prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: When did the place of birth of the performer of Mother-in-Law elect its first black Mayor?

The following are given passages.
Context 1: Passage 1:
E  Denise Simmons
E  Denise Simmons (born October 2, 1951) is the former mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts, having served her first mayoral term 2008–2009 term and her second mayoral term 2016-2017  She was the first openly lesbian African-American mayor in the United States  Simmons has been on the Cambridge City Council continuously from 2001 to present, serving ten consecutive terms 

Early life and education
Simmons was born on October 2, 1951  She grew up in Cambridge's Area 4 neighborhood and attended Cambridge schools  She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts Boston, and a Master's degree in Psychotherapy from Antioch College 
In 1982, Simmons established her own business, the Cambridgeport Insurance Agency 

Public Service and Political Career
Public Service
Simmons served as Executive Director of the Cambridge Civic Unity Committee in the 1980s  Among the work performed while in this role was her successful fight to increase the diversity within the Cambridge public school faculty 
In 1992, Simmons ran for and won a spot on the Cambridge School Committee  She quickly won praise from across Cambridge for her tremendous work ethic, and for her efforts to find ways to build consensus with her colleagues  Over the next several years, Simmons gained a reputation as a calm, thoughtful voice on the school committee, and as a person who always kept her door open to anyone who wished to speak with her 
Simmons is a Justice of the Peace and Notary Public 

City Council Member - 2001 to present
In 2001, Simmons ran for and won a seat on the Cambridge City Council  She immediately set out to make local government more accessible to a wider range of people, and through efforts such as holding "town hall" style meetings, Simmons worked to get more people involved in their own governance   Simmons – being Black, a woman, and a member of the GLBT community – worked hard to make sure that each of these constituencies was given a voice inside City Hall  Simmons was a member of the City Council when Cambridge City Hall became the first municipality, in 2004, to issue same-sex marriage licenses  She also promoted efforts to help local minority business owners network and establish themselves in Cambridge  Simmons also helped initiate community conversations about the role of race and class in contemporary Cambridge society 

First Term As Mayor
Her election to mayor of Cambridge by the Cambridge City Council on January 14, 2008, was unanimous  The previous mayor of Cambridge, Kenneth Reeves, was the first openly gay African-American mayor in the United States  As Cambridge mayor, Simmons served as head of the city's legislative body—while the non-elected city manager serves as the city's chief executive officer  Simmons brought the same sensibilities to the mayor's office that she brought to her previous endeavors – notably, she took pains to create an open-door atmosphere to her constituents  She opened the "mayor's parlor" to the people of Cambridge, where she convened meetings on everything from environmental policy, to the coordination of the city's various social services providers, to a senior citizens' advisory group  Simmons developed a reputation as a workhorse, with an emphasis on constituent services 
Simmons was mayor during the summer of 2009, during which time Cambridge was thrust into the international spotlight due to the arrest of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr   As a result of the attention this incident generated, Simmons was sought after as a spokesperson for the city, and she was careful to avoid inflaming an already volatile situation   Simmons was interviewed on ABC's Good Morning America, CBS's The Early Show, CNN's State Of The Union with John King, among several other national media outlets   Simmons won praise from her constituents for giving measured, thoughtful responses in public, as well as for her diligent work to contain the situation behind the scenes  Simmons noted that she had a lengthy record of leading public discussions on how race and class impact contemporary Cambridge, and this work would continue long after the Professor Gates arrest faded from the headlines 

State Senate Bid
In February 2010, Councillor Simmons announced that she was running for an open state Senate seat in the Middlesex, Suffolk and Essex district that was vacated by Anthony Galluccio   She came in third, behind Everett City Councilor Sal DiDomenico and Cambridge Attorney Tim Flaherty, in the April 13, 2010 primary   She released a statement to the press that said, in part: "Despite coming up a little short at the end, this campaign was still a winning experience for me  I have had a tremendous opportunity to get to meet so many people, to learn more about the issues impacting the people in this district, and to make many new friends in Cambridge and beyond  The volunteers that made phone calls and knocked on doors every day were phenomenal, and their dedication and enthusiasm for civic engagement energized me every day "  Having lost the primary, Councillor Simmons returned her attention to her duties on the Cambridge City Council 

Career 2012 - Present
In the 2012–2013 term, she served as Vice Mayor of Cambridge 
Simmons was again elected Mayor on January 4, 2016 On November 5, 2019, Simmons was elected to her 10th term on the Cambridge City Council

Personal
Simmons is also a photo archivist and family historian and has facilitated workshops for public and private organizations both nationally and locally—including for the Cambridge Public Schools  Simmons has received numerous awards and commendations for her work in the community 

See also
List of first African-American mayors
List of the first LGBT holders of political offices
List of mayors of Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts municipal election, 2013
Passage 2:
Mother-in-Law Lounge
The Mother-in-Law Lounge is a live music venue, pub and a shrine in New Orleans, Louisiana dedicated to the memory of rhythm and blues singer, Ernie K-Doe    It is at the downtown river corner of Claiborne Avenue and Columbus Street in the 7th Ward of New Orleans   The exterior of the building is decorated with colorful murals depicting K-Doe and other prominent figures in New Orleans music, especially people who collaborated with K-Doe 
The lounge was originally opened by Ernie K-Doe in 1994, and it has become a historical icon in the local community   It was flooded with five and a half feet of water during Hurricane Katrina in 2005   With the help of the Hands on Network and Chet Haines, the lounge reopened its doors on 29 August 2006, on the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina   Mother-in-Law Lounge was owned and operated by K-Doe's widow and musician, Antoinette K-Doe, before she died during Mardi Gras 2009   
In 2011, local musician Kermit Ruffins agreed to lease the site, and it reopened on January 20, 2014 
Ruffins is now running the establishment as Kermit's Mother-In-Law Lounge 
Passage 3:
2017 Raleigh mayoral election
The biennial nonpartisan election for the Mayor of Raleigh, North Carolina, was held on Tuesday, Oct  10, 2017  As no candidate won a majority of the vote in the first round, a runoff was held on November 7, 2017, as requested by the second-place finisher, Charles Francis  Incumbent Mayor Nancy McFarlane defeated Francis in the runoff, winning a fourth term in office 
This was the first Raleigh mayoral election to advance to a second round since 2001 

Candidates
Declared
Paul Fitts
Charles Francis, attorney and former City Council member
Nancy McFarlane, Mayor since 2011, former City Council member

First-round Results
Runoff Results


== Notes ==
Passage 4:
Hardin Bigelow
Hardin Bigelow (1809 in Michigan Territory – November 27, 1850 in San Francisco, California) was the first elected mayor of the city of Sacramento, California, which was known then as "Sacramento City " Bigelow's efforts to construct Sacramento's first levees won him enough support to become mayor in Sacramento's first mayoral elections in February 1850  Bigelow served seven months, from April to November, before succumbing to cholera; while he was mayor, Sacramento averted disaster in a potentially devastating flood, but fell victim to a series of April fires, a riot, and a cholera epidemic 

1850 floods
Bigelow gained popularity when he advocated and carried out the construction of Sacramento City's first levees and dams in the aftermath of the destruction caused by the 1850 Sacramento flood in January, which devastated the commercial operations on Sacramento City's Embarcadero and washed away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of store merchandise  Bigelow's efforts prevented a second inundation event in March 1850 from enacting devastation similar to that of the flood that had destroyed the city two months earlier 

Mayoral office (1850)
Hardin Bigelow was the first mayor to be elected in Sacramento City, succeeding Major General Albert Maver Winn as city mayor in February 1850  Bigelow was chosen because of his foresight, which protected the city from a March 1850 flood event  Under Bigelow, the Sacramento dropped the "City" portion of its name and was chartered as a city by the newly formed California State Legislature in late February Bigelow was mayor during the 1850 Sacramento fires in April, which destroyed a number of wooden structures on the Embarcadero apiece; he was mayor during the aftermath as well, when Sacramento City rebuilt with iron-shuttered structures and with brick and stone rather than wood to reduce the likelihood of fire damage 

Squatters' riot
Ever since 1848, land-seeking settlers had decided to disregard the right that John Sutter had to the land in what he called his personal empire, "New Helvetia;" settling on his land, the squatters grew at odds with the government in Sacramento  After a squatter named John T  Madden was tried and found guilty of unlawful occupation in May 1850, the squatting settlers charged the government with "brute force" and worked to garner support from sympathetic settlers  Rallying around future Kansas governor Charles L  Robinson, settlers marched to free jailed prisoners James McClatchy and businessman Richard Moran from the city's prison brig in August 1850, from a ship called the La Grange According to the local Placer Times, Bigelow had feared a full uprising and decided to strike pre-emptively against Robinson's army while they marched through downtown Sacramento  In the following fight, Bigelow was wounded to an extent where Demas Strong replaced him as acting mayor of the city  City sheriff Joseph McKinney ended the conflict on Bigelow's behalf with a tactical strike on a squatter's retreat to the east of Sacramento while Bigelow traveled southwest to San Francisco to recover 

Death
Two months later in October 1850, a cholera epidemic struck the city of Sacramento, driving out eighty percent of the city populace and killing seventeen of the city's physicians  Bigelow became afflicted by the disease, and died in San Francisco that month  He was buried at the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery in Sacramento, California 
Passage 5:
Eugene P  Ruehlmann
Eugene Peter Ruehlmann (February 23, 1925 – June 8, 2013)  was an American lawyer and politician  He was the Mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1967 to 1971 

Early life and education
Ruehlmann was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of John and Hattie Ruehlmann  Ruehlmann had nine siblings  In 1943, he graduated from Western Hills High School  In 1948, Ruehlmann earned his bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Cincinnati, where he also was awarded the McKibbin Medal from the College of Arts and Sciences  Ruehlmann was a member of Beta Theta Pi and the varsity football team  He then  served in the United States Marine Corps during World War II  In 1950, Ruehlmann earned his law degree from Harvard Law School 

Career
Ruehlmann was a founder of the Strauss, Troy and Ruehlmann law firm in Cincinnati In 1959, Ruehlmann was elected to Cincinnati City Council and then served as Mayor of Cincinnati from 1967 to 1971  As mayor, he helped to bring professional football to the city, and was among those who negotiated a deal that resulted in the construction of Riverfront Stadium, where the Cincinnati Bengals and Cincinnati Reds played  He is also credited with reaching out to the African American community and helping to heal the city after race riots in 1967 and 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr Ruehlmann was a member of the Republican Party  In the 1990s, he served as a chairman of the Hamilton County Republican Party 

Personal life and death
Ruehlmann's wife was Virginia Ruehlmann (née Juergens), who died in 2008  They had eight children On June 8, 2013, Ruehlmann died in Cincinnati at the age of 88 

Awards
1998 Great Living Cincinnatian Award  Presented by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber 
Passage 6:
Black people
Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid to dark brown complexion  Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western world, the term "black" is used to describe persons who are perceived as dark-skinned compared to other populations  It is most commonly used for people of sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous Australians and Melanesians, though it has been applied in many contexts to other groups, and is no indicator of any close ancestral relationship whatsoever  Indigenous African societies do not use the term black as a racial identity outside of influences brought by Western cultures  Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, several style guides, including the AP Stylebook, changed their guides to capitalize the "b" in black in 2020  The ASA Style Guide says that the "b" should not be capitalized  Some perceive the term "black" as a derogatory, outdated, reductive or otherwise unrepresentative label, and as a result neither use nor define it, especially in African countries with little to no history of colonial racial segregation Contemporary anthropologists and other scientists, while recognizing the reality of biological variation between different human populations, regard the concept of a unified, distinguishable "Black race" as socially constructed  Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified "black", and these social constructs have changed over time  In a number of countries, societal variables affect classification as much as skin color, and the social criteria for "blackness" vary  In the United Kingdom, "black" was historically equivalent with "person of color", a general term for non-European peoples   In other regions such as Australasia, settlers applied the term "black" or it was used by local populations with different histories and ancestral backgrounds 

Africa
Northern Africa
Numerous communities of dark-skinned peoples are present in North Africa, some dating from prehistoric communities  Others descend from migrants via the historical trans-Saharan trade or, after the Arab invasions of North Africa in the 7th century, from slaves from the trans-Saharan slave trade in North Africa 
In the 18th century, the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail "the Warrior King" (1672–1727) raised a corps of 150,000 black soldiers, called his Black Guard According to Carlos Moore, resident scholar at Brazil's University of the State of Bahia, in the 21st century Afro-multiracials in the Arab world, including Arabs in North Africa, self-identify in ways that resemble multi-racials in Latin America  He claims that darker-toned Arabs, much like darker-toned Latin Americans, consider themselves white because they have some distant white ancestry Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had a mother who was a dark-skinned Nubian Sudanese (Sudanese Arab) woman and a father who was a lighter-skinned Egyptian  In response to an advertisement for an acting position, as a young man he said, "I am not white but I am not exactly black either  My blackness is tending to reddish" Due to the patriarchal nature of Arab society, Arab men, including during the slave trade in North Africa, enslaved more African women than men  The female slaves were often put to work in domestic service and agriculture  The men interpreted the Quran to permit sexual relations between a male master and his enslaved females outside of marriage (see Ma malakat aymanukum and sex), leading to many mixed-race children  When an enslaved woman became pregnant with her Arab master's child, she was considered as umm walad or "mother of a child", a status that granted her privileged rights  The child was given rights of inheritance to the father's property, so mixed-race children could share in any wealth of the father  Because the society was patrilineal, the children inherited their fathers' social status at birth and were born free 
Some mixed-race children succeeded their respective fathers as rulers, such as Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, who ruled Morocco from 1578 to 1608  He was not technically considered as a mixed-race child of a slave; his mother was Fulani and a concubine of his father In early 1991, non-Arabs of the Zaghawa people of Sudan attested that they were victims of an intensifying Arab apartheid campaign, segregating Arabs and non-Arabs (specifically, people of Nilotic ancestry)  Sudanese Arabs, who controlled the government, were widely referred to as practicing apartheid against Sudan's non-Arab citizens  The government was accused of "deftly manipulat(ing) Arab solidarity" to carry out policies of apartheid and ethnic cleansing Sudanese Arabs are also black people in that they are culturally and linguistically Arabized indigenous peoples of Sudan of mostly Nilo-Saharans, Nubian, and Cushitic ancestry; their skin tone and appearance resembles that of other black people 
American University economist George Ayittey accused the Arab government of Sudan of practicing acts of racism against black citizens  According to Ayittey, "In Sudan    the Arabs monopolized power and excluded blacks – Arab apartheid " Many African commentators joined Ayittey in accusing Sudan of practicing Arab apartheid 

Sahara
In the Sahara, the native Tuareg Berber populations kept "negro" slaves  Most of these captives were of Nilotic extraction, and were either purchased by the Tuareg nobles from slave markets in the Western Sudan or taken during raids  Their origin is denoted via the Ahaggar Berber word Ibenheren (sing  Ébenher), which alludes to slaves that only spoke a Nilo-Saharan language  These slaves were also sometimes known by the borrowed Songhay term Bella Similarly, the Sahrawi indigenous peoples of the Western Sahara observed a class system consisting of high castes and low castes  Outside of these traditional tribal boundaries were "Negro" slaves, who were drawn from the surrounding areas 

North-Eastern Africa
In Ethiopia and Somalia, the slave classes mainly consisted of captured peoples from the Sudanese-Ethiopian and Kenyan-Somali international borders or other surrounding areas of Nilotic and Bantu peoples who were collectively known as Shanqella and Adone (both analogues to "negro" in an English-speaking context)  Some of these slaves were captured during territorial conflicts in the Horn of Africa and then sold off to slave merchants  The earliest representation of this tradition dates from a seventh or eighth century BC inscription belonging to the Kingdom of Damat These captives and others of analogous morphology were distinguished as tsalim barya (dark-skinned slave) in contrast with the Afroasiatic-speaking nobles or saba qayh ("red men") or light-skinned slave; while on the other hand, western racial category standards do not differentiate between saba qayh ("red men"—light-skinned) or saba tiqur ("black men"—dark-skinned) Horn Africans (of either Afroasiatic-speaking, Nilotic-speaking or Bantu origin) thus considering all of them as "black people" (and in some case "negro") according to Western society's notion of race 

Southern Africa
In South Africa, the period of colonization resulted in many unions and marriages between European and Africans (Bantu peoples of South Africa and Khoisans) from various tribes, resulting in mixed-race children  As the European colonialists acquired control of territory, they generally pushed the mixed-race and African populations into second-class status  During the first half of the 20th century, the white-dominated government classified the population according to four main racial groups: Black, White, Asian (mostly Indian), and Coloured  The Coloured group included people of mixed Bantu, Khoisan, and European ancestry (with some Malay ancestry, especially in the Western Cape)  The Coloured definition occupied an intermediary political position between the Black and White definitions in South Africa  It imposed a system of legal racial segregation, a complex of laws known as apartheid 
The apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria in the Population Registration Act of 1945 to determine who belonged in which group  Minor officials administered tests to enforce the classifications  When it was unclear from a person's physical appearance whether the individual should be considered Coloured or Black, the "pencil test" was used  A pencil was inserted into a person's hair to determine if the hair was kinky enough to hold the pencil, rather than having it pass through, as it would with smoother hair  If so, the person was classified as Black  Such classifications sometimes divided families 
Sandra Laing is a South African woman who was classified as Coloured by authorities during the apartheid era, due to her skin colour and hair texture, although her parents could prove at least three generations of European ancestors  At age 10, she was expelled from her all-white school  The officials' decisions based on her anomalous appearance disrupted her family and adult life  She was the subject of the 2008 biographical dramatic film Skin, which won numerous awards  During the apartheid era, those classed as "Coloured" were oppressed and discriminated against  But, they had limited rights and overall had slightly better socioeconomic conditions than those classed as "Black"  The government required that Blacks and Coloureds live in areas separate from Whites, creating large townships located away from the cities as areas for Blacks 
In the post-apartheid era, the Constitution of South Africa has declared the country to be a "Non-racial democracy"  In an effort to redress past injustices, the ANC government has introduced laws in support of affirmative action policies for Blacks; under these they define "Black" people to include "Africans", "Coloureds" and "Asians"  Some affirmative action policies favor "Africans" over "Coloureds" in terms of qualifying for certain benefits  Some South Africans categorized as "African Black" say that "Coloureds" did not suffer as much as they did during apartheid  "Coloured" South Africans are known to discuss their dilemma by saying, "we were not white enough under apartheid, and we are not black enough under the ANC (African National Congress)" In 2008, the High Court in South Africa ruled that Chinese South Africans who were residents during the apartheid era (and their descendants) are to be reclassified as "Black people," solely for the purposes of accessing affirmative action benefits, because they were also "disadvantaged" by racial discrimination  Chinese people who arrived in the country after the end of apartheid do not qualify for such benefits Other than by appearance, "Coloureds" can usually be distinguished from "Blacks" by language  Most speak Afrikaans or English as a first language, as opposed to Bantu languages such as Zulu or Xhosa  They also tend to have more European-sounding names than Bantu names 

Asia
Afro-Asians
"Afro-Asians" or "African-Asians" are persons of mixed sub-Saharan African and Asian ancestry  In the United States, they are also called "black Asians" or "Blasians"  Historically, Afro-Asian populations have been marginalized as a result of human migration and social conflict 

Western Asia
Arab world
Historians estimate that between the advent of Islam in 650 CE and the abolition of slavery in the Arabian Peninsula in the mid-20th century, 10 to 18 million black Africans (known as the Zanj) were enslaved by east African slave traders and transported to the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries  This number far exceeded the number of slaves who were taken to the Americas  Several factors affected the visibility of descendants of this diaspora in 21st-century Arab societies: The traders shipped more female slaves than males, as there was a demand for them to serve as concubines in harems in the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries  Male slaves were castrated in order to serve as harem guards  The death toll of black African slaves from forced labor was high  The mixed-race children of female slaves and Arab owners were assimilated into the Arab owners' families under the patrilineal kinship system  As a result, few distinctive Afro-Arab communities have survived in the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries Distinctive and self-identified black communities have been reported in countries such as Iraq, with a reported 1 2 million black people (Afro-Iraqis), and they attest to a history of discrimination  These descendants of the Zanj have sought minority status from the government, which would reserve some seats in Parliament for representatives of their population  According to Alamin M  Mazrui et al , generally in the Arabian Peninsula and neighboring countries, most of these communities identify as both black and Arab 

Iran
Afro-Iranians are people of black African ancestry residing in Iran  During the Qajar dynasty, many wealthy households imported black African women and children as slaves to perform domestic work  This slave labor was drawn exclusively from the Zanj, who were Bantu-speaking peoples that lived along the African Great Lakes, in an area roughly comprising modern-day Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi 

Israel
About 150,000 East African and black people live in Israel, amounting to just over 2% of the nation's population  The vast majority of these, some 120,000, are Beta Israel, most of whom are recent immigrants who came during the 1980s and 1990s from Ethiopia  In addition, Israel is home to more than 5,000 members of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem movement that are ancestry of African Americans who emigrated to Israel in the 20th century, and who reside mainly in a distinct neighborhood in the Negev town of Dimona  Unknown numbers of black converts to Judaism reside in Israel, most of them converts from the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States 
Additionally, there are around 60,000 non-Jewish African immigrants in Israel, some of whom have sought asylum  Most of the migrants are from communities in Sudan and Eritrea, particularly the Niger-Congo-speaking Nuba groups of the southern Nuba Mountains; some are illegal immigrants 

Turkey
Beginning several centuries ago, during the period of the Ottoman Empire, tens of thousands of Zanj captives were brought by slave traders to plantations and agricultural areas situated between Antalya and Istanbul, which gave rise to the Afro-Turk population in present-day Turkey  Some of their ancestry remained in situ, and many migrated to larger cities and towns  Other black slaves were transported to Crete, from where they or their descendants later reached the İzmir area through the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, or indirectly from Ayvalık in pursuit of work Apart from the historical Afro-Turk presence Turkey also hosts a sizeable immigrant black population since the end of the 1990s  The community is composed mostly of modern immigrants from Ghana, Ethiopia, DRC, Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, Eritrea, Somalia and Senegal  According to official figures 1 5 million Africans live in Turkey and around 25% of them are located in Istanbul  Other studies state the majority of  Africans in Turkey lives in Istanbul and report Tarlabaşı, Dolapdere, Kumkapı, Yenikapı and Kurtuluş as having a strong African presence Most of the African immigrants in Turkey come to Turkey to further migrate to Europe   Immigrants from Eastern Africa are usually refugees, meanwhile Western and Central African immigration is reported to be economically driven  It is reported that African immigrants in Turkey regularly face economic and social challenges, notably racism and opposition to immigration by locals 

Southern Asia
The Siddi are an ethnic group inhabiting India and Pakistan  Members are descended from the Bantu peoples of Southeast Africa  Some were merchants, sailors, indentured servants, slaves or mercenaries  The Siddi population is currently estimated at around 270,000–350,000 individuals, living mostly in Karnataka, Gujarat, and Hyderabad in India and Makran and Karachi in Pakistan  In the Makran strip of the Sindh and Balochistan provinces in southwestern Pakistan, these Bantu descendants are known as the Makrani  There was a brief "Black Power" movement in Sindh in the 1960s and many Siddi are proud of and celebrate their African ancestry 

Southeastern Asia
Negritos, are a collection of various, often unrelated peoples, who were once considered a single distinct population of closely related groups, but genetic studies showed that they descended from the same ancient East Eurasian meta-population which gave rise to modern East Asian peoples, and consist of several separate groups, as well as displaying genetic heterogeneity  They inhabit isolated parts of Southeast Asia, and are now confined primarily to Southern Thailand, the Malay Peninsula, and the Andaman Islands of India Negrito means "little black people" in Spanish (negrito is the Spanish diminutive of negro, i e , "little black person"); it is what the Spaniards called the aborigines that they encountered in the Philippines  The term Negrito itself has come under criticism in countries like Malaysia, where it is now interchangeable with the more acceptable Semang, although this term actually refers to a specific group 
They have dark skin, often curly-hair and Asiatic facial characteristics, and are stockily built Negritos in the Philippines frequently face discrimination  Because of their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle, they are marginalized and live in poverty, unable to find employment 

Europe
Western Europe
France
While census collection of ethnic background is illegal in France, it is estimated that there are about 2 5 – 5 million black people residing there 

Germany
As of 2020, there are approximately one million black people living in Germany 

Netherlands
Afro-Dutch are residents of the Netherlands who are of Black African or Afro-Caribbean ancestry  They tend to be from the former and present Dutch overseas territories of Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and Suriname  The Netherlands also has sizable Cape Verdean and other African communities 

Portugal
As of 2021, there were at least 232,000 people of recent Black-African immigrant background living in Portugal  They mainly live in the regions of Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra  As Portugal doesn't collect information dealing with ethnicity, the estimate includes only people that, as of 2021, hold the citizenship of a Sub Saharan African country or people who have acquired Portuguese citizenship from 2008 to 2021, thus excluding descendants, people of more distant African ancestry or people who have settled in Portugal generations ago and are now Portuguese citizens 

Spain
The term "Moors" has been used in Europe in a broader, somewhat derogatory sense to refer to Muslims, especially those of Arab or Berber ancestry, whether living in North Africa or Iberia  Moors were not a distinct or self-defined people  Medieval and early modern Europeans applied the name to Muslim Arabs, Berbers, Sub-Saharan Africans and Europeans alike Isidore of Seville, writing in the 7th century, claimed that the Latin word Maurus was derived from the Greek mauron, μαύρον, which is the Greek word for "black"  Indeed, by the time Isidore of Seville came to write his Etymologies, the word Maurus or "Moor" had become an adjective in Latin, "for the Greeks call black, mauron"  "In Isidore's day, Moors were black by definition   "Afro-Spaniards are Spanish nationals of West/Central African ancestry  Today, they mainly come from Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Gambia, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal  Additionally, many Afro-Spaniards born in Spain are from the former Spanish colony Equatorial Guinea  Today, there are an estimated 683,000 Afro-Spaniards in Spain 

United Kingdom
According to the Office for National Statistics, at the 2001 census there were more than a million black people in the United Kingdom; 1% of the total population described themselves as "Black Caribbean", 0 8% as "Black African", and 0 2% as "Black other"  Britain encouraged the immigration of workers from the Caribbean after World War II; the first symbolic movement was of those who came on the ship the Empire Windrush and, hence, those who migrated between 1948 and 1970 are known as the Windrush generation  The preferred official umbrella term is "black, Asian and minority ethnic" (BAME), but sometimes the term "black" is used on its own, to express unified opposition to racism, as in the Southall Black Sisters, which started with a mainly British Asian constituency, and the National Black Police Association, which has a membership of "African, African-Caribbean and Asian origin" 

Eastern Europe
As African states became independent in the 1960s, the Soviet Union offered many of their citizens the chance to study in Russia  Over a period of 40 years, about 400,000 African students from various countries moved to Russia to pursue higher studies, including many black Africans  This extended beyond the Soviet Union to many countries of the Eastern bloc 

Balkans
Due to the slave trade in the Ottoman Empire that had flourished in the Balkans, the coastal town of Ulcinj in Montenegro had its own black community  In 1878, that community consisted of about 100 people 

Oceania
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians have been referred to as "black people" in Australia since the early days of European settlement  While originally related to skin colour, the term is used today to indicate Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander ancestry in general and can refer to people of any skin pigmentation Being identified as either "black" or "white" in Australia during the 19th and early 20th centuries was critical in one's employment and social prospects  Various state-based Aboriginal Protection Boards were established which had virtually complete control over the lives of Indigenous Australians – where they lived, their employment, marriage, education and included the power to separate children from their parents  Aborigines were not allowed to vote and were often confined to reserves and forced into low paid or effectively slave labour  The social position of mixed-race or "half-caste" individuals varied over time  A 1913 report by Baldwin Spencer states that:

the half-castes belong neither to the aboriginal nor to the whites, yet, on the whole, they have more leaning towards the former;     One thing is certain and that is that the white population as a whole will never mix with half-castes    the best and kindest thing is to place them on reserves along with the natives, train them in the same schools and encourage them to marry amongst themselves 
After the First World War, however, it became apparent that the number of mixed-race people was growing at a faster rate than the white population, and, by 1930, fear of the "half-caste menace" undermining the White Australia ideal from within was being taken as a serious concern  Cecil Cook, the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, noted that:

generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated  The problem of our half-castes will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white 
The official policy became one of biological and cultural assimilation: "Eliminate the full-blood and permit the white admixture to half-castes and eventually the race will become white"  This led to different treatment for "black" and "half-caste" individuals, with lighter-skinned individuals targeted for removal from their families to be raised as "white" people and prohibited from speaking their native language and practicing traditional customs, a process now known as the Stolen Generation 

The second half of the 20th century to the present has seen a gradual shift towards improved human rights for Aboriginal people  In a 1967 referendum, more than 90% of the Australian population voted to end constitutional discrimination and to include Aborigines in the national census  During this period, many Aboriginal activists began to embrace the term "black" and use their ancestry as a source of pride  Activist Bob Maza said:

I only hope that when I die I can say I'm black and it's beautiful to be black  It is this sense of pride which we are trying to give back to the aborigine [sic] today 
In 1978, Aboriginal writer Kevin Gilbert received the National Book Council award for his book Living Black: Blacks Talk to Kevin Gilbert, a collection of Aboriginal people's stories, and in 1998 was awarded (but refused to accept) the Human Rights Award for Literature for Inside Black Australia, a poetry anthology and exhibition of Aboriginal photography  In contrast to previous definitions based solely on the degree of Aboriginal ancestry, the Government changed the legal definition of Aboriginal in 1990 to include any:

person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent who identifies as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and is accepted as such by the community in which he [or she] lives
This nationwide acceptance and recognition of Aboriginal people led to a significant increase in the number of people self-identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander  The reappropriation of the term "black" with a positive and more inclusive meaning has resulted in its widespread use in mainstream Australian culture, including public media outlets, government agencies, and private companies  In 2012, a number of high-profile cases highlighted the legal and community attitude that identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander is not dependent on skin color, with a well-known boxer Anthony Mundine being widely criticized for questioning the "blackness" of another boxer and journalist Andrew Bolt being successfully sued for publishing discriminatory comments about Aboriginals with light skin 

Melanesians
The region of Melanesia is named from Greek μέλας, black, and νῆσος, island, etymologically meaning "islands of black [people]", in reference to the dark skin of the indigenous peoples  Early European settlers, such as Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez, noted the resemblance of the people to those in Africa 

Melanesians, along with other Pacific Islanders, were frequently deceived or coerced during the 19th and 20th centuries into forced labour for sugarcane, cotton, and coffee planters in countries distant to their native lands in a practice known as blackbirding  In Queensland, some 55,000 to 62,500 were brought from the New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands, and New Guinea to work in sugarcane fields  Under the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901, most islanders working in Queensland were repatriated back to their homelands  
Those who remained in Australia, commonly called South Sea Islanders, often faced discrimination similarly to Indigenous Australians by white-dominated society  Many indigenous rights activists have South Sea Islander ancestry, including Faith Bandler, Evelyn Scott and Bonita Mabo 
Many Melanesians have taken up the term 'Melanesia' as a way to empower themselves as a collective people  Stephanie Lawson writes that the term "moved from a term of denigration to one of affirmation, providing a positive basis for contemporary subregional identity as well as a formal organisation" : 14  For instance, the term is used in the Melanesian Spearhead Group, which seeks to promote economic growth among Melanesian countries 

Other
John Caesar, nicknamed "Black Caesar", a convict and bushranger with parents born in an unknown area in Africa, was one of the first people of recent black African ancestry to arrive in Australia At the 2006 Census, 248,605 residents declared that they were born in Africa  This figure pertains to all immigrants to Australia who were born in nations in Africa regardless of race, and includes white Africans 

North America
Canada
"Black Canadians" is a designation used for people of black African ancestry who are citizens or permanent residents of Canada  The majority of black Canadians are of Caribbean origin, though the population also consists of African American immigrants and their descendants (including black Nova Scotians), as well as many African immigrants Black Canadians often draw a distinction between those of Afro-Caribbean ancestry and those of other African roots  The term African Canadian is occasionally used by some black Canadians who trace their heritage to the first slaves brought by British and French colonists to the North American mainland  Promised freedom by the British during the American Revolutionary War, thousands of Black Loyalists were resettled by the Crown in Canada afterward, such as Thomas Peters  In addition, an estimated ten to thirty thousand fugitive slaves reached freedom in Canada from the Southern United States during the Antebellum years, aided by people along the Underground Railroad 
Many black people of Caribbean origin in Canada reject the term "African Canadian" as an elision of the uniquely Caribbean aspects of their heritage, and instead identify as Caribbean Canadian  Unlike in the United States, where "African American" has become a widely used term, in Canada controversies associated with distinguishing African or Caribbean heritage have resulted in the term "black Canadian" being widely accepted there 

United States
There were eight principal areas used by Europeans to buy and ship slaves to the Western Hemisphere  The number of enslaved people sold to the New World varied throughout the slave trade  As for the distribution of slaves from regions of activity, certain areas produced far more enslaved people than others  Between 1650 and 1900, 10 24 million enslaved West Africans arrived in the Americas from the following regions in the following proportions:
Senegambia (Senegal and The Gambia): 4 8%
Upper Guinea (Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Sierra Leone): 4 1%
Windward Coast (Liberia and Ivory Coast): 1 8%
Gold Coast (Ghana and east of Ivory Coast): 10 4%
Bight of Benin (Togo, Benin and Nigeria west of the Niger Delta): 20 2%
Bight of Biafra (Nigeria east of the Niger Delta, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon): 14 6%
West Central Africa (Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola): 39 4%
Southeastern Africa (Mozambique and Madagascar): 4 7%
By the early 1900s, nigger had become a pejorative word in the United States  In its stead, the term colored became the mainstream alternative to negro and its derived terms  After the American Civil Rights Movement, the terms colored and negro gave way to "black"  Negro had superseded colored as the most polite word for African Americans at a time when black was considered more offensive  This term was accepted as normal, including by people classified as Negroes, until the later Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s  One well-known example is the use by Dr  Rev  Martin Luther King Jr  of "Negro" in his famous speech of 1963, I Have a Dream  During the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some African-American leaders in the United States, notably Malcolm X, objected to the word Negro because they associated it with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second-class citizens, or worse  Malcolm X preferred Black to Negro, but later gradually abandoned that as well for Afro-American after leaving the Nation of Islam Since the late 1960s, various other terms for African Americans have been more widespread in popular usage  Aside from black American, these include Afro-American (in use from the late 1960s to 1990) and African American (used in the United States to refer to Black Americans, people often referred to in the past as American Negroes) In the first 200 years that black people were in the United States, they primarily identified themselves by their specific ethnic group (closely allied to language) and not by skin color  Individuals identified themselves, for example, as Ashanti, Igbo, Bakongo, or Wolof  However, when the first captives were brought to the Americas, they were often combined with other groups from West Africa, and individual ethnic affiliations were not generally acknowledged by English colonists  In areas of the Upper South, different ethnic groups were brought together  This is significant as the captives came from a vast geographic region: the West African coastline stretching from Senegal to Angola and in some cases from the south-east coast such as Mozambique  A new African-American identity and culture was born that incorporated elements of the various ethnic groups and of European cultural heritage, resulting in fusions such as the Black church and African-American English  This new identity was based on provenance and slave status rather than membership in any one ethnic group By contrast, slave records from Louisiana show that the French and Spanish colonists recorded more complete identities of the West Africans, including ethnicities and given tribal names The U S  racial or ethnic classification "black" refers to people with all possible kinds of skin pigmentation, from the darkest through to the very lightest skin colors, including albinos, if they are believed by others to have African ancestry (in any discernible percentage)  There are also certain cultural traits associated with being "African American", a term used effectively as a synonym for "black person" within the United States 
In March 1807, Great Britain, which largely controlled the Atlantic, declared the transatlantic slave trade illegal, as did the United States  (The latter prohibition took effect 1 January 1808, the earliest date on which Congress had the power to do so after protecting the slave trade under Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution )
By that time, the majority of black people in the United States were native-born, so the use of the term "African" became problematic  Though initially a source of pride, many blacks feared that the use of African as an identity would be a hindrance to their fight for full citizenship in the United States  They also felt that it would give ammunition to those who were advocating repatriating black people back to Africa  In 1835, black leaders called upon Black Americans to remove the title of "African" from their institutions and replace it with "Negro" or "Colored American"  A few institutions chose to keep their historic names, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church  African Americans popularly used the terms "Negro" or "colored" for themselves until the late 1960s The term black was used throughout but not frequently since it carried a certain stigma  In his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, Martin Luther King Jr  uses the terms negro fifteen times and black four times  Each time that he uses black, it is in parallel construction with white; for example, "black men and white men" With the successes of the American Civil Rights Movement, a new term was needed to break from the past and help shed the reminders of legalized discrimination  In place of Negro, activists promoted the use of black as standing for racial pride, militancy, and power  Some of the turning points included the use of the term "Black Power" by Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and the popular singer James Brown's song "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud" 
In 1988, the civil rights leader Jesse Jackson urged Americans to use instead the term "African American" because it had a historical cultural base and was a construction similar to terms used by European descendants, such as German American, Italian American, etc  Since then, African American and black have often had parallel status  However, controversy continues over which, if any, of the two terms is more appropriate  Maulana Karenga argues that the term African-American is more appropriate because it accurately articulates their geographical and historical origin  Others have argued that "black" is a better term because "African" suggests foreignness, although black Americans helped found the United States  Still others believe that the term "black" is inaccurate because African Americans have a variety of skin tones  Some surveys suggest that the majority of Black Americans have no preference for "African American" or "black", although they have a slight preference for "black" in personal settings and "African American" in more formal settings In the U S  census race definitions, black and African Americans are citizens and residents of the United States with origins in the black racial groups of Africa  According to the Office of Management and Budget, the grouping includes individuals who self-identify as African American, as well as persons who emigrated from nations in the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa  The grouping is thus based on geography, and may contradict or misrepresent an individual's self-identification, since not all immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa are "black"  The Census Bureau also notes that these classifications are socio-political constructs and should not be interpreted as scientific or anthropological According to U S  Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American  The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities (~95%)  Immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term Recent surveys of African Americans using a genetic testing service have found varied ancestries that show different tendencies by region and sex of ancestors  These studies found that on average, African Americans have 73 2–80 9% West African, 18–24% European, and 0 8–0 9% Native American genetic heritage, with large variation between individuals According to studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, U S  residents consistently overestimate the size, physical strength, and formidability of young black men 

One-drop rule
From the late 19th century, the South used a colloquial term, the one-drop rule, to classify as black a person of any known African ancestry  This practice of hypodescent was not put into law until the early 20th century  Legally, the definition varied from state to state  Racial definition was more flexible in the 18th and 19th centuries before the American Civil War  For instance, President Thomas Jefferson held in slavery persons who were legally white (less than 25% black) according to Virginia law at the time, but, because they were born to slave mothers, they were born into slavery, according to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, which Virginia adopted into law in 1662 
Outside of the United States, some other countries have adopted the one-drop rule, but the definition of who is black and the extent to which the one-drop "rule" applies varies greatly from country to country 
The one-drop rule may have originated as a means of increasing the number of black slaves and was maintained as an attempt to keep the white race "pure"  One of the results of the one-drop rule was the uniting of the African-American community  Some of the most prominent abolitionists and civil-rights activists of the 19th century were multiracial, such as Frederick Douglass, Robert Purvis and James Mercer Langston  They advocated equality for all 

Blackness
The concept of blackness in the United States has been described as the degree to which one associates themselves with mainstream African-American culture, politics, and values  To a certain extent, this concept is not so much about race but more about political orientation, culture and behavior  Blackness can be contrasted with "acting white", where black Americans are said to behave with assumed characteristics of stereotypical white Americans with regard to fashion, dialect, taste in music, and possibly, from the perspective of a significant number of black youth, academic achievement Due to the often political and cultural contours of blackness in the United States, the notion of blackness can also be extended to non-black people  Toni Morrison once described Bill Clinton as the first black President of the United States, because, as she put it, he displayed "almost every trope of blackness"  Clinton welcomed the label The question of blackness also arose in the Democrat Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign  Commentators questioned whether Obama, who was elected the first president with black ancestry, was "black enough", contending that his background is not typical because his mother was a white American and his father was a black student visitor from Kenya  Obama chose to identify as black and African American 

Mexico
Caribbean
Dominican Republic
The first Afro-Dominican slaves were shipped to the Dominican Republic by Spanish conquistadors during the Transatlantic slave trade 

Puerto Rico
Spanish conquistadors shipped slaves from West Africa to Puerto Rico  Afro-Puerto Ricans in part trace ancestry to this colonization of the island 

South America
Approximately 12 million people were shipped from Africa to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade from 1492 to 1888  Of these, 11 5 million of those shipped to South America and the Caribbean  Brazil was the largest importer in the Americas, with 5 5 million African slaves imported, followed by the British Caribbean with 2 76 million, the Spanish Caribbean and Spanish Mainland with 1 59 million Africans, and the French Caribbean with 1 32 million  Today their descendants number approximately 150 million in South America and the Caribbean  In addition to skin color, other physical characteristics such as facial features and hair texture are often variously used in classifying peoples as black in South America and the Caribbean  In South America and the Caribbean, classification as black is also closely tied to social status and socioeconomic variables, especially in light of social conceptions of "blanqueamiento" (racial whitening) and related concepts 

Brazil
The concept of race in Brazil is complex  A Brazilian child was never automatically identified with the racial type of one or both of their parents, nor were there only two categories to choose from  Between an individual of unmixed West African ancestry and a very light mulatto individual, more than a dozen racial categories were acknowledged, based on various combinations of hair color, hair texture, eye color, and skin color  These types grade into each other like the colors of the spectrum, and no one category stands significantly isolated from the rest  In Brazil, people are classified by appearance, not heredity Scholars disagree over the effects of social status on racial classifications in Brazil  It is generally believed that achieving upward mobility and education results in individuals being classified as a category of lighter skin  The popular claim is that in Brazil, poor whites are considered black and wealthy blacks are considered white  Some scholars disagree, arguing that "whitening" of one's social status may be open to people of mixed race, a large part of the population known as pardo, but a person perceived as preto (black) will continue to be classified as black regardless of wealth or social status 

Statistics
From the years 1500 to 1850, an estimated 3 5 million captives were forcibly shipped from West/Central Africa to Brazil  The territory received the highest number of slaves of any country in the Americas  Scholars estimate that more than half of the Brazilian population is at least in part descended from these individuals  Brazil has the largest population of Afro-ancestry outside Africa  In contrast to the US, during the slavery period and after, the Portuguese colonial government in Brazil and the later Brazilian government did not pass formal anti-miscegenation or segregation laws  As in other Latin American countries, intermarriage was prevalent during the colonial period and continued afterward  In addition, people of mixed race (pardo) often tended to marry white spouses, and their descendants became accepted as white  As a result, some of the European descended population also has West African or Amerindian blood  According to the last census of the 20th century, in which Brazilians could choose from five color/ethnic categories with which they identified, 54% of individuals identified as white, 6 2% identified as black, and 39 5% identified as pardo (brown)—a broad multi-racial category, including tri-racial persons In the 19th century, a philosophy of racial whitening emerged in Brazil, related to the assimilation of mixed-race people into the white population through intermarriage  Until recently the government did not keep data on race  However, statisticians estimate that in 1835, roughly 50% of the population was preto (black; most were enslaved), a further 20% was pardo (brown), and 25% white, with the remainder Amerindian  Some classified as pardo were tri-racial 
By the 2000 census, demographic changes including the end to slavery, immigration from Europe and Asia, assimilation of multiracial persons, and other factors resulted in a population in which 6 2% of the population identified as black, 40% as pardo, and 55% as white  Essentially most of the black population was absorbed into the multi-racial category by intermixing  A 2007 genetic study found that at least 29% of the middle-class, white Brazilian population had some recent (since 1822 and the end of the colonial period) African ancestry 

Race relations in Brazil
According to the 2010 census, 6 7% of Brazilians said they were black, compared with 6 2% in 2000, and 43 1% said they were racially mixed, up from 38 5%  In 2010, Elio Ferreira de Araujo, Brazil's minister for racial equality, attributed the increases to growing pride among his country's black and indigenous communities The philosophy of the racial democracy in Brazil has drawn some criticism, based on economic issues  Brazil has one of the largest gaps in income distribution in the world  The richest 10% of the population earn 28 times the average income of the bottom 40%  The richest 10 percent is almost exclusively white or predominantly European in ancestry  One-third of the population lives under the poverty line, with blacks and other people of color accounting for 70 percent of the poor 

In 2015 United States, African Americans, including multiracial people, earned 76 8% as much as white people  By contrast, black and mixed race Brazilians earned on average 58% as much as whites in 2014  The gap in income between blacks and other non-whites is relatively small compared to the large gap between whites and all people of color  Other social factors, such as illiteracy and education levels, show the same patterns of disadvantage for people of color 

Some commentators observe that the United States practice of segregation and white supremacy in the South, and discrimination in many areas outside that region, forced many African Americans to unite in the civil rights struggle, whereas the fluid nature of race in Brazil has divided individuals of African ancestry between those with more or less ancestry and helped sustain an image of the country as an example of post-colonial harmony  This has hindered the development of a common identity among black Brazilians Though Brazilians of at least partial African heritage make up a large percentage of the population, few blacks have been elected as politicians  The city of Salvador, Bahia, for instance, is 80% people of color, but voters have not elected a mayor of color 
Patterns of discrimination against non-whites have led some academic and other activists to advocate for use of the Portuguese term negro to encompass all African-descended people, in order to stimulate a "black" consciousness and identity 

Colombia
Afro-Colombians are the third-largest African diaspora population in Latin America after Afro-Brazilians and Afro-Haitians 

Venezuela
Most black Venezuelans descend from people brought as slaves to Venezuela directly from Africa during colonization; others have been descendants of immigrants from the Antilles and Colombia  Many blacks were part of the independence movement, and several managed to be heroes  There is a deep-rooted heritage of African culture in Venezuelan culture, as demonstrated in many traditional Venezuelan music and dances, such as the Tambor, a musical genre inherited from black members of the colony, or the Llanera music or the Gaita zuliana that both are a fusion of all the three major peoples that contribute to the cultural heritage  Also, black inheritance is present in the country's gastronomy 
There are entire communities of blacks in the Barlovento zone, as well as part of the Bolívar state and in other small towns; they also live peaceably among the general population in the rest of Venezuela  Currently, blacks represent a plurality of the Venezuelan population, although many are actually mixed people 

See also
African diaspora
Afrophobia
Black elite
Black supremacy
Black women
Lists of black people
Mulatto
Negrito
San Basilio de Palenque, the first free African town in the Americas
Scientific racism
Zambo
Passage 7:
Mother-in-Law (song)
"Mother-in-Law" is a 1961 song recorded by Ernie K-Doe  It was a number-one hit in the U S  on both the Billboard Hot 100 chart and the Billboard R&B chart  The song was written and produced by Allen Toussaint, who also played the piano solo  It was issued by Minit Records 
After several unsuccessful takes, Toussaint balled up the composition and threw it away as he was leaving the room  One of the backup singers, Willie Harper, thought that it was such a good song that he convinced K-Doe to give it one more try A cover version by The Newbeats was also included on their 1965 album Big Beat Sounds By The Newbeats 

See also
List of Billboard Hot 100 number ones of 1961
List of number-one R&B singles of 1961 (U S )
Mother-in-law joke
Passage 8:
Balestrand
Balestrand is a former municipality in Sogn og Fjordane county, Norway  It was located on the northern shore of the Sognefjorden in the traditional district of Sogn  The administrative center was the village of Balestrand  Other villages in the municipality included Ese, Kvamme, Låne, Sæle, Tjugum, and Vetlefjorden 
The municipality was situated at the confluence of the Fjærlandsfjorden/Esefjorden and the main Sognefjorden  The major industries in the municipality were tourism and farming  Balestrand became popular early due to the interest of artists, such as Hans Gude, Kjartan Lauritzen, Alfred Heaton Cooper, Hans Dahl, and Johannes Flintoe  Their paintings of the scenery around Balestrand inspired visitors, and Balestrand maintains its connection with art  Other industries include made-to-order kitchen interiors, local apple juice, and Nesseplast which produces industrial plastic  The Norwegian County Road 13 runs through the municipality 
At the time of its dissolution in 2020, the 430-square-kilometre (170 sq mi) municipality was the 231st largest by area out of the 422 municipalities in Norway  Balestrand was the 370th most populous municipality in Norway with a population of 1,272  The municipality's population density was 3 1 inhabitants per square kilometre (8 0/sq mi) and its population had decreased by 5 1% over the previous decade In 2016, the chief of police for Vestlandet formally suggested a reconfiguration of police districts and stations  He proposed that the police station in Balestrand be closed 

General information
Balestrand was established as a municipality in 1850 when the three sub-parishes (sokn) of Vangsnes, Tjugum, and Mundal in the northwestern part of the large Leikanger municipality were separated to form the new municipality of Balestrand  The initial population of the municipality was 2,122  In 1861, the Mundal sub-parish was renamed Fjærland During the 1960s, there were many municipal mergers across Norway due to the work of the Schei Committee  On 1 January 1964 the municipalities of Vik, Leikanger, and Balestrand changed their boundaries in a land trade  The sub-parish of Vangsnes (population: 189) was transferred from Balestrand to Vik, Balestrand gained the sub-parish of Kvamsøy (population: 389) from Vik, and Leikanger gained the Hella-Eitorn area (population: 31) from Balestrand  Balestrand had a population of 1,606 after the changes were completed The Fjærland area of Balestrand had always been isolated from the rest of the municipality, and only accessible by boat  In 1995, the Frudal Tunnel was completed connecting Fjærland to neighboring Sogndal municipality (not to the rest of Balestrand)  This caused discussions about Fjærland's municipal future  On 1 January 2000, the entire sub-parish of Fjærland in northern Balestrand was transferred to Sogndal municipality On 1 January 2020, Balestrand Municipality ceased to exist  The far western Nesse area of Balestrand was transferred to the neighboring Høyanger Municipality and the rest of Balestrand was merged with the neighboring municipalities of Leikanger and Sogndal to form a much larger municipality called Sogndal 

Name
The municipality is named Balestrand, a compound name for the area that was created in 1832 by the Norwegian writer Henrik Wergeland  The first element is the name of the old Bale farm (Old Norse: Bali)  The farm name is identical to the word bali which means "grassy hillside"  The last element is derived from the word strǫnd which means "beach" or "shore"  Thus the "shore along the grassy hillside "

Coat of arms
The coat of arms was granted on 23 October 1989  The official blazon is "Azure, a down-pointing sword argent issuant from the base" (Norwegian: På blå grunn eit oppveksande nedvend sølv sverd)  This means the arms have a blue field (background) and the charge is the hilt of a Viking sword  The charge has a tincture of argent which means it is commonly colored white, but if it is made out of metal, then silver is used  The design symbolizes an old Viking sword found in the burial mound in Balestrand  The sword is belived to belong to King Bele from Frithiof's Saga  The arms were designed by Inge Rotevatn  The municipal flag has the same design as the coat of arms 

Churches
The Church of Norway had one parish (sokn) within the municipality of Balestrand  It was part of the Sogn prosti (deanery) in the Diocese of Bjørgvin 

There is also one Anglican church in Balestrand:

St  Olaf's Church (built in 1897) is located in the village of Balestrand 

Government
While it existed, this municipality was responsible for primary education (through 10th grade), outpatient health services, senior citizen services, unemployment, social services, zoning, economic development, and municipal roads  During its existence, this municipality was governed by a municipal council of directly elected representatives  The mayor was indirectly elected by a vote of the municipal council  The municipality was under the jurisdiction of the Sogn og Fjordane District Court and the Gulating Court of Appeal 

Municipal council
The municipal council (Kommunestyre) of Balestrand is made up of 17 representatives that are elected to four year terms  The party breakdown of the final municipal council was as follows:

Mayors
The mayors of Balestrand:

Geography
Balestrand was located between the high snow-covered Gaularfjellet mountains in the center of the beautiful, lush Sognefjorden  Three fjord arms stretch inland, winding through the mountains and dotted with charming hamlets: Lånefjorden, Esefjorden, and Vetlefjorden  The Fjærlandsfjorden runs along the eastern border of the municipality  The Jostefonn glacier sits at the very northernmost part of the municipality 
Balestrand was bordered to the west by the municipalities of Høyanger and Gaular, to the north by Førde, and to the east by Sogndal and Leikanger  Across the Sognefjorden to the south is the municipality of Vik 

Attractions
Kvikne's Hotel
Built in the 19th century, the Kvikne's Hotel is one of the most famous buildings in Balestrand  The Kvikne family, who own the place, took it over in 1877  Since then the establishment has undergone constant development which continues to this day  There are many new buildings and remodeling and expansion projects have been carried out 
Today, the hotel is a highly modern facility resounding with tradition and culture  With 200 rooms, it is also one of Norway's largest fine hotels catering to tourists  An impressive collection of art and historical pieces is a central feature of the hotel's interior, and one of the elements of its distinct personality 
Kviknes Hotel was made popular for European visitors in the early part of the 20th century by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who often visited there during his summer vacations prior to World War I  The hotel still possesses the chair he used in their restaurant  The Kaiser is accompanied on the list by a number of emperors, kings, presidents, Prime ministers, film stars, and artists from many countries 

St  Olaf's Church
St  Olaf's Church, also known as the English Church, is an Anglican church built in the style of a Stave church  The church was completed in 1897 as a memorial to Margaret Green  Margaret, an English lady, came to the fjords as a tourist to hike the mountains  She met, fell in love with and married Knut Kvikne who was an avid mountain man  Being a very pious woman, she wished for an Anglican church in Balestrand  She started the church with her husband, but died before its completion  Sunday services are held during the summer months, being conducted by rotating vicars from England St  Olaf's Church is notable as the inspiration for the chapel in Elsa's coronation scene in the 2013 Disney film Frozen 

Other attractions
Songnefjord Aquarium
Balejazz summer jazz festival
Balestrand Art Village
The Norwegian Museum of Travel and Tourism

Notable people
Christian Garup Meidell (1780 in Balestrand – 1863), a military officer and politician; first Mayor of Leikanger in 1838-1839
Jakob Sverdrup (1845–1899), a Norwegian bishop and politician, raised in Balestrand
Georg Sverdrup (1848 in Balestrand – 1907), a Norwegian-American Lutheran theologian and teacher
Edvard Sverdrup (1861 in Balestrand – 1923), a Norwegian educator, author, church leader, and a key theologian in the Church of Norway in early 20thC 
Anders Johanneson Bøyum (1890 in Balestrand – 1962), a politician who was mayor of Balestrand before and after WWII
Trygve Heltveit (1913 in Balestrand – 1985), a Norwegian philologist 

See also
List of former municipalities of Norway
Passage 9:
Lodewijk Asscher
Lodewijk Frans Asscher (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈloːdəʋɛik frɑns ˈɑʃər]; born 27 September 1974) is a Dutch politician and jurist who served as Leader of the Labour Party (PvdA) from 2016 to 2021 and parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives from 2017 to 2021 
Asscher worked as a researcher at the University of Amsterdam from 1996 until 2002  He was elected as a municipal councillor of Amsterdam on 8 March 2002 and assumed the leadership of the Labour Party in the municipal council on 3 April 2004  He worked as an associate professor of Intellectual property law at the University of Amsterdam from 1 May 2002 until 1 May 2006  Asscher was the lijsttrekker (top candidate) for the PvdA in the 2006 municipal election and became Deputy Mayor and alderman on 26 April 2006  Following the resignation of Mayor of Amsterdam Job Cohen to run for the Labour Party leadership for the election of 2010, Asscher as Deputy Mayor served as ad interim Mayor of Amsterdam from 12 March 2010 until 7 July 2010  After the election of 2012 Asscher was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Social Affairs and Employment in the Cabinet Rutte II, serving from 5 November 2012 until 26 October 2017 

Early life and education
Lodewijk Frans Asscher was born on 27 September 1974 in Amsterdam in a mixed religious family; his father is of Jewish descent and his mother is Catholic  His father is a member of the centre-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy and his mother a member of the Labour Party Asscher went to the Christelijk Gymnasium Sorghvliet in The Hague  He studied psychology (propaedeutics in 1995) and Dutch law (master's degree in 1998) at the University of Amsterdam in Amsterdam  In 2002, he received his PhD in law from the University of Amsterdam 

Politics
Amsterdam
Asscher entered the municipal council after the Dutch municipal elections of 2002  Besides his role as the group leader of the Labour Party in the Amsterdam municipal council, he took part in the commission on General Affairs 
Until 1 January 2006, Asscher taught information law at the University of Amsterdam  In his book "New Amsterdam", Asscher advocated the eventual disappearance of the red light district  A few days after the release of the book, Asscher revoked that statement, stating that he was not against prostitution, but rather against sexual slavery 
After the Dutch municipal elections of 2006, where he led the Labour Party's campaign in Amsterdam, Asscher was installed as an alderman on 26 April  His portfolio included Economics, Airport and Harbour; he also was Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam from 2006 until 2010  He served as Acting Mayor of Amsterdam from 12 March 2010 to 7 July 2010 and then became the alderman in charge of Finances until 5 November 2012 

Netherlands
On 5 November 2012, he became Minister of Social Affairs and Employment and Deputy Prime Minister in the Second Rutte cabinet  In Amsterdam he was succeeded by Eberhard van der Laan (also PvdA) 
In September 2014, Asscher announced heightened scrutiny of four Dutch-Turkish organisations that he suspected of hindering integration, including a religious group, Millî Görüş  This led to the expulsion of 2 Dutch Turkish MPs from the Labour Party after they harshly criticised the move On 9 December 2016, Asscher won the leadership of the Labour Party in an election against incumbent Diederik Samsom  He obtained 54,5% of the vote  In the Dutch general election of 2017, the PvdA suffered the biggest defeat in Dutch electoral history, receiving only 5 7% of the votes and losing 29 of its 38 seats  The PvdA did not rejoin the government after the election  Asscher was succeeded as Minister of Social Affairs and Employment by Wouter Koolmees in the Third Rutte cabinet, on 26 October 2017  While being the presumptive party leader for the 2021 parliamentary elections, Asscher withdrew as leader on 14 January 2021 with just two months before the election, due to his role as Minister of Social Affairs in the toeslagenaffaire (social benefits scandal) 

Personal
Lodewijk Asscher is married to Jildau Piena, with whom he has three sons 

Bibliography
(1999) Constitutionele convergentie van pers, omroep en telecommunicatie (Constitutional Convergence of Press, Broadcaster, and Telecommunication)
(2002) Communicatiegrondrechten (Fundamental Rights of Communication)
(2005) Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam)
(2010) De ontsluierde stad (The Unveiled City)
Context 2: Passage 1:
East Timor
East Timor ( (listen)), also known as Timor-Leste (; Portuguese pronunciation: [tiˈmoɾ ˈlɛʃtɨ]), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Southeast Asia  It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, of which the western half is administered by Indonesia, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-western half, and the minor islands of Atauro and Jaco  Australia is the country's southern neighbour, separated by the Timor Sea  The country's size is 14,874 square kilometres (5,743 sq mi)  Dili is its capital and largest city 
East Timor came under Portuguese influence in the sixteenth century, remaining a Portuguese colony until 1975  Internal conflict preceded a unilateral declaration of independence and an Indonesian invasion and annexation  Resistance continued throughout Indonesian rule, and, in 1999, a United Nations–sponsored act of self-determination led to Indonesia relinquishing control of the territory  On 20 May 2002, as Timor-Leste, it became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century  That same year, relations with Indonesia were established and normalized, with Indonesia also supporting East Timor's accession into ASEAN  
The national government runs on a semi-presidential system, with the popularly elected president sharing power with a prime minister appointed by the National Parliament  Power is centralised under the national government, although many local leaders have informal influence  The country maintains a policy of international cooperation, and is a member of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, an observer of the Pacific Islands Forum, and an applicant for ASEAN membership  The country remains relatively poor, with an economy that relies heavily on natural resources, especially oil, and foreign aid 
The total population is over 1 1 million, and is heavily skewed towards young people due to a high fertility rate  Education has led to increasing literacy over the past half-century, especially in the two official languages of Portuguese and Tetum  High ethnic and linguistic diversity is reflected by the 30 indigenous languages spoken in the country  The majority of the population is Catholic, which exists alongside strong local traditions, especially in rural areas 

Name
"Timor" is derived from timur, meaning 'east' in Malay, thus resulting in a tautological place name meaning 'East East'  In Indonesian, this results in the name Timor Timur  (this name only refers to the former de facto Indonesian province, Timor Leste is used instead to refer this country)  In Portuguese, the country is called Timor-Leste (Leste meaning 'east')  In Tetum it is Timór Lorosa'e (Lorosa'e can be literally translated as 'where the sun rises') The official names under its constitution are "Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste" in English, "República Democrática de Timor-Leste" in Portuguese, and "Repúblika Demokrátika Timór-Leste" in Tetum  The official short form of the name is "Timor-Leste", and it uses the ISO codes TLS & TL 

History
Prehistory and Classical era
Cultural remains at Jerimalai on the eastern tip of East Timor have been dated to 42,000 years ago  The first known inhabitants are those who arrived during the Australo-Melanesian migration through the region, likely bringing the precursors to today's Papuan languages  A later migration of Austroasiatic-speakers is suspected, although no such languages remain  The arrival of Austronesian peoples brought new languages, and merged with existing cultures on the island  Timorese origin myths recount settlers sailing around the eastern end of the island before landing in the south  These people are sometimes noted as being from the Malay Peninsula or the Minangkabau highlands of Sumatra  Austronesian migration to Timor may be associated with the development of agriculture on the island While information is limited about the political system of Timor during this period, the island had developed an interconnected series of polities governed by customary law  Small communities, centred around a particular sacred house, were part of wider sucos (or principalities), which were themselves part of larger kingdoms led by a liurai  Authority within these kingdoms was held by two individuals, with the worldly power of the liurai balanced by the spiritual power of a rai nain, who was generally associated with the primary sacred house of the kingdom  These polities were numerous and saw shifting alliances and relations, but many were stable enough that they survived from initial European documentation in the 16th century until the end of Portuguese rule : 11–15 From perhaps the thirteenth century, the island exported sandalwood,: 267  which was valued both for its use in crafting and as a source of perfume  Timor was included in Southeast Asian, Chinese, and Indian trading networks by the fourteenth century, exporting sandalwood, honey, and wax  The island was recorded by the Majapahit Empire as a source of tribute : 89  It was sandalwood that attracted European explorers to the island in the early sixteenth century  Early European presence was limited to trade, with the first Portuguese settlement being on the nearby island of Solor : 90

Portuguese era (1769–1975)
Early Portuguese presence on Timor was very limited; trade was directed through Portuguese settlements on nearby islands  Only in the 17th century did they establish a more direct presence on the island, a consequence of being driven out of other islands by the Dutch : 267  After Solor was lost in 1613 the Portuguese moved to Flores  In 1646 the capital moved to Kupang on Timor's west, before Kupang too was lost to the Dutch in 1652  The Portuguese then moved to Lifau, in what is now East Timor's Oecusse exclave : 90  Effective European occupation in the east of the island only began in 1769, when the city of Dili was founded, although actual control remained highly limited  A definitive border between the Dutch and Portuguese parts of the island was established by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 1914 and remains the international boundary between the successor states Indonesia and East Timor, respectively For the Portuguese, East Timor remained little more than a neglected trading post, with minimal investment in infrastructure and education, until the late nineteenth century  Even when Portugal established actual control over the interior of its colony, investment remained minimal : 269, 273  Sandalwood continued to be the main export crop and coffee exports became significant in the mid-nineteenth century At the beginning of the twentieth century, a faltering domestic economy prompted the Portuguese to extract greater wealth from its colonies, which was met with East Timorese resistance  The colony was seen as an economic burden during the Great Depression and received little support or management from Portugal : 269 During World War II, Dili was occupied by the Allies in 1941, and later by the Japanese beginning in 1942  The mountainous interior of the colony became the scene of a guerrilla campaign, known as the Battle of Timor  Waged by East Timorese volunteers and Allied forces against the Japanese, the struggle killed between 40,000 and 70,000 East Timorese civilians  The Japanese eventually drove the last of the Australian and Allied forces out in early 1943  Portuguese control resumed, however, after Japanese surrender at the end of World War II Portugal began investment in the colony in the 1950s, funding education and promoting coffee exports, but the economy did not improve substantially and infrastructure improvements were limited : 269  Growth rates remained low, near 2%  Following the 1974 Portuguese revolution, Portugal effectively abandoned its colony in Timor, and civil war between East Timorese political parties broke out in 1975 
The Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) resisted a Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) coup attempt in August 1975, and unilaterally declared independence on 28 November 1975  Fearing a communist state within the Indonesian archipelago, the Indonesian military launched an invasion of East Timor in December 1975  Indonesia declared East Timor its 27th province on 17 July 1976  The United Nations Security Council opposed the invasion, and the territory's nominal status in the UN remained as "non-self-governing territory under Portuguese administration" 

Indonesian occupation (1975–1999)
Fretilin resisted the invasion, initially as an army, holding territory until November 1978, and then as a guerrilla resistance  The Indonesian occupation of Timor was marked by violence and brutality  A detailed statistical report prepared for the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor cited a minimum of 102,800 conflict-related deaths in the period between 1974 and 1999, including approximately 18,600 killings and 84,200 excess deaths from hunger and illness  The total number of conflict-related deaths during this period is difficult to determine due to a lack of data  One estimate based on Portuguese, Indonesian, and Catholic Church data suggests it may have been as high as 200,000  Repression and restrictions counteracted improvements in health and education infrastructure and services, meaning there was little overall improvement in living standards; economic growth mostly benefited immigrants from elsewhere in Indonesia : 271  A huge expansion of education was intended to increase Indonesian language use and internal security as much as it was for development The 1991 massacre of more than 200 demonstrators by the Indonesian military was a turning point for the independence cause, and brought increased international pressure on Indonesia  Following the resignation of Indonesian President Suharto, the new President BJ Habibie, prompted by a letter from Australian Prime Minister John Howard, decided to hold a referendum on independence  A UN-sponsored agreement between Indonesia and Portugal allowed for a UN-supervised popular referendum in August 1999  A clear vote for independence was met with a punitive campaign of violence by East Timorese pro-integration militias supported by elements of the Indonesian military  In response, the Indonesian government allowed a multinational peacekeeping force, INTERFET, to restore order and aid East Timorese refugees and internally displaced persons  On 25 October 1999, the administration of East Timor was taken over by the UN through the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET)  INTERFET deployment ended in February 2000 with the transfer of military command to the UN 

Contemporary era
On 30 August 2001, the East Timorese voted in their first election organised by the UN to elect members of the Constituent Assembly  On 22 March 2002, the Constituent Assembly approved the Constitution  By May 2002, more than 205,000 refugees had returned  On 20 May 2002, the Constitution of the Democratic Republic of East Timor came into force and East Timor was recognised as independent by the UN  The Constituent Assembly was renamed the National Parliament, and Xanana Gusmão was elected as the country's first president  On 27 September 2002 the country became a UN member state In 2006, a crisis of unrest and factional fighting forced 155,000 people to flee their homes; the United Nations sent in security forces to restore order  The following year, Gusmão declined to run for another term  While there were minor incidents in the build-up to the mid-year presidential elections, the process was peaceful overall and José Ramos-Horta was elected president  In June 2007, Gusmão ran in the parliamentary elections and became prime minister at the head of the National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) party  In February 2008, Ramos-Horta was critically injured in an attempted assassination; Prime Minister Gusmão also faced gunfire separately but escaped unharmed  Australian reinforcements were immediately sent to help keep order  In March 2011, the UN handed over operational control of the police force to the East Timor authorities  The United Nations ended its peacekeeping mission on 31 December 2012 Francisco Guterres of the centre-left Fretilin party became president in May 2017  The leader of Fretilin, Mari Alkatiri, formed a coalition government after the July 2017 parliamentary election  This government soon fell, leading to a second general election in May 2018  In June 2018, former president and independence fighter, Taur Matan Ruak, became the new prime minister  José Ramos-Horta again became president on 20 May 2022 after winning the April 2022 presidential election runoff against Francisco Guterres 

Politics and government
The political system of East Timor is semi-presidential, based upon the Portuguese system : 175  The constitution establishes both this separation of executive powers between the president and the prime minister; and the separation of powers between the executive, legislature, and judiciary : 12  Individuals are not allowed to participate in both the legislature and the executive branch  The legislature is intended to provide a check on the executive; in practice the executive has maintained control of the legislature under all political parties, reflecting the dominance of individual leaders within political parties and coalitions : 174  The executive, through the council of ministers, also holds some formal legislative powers : 175  The judiciary operates independently, although there are instances of executive interference : 13, 39  Some courts shift between locations, to improve access for those in more isolated areas  Despite political rhetoric, the constitution and democratic institutions have been followed by politicians, and changes of government are peaceful : 15, 42  Elections are run by an independent body,: 216  and turnout is high, ranging from around 70% to 85% : 17  The political system has wide public acceptance : 17 : 106 The head of state of East Timor is the president of the republic, who is elected by popular vote for a five-year term,: 244  and can serve a maximum of two terms  Formally, the directly elected president holds relatively limited powers compared to those in similar systems, with no power over the appointment and dismissal of the prime minister and the council of ministers  However, as they are directly elected, past presidents have wielded great informal power and influence : 175  The president does have the power to veto government legislation, initiate referendums, and to dissolve parliament in the event that it is unable to form a government or pass a budget : 244  If the president vetoes a legislative action, the parliament can overturn the veto with a two-thirds majority : 10  The prime minister is chosen by the parliament, with the president appointing the leader of the majority party or coalition as prime minister of East Timor and the cabinet on the proposal of the latter : 10  As head of government, the prime minister presides over the cabinet 

Representatives in the unicameral National Parliament are elected by popular vote to a five-year term  The number of seats can vary from a minimum of fifty-two to a maximum of sixty-five  Parties must achieve 3% of the vote to enter parliament, with seats for qualifying parties allocated using the D'Hondt method  Elections occur within the framework of a competitive multi-party system  Upon independence, power was held by the Fretilin political party, which was formed shortly before the Indonesian invasion and led its resistance  Given its history, Fretilin viewed itself as the natural party of government and supported a multi-party system, expecting the development of a dominant-party system  Support from the United Nations and the international community, both before and after independence, allowed the nascent political system to survive shocks such as the 2006 crisis : 173 Candidates in parliamentary elections run in a single national district in a party-list system  One in three of all candidates presented by political parties must be women  This system promotes a diversity of political parties, but gives voters little influence over the individual candidates selected by each party : 175–176  Women hold more than a third of parliamentary seats, with parties required by law to run female candidates, but they are less prominent at other levels and within party leadership Political divisions exist along class lines and along geographical lines  There is broadly a divide between eastern and western areas of the country, stemming from differences that arose under Indonesian rule  Fretilin in particular is strongly linked to the Eastern areas : 176–177  Political parties are more closely associated with prominent personalities more than with ideology : 16  The National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction became the main opposition to Fretilin, following its establishment to allow Xanana Gusmão to run for Prime Minister in the 2007 parliamentary elections : 168–169  While both major parties have been relatively stable, they remain led by an "old guard" of individuals who came to prominence during the resistance against Indonesia : 175 : 10–11 Politics and administration is centred in the capital Dili, with the national government responsible for most civil services : 9, 36  Oecusse, separated from the rest of the country by Indonesian territory, is a special administrative region with some autonomy : 180  The National Police of East Timor and Timor Leste Defence Force have held a monopoly on violence since 2008 and very few guns are present outside of these organisations : 8  While there are allegations of abuse of power, there is some judicial oversight of police and public trust in the institution has grown  An active civil society functions independently of the government, as do media outlets : 11–12  Civil society organisations are concentrated in the capital, including student groups  Due to the structure of the economy, there are no powerful trade unions : 17  The Catholic Church has strong influence in the country : 40

Foreign relations and military
International cooperation has always been important to East Timor; donor funds made up 80% of the budget before oil revenues began to replace them : 42–44  International forces also provided security, with five UN missions sent to the country from 1999  The final one, the United Nations Integrated Mission in East Timor, began after the 2006 East Timorese crisis and concluded in 2012 : 4, 14 East Timor formally applied to join ASEAN in 2011,: 42–44  and was granted observer status and accepted "in principle" in November 2022  Despite the nationalist political leadership promoting closer ties with Melanesian states, the country has targeted ASEAN membership since before its independence, with its leaders stating that joining Pacific bodies would have precluded ASEAN membership  ASEAN membership was sought for economic and security reasons, including to improve the relationship with Indonesia  Nonetheless, the process has been slow due to a lack of support from some ASEAN states : 10–11  East Timor is thus an observer to the Pacific Islands Forum and the Melanesian Spearhead Group  More broadly, the country is a leader within the Group of Seven Plus (g7+), an organisation of fragile states  It is also a member of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries : 42–44 Continuing bilateral donors include Australia, Portugal, Germany, and Japan, and East Timor has a reputation for effectively and transparently using donor funds  Good relations with Australia and with Indonesia are a policy goal for the government, despite historical and more-recent tensions  These countries are important economic partners and provide most transport links to the country : 42–44  China has also increased its presence by contributing to infrastructure in Dili : 12 The relationship with Australia was dominated from before independence by disputes over natural resources in the ocean between them, hampering the establishment of a mutually agreed border  The dominance of Australian hard power led East Timor to utilise public diplomacy and forums for international law to push their case  The dispute was resolved in 2018 following negotiations at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, when a maritime boundary between the two was established along with an agreement on natural resource revenues The Timor Leste Defence Force (F-FDTL) was established in 2001, replacing Falintil, and was restructured following the events of 2006  It is responsible not only for safeguarding against external threats, but also for addressing violent crime, a role it shares with the National Police of East Timor  These forces remain small: 2,200 soldiers in the regular army and 80 in a naval component  A single aircraft and seven patrol boats are operated, and there are plans to expand the naval component  There is some military cooperation with Australia, Portugal, and the United States 

Administrative divisions
East Timor is divided into fourteen municipalities, which in turn are subdivided into 64 administrative posts, 442 sucos (villages), and 2,225 aldeias (hamlets)  The municipalities are: Aileu, Ainaro, Atauro, Baucau, Bobonaro, Cova Lima, Dili, Ermera, Lautém, Liquiçá, Manatuto, Manufahi, Oecusse, and Viqueque The existing system of municipalities and administrative posts was established during Portuguese rule : 3  While decentralisation is mentioned in the constitution, administrative powers generally remain with the national government operating out of Dili : 2  Upon independence there was debate about how to implement decentralisation; various proposed models would create different levels of administration between the sucos and the central government  In most proposals, there were no specific provisions for suco-level governance, and they were expected to continue to exist as mostly traditional spaces, identifying communities rather than being part of the civil administration  In the end, the existing districts were kept and renamed municipalities in 2009, and received very few powers : 88–92  In 2016 changes were made so that each municipality is led by a civil servant appointed by the central government  This civil servant is advised by locally elected leaders : 4, 7  The isolated Oecusse municipality, which has a strong identity and is fully surrounded by Indonesian territory, is specified by Articles 5 and 71 of the 2002 constitution to be governed by a special administrative policy and economic regime  Law 3/2014 of 18 June 2014 implemented this constitutional provision, which went into effect in January 2015, turning Oecusse into a Special Administrative Region  The region began operating its own civil service in June 2015  In January 2022 the island of Atauro, formerly an Administrative Post of Dili, became its own municipality Administration in the lowest levels of the administrative system of East Timor, the aldeias and sucos, generally reflects traditional customs,: 1  reflecting community identity and relationships between local households : 4  Sucos generally contain 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants  Their long persistence and links to local governance means the sucos are the level of government that is linked to community identities, rather than any high level of administration : 89  Such relationships, however, are associated specifically with the kinship groups within that land, rather than the land itself : 52–53  Relationships between sucos also reflect customary practices, for example through the reciprocal exchanging of support for local initiatives : 9  Laws passed in 2004 provided for the election of some suco officials, but assigned these positions no formal powers  An updated law in 2009 established the expected mandate of these positions, although it continued to leave them outside of the formal state system, reliant on municipal governments to provide formal administration and services : 94–97  Further clarification was given in 2016, which entrenched the treatment of sucos and aldeias more as communities than formal levels of administration  Despite this lack of formal association with the state, suco leaders hold great influence and are often seen by their community as representatives of the state  They have responsibilities usually associated with civic administration : 7–10

Geography
Located in between Southeast Asia and the South Pacific,: 2  the island of Timor is the largest of the Lesser Sunda Islands, which lie within the Malay archipelago : 1  The island is surrounded by the Ombai and Wetar Straits of the rougher Banda Sea in the north, and the calmer Timor Sea in the south : 2  East Timor shares the island with Indonesia, with Indonesian territory separating the Oecusse exclave from the rest of the country  The island of Atauro lies north of the mainland,: 2  with the fourth area being the small island of Jaco  The Savu Sea lies north of Oecusse : 1  The country is about 265 kilometres (165 mi) long and 97 kilometres (60 mi) wide, with a total land area of 14,874 square kilometres (5,743 sq mi) : 1  This territory is situated between 8′15S – 10′30S latitude and 125′50E – 127′30E longitude : 2  The country's coastline covers around 700 kilometres (430 mi),: 27  while the main land border with Indonesia is 125 kilometres (78 mi) long, and the Oecusse land border is around 100 kilometres (62 mi) long : 1  Maritime borders exist with Australia to the south and Indonesia elsewhere  East Timor has an exclusive economic zone of 77,051 km2 (29,750 sq mi) The interior of the country is mountainous,: 2  with ridges of inactive volcanic mountains extending along the island : 2  Almost half of the country has a slope of at least 40%  The south is slightly less mountainous, and has some plains near the coastline : 2  The highest point is Tatamailau (also known as Mount Ramelau) at 2,963 metres (9,721 ft)  Most rivers dry up at least partially during the dry season : 2  Outside of some coastal areas and river valleys, the soil is shallow and prone to erosion, and its quality is poor : 13 : 2  The capital and largest city is Dili  The second-largest city is the eastern town of Baucau : 22 

The climate is tropical with relatively stable temperatures throughout the year  A wet season lasts from December to May throughout the country, and lasts slightly longer in the south: 5  and the interior due to the effect of a monsoon from Australia : 2  During this period, rainfall can reach 222–252 millimetres (8 7–9 9 in) per month  In the dry season, it drops to 12–18 millimetres (0 47–0 71 in) : 5  The country is vulnerable to flooding and landslides that occur as a result of heavy rain, especially when rainfall levels are increased by the La Niña effect : 13  The mountainous interior is cooler than the coasts  Coastal areas are heavily dependent on groundwater, which faces pressure from mismanagement, deforestation, and climate change : 14  While the temperature is thought to have experienced a small increase due to climate change, there has been little change in annual rainfall : 6 Coastal ecosystems around the country are diverse and varied, with vary spatially between the north and south coastlines, as well as between the eastern tip and areas more to the west  These ecosystems include coral reefs, as the country's waters are part of the Coral Triangle biodiversity hotspot : 28  The easternmost area of East Timor consists of the Paitchau Range and the Lake Ira Lalaro area, which contains the country's first conservation area, the Nino Konis Santana National Park  It contains the last remaining tropical dry forested area within the country  It hosts a number of unique plant and animal species and is sparsely populated  The northern coast is characterised by a number of coral reef systems that have been determined to be at risk There are around 41,000 terrestrial plant species in the country  Forests covered 35% of East Timor's land in the mid 2010s : 1  The forests of the northern coast, central uplands, and southern coast are distinct : 2  East Timor is home to the Timor and Wetar deciduous forests ecoregion  There is some environmental protection in law, but it has not been a government priority : 27 : 10–14  In addition to climate change, local ecosystems are threatened by deforestation, land degradation, overfishing, and pollution : 2–3

Economy
The economy of East Timor is a market economy, although it is dependent upon the export of a few commodities and has a large public sector  Internally, market operations are limited by widespread poverty : 20  The country uses the United States dollar, producing its own coins to facilitate smaller transactions  The economy is generally open to foreign investment, although a prohibition on foreigners owning land means many require a local partner in the country : 20  Competition is limited by the small size of the economy, rather than any government barriers  There are far more imports than exports,: 21  and prices for goods are often higher than in nearby countries : 27  Inflation is strongly affected by government spending : 257  Growth has been slow, averaging just 2 5% per year from 2011 to 2021 : 24 Most of the country is very poor, with just more than 40% living under the national poverty line  This poverty is especially prevalent in rural areas, where many are subsistence farmers or fishermen  Even in urban areas, the majority are poor  Overall, women are poorer than men, often being employed in lower-paying careers : 18  Malnutrition is common, with over half of children showing stunted growth : 255  While 91% of married working age (15–49) men were employed as of 2016, only 43% of married working age women were  There are small disparities in favour of men in terms of home and land ownership and owning a bank account : 14  The eastern three municipalities, which contain around a quarter of the population, has less poverty than the western areas, which contain 50% of the population : 214 Sixty-six per cent of families are in part supported by subsistence activities; however, the country as a whole does not produce enough food to be self-sustaining, and thus relies on imports : 16  Agricultural work carries the implication of poverty, and the sector receives little investment from the government : 260  Ninety-four per cent of domestic fish catch comes from the ocean, especially coastal fisheries : 17  Those in the capital of Dili are on average better off, although they remain poor by international standards : 257  The small size of the private sector means the government is often the customer of public businesses  A quarter of the national population works in the informal economy, with the official public and private sectors employing 9% each : 18  Of those of working age, around 23% are in the formal sector, 21% are students, and 27% are subsistence farmers and fishers : 21  The economy is mostly cash-based, with little commercial credit available from banks : 11–12  Remittances from overseas workers add up to around $100 million annually : 257 

This poverty belies significant wealth in terms of natural resources, which at the time of independence had per capita value equivalent to the wealth of an upper-middle income country  Over half of this was in oil, and over a quarter natural gas  The Timor-Leste Petroleum Fund was established in 2005 to turn these non-renewable resources into a more sustainable form of wealth : 4–6  From 2005 to 2021, $23 billion earned from oil sales has entered the fund  $8 billion has been generated from investments, while $12 billion has been spent : 30  A decrease in oil and gas reserves led to decreasing HDI beginning in 2010 : 18–19  Eighty per cent of government spending comes from this fund, which as of 2021 had $19 billion, 10 times greater than the size of the national budget  As oil income has decreased, the fund is at risk of being exhausted  Withdrawals have exceeded sustainable levels almost every year since 2009 : 23  Resources within the Bayu-Undan field are expected to soon run out, while extracting those within the so far undeveloped Greater Sunrise field has proven technically and politically challenging  Remaining potential reserves are also losing value as oil and gas become less favoured sources of energy : 264–272 The country's economy is dependent on government spending and, to a lesser extent, assistance from foreign donors  Government spending decreased beginning in 2012, which had knock-on effects in the private sector over the following years  The government and its state-owned oil company often invest in large private projects  Decreasing government spending was matched with a decrease in GDP growth : 18  After the petroleum fund, the second largest source of government income is taxes  Tax revenue is less than 8% of GDP, lower than many other countries in the region and with similarly sized economies  Other government income comes from 23 "autonomous agencies", which include port authorities, infrastructure companies, and the National University of East Timor : 13, 28–309  Overall, government spending remains among the highest in the world,: 12  although investment into education, health, and water infrastructure is negligible : 260 

Private sector development has lagged due to human capital shortages, infrastructure weakness, an incomplete legal system, and an inefficient regulatory environment  Property rights remain ill-defined, with conflicting titles from Portuguese and Indonesian rule, as well as needing to accommodate traditional customary rights : 23  As of 2010, 87 7% of urban (321,043 people) and 18 9% of rural (821,459 people) households have electricity, for an overall average of 38 2%  The private sector shrank between 2014 and 2018, despite a growing working age population  Agriculture and manufacturing are less productive per capita than at independence : 255–256  Non-oil economic sectors have failed to develop, and growth in construction and administration is dependent on oil revenue : 256  The dependence on oil shows some aspects of a resource curse  Coffee made up 90% of all non-fossil fuel exports from 2013 to 2019, with all such exports totalling to around US$20 million annually : 257  In 2017, the country was visited by 75,000 tourists 

Demographics
East Timor recorded a population of 1,183,643 in its 2015 census  The population lives mainly along the coastline, where all urban areas are located : 27  Those in urban areas generally have more formal education, employment prospects, and healthcare  While a strong gender disparity exists throughout the country, it is less severe in the urban capital  The wealthy minority often go abroad for health, education and other purposes : 25  The population is young, with the median age being under 20 : 29  In particular, a large proportion of the population (almost 45% in 2015) are males between the ages of 15 and 24, the third largest male 'youth bulge' in the world : 212 The Government of Timor-Leste's website lists the English-language demonym for East Timor as Timorese  Other reference sources list it as East Timorese  The word Maubere formerly used by the Portuguese to refer to native East Timorese and often employed as synonymous with the illiterate and uneducated, was adopted by Fretilin as a term of pride Healthcare received 6% of the national budget in 2021
Context 3: Passage 1:
Le Saut à la couverture
Le Saut à la couverture (also known as Brimade dans une caserne) is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Louis Lumière 
The film formed part of the first commercial presentation of the Lumière Cinématographe on 28 December 1895 at the Salon Indien, Grand Café, 14 Boulevard des Capuchins, Paris 

Production
As with all early Lumière movies, this film was made in a 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1 33:1  It was filmed by means of the Cinématographe, an all-in-one camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer 

Plot
Four men stand holding what appears to be a blanket, while one wearing a hat stands watching  A sixth man then runs towards them and attempts to jump into the blanket  He attempts this unsuccessfully twice in a row failing to jump high enough  On the third attempt he is able to jump and spin in the air, nearly clearing in the blanket  The man who are holding it then flip it a little in the air causing him to fall to the ground  His fourth attempt is more successful and he is able to roll on the blanket and land on his feet at the other side  He runs around for a fifth and final attempt but this is less successful and he gets stuck in the blanket and has difficulty getting out despite the attempts by the four men to throw him free 
Passage 2:
Black Death
The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353  It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the deaths of 75–200 million people, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351  Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis spread by fleas, but during the Black Death it probably also took a secondary form, spread by person-to-person contact via aerosols, causing pneumonic plague The Black Death was the beginning of the second plague pandemic  The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history 
The origin of the Black Death is disputed  Genetic analysis points to the evolution of Yersinia pestis in the Tian Shan mountains on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China 2,600 years ago  The immediate territorial origins of the Black Death and its outbreak remains unclear with some pointing towards Central Asia, China, the Middle East and Europe  The pandemic was reportedly first introduced to Europe during the siege of the Genoese trading port of Kaffa in Crimea by the Golden Horde army of Jani Beg in 1347  From Crimea, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese ships, spreading through the Mediterranean Basin and reaching North Africa, Western Asia and the rest of Europe via Constantinople, Sicily and the Italian Peninsula  There is evidence that once it came ashore, the Black Death mainly spread person-to-person as pneumonic plague, thus explaining the quick inland spread of the epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the primary vector was rat fleas causing bubonic plague  In 2022, it was discovered that there was a sudden surge of deaths in what is today Kyrgyzstan from the Black Death in the late 1330s; when combined with genetic evidence, this implies that the initial spread may not have been due to Mongol conquests in the 14th century, as previously speculated The Black Death was the second great natural disaster to strike Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being the Great Famine of 1315–1317) and is estimated to have killed 30 percent to 60 percent of the European population, as well as about one-third of the population of the Middle East  The plague might have reduced the world population from c  475 million to 350–375 million in the 14th century  There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages and, with other contributing factors (the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages), the European population did not regain its level in 1300 until 1500  Outbreaks of the plague recurred around the world until the early 19th century 

Names
European writers contemporary with the plague described the disease in Latin as pestis or pestilentia, 'pestilence'; epidemia, 'epidemic'; mortalitas, 'mortality'  In English prior to the 18th century, the event was called the "pestilence" or "great pestilence", "the plague" or the "great death"  Subsequent to the pandemic "the furste moreyn" (first murrain) or "first pestilence" was applied, to distinguish the mid-14th century phenomenon from other infectious diseases and epidemics of plague The 1347 pandemic plague was not referred to specifically as "black" in the time of occurrence in any European language, though the expression "black death" had occasionally been applied to fatal disease beforehand  "Black death" was not used to describe the plague pandemic in English until the 1750s; the term is first attested in 1755, where it translated Danish: den sorte død, lit  'the black death'  This expression as a proper name for the pandemic had been popularized by Swedish and Danish chroniclers in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and in the 16th and 17th centuries was transferred to other languages as a calque: Icelandic: svarti dauði, German: der schwarze Tod, and French: la mort noire  Previously, most European languages had named the pandemic a variant or calque of the Latin: magna mortalitas, lit  'Great Death' The phrase 'black death' – describing Death as black – is very old  Homer used it in the Odyssey to describe the monstrous Scylla, with her mouths "full of black Death" (Ancient Greek: πλεῖοι μέλανος Θανάτοιο, romanized: pleîoi mélanos Thanátoio)  Seneca the Younger may have been the first to describe an epidemic as 'black death', (Latin: mors atra) but only in reference to the acute lethality and dark prognosis of disease  The 12th–13th century French physician Gilles de Corbeil had already used atra mors to refer to a "pestilential fever" (febris pestilentialis) in his work On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases (De signis et symptomatibus aegritudium)  The phrase mors nigra, 'black death', was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino (or Couvin), a Belgian astronomer, in his poem "On the Judgement of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn" (De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni), which attributes the plague to an astrological conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn  His use of the phrase is not connected unambiguously with the plague pandemic of 1347 and appears to refer to the fatal outcome of disease The historian Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet wrote about the Great Pestilence in 1893 and suggested that it had been "some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague"  In 1908, Gasquet said use of the name atra mors for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by J  I  Pontanus: "Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death" (Vulgo & ab effectu atram mortem vocitabant) 

Previous plague epidemics
Research from 2017 suggests plague first infected humans in Europe and Asia in the Late Neolithic-Early Bronze Age  Research in 2018 found evidence of Yersinia pestis in an ancient Swedish tomb, which may have been associated with the "Neolithic decline" around 3000 BCE, in which European populations fell significantly  This Y  pestis may have been different from more modern types, with bubonic plague transmissible by fleas first known from Bronze Age remains near Samara The symptoms of bubonic plague are first attested in a fragment of Rufus of Ephesus preserved by Oribasius; these ancient medical authorities suggest bubonic plague had appeared in the Roman Empire before the reign of Trajan, six centuries before arriving at Pelusium in the reign of Justinian I  In 2013, researchers confirmed earlier speculation that the cause of the Plague of Justinian (541–542 CE, with recurrences until 750) was Y  pestis  This is known as the first plague pandemic  In 610, the Chinese physician Chao Yuanfang described a "malignant bubo" "coming in abruptly with high fever together with the appearance of a bundle of nodes beneath the tissue " The Chinese physician Sun Simo who died in 652 also mentioned a "malignant bubo" and plague that was common in Lingnan (Guangzhou)  Ole Jørgen Benedictow believes that this indicates it was an offshoot of the first plague pandemic which made its way eastward to Chinese territory by around 600 

14th-century plague
Causes
Early theory
The most authoritative contemporary account is found in a report from the medical faculty in Paris to Philip VI of France  It blamed the heavens, in the form of a conjunction of three planets in 1345 that caused a "great pestilence in the air" (miasma theory)  Muslim religious scholars taught that the pandemic was a "martyrdom and mercy" from God, assuring the believer's place in paradise  For non-believers, it was a punishment  Some Muslim doctors cautioned against trying to prevent or treat a disease sent by God  Others adopted preventive measures and treatments for plague used by Europeans  These Muslim doctors also depended on the writings of the ancient Greeks 

Predominant modern theory
Due to climate change in Asia, rodents began to flee the dried-out grasslands to more populated areas, spreading the disease  The plague disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground rodents, including marmots, in various areas, including Central Asia, Kurdistan, Western Asia, North India, Uganda and the western United States Y  pestis was discovered by Alexandre Yersin, a pupil of Louis Pasteur, during an epidemic of bubonic plague in Hong Kong in 1894; Yersin also proved this bacillus was present in rodents and suggested the rat was the main vehicle of transmission  The mechanism by which Y  pestis is usually transmitted was established in 1898 by Paul-Louis Simond and was found to involve the bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating Y  pestis several days after feeding on an infected host  This blockage starves the fleas and drives them to aggressive feeding behaviour and attempts to clear the blockage by regurgitation, resulting in thousands of plague bacteria being flushed into the feeding site, infecting the host  The bubonic plague mechanism was also dependent on two populations of rodents: one resistant to the disease, which act as hosts, keeping the disease endemic, and a second that lacks resistance  When the second population dies, the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating a human epidemic 

DNA evidence
Definitive confirmation of the role of Y  pestis arrived in 2010 with a publication in PLOS Pathogens by Haensch et al  They assessed the presence of DNA/RNA with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques for Y  pestis from the tooth sockets in human skeletons from mass graves in northern, central and southern Europe that were associated archaeologically with the Black Death and subsequent resurgences  The authors concluded that this new research, together with prior analyses from the south of France and Germany, "ends the debate about the cause of the Black Death, and unambiguously demonstrates that Y  pestis was the causative agent of the epidemic plague that devastated Europe during the Middle Ages"  In 2011, these results were further confirmed with genetic evidence derived from Black Death victims in the East Smithfield burial site in England  Schuenemann et al  concluded in 2011 "that the Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y  pestis that may no longer exist" Later in 2011, Bos et al  reported in Nature the first draft genome of Y  pestis from plague victims from the same East Smithfield cemetery and indicated that the strain that caused the Black Death is ancestral to most modern strains of Y  pestis Since this time, further genomic papers have further confirmed the phylogenetic placement of the Y  pestis strain responsible for the Black Death as both the ancestor of later plague epidemics including the third plague pandemic and as the descendant of the strain responsible for the Plague of Justinian  In addition, plague genomes from significantly earlier in prehistory have been recovered DNA taken from 25 skeletons from 14th century London have shown plague is a strain of Y  pestis almost identical to that which hit Madagascar in 2013  Further DNA evidence also proves the role of Y  Pestis and traces the source to the Tian Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan 

Alternative explanations
It is recognised that an epidemiological account of plague is as important as an identification of symptoms, but researchers are hampered by the lack of reliable statistics from this period  Most work has been done on the spread of the disease in England, and even estimates of overall population at the start vary by over 100% as no census was undertaken in England between the time of publication of the Domesday Book of 1086 and the poll tax of the year 1377  Estimates of plague victims are usually extrapolated from figures for the clergy 
Mathematical modelling is used to match the spreading patterns and the means of transmission  A research in 2018 challenged the popular hypothesis that "infected rats died, their flea parasites could have jumped from the recently dead rat hosts to humans"  It suggested an alternative model in which "the disease was spread from human fleas and body lice to other people"  The second model claims to better fit the trends of death toll because the rat-flea-human hypothesis would have produced a delayed but very high spike in deaths, which contradict historical death data Lars Walløe complains that all of these authors "take it for granted that Simond's infection model, black rat → rat flea → human, which was developed to explain the spread of plague in India, is the only way an epidemic of Yersinia pestis infection could spread", whilst pointing to several other possibilities  Similarly, Monica Green has argued that greater attention is needed to the range of (especially non-commensal) animals that might be involved in the transmission of plague Archaeologist Barney Sloane has argued that there is insufficient evidence of the extinction of numerous rats in the archaeological record of the medieval waterfront in London and that the disease spread too quickly to support the thesis that Y  pestis was spread from fleas on rats; he argues that transmission must have been person to person  This theory is supported by research in 2018 which suggested transmission was more likely by body lice and fleas during the second plague pandemic 

Summary
Although academic debate continues, no single alternative solution has achieved widespread acceptance  Many scholars arguing for Y  pestis as the major agent of the pandemic suggest that its extent and symptoms can be explained by a combination of bubonic plague with other diseases, including typhus, smallpox and respiratory infections  In addition to the bubonic infection, others point to additional septicaemic (a type of "blood poisoning") and pneumonic (an airborne plague that attacks the lungs before the rest of the body) forms of plague, which lengthen the duration of outbreaks throughout the seasons and help account for its high mortality rate and additional recorded symptoms  In 2014, Public Health England announced the results of an examination of 25 bodies exhumed in the Clerkenwell area of London, as well as of wills registered in London during the period, which supported the pneumonic hypothesis  Currently, while osteoarcheologists have conclusively verified the presence of Y  pestis bacteria in burial sites across northern Europe through examination of bones and dental pulp, no other epidemic pathogen has been discovered to bolster the alternative explanations 

Transmission
Lack of hygiene
The importance of hygiene was recognised only in the nineteenth century with the development of the germ theory of disease; until then streets were commonly filthy, with live animals of all sorts around and human parasites abounding, facilitating the spread of transmissible disease By the early fourteenth century so much filth had collected inside urban Europe that French and Italian cities were naming streets after human waste  In medieval Paris, several street names were inspired by merde, the French word for "shit"  There were rue Merdeux, rue Merdelet, rue Merdusson, rue des Merdons and rue Merdiere—as well as a rue du Pipi Pigs, cattle, chickens, geese, goats and horses roamed the streets of medieval London and Paris  Medieval homeowners were supposed to police their housefronts, including removing animal dung, but most urbanites were as careless as William E  Cosner, a resident of the London suburb of Farringdon Without  A complaint lodged against Cosner charges that "men could not pass [by his house] for the stink [of]       horse dung and horse piss "One irate Londoner complained that the runoff from the local slaughterhouse had made his garden "stinking and putrid", while another charged that the blood from slain animals flooded nearby streets and lanes, "making a foul corruption and abominable sight to all dwelling near " In much of medieval Europe, sanitation legislation consisted of an ordinance requiring homeowners to shout, "Look out below!" three times before dumping a full chamber pot into the street Early Christians, who thought self-abnegation a cardinal virtue, considered bathing, if not a vice, then a temptation  "Who knows what impure thoughts might arise in a tub of warm water? With this danger in mind, St  Benedict declared, "To those who are well, and especially to the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted " St  Agnes took the injunction to heart and died without ever bathing 

Territorial origins
According to a team of medical geneticists led by Mark Achtman that analysed the genetic variation of the bacterium Yersinia pestis "evolved in or near China" over 2,600 years ago  Later research by a team led by Galina Eroshenko places the origins more specifically in the Tian Shan mountains on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China  However more recent research notes that the previous sampling had a very heavy East Asian bias and that sampling since then has discovered strains of Y  pestis in the Caucasus region that were previously thought to be restricted to China  There is also no physical or specific textual evidence of the Black Death in 14th century China  As a result, China's place in the sequence of the plague's spread is still debated to this day  According to Charles Creighton, records of epidemics in 14th century China suggest nothing more than typhus and major Chinese outbreaks of epidemic disease post-date the European epidemic by several years  The earliest Chinese descriptions of the bubonic plague do not appear until the 1640s Nestorian graves dating to 1338–1339 near Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan have inscriptions referring to plague, which has led some historians and epidemiologists to think they mark the outbreak of the epidemic; this is supported by recent direct findings of Y  pestis DNA in teeth samples from graves in the area with inscriptions referring to "pestilence" as the cause of death  Epidemics killed an estimated 25 million across Asia during the fifteen years before the Black Death reached Constantinople in 1347 
The evidence does not suggest, at least at present, that these mortality crises were caused by plague  Although some scholars, including McNeill and Cao, see the 1333 outbreak as a prelude to the outbreaks in Europe from the late 1340s to the early 1350s, scholars of the Yuan and Ming periods remain skeptical about such an interpretation  Nonetheless, the remarkably high mortality rates during the Datong mortality should discourage us from rejecting the possibility of localized/regional outbreaks of plague in different parts of China, albeit differing in scale from, and unrelated to, the pandemic mortality of the Black Death  What we lack is any indication of a plague pandemic that engulfed vast territories of the Yuan Empire and later moved into western Eurasia through Central Asia 
According to John Norris, evidence from Issyk-Kul indicates a small sporadic outbreak characteristic of transmission from rodents to humans with no wide-scale impact  According to Achtman, the dating of the plague suggests that it was not carried along the Silk Road, and its widespread appearance in that region probably postdates the European outbreak  There are no records of the symptoms of the Black Death from Mongol sources or writings from travelers east of the Black Sea prior to the Crimean outbreak in 1346  Finally, the Silk Road had already been heavily disrupted before the spread of the Black Death  Western and Middle Eastern traders found it difficult to trade on the Silk Road by 1325 and impossible by 1340, making spread of the plague less likely Others still favor an origin in China or even Kurdistan, and not Central Asia  According to the theory of Chinese origin, the disease may have traveled along the Silk Road with Mongol armies and traders, or it could have arrived via ship, but this theory is still contested  It is speculated that rats aboard Zheng He's ships in the 15th century may have carried the plague to Southeast Asia, India and Africa 
Research on the Delhi Sultanate and the Yuan Dynasty shows no evidence of any serious epidemic in fourteenth-century India and no specific evidence of plague in fourteenth-century China, suggesting that the Black Death may not have reached these regions  Ole Benedictow argues that since the first clear reports of the Black Death come from Kaffa, the Black Death most likely originated in the nearby plague focus on the northwestern shore of the Caspian Sea 
Demographic historians estimate that China's population fell by at least 15 percent, and perhaps as much as a third, between 1340 and 1370  This population loss coincided with the Black Death that ravaged Europe and much of the Islamic world in 1347–52  However, there is a conspicuous lack of evidence for pandemic disease on the scale of the Black Death in China at this time  War and famine – and the diseases that typically accompanied them – probably were the main causes of mortality in the final decades of Mongol rule 
Monica H  Green suggests that the reason why other parts of Eurasia outside the west do not contain the same evidence of the Black Plague is because there were actually four strains of Yersinia pestis that became predominant in different parts of the world  Mongol records of illness such as food poisoning may have been referring to the Black Plague  Another theory is that the Black Death originated near Europe and cycled through the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and Russia before making its way to China  Other historians such as John Norris and Ole Benedictaw believe the Black Death likely originated in Europe or the Middle East and never reached China 

European outbreak
Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from their port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347  During a protracted siege of the city, in 1345–1346 the Mongol Golden Horde army of Jani Beg, whose mainly Tatar troops were suffering from the disease, catapulted infected corpses over the city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants, though it is more likely that infected rats travelled across the siege lines to spread the epidemic to the inhabitants  As the disease took hold, Genoese traders fled across the Black Sea to Constantinople, where the disease first arrived in Europe in summer 1347 The epidemic there killed the 13-year-old son of the Byzantine emperor, John VI Kantakouzenos, who wrote a description of the disease modelled on Thucydides's account of the 5th century BCE Plague of Athens, but noting the spread of the Black Death by ship between maritime cities  Nicephorus Gregoras also described in writing to Demetrios Kydones the rising death toll, the futility of medicine, and the panic of the citizens



ground_truth: 1970s

prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: Who is the president of the newly declared independent country that is part of the Commission of Truth and Friendship with the country where Sumardi was born?

The following are given passages.
Context 2: : 24  From 1990 to 2019 life expectancy rose from 48 5 to 69 5  Expected years of schooling rose from 9 8 to 12 4 between 2000 and 2010, while mean years of schooling rose from 2 8 to 4 4  Progress since 2010 for these has been limited  Gross national income per capita similarly peaked in 2010, and has decreased since : 3  As of 2016, 45 8% of East Timorese were impoverished, 16 3% severely so : 6  The fertility rate, which at the time of independence was the highest in the world at 7 8, dropped to 4 2 by 2016  It is relatively higher in rural areas, and among poorer: 3  and less literate households  As of 2016, the average household size was 5 3, with 41% of people aged under 15, and 18% of households headed by women : 2  Infant mortality stood at 30 per 1,000, down from 60 per 1,000 in 2003 : 7  46% of children under 5 showed stunted growth, down from 58% in 2010  Working age adult obesity increased from 5% to 10% during the same time period  As of 2016, 40% of children, 23% of women, and 13% of men had anemia : 11

Ethnicity and language
Timorese communities are not strictly defined by ethnic background or linguistic group  Separate communities may share ethnicity or language, and many areas show overlaps and hybridisation between ethnic and linguistic groups : 44  Familial relations and descent, which are interlinked with sacred house affiliation, are a more important indicator of identity : 47  Each family group generally identifies with a single language or dialect : 49  With this immense local variation in mind, there is a broad cultural and identity distinction between the east (Bacau, Lautém, and Viqueque Municipalities) and the west of the country, a product of history more than it is of linguistic and ethnic differences,: 45–47  although it is very loosely associated with the two language groups : 142–143  There is a small mestiço population of mixed Portuguese and local descent  There is a small Chinese minority, most of whom are Hakka  Many Chinese left in the mid-1970s, but a significant number have also returned to East Timor following the end of Indonesian occupation  East Timor has a small community of Timorese Indian, specifically Goan descent, as well as historical immigration from Africa and Yemen Likely reflecting the mixed origins of the different ethnolinguistic groups of the island, the indigenous languages fall into two language families: Austronesian and Papuan : 10  Depending on how they are classified, there are up to 19 indigenous languages with up to 30 dialects : 136  Aside from Tetum, Ethnologue lists the following indigenous languages: Adabe, Baikeno, Bunak, Fataluku, Galoli, Habun, Idaté, Kairui-Midiki, Kemak, Lakalei, Makasae, Makuv'a, Mambae, Nauete, Tukudede, and Waima'a  According to the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, there are six endangered languages in East Timor: Adabe, Habu, Kairui-Midiki, Maku'a, Naueti, and Waima'a  The largest Malayo-Polynesian group is the Tetum, mostly around Dili or the western border  Other Malayo-Polynesian languages with native speakers of more than 40,000 are Mambai in the central mountains south of Dili, Baikeno in Oecusse, Kemak in the north-west interior, and Tokodede on the northwest coast  The main Papuan languages spoken are Bunak in the centre of Timor, especially within Bobonaro Municipality; Makasae in the eastern Baucau and Viqueque municipalities; and Fataluku in the eastern Lautém Municipality : 43  The 2015 census found that the most commonly spoken mother tongues were Tetum Prasa (mother tongue for 30 6% of the population), Mambai (16 6%), Makasai (10 5%), Tetum Terik (6 05%), Baikenu (5 87%), Kemak (5 85%), Bunak (5 48%), Tokodede (3 97%), and Fataluku (3 52%)  Other indigenous languages accounted for 10 47%, while 1 09% of the population spoke foreign languages natively East Timor's two official languages are Portuguese and Tetum  In addition, English and Indonesian are designated by the constitution as "working languages" : 3  This is within the Final and Transitional Provisions, which do not set a final date  In 2012, 35% could speak, read, and write Portuguese, which is up significantly from less than 5% in the 2006 UN Development Report  Portuguese is recovering as it has now been made the main official language of Timor, and is being taught in most schools  The use of Portuguese for government information and in the court system provides some barriers to access for those who do not speak it  Tetum is also not understood by everyone in the country : 11  According to the Observatory of the Portuguese Language, the East Timorese literacy rate was 77 8% in Tetum, 55 6% in Indonesian, and 39 3% in Portuguese, and that the primary literacy rate increased from 73% in 2009 to 83% in 2012  According to the 2015 census, 50% of the population between the ages of 14 and 24 can speak and understand Portuguese  The 2015 census found around 15% of those over the age of five were literate in English 

Education
East Timor's adult literacy rate was 68% among adults, and 84% among those aged 15–24, as of 2021  It is slightly higher among women than men : 27  More girls than boys attend school, although some drop out upon reaching puberty : 25  As of 2016 22% of working age women (15–49) and 19% of working age men had no education, 15% of women and 18% of men had some primary education, 52% of women and 51% of men had some secondary education, and 11% of women and 12% of men had higher education  Overall, 75% of women and 82% of men were literate : 2  Primary schools exist throughout the country, although the quality of materials and teaching is often poor  Secondary schools are generally limited to municipal capitals  Education takes up 10% of the national budget : 27  The country's main university is the National University of East Timor  There are also four colleges Since independence, both Indonesian and Tetum have lost ground as media of instruction, while Portuguese has increased: in 2001 only 8 4% of primary school and 6 8% of secondary school students attended a Portuguese-medium school; by 2005 this had increased to 81 6% for primary and 46 3% for secondary schools  Indonesian formerly played a considerable role in education, being used by 73 7% of all secondary school students as a medium of instruction, but by 2005 Portuguese was used by most schools in Baucau, Manatuto, as well as the capital district  Portugal provides support to about 3% of the public schools in East Timor, focused on those in urban areas, further encouraging the use of the Portuguese language : 28

Religion
While the Constitution of East Timor enshrines the principles of freedom of religion and separation of church and state, Section 45 Comma 1 also acknowledges "the participation of the Catholic Church in the process of national liberation" in its preamble  Upon independence, the country joined the Philippines to become the only two predominantly Catholic states in Asia, although nearby parts of eastern Indonesia such as Flores and parts of Western New Guinea also have Catholic majorities According to the 2015 census, 97 57% of the population is Catholic; 1 96% Protestant; 0 24% Muslim; 0 08% Traditional; 0 05% Buddhist; 0 02% Hindu, and 0 08% other religions  A 2016 survey conducted by the Demographic and Health Survey programme showed that Catholics made up 98 3% of the population, Protestants 1 2%, and Muslims 0 3% The number of churches grew from 100 in 1974 to more than 800 in 1994, with Church membership having grown considerably under Indonesian rule as Pancasila, Indonesia's state ideology, requires all citizens to believe in one God and does not recognise traditional beliefs  East Timorese animist belief systems did not fit with Indonesia's constitutional monotheism, resulting in mass conversions to Christianity  Portuguese clergy were replaced with Indonesian priests and Latin and Portuguese mass was replaced by Indonesian mass  While just 20% of East Timorese called themselves Catholics at the time of the 1975 invasion, the figure surged to reach 95% by the end of the first decade after the invasion  The Roman Catholic Church divides East Timor into three dioceses: the Archdiocese of Díli, the Diocese of Baucau, and the Diocese of Maliana  In rural areas, Roman Catholicism is syncretised with local animist beliefs  The number of Protestants and Muslims declined significantly after September 1999, as these groups were disproportionately represented among supporters of integration with Indonesia  Fewer than half of previous Protestant congregations existed after September 1999, and many Protestants were among those who remained in West Timor 

Culture
The many cultures within East Timor stem from the several waves of Austronesian and Melanesian migration that led to the current population, with unique identities and traditions developing within each petty kingdom  Portuguese authorities built upon traditional structures, blending Portuguese influence into the existing political and social systems : 91–92  The presence of the Catholic Church created a point of commonality across the various ethnic groups, despite full conversion remaining limited  The Portuguese language also provided common linkages, even if direct Portuguese impact was limited : 97–98  Under Indonesian rule, resistance strengthened cultural links to Catholicism and the Portuguese language  At the same time, Indonesian cultural influence was spread through schools and administration : 98–99 The preservation of traditional beliefs in the face of Indonesian attempts to suppress them became linked to the creation of the country's national identity : 7–13  This national identity only began to emerge at the very end of Portuguese rule, and further developed during Indonesian rule : 134–136  Following independence, a civic identity began to develop  This was most clearly expressed through enthusiasm for national-level democracy,: 155–156  and was reflected in politics through a shift from resistance narratives to development ones : 3  The capital has developed a more cosmopolitan culture, while rural areas maintain stronger traditional practices : 30  Internal migration into urban areas, especially Dili, creates cultural links between these areas and rural hinterlands  Those in urban areas often continue to identify with a specific rural area, even those with multiple generations born in Dili : 53–54 The presence of so many ethnic and linguistic groups means cultural practices vary across the country : 11  These practices reflect historical social structures and practices, where political leaders were regarded as having spiritual powers  Ancestry was an important part of cultural practices, and partly signified leadership  Leaders often had influence over land use, and these leaders continue to play an informal role in land disputes and other aspects of community practice today  An important traditional concept is lulik, or sacredness  Some lulik ceremonies continue to reflect animist beliefs, for example through divination ceremonies which vary throughout the country  Sacred status can also be associated with objects, such as Portuguese flags which have been passed down within families : 7–13 

Community life is centred around sacred houses (Uma Lulik), physical structures which serve as a representative symbol and identifier for each community : 47–49  The architectural style of these houses varies between different parts of the country, although following widespread destruction by Indonesian forces many were rebuilt with cheap modern materials : 22–25  The house as a concept extends beyond the physical object to the surrounding community : 92–93, 96  Kinship systems exist within and between houses  Traditional leaders, who stem from historically important families, retain key roles in administering justice and resolving disputes through methods that vary between communities : 47–49  Such leaders are often elected to official leadership positions, merging cultural and historical status with modern political status : 52  The concept of being part of a communal house has been extended to the nation, with Parliament serving as the national sacred house : 96 Art styles vary throughout the various ethnolinguistic groups of the island  Nonetheless, similar artistic motifs are present throughout, such as large animals and particular geometric patterns  Some art is traditionally associated with particular genders  For example, the Tais textiles that play a widespread role in traditional life throughout the island are traditionally handwoven by women  Different tais patterns are associated with different communities, and more broadly with linguistic groups : 137  Many buildings within central Dili maintain historical Portuguese architecture : I-5 Traditional rituals remain important, often mixed in with more modern aspects : 137  A strong oral history is highlighted in individuals able to recite long stories or poetry  This history, or Lia nain, passes down traditional knowledge : 16  There remains a strong tradition of poetry  Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, for example, is a distinguished poet, earning the moniker "poet warrior" In the field of cinema, East Timor released its first feature-length film, a period thriller titled Beatriz's War, in 2013  Shot with a limited budget by a mix of local filmmakers and a volunteer Australian film crew, the film depicted East Timorese life under Indonesian occupation in the 1970s, with producer Lurdes Pires acknowledging their aim to diverge from the government's "friendship and forgiveness" policy for its past conflicts by telling a story of truth-seeking and justice 

See also
Outline of East Timor
Index of East Timor-related articles
List of topics on the Portuguese Empire in the East
Passage 2:
Dutch Republic
The United Provinces of the Netherlands, officially the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (Dutch: Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden), and commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795  It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands  The republic was established after seven Dutch provinces in the Spanish Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule, forming a mutual alliance against Spain in 1579 (the Union of Utrecht) and declaring their independence in 1581 (the Act of Abjuration)  It comprised Groningen, Frisia, Overijssel, Guelders, Utrecht, Holland and Zeeland 
Although the state was small and contained only around 1 5 million inhabitants, it controlled a worldwide network of seafaring trade routes  Through its trading companies, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (GWC), it established a Dutch colonial empire  The income from this trade allowed the Dutch Republic to compete militarily against much larger countries  It amassed a huge fleet of 2,000 ships, initially larger than the fleets of England and France combined  Major conflicts were fought in the Eighty Years' War against Spain (from the foundation of the Dutch Republic until 1648), the Dutch–Portuguese War (1602–1663), four Anglo-Dutch Wars (the first against the Commonwealth of England, two against the Kingdom of England, and a fourth against the Kingdom of Great Britain: 1652–1654, 1665–1667, 1672–1674 and 1780–1784), the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678), War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697), the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713), the War of Austrian Succession (1744–1748) and the War of the First Coalition (1792–1795) against the Kingdom of France 
The republic was more tolerant of different religions and ideas than its contemporary states were, allowing freedom of thought to its residents  Artists flourished under this regime, including painters such as Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer and many others  So did scientists, such as Hugo Grotius, Christiaan Huygens and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek  The Dutch trade, science, military, and art were among the most acclaimed in the world during much of the 17th century, a period which became known in Dutch history as the Dutch Golden Age 
The republic was a confederation of provinces each with a high degree of independence from the federal assembly, known as the States General  In the Peace of Westphalia (1648) the republic gained approximately 20% more territory, located outside the member provinces, which was ruled directly by the States General as Generality Lands  Each province was led by an official known as the stadtholder (Dutch for 'steward'); this office was nominally open to anyone, but most provinces appointed a member of the House of Orange  The position gradually became hereditary, with the Prince of Orange simultaneously holding most or all of the stadtholderships, making him effectively the head of state  This created tension between political factions: the Orangists favoured a powerful stadtholder, while the Republicans favoured a strong States General  The Republicans forced two Stadtholderless Periods, 1650–1672 and 1702–1747, with the latter causing national instability and the end of Great Power status 
Economic decline led to a period of political instability known as the Patriottentijd (1780–1787)  This unrest was temporarily suppressed by a Prussian invasion in support of the stadtholder  The French Revolution and subsequent War of the First Coalition caused these tensions to reignite  Following military defeat by France, the stadtholder was expelled in the Batavian Revolution of 1795  This ended the Dutch Republic; it was succeeded by the Batavian Republic 

History
Until the 16th century, the Low Countries—corresponding roughly to the present-day Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg—consisted of a number of duchies, counties, and prince-bishoprics, almost all of which were under the supremacy of the Holy Roman Empire, with the exception of the County of Flanders, most of which was under the Kingdom of France 
Most of the Low Countries had come under the rule of the House of Burgundy and subsequently the House of Habsburg  In 1549, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which further unified the Seventeen Provinces under his rule  Charles was succeeded by his son, King Philip II of Spain  In 1568, the Netherlands, led by William I of Orange, together with Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn, and Lamoral, Count of Egmont revolted against Philip II because of high taxes, persecution of Protestants by the government, and Philip's efforts to modernize and centralize the devolved-medieval government structures of the provinces  This was the start of the Eighty Years' War  During the initial phase of the war, the revolt was largely unsuccessful  Spain regained control over most of the rebelling provinces  This period is known as the "Spanish Fury" due to the high number of massacres, instances of mass looting, and total destruction of multiple cities and in particular Antwerp between 1572 and 1579 
In 1579, a number of the northern provinces of the Low Countries signed the Union of Utrecht, in which they promised to support each other in their defence against the Army of Flanders  This was followed in 1581 by the Act of Abjuration, the declaration of independence of the provinces from Philip II  Dutch colonialism began at this point, as the Netherlands was able to swipe a number of Portuguese and Spanish colonies, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region  After the assassination of William of Orange on 10 July 1584, both Henry III of France and Elizabeth I of England declined offers of sovereignty  However, the latter agreed to turn the United Provinces into a protectorate of England (Treaty of Nonsuch, 1585), and sent the Earl of Leicester as governor-general  This was unsuccessful and in 1588 the provinces became a confederacy  The Union of Utrecht is regarded as the foundation of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces, which was not recognized by Spain until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 
During the Anglo-French War (1778–1783), the internal territory was divided into two groups: the Patriots, who were pro-French and pro-American, and the Orangists, who were pro-British  The Republic of the United Provinces faced a series of republican revolutions in 1783–1787  During this period, republican forces occupied several major Dutch cities  Initially on the defence, the Orangist forces received aid from Prussian troops and retook the Netherlands in 1787  The republican forces fled to France, but then successfully re-invaded alongside the army of the French Republic (1793–1795), ousting stadtholder William V, abolishing the Dutch Republic, and replacing it with the Batavian Republic (1795–1806)  After the French Republic became the French Empire under Napoleon, the Batavian Republic was replaced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Holland (1806–1810) 
The Netherlands regained independence from France in 1813  In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 the names "United Provinces of the Netherlands" and "United Netherlands" were used  In 1815, it was rejoined with the Austrian Netherlands and Liège (the "Southern provinces") to become the Kingdom of the Netherlands, informally known as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, to create a strong buffer state north of France  On 16 March 1815, the son of stadtholder William V crowned himself King William I of the Netherlands  Between 1815 and 1890, the King of the Netherlands was also in a personal union the Grand Duke of the sovereign Grand Duchy of Luxembourg  After Belgium gained its independence in 1830, the state became unequivocally known as the "Kingdom of the Netherlands", as it remains today 

Economy
During the Dutch Golden Age in the late-16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch Republic dominated world trade, conquering a vast colonial empire and operating the largest fleet of merchantmen of any nation  The County of Holland was the wealthiest and most urbanized region in the world  In 1650 the urban population of the Dutch Republic as a percentage of total population was 31 7 percent, while that of the Spanish Netherlands was 20 8 percent, of Portugal 16 6 percent, and of Italy 14 percent  In 1675 the urban population density of Holland alone was 61 percent, compared to the rest of the Dutch Republic, where 27 percent lived in urban areas The free trade spirit of the time was augmented by the development of a modern, effective stock market in the Low Countries  The Netherlands has the oldest stock exchange in the world, founded in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company, while Rotterdam has the oldest bourse in the Netherlands  The Dutch East-India Company exchange went public in six different cities  Later, a court ruled that the company had to reside legally in a single city, so Amsterdam is recognized as the oldest such institution based on modern trading principles  While the banking system evolved in the Low Countries, it was quickly incorporated by the well-connected English, stimulating English economic output The Dutch Republic was a master of banking, often compared to 14th century Florence  When Southern Europe was experiencing poor harvests, surplus grain from Poland was sold by the Dutch for large profits 

Politics
The republic was a confederation of seven provinces, which had their own governments and were very independent, and a number of so-called Generality Lands  The latter were governed directly by the States General, the federal government  The States General were seated in The Hague and consisted of representatives of each of the seven provinces  The provinces of the republic were, in official feudal order:

Duchy of Guelders
County of Holland
County of Zeeland
Lordship of Utrecht
Lordship of Overijssel
Lordship of Frisia
Lordship of GroningenThere was an eighth province, the County of Drenthe, but this area was so poor that it was exempt from paying federal taxes, and as a consequence, it was denied representation in the States General 
Each province was governed by the Provincial States, their main executive official (though not the official head of state) being a raadpensionaris or landsadvocaat  In times of war, the stadtholder, who commanded the army, would have more power than the raadpensionaris  In theory, the stadtholders were freely appointed by and subordinate to the states of each province  However, in practice the princes of Orange of the House of Orange-Nassau, beginning with William the Silent, were always chosen as stadtholders of most of the provinces 
Zeeland and usually Utrecht had the same stadtholder as Holland  There was a constant power struggle between the Orangists, who supported the stadtholders and specifically the princes of Orange, and the Republicans, who supported the States General and hoped to replace the semi-hereditary nature of the stadtholdership with a true republican structure 
After the Peace of Westphalia, several border territories were assigned to the United Provinces  They were federally governed Generality Lands  These were Staats-Brabant, Staats-Vlaanderen, Staats-Overmaas, and (after the Treaty of Utrecht) Staats-Opper-Gelre  The States General of the United Provinces were in control of the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company, but some shipping expeditions were initiated by some of the provinces, mostly Holland and Zeeland 
The framers of the United States Constitution were influenced by the Constitution of the Republic of the United Provinces, as Federalist No  20, by James Madison, shows  Such influence appears, however, to have been of a negative nature, as Madison describes the Dutch confederacy as exhibiting "Imbecility in the government; discord among the provinces; foreign influence and indignities; a precarious existence in peace, and peculiar calamities from war " Apart from this, the American Declaration of Independence is similar to the Act of Abjuration, essentially the declaration of independence of the United Provinces, but concrete evidence that the latter directly influenced the former is absent 

Religion
In the Union of Utrecht of 20 January 1579, Holland and Zeeland were granted the right to accept only one religion (in practice, Calvinism)  Every other province had the freedom to regulate the religious question as it wished, although the Union stated every person should be free in the choice of personal religion and that no person should be prosecuted based on religious choice  William of Orange had been a strong supporter of public and personal freedom of religion and hoped to unite Protestants and Catholics in the new union, and, for him, the Union was a defeat  In practice, Catholic services in all provinces were quickly forbidden, and the Dutch Reformed Church became the "public" or "privileged" church in the republic During the republic, any person who wished to hold public office had to conform to the Reformed Church and take an oath to this effect  The extent to which different religions or denominations were persecuted depended much on the time period and regional or city leaders  In the beginning, this was especially focused on Roman Catholics, being the religion of the enemy  In 17th-century Leiden, for instance, people opening their homes to services could be fined 200 guilders (a year's wage for a skilled tradesman) and banned from the city  Throughout this, however, personal freedom of religion existed and was one factor—along with economic reasons—in causing large immigration of religious refugees from other parts of Europe In the first years of the republic, controversy arose within the Reformed Church, mainly around the subject of predestination  This has become known as the struggle between Arminianism and Gomarism, or between Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants  In 1618, the Synod of Dort tackled this issue, which led to the banning of the Remonstrant faith 
Beginning in the 18th century, the situation changed from more or less active persecution of religious services to a state of restricted toleration of other religions, as long as their services took place secretly in private churches 

Decline
Long-term rivalry between the two main factions in Dutch society, the Staatsgezinden (Republicans, Dutch States Party) and the Prinsgezinden (Royalists or Orangists), sapped the strength and unity of the country  Johan de Witt and the Republicans did reign supreme for a time at the middle of the 17th century (the First Stadtholderless Period) until his overthrow and murder in 1672  Subsequently, William III of Orange became stadtholder  After a 22-year stadtholderless era, the Orangists regained power, and his first problem was to survive the Franco-Dutch War (with the derivative Third Anglo-Dutch war), when France, England, Münster, and Cologne united against this country 
Wars to contain the expansionist policies of France in various coalitions after the Glorious Revolution, mostly including England and Scotland—after 1707, Great Britain—burdened the republic with huge debts, although little of the fighting after 1673 took place on its own territory  The necessity to maintain a vast army against France meant that less money could be spent on the navy, weakening the republic's economy  After William III's death in 1702 the Second Stadtholderless Period was inaugurated  Despite having contributed much in the War of the Spanish Succession, the Dutch Republic gained little from the peace talks in Utrecht (1713)  However, the Dutch had over a period of forty years successfully defended their positions in the Southern Netherlands and their troops were central in the alliances which had halted French territorial expansion in Europe until 1792  The end of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748, and Austria becoming allies with France against Prussia, marked the end of the republic as a major military power Fierce competition for trade and colonies, especially from France and England, furthered the economic downturn of the country  The three Anglo-Dutch Wars and the rise of mercantilism had a negative effect on Dutch shipping and commerce 

See also
List of countries that gained independence from Spain
Dutch Empire
Dutch East India Company
Passage 3:
Sumardi
Sumardi (born 26 June 1972) is an Indonesian former footballer who plays as a goalkeeper 
Passage 4:
Zeferino Martins
Zeferino Martins, also known as Ze Martins (born September 5, 1985) is an East Timorese footballer who plays as midfielder for Ad  Dili Oeste and the Timor-Leste national team 
Passage 5:
The Trouble with the Truth (song)
"The Trouble with the Truth" is a song written by Gary Nicholson, and recorded by American country music artist Patty Loveless  It was released in April 1997 as the fifth and final single and title track from her album  The Trouble with the Truth 
The song charted for 20 weeks on the Billboard Hot Country Singles and Tracks chart, reaching number 15 during the week of July 12, 1997 

Other versions
Joan Baez also cut a version of the song during an early 1990s recording session in Nashville, but the recording remained unissued until released in 2012 as a bonus track on the remastered rerelease of her 1992 album Play Me Backwards 

Chart positions
Passage 6:
Indonesia–Timor Leste Commission of Truth and Friendship
The Indonesia–Timor Leste Commission on Truth and Friendship (more commonly known by its Portuguese acronym CVA, Comissão Verdade e Amizade) was a truth commission established jointly by the governments of Indonesia and East Timor in August 2005  The commission was officially created to investigate acts of violence that occurred around the independence referendum held in East Timor in 1999 and sought to find the "conclusive truth" behind the events  After holding private hearings and document reviews, the commission handed in the final report on July 15, 2008 to the presidents of both nations, and was fully endorsed by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, providing the first acknowledgement by the government of Indonesia of the human rights violations committed by state institutions in Timor  The commission is notable for being the first modern truth commission to be bilateral 

Background
East Timor was originally colonized by the Portuguese, and remained a colony up until the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974  East Timor declared independence soon afterwards, but Indonesia soon decided to intervene as it became clear that the government of the new state would most likely be leftist  The Indonesian government began Operation Komodo, which was intended to bring about the integration of the East Timorese territory  It began with a propaganda campaign, but after the outbreak of conflict in East Timor, the Indonesian military began a campaign on 7 October starting with an assault on a border post and accumulating with a full-scale invasion utilizing paratroopers and naval support  The United Nations quickly condemned the invasion via resolution, but due to resistance in the Security council, no further action was taken  The United States also tacitly gave their approval, as the dismantling of a pro-communist government helped advance the policy of containment being pursued by the government 
Indonesia occupied the territory for the following two decades  During the administration of the Habibie government, a referendum was held in the occupied area asking if the residents of the area wished to remain a part of Indonesia  Even before the referendum, there was harassment by militia groups in the area, with UN workers being attacked in Maliana  It soon became clear in the wake of the referendum that the referendum result would be overwhelmingly in favor of the "no" option on the ballot; this raised tensions to a boiling point, and within two hours of the announcement of the results, armed militia groups began attacking civilians  Militia continued to attack civilians as they withdrew from the country, and several massacres occurred as the troops filtered out of the area  A UN peacekeeping force known as INTERFET was deployed to stabilize the situation, made up of mostly Australian troops, and was withdrawn with the arrival of normal UN peacekeepers  East Timor eventually transitioned from a UN mandate to an independent country 

Report
The commission itself was announced in August 2006 and sought to establish "the conclusive truth regarding human rights violations to have occurred prior to, immediately after the Popular Consultation on 30 August 1999" as well as "prepare recommendations that can contribute to healing wounds of the past and strengthen friendship"  The timing of the commission's creation was criticized by some, as it was believed that it was created to intentionally subvert calls for an international tribunal to deal with the events surrounding the 1999 plebiscite  The commission's mandate allowed it to review documents pertaining to four other inquiries surrounding the events that predated it: "The Indonesian National Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights Violations in East Timor in 1999", "The Indonesian Ad Hoc Human Rights Court on East Timor", "The Special Panels for Serious Crimes", and "The Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation" The commission was made up of four members appointed from each nation, and these commissioners were instructed to conduct a document review and analyze previous trials and investigations into the subject, including the UN Special Panels for Serious Crimes and Serious Crime Units in Dili, and the report of the Commission of Reception, Truth and Reconciliation of Timor-Leste  The commission also stated its intent to research the "historical background, political dynamics, and institutional structures that shaped events before and during 1999" to "inform its conclusions with a broader understanding of the way in which the causes of the violence in 1999 were connected to previously established institutional structures and practices "Operating over three years, the commission gave its final report on July 15, 2008, and presented it to the Presidents of Indonesia and East Timor, concluding that "gross human rights violations in the form of crimes against humanity did occur in East Timor in 1999" and that "pro-autonomy militia groups, TNI, the Indonesian civil government, and Polri must all bear institutional responsibility", as well as stating that "from a moral and political perspective the respective states must accept state responsibility for the violations identified in the report " The commission also made recommendations that both nations begin institutional reform enhancing the strength of investigative and prosecuting bodies involved with investigations into the events, as well as forming joint security policy to ensure the safety of individuals in case of the recurrence of violence  It also noted the need to resolve other standing border and security issues between the two nations to allow for more cooperation  Notably, the report gave no recommendations of amnesty or rehabilitation  The report was endorsed by the president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, making it the first recognition of the Indonesian government's complicity in human rights violations in East Timor by Indonesia 

Reception
In Indonesia and Timor, the report was presented to both governments and accepted by both the Timorese and Indonesian governments  However, Timorese NGO Timor-Leste National Alliance for International Tribunal wrote an open letter in response to the commission's findings with several criticisms, including the lack of public consultation with victims and parliamentary approval of the commission, as well as noting that the commission assigned institutional responsibility rather than individual responsibility, "which is contrary to the principles of international laws which were ratified by the state of Timor-Leste and to Article 160 of its constitution which says that there must be a justice process for crimes against humanity ", as well as stating their belief that the CAVR was a more trustworthy and support worthy commission for the government to support Internationally, the report had a mixed reception  Some, such as the War Crimes Studies Center at the University of California, Berkeley, said that the commission could be seen as "widely acknowledged as credible and far-reaching ", noting that the Indonesian government's affirmation of the results was important and that the commission made arguments that "there was credible evidence to indicate that Timorese institutions were also responsible for illegal detentions and possibly other crimes "

See also
History of East Timor
Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor
Indonesian occupation of East Timor
Santa Cruz massacre
Context 3:  The first outbreak in Constantinople lasted a year, but the disease recurred ten times before 1400 Carried by twelve Genoese galleys, plague arrived by ship in Sicily in October 1347; the disease spread rapidly all over the island  Galleys from Kaffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348, but it was the outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry point to northern Italy  Towards the end of January, one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseilles From Italy, the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain (the epidemic began to wreak havoc first on the Crown of Aragon in the spring of 1348), Portugal and England by June 1348, then spread east and north through Germany, Scotland and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350  It was introduced into Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Askøy, then spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen) and Iceland  Finally, it spread to northwestern Russia in 1351  Plague was somewhat more uncommon in parts of Europe with less developed trade with their neighbours, including the majority of the Basque Country, isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, and isolated Alpine villages throughout the continent According to some epidemiologists, periods of unfavourable weather decimated plague-infected rodent populations and forced their fleas onto alternative hosts, inducing plague outbreaks which often peaked in the hot summers of the Mediterranean, as well as during the cool autumn months of the southern Baltic region  Among many other culprits of plague contagiousness, malnutrition, even if distantly, also contributed to such an immense loss in European population, since it weakened immune systems 

Western Asian and North African outbreak
The disease struck various regions in the Middle East and North Africa during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures  As infected rodents infected new rodents, the disease spread across the region, entering also from southern Russia 
By autumn 1347, plague had reached Alexandria in Egypt, transmitted by sea from Constantinople; according to a contemporary witness, from a single merchant ship carrying slaves  By late summer 1348 it reached Cairo, capital of the Mamluk Sultanate, cultural centre of the Islamic world, and the largest city in the Mediterranean Basin; the Bahriyya child sultan an-Nasir Hasan fled and more than a third of the 600,000 residents died  The Nile was choked with corpses despite Cairo having a medieval hospital, the late 13th century bimaristan of the Qalawun complex  The historian al-Maqrizi described the abundant work for grave-diggers and practitioners of funeral rites, and plague recurred in Cairo more than fifty times over the following one and a half centuries During 1347, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza by April; by July it had reached Damascus, and in October plague had broken out in Aleppo  That year, in the territory of modern Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Palestine, the cities of Ascalon, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon and Homs were all infected  In 1348–1349, the disease reached Antioch  The city's residents fled to the north, but most of them ended up dying during the journey  Within two years, the plague had spread throughout the Islamic world, from Arabia across North Africa  The pandemic spread westwards from Alexandria along the African coast, while in April 1348 Tunis was infected by ship from Sicily  Tunis was then under attack by an army from Morocco; this army dispersed in 1348 and brought the contagion with them to Morocco, whose epidemic may also have been seeded from the Islamic city of Almería in al-Andalus Mecca became infected in 1348 by pilgrims performing the Hajj  In 1351 or 1352, the Rasulid sultan of the Yemen, al-Mujahid Ali, was released from Mamluk captivity in Egypt and carried plague with him on his return home  During 1348, records show the city of Mosul suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease 

Signs and symptoms
Bubonic plague
Symptoms of the disease include fever of 38–41 °C (100–106 °F), headaches, painful aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise  Left untreated, of those that contract the bubonic plague, 80 percent die within eight days Contemporary accounts of the pandemic are varied and often imprecise  The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos) in the groin, neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened  Boccaccio's description:

In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg     From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous  As the gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they showed themselves 
This was followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood  Most people died two to seven days after initial infection  Freckle-like spots and rashes, which could have been caused by flea-bites, were identified as another potential sign of plague 

Pneumonic plague
Lodewijk Heyligen, whose master the Cardinal Colonna died of plague in 1348, noted a distinct form of the disease, pneumonic plague, that infected the lungs and led to respiratory problems  Symptoms include fever, cough and blood-tinged sputum  As the disease progresses, sputum becomes free-flowing and bright red  Pneumonic plague has a mortality rate of 90 to 95 percent 

Septicaemic plague
Septicaemic plague is the least common of the three forms, with a mortality rate near 100%  Symptoms are high fevers and purple skin patches (purpura due to disseminated intravascular coagulation)  In cases of pneumonic and particularly septicaemic plague, the progress of the disease is so rapid that there would often be no time for the development of the enlarged lymph nodes that were noted as buboes 

Consequences
Deaths
There are no exact figures for the death toll; the rate varied widely by locality  In urban centres, the greater the population before the outbreak, the longer the duration of the period of abnormal mortality  It killed some 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia  A study published in 2022 of pollen samples across Europe between 1250 and 1450 was used to estimate changes in agricultural output before and after the Black Death  The authors found great variability in different regions, with evidence for high mortality in areas of Scandinavia, France, western Germany, Greece and central Italy, but uninterrupted agricultural growth in central and eastern Europe, Iberia and Ireland The mortality rate of the Black Death in the 14th century was far greater than the worst 20th-century outbreaks of Y  pestis plague, which occurred in India and killed as much as 3% of the population of certain cities  The overwhelming number of deceased bodies produced by the Black Death caused the necessity of mass burial sites in Europe, sometimes including up to several hundred or several thousand skeletons  The mass burial sites that have been excavated have allowed archaeologists to continue interpreting and defining the biological, sociological, historical and anthropological implications of the Black Death According to medieval historian Philip Daileader, it is likely that over four years, 45–50% of the European population died of plague  Norwegian historian Ole Benedictow suggests it could have been as much as 60% of the European population  In 1348, the disease spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins, about a third of the European population had already perished  In crowded cities, it was not uncommon for as much as 50% of the population to die  Half of Paris' population of 100,000 people died  In Italy, the population of Florence was reduced from between 110,000 and 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 down to 50,000 in 1351  At least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished, and a similar percentage of Londoners may have died from the disease as well, with a death toll of approximately 62,000 between 1346 and 1353  Florence's tax records suggest that 80% of the city's population died within four months in 1348  Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450  The disease bypassed some areas, with the most isolated areas being less vulnerable to contagion  Plague did not appear in Douai in Flanders until the turn of the 15th century, and the impact was less severe on the populations of Hainaut, Finland, northern Germany and areas of Poland  Monks, nuns and priests were especially hard-hit since they cared for people with the Black Death 
The physician to the Avignon Papacy, Raimundo Chalmel de Vinario (Latin: Magister Raimundus, lit  'Master Raymond'), observed the decreasing mortality rate of successive outbreaks of plague in 1347–48, 1362, 1371 and 1382 in his 1382 treatise On Epidemics (De epidemica)  In the first outbreak, two thirds of the population contracted the illness and most patients died; in the next, half the population became ill but only some died; by the third, a tenth were affected and many survived; while by the fourth occurrence, only one in twenty people were sickened and most of them survived  By the 1380s in Europe, it predominantly affected children  Chalmel de Vinario recognised that bloodletting was ineffective (though he continued to prescribe bleeding for members of the Roman Curia, whom he disliked), and said that all true cases of plague were caused by astrological factors and were incurable; he himself was never able to effect a cure The most widely accepted estimate for the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran and Syria, during this time, is for a death toll of about a third of the population  The Black Death killed about 40% of Egypt's population  In Cairo, with a population numbering as many as 600,000, and possibly the largest city west of China, between one third and 40% of the inhabitants died within eight months Italian chronicler Agnolo di Tura recorded his experience from Siena, where plague arrived in May 1348:

Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through the breath and sight  And so they died  And none could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship  Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices     great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead  And they died by the hundreds both day and night     And as soon as those ditches were filled more were dug     And I, Agnolo di Tura     buried my five children with my own hands  And there were also those who were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs dragged them forth and devoured many bodies throughout the city  There was no one who wept for any death, for all awaited death  And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world 

Economic
It has been suggested that the plague, like some others in history, disproportionately affected the poorest people, who were already in generally worse physical condition than the wealthier citizens   Nevertheless, with such a large overall population decline from the pandemic, wages soared in response to a labour shortage  On the other hand, in the quarter century after the Black Death in England, it is clear many labourers, artisans and craftsmen, those living from money-wages alone, did suffer a reduction in real incomes owing to rampant inflation  Landowners were also pushed to substitute monetary rents for labour services in an effort to keep tenants 

Environmental
A study performed by Thomas Van Hoof of the Utrecht University suggests that the innumerable deaths brought on by the pandemic cooled the climate by freeing up land and triggering reforestation  This may have led to the Little Ice Age 

Persecutions
Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death  Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims", lepers and Romani, blaming them for the crisis  Lepers, and others with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were killed throughout Europe 
Because 14th-century healers and governments were at a loss to explain or stop the disease, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for outbreaks  Many believed the epidemic was a punishment by God for their sins, and could be relieved by winning God's forgiveness There were many attacks against Jewish communities  In the Strasbourg massacre of February 1349, about 2,000 Jews were murdered  In August 1349, the Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne were annihilated  By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed  During this period many Jews relocated to Poland, where they received a warm welcome from King Casimir the Great 

Social
One theory that has been advanced is that the devastation in Florence caused by the Black Death, which hit Europe between 1348 and 1350, resulted in a shift in the world view of people in 14th-century Italy and led to the Renaissance  Italy was particularly badly hit by the pandemic, and it has been speculated that the resulting familiarity with death caused thinkers to dwell more on their lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife  It has also been argued that the Black Death prompted a new wave of piety, manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art This does not fully explain why the Renaissance occurred in Italy in the 14th century  The Black Death was a pandemic that affected all of Europe in the ways described, not only Italy  The Renaissance's emergence in Italy was most likely the result of the complex interaction of the above factors, in combination with an influx of Greek scholars following the fall of the Byzantine Empire  As a result of the drastic reduction in the populace the value of the working class increased, and commoners came to enjoy more freedom  To answer the increased need for labour, workers travelled in search of the most favorable position economically Prior to the emergence of the Black Death, the workings of Europe were run by the Catholic Church and the continent was considered a feudalistic society, composed of fiefs and city-states  The pandemic completely restructured both religion and political forces; survivors began to turn to other forms of spirituality and the power dynamics of the fiefs and city-states crumbled Cairo's population, partly owing to the numerous plague epidemics, was in the early 18th century half of what it was in 1347  The populations of some Italian cities, notably Florence, did not regain their pre-14th century size until the 19th century  The demographic decline due to the pandemic had economic consequences: the prices of food dropped and land values declined by 30–40% in most parts of Europe between 1350 and 1400  Landholders faced a great loss, but for ordinary men and women it was a windfall  The survivors of the pandemic found not only that the prices of food were lower but also that lands were more abundant, and many of them inherited property from their dead relatives, and this probably destabilised feudalism The word "quarantine" has its roots in this period, though the concept of isolating people to prevent the spread of disease is older  In the city-state of Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik, Croatia), a thirty-day isolation period was implemented in 1377 for new arrivals to the city from plague-affected areas  The isolation period was later extended to forty days, and given the name "quarantino" from the Italian word for "forty" 

Recurrences
Second plague pandemic
The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries  According to Jean-Noël Biraben, the plague was present somewhere in Europe in every year between 1346 and 1671  (Note that some researchers have cautions about the uncritical use of Biraben's data ) The second pandemic was particularly widespread in the following years: 1360–63; 1374; 1400; 1438–39; 1456–57; 1464–66; 1481–85; 1500–03; 1518–31; 1544–48; 1563–66; 1573–88; 1596–99; 1602–11; 1623–40; 1644–54; and 1664–67  Subsequent outbreaks, though severe, marked the retreat from most of Europe (18th century) and northern Africa (19th century)  The historian George Sussman argued that the plague had not occurred in East Africa until the 1900s  However, other sources suggest that the Second pandemic did indeed reach Sub-Saharan Africa According to historian Geoffrey Parker, "France alone lost almost a million people to the plague in the epidemic of 1628–31 " In the first half of the 17th century, a plague killed some 1 7 million people in Italy  More than 1 25 million deaths resulted from the extreme incidence of plague in 17th-century Spain The Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world  Plague could be found in the Islamic world almost every year between 1500 and 1850  Sometimes the outbreaks affected small areas, while other outbreaks affected multiple regions  Plague repeatedly struck the cities of North Africa  Algiers lost 30,000–50,000 inhabitants to it in 1620–21, and again in 1654–57, 1665, 1691 and 1740–42  Cairo suffered more than fifty plague epidemics within 150 years from the plague's first appearance, with the final outbreak of the second pandemic there in the 1840s  Plague remained a major event in Ottoman society until the second quarter of the 19th century  Between 1701 and 1750, thirty-seven larger and smaller epidemics were recorded in Constantinople, and an additional thirty-one between 1751 and 1800  Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague, and sometimes two-thirds of its population had died 

Third plague pandemic
The third plague pandemic (1855–1859) started in China in the mid-19th century, spreading to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone  The investigation of the pathogen that caused the 19th-century plague was begun by teams of scientists who visited Hong Kong in 1894, among whom was the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin, after whom the pathogen was named Twelve plague outbreaks in Australia between 1900 and 1925 resulted in well over 1,000 deaths, chiefly in Sydney  This led to the establishment of a Public Health Department there which undertook some leading-edge research on plague transmission from rat fleas to humans via the bacillus Yersinia pestis The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904, followed by another outbreak in 1907–1908 

Modern-day
Modern treatment methods include insecticides, the use of antibiotics, and a plague vaccine  It is feared that the plague bacterium could develop drug resistance and again become a major health threat  One case of a drug-resistant form of the bacterium was found in Madagascar in 1995  A further outbreak in Madagascar was reported in November 2014  In October 2017, the deadliest outbreak of the plague in modern times hit Madagascar, killing 170 people and infecting thousands An estimate of the case fatality rate for the modern bubonic plague, following the introduction of antibiotics, is 11%, although it may be higher in underdeveloped regions 

See also
Black Death in England
Black Death in medieval culture
Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
Flagellant
Globalization and disease
List of epidemics
Second plague pandemic
Timeline of plague
Passage 3:
Saint-Laurent-des-Bâtons
Saint-Laurent-des-Bâtons (French pronunciation: ​[sɛ̃ loʁɑ̃ de batɔ̃]; Occitan: Sent Laurenç deus Bastons) is a former commune in the Dordogne department in southwestern France  On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune Sainte-Alvère-Saint-Laurent Les Bâtons, which merged into the new commune Val de Louyre et Caudeau on 1 January 2017 

Population
See also
Communes of the Dordogne department
Passage 4:
Bâton à feu
The Bâton à feu, or Baston à feu (French for "Fire stick"), is a type of hand cannon developed in the 14th century in Western Europe  This weapon type corresponds to the portable artillery of the second half of 14th century The Bâton à feu at the Musée de l'Armée in Paris has an hexagonal cross-section, and looks like a steel tube  It weighs 1 04 kg, and has a length of 18 cm  Its caliber is 2 cm 

In order to facilitate handling, the metal piece was placed at the end of a wooden pole  The powder was ignited through a small hole at the top, with a red-hot steel stick 

See also
Hand cannon


== Notes ==
Passage 5:
Consequences of the Black Death
The Black Death peaked in Europe between 1348 and 1350, with an estimated third of the continent's population ultimately succumbing to the disease  Often simply referred to as "The Plague", the Black Death had both immediate and long-term effects on human population across the world as one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, including a series of biological, social, economic, political and religious upheavals that had profound effects on the course of world history, especially European history  Symptoms of the Bubonic Plague included painful and enlarged or swollen lymph nodes, headaches, chills, fatigue, vomiting, and fevers, and within 3 to 5 days, 80% of the victims would be dead



ground_truth: Francisco Guterres

prompt_front: Answer the question based on the given passages. Only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: By how much of the population of the region where Baton a feu originated reduced by the black death?

The following are given passages.
Context 3:  Historians estimate that it reduced the total world population from 475 million to between 350 and 375 million  In most parts of Europe, it took nearly 80 years for population sizes to recover, and in some areas, it took more than 150 years From the perspective of many of the survivors, the effect of the plague may have been ultimately favourable, as the massive reduction of the workforce meant their labor was suddenly in higher demand  R  H  Hilton has argued that the English peasants who survived found their situation to be much improved  For many Europeans, the 15th century was a golden age of prosperity and new opportunities  The land was plentiful, wages were high and serfdom had all but disappeared  A century later, as population growth resumed, the lower classes once again faced deprivation and famine 

Death toll
Figures for the death toll vary widely by area and from source to source, and estimates are frequently revised as historical research brings new discoveries to light  Most scholars estimate that the Black Death killed up to 75 million people in the 14th century, at a time when the entire world population was still less than 500 million  Even where the historical record is considered reliable, only rough estimates of the total number of deaths from the plague are possible 

Europe
Europe suffered an especially- significant death toll from the plague  Modern estimates range between roughly one third and one half of the total European population in the five-year period of 1347 to 1351 died during which the most severely-affected areas may have lost up to 80% of the population  Contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart estimated the toll to be one-third, which modern scholars consider less an accurate assessment than an allusion to the Book of Revelation meant to suggest the scope of the plague  Deaths were not evenly distributed across Europe, and some areas were affected very little, but others were all but entirely depopulated The Black Death hit the culture of towns and cities disproportionately hard although rural areas, where most of the population lived at the time, were also significantly affected  Larger cities were the worst off, as population densities and close living quarters made disease transmission easier  Cities were also strikingly filthy, infested with lice, fleas, and rats, and subject to diseases caused by malnutrition and poor hygiene  The population of the city of Florence was reduced from 110,000 to 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351  In the cities of Hamburg and Bremen, 60–70% of the inhabitants died  In Provence, Dauphiné, and Normandy, historians observe a decrease of 60% of fiscal hearths  In some regions, two thirds of the population was annihilated  In the town of Givry, in the Bourgogne region of France, the local friar, who used to note 28–29 funerals a year, recorded 649 deaths in 1348, half of them in September  About half the population of Perpignan died over the course of several months (only two of the eight physicians survived the plague)  Over 60% of Norway's population died between 1348 and 1350  London may have lost two thirds of its population during the 1348–49 outbreak; England as a whole may have lost 70% of its population, which declined from 7 million before the plague to 2 million in 1400 Some places, including the Kingdom of Poland, parts of Hungary, the Brabant region, Hainaut, and Limbourg (in modern Belgium), as well as Santiago de Compostela, were unaffected for unknown reasons  Some historians have assumed that the presence of resistant blood groups in the local population helped them resist infection, but the regions were touched by the second plague outbreak in 1360–1363 (the "little mortality") and later during the numerous resurgences of the plague (in 1366–1369, 1374–75, 1400, 1407 etc )  Other areas escaping the plague were isolated in mountainous regions such as the Pyrenees 
All social classes were affected, but the lower classes, living together in unhealthy places, were most vulnerable  Alfonso XI of Castile and Joan of Navarre (daughter of Louis X le Hutin and Margaret of Burgundy) were the only European monarchs to die of the plague, but Peter IV of Aragon lost his wife, his daughter and a niece in six months  Joan of England, daughter of Edward III, died in Bordeaux on her way to Castile to marry Alfonso's son Pedro  The Byzantine Emperor lost his son, while in the Kingdom of France, Bonne of Luxembourg, the wife of the future John II of France, died of the plague 

Asia
Estimates of the demographic effect of the plague in Asia are based on population figures during the time and estimates of the disease's toll on population centers  The most severe outbreak of plague, in the Chinese province of Hubei in 1334, claimed up to 80% of the population  China had several epidemics and famines from 1200 to the 1350s and its population decreased from an estimated 125 million to 65 million in the late 14th century The precise demographic effect of the disease in the Middle East is very difficult to calculate  Mortality was particularly high in rural areas, including significant areas of Gaza and Syria  Many rural people fled, leaving their fields and crops, and entire rural provinces are recorded as being totally depopulated  Surviving records in some cities reveal a devastating number of deaths  The 1348 outbreak in Gaza left an estimated 10,000 people dead, and Aleppo recorded a death rate of 500 per day during the same year  In Damascus, at the disease's peak in September and October 1348, a thousand deaths were recorded every day, with overall mortality estimated at between 25 and 38 percent  Syria had lost a total of 400,000 people when the epidemic subsided, in March 1349  In contrast to some higher mortality estimates in Asia and Europe, scholars such as John Fields of Trinity College, Dublin, believe the mortality rate in the Middle East to have been less than one third of the total population, with higher rates in selected areas 

Social, environmental, and economic effects
Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause of the Black Death, many Europeans gave supernatural forces, earthquakes, malicious conspiracies and other things as possible reasons for the plague's emergence  No one in the 14th century considered rat control a way to ward off the plague, and people began to believe that only God's anger could produce such horrific displays of suffering and death  Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian writer and poet of the era, questioned whether it was sent by God for their correction, or if it came through the influence of the heavenly bodies  Christians accused Jews of poisoning public water supplies and alleged that Jews were making an effort to ruin European civilization  The spreading of those rumours led to the complete destruction of entire Jewish towns  In February 1349, 2,000 Jews were murdered in Strasbourg  In August that year, the Jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were murdered Where government authorities were concerned, most monarchs instituted measures that prohibited exports of foodstuffs, condemned black market speculators, set price controls on grain and outlawed large-scale fishing  At best, those proved mostly unenforceable; at worst, they contributed to a continental downward spiral  The hardest-hit lands, like England, were unable to buy grain abroad from France because of the prohibition and from most of the rest of the grain producers because of crop failures from shortage of labour  Any grain that could be shipped was eventually taken by pirates or looters to be sold on the black market  Meanwhile, many of the largest countries, most notably England and Scotland, had been at war, used up much of their treasury which exacerbated inflation  In 1337, on the eve of the first wave of the Black Death, England and France went to war in what would become known as the Hundred Years' War  Malnutrition, poverty, disease and hunger, coupled with war, growing inflation and other economic concerns, made Europe in the mid-14th century ripe for tragedy 
The historian Walter Scheidel contends that waves of plague following the initial outbreak of the Black Death had a levelling effect, which changed the ratio of land to labour by reducing the value of the former and boosting that of the latter, which lowered economic inequality by making landowners and employers less well-off and improved the lot of the workers: "the observed improvement in living standards of the laboring population was rooted in the suffering and premature death of tens of millions over the course of several generations"  The levelling effect was reversed by a "demographic recovery that resulted in renewed population pressure"  On the other hand, in the quarter-century after the Black Death, many labourers, artisans, and craftsmen, those living from money-wages alone, suffer a reduction in real incomes in England from rampant inflation  In 1357, a third of property in London was unused because of a severe outbreak in 1348–49  However, for reasons still debated, population levels declined after the Black Death's first outbreak until around 1420 and did not begin to rise again until 1470 and so the initial Black Death event on its own does not entirely provide a satisfactory explanation to that extended period of decline in prosperity  See medieval demography for a more complete treatment of this issue and current theories on why improvements in living standards took longer to evolve 

Peasantry
The great population loss brought favorable results to the surviving peasants in England and the rest of Western Europe  There was increased social mobility, as depopulation further eroded the peasants' already-weakened obligations to remain on their traditional holdings  Seigneurialism never recovered  Land was plentiful, wages high, and serfdom had all but disappeared  It was possible to move about and rise higher in life  Younger sons and women especially benefited  As population growth resumed, however, peasants again faced deprivation and famine In Eastern Europe, by contrast, renewed stringency of laws tied the remaining peasantry more tightly to the land than ever before through serfdom 
Furthermore, the plague's great population reduction brought cheaper land prices; more food for the average peasant; and a relatively large increase in per capita income among the peasantry, if not immediately, in the coming century  Since the plague left vast areas of farmland untended, they were made available for pasture and put more meat on the market  The consumption of meat and dairy products went up, as did the export of beef and butter from the Low Countries, Scandinavia and northern Germany  However, the upper class often attempted to stop the changes, initially in Western Europe and more forcefully and successfully in Eastern Europe, by instituting sumptuary laws  They regulated what people (particularly of the peasant class) could wear so that nobles could ensure that peasants did not begin to dress and act as a higher-class member with their increased wealth  Another tactic was to fix prices and wages so that peasants could not demand more with increasing value  In England, the Statute of Labourers 1351 was enforced, which stated that no peasant could ask for more wages than in 1346  That was met with varying success depending on the amount of rebellion it inspired  Such a law was one of the causes of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England 
The rapid development of the use was probably one of the consequences of the Black Death during which many landowning nobles died and left their realty to their widows and minor orphans 

Urban workers
In the wake of the drastic population decline brought on by the plague, wages shot up, and labourers could move to new localities in response to wage offers  Local and royal authorities in Western Europe instituted wage controls  The government controls sought to freeze wages at the old levels before the Black Death  Within England, for example, the Ordinance of Labourers, enacted in 1349, and the Statute of Labourers, enacted in 1351, restricted both wage increases and the relocation of workers  If workers attempted to leave their current post, employers were given the right to have them imprisoned  The statute was poorly enforced in most areas, and farm wages in England on average doubled between 1350 and 1450, but they were then static until the late 19th century Cohn, comparing numerous countries, argues that the laws were not designed primarily to freeze wages  Instead, he says that the energetic local and royal measures to control labour and artisans' prices were responses to elite fears of the greed and the possible new powers of the lesser classes that had gained new freedom  Cohn continues that the laws reflected the anxiety that followed the Black Death's new horrors of mass mortality and destruction and from elite anxiety about manifestations, such as the flagellant movement and the persecution of Jews, Catalans (in Sicily) and beggars 

Labour-saving adaptations
The Black Death encouraged innovation of labour-saving technologies, leading to higher productivity  There was also a shift from grain farming to animal husbandry  Grain farming was very labor-intensive, but animal husbandry needed only a shepherd and a few dogs and pastureland By 1200, virtually all of the Mediterranean basin and most of northern Germany had been deforested and cultivated  Indigenous flora and fauna were replaced by domestic grasses and animals, and domestic woodlands were lost  With depopulation, the process was reversed  Much of the primeval vegetation returned, and abandoned fields and pastures were reforested 

Changing land-contracts and end of serfdom
Plague brought an eventual end of serfdom in Western Europe  The manorial system was already in trouble, but the Black Death assured its demise throughout much of Western and Central Europe by 1500  Severe depopulation and migration of the village to cities caused an acute shortage of agricultural labourers  Many villages were abandoned  In England, more than 1300 villages were deserted between 1350 and 1500  Wages of labourers were high, but the rise in nominal wages after the Black Death was swamped by inflation and so real wages fell Labour was in such a short supply that landlords were forced to give better terms of tenure  That resulted in much lower rents in Western Europe  By 1500, a new form of tenure called copyhold became prevalent in Europe  In copyhold, both a landlord and peasant made their best business deal, whereby the peasant got use of the land and the landlord got a fixed annual payment, and both possessed a copy of the tenure agreement  Serfdom did not end everywhere and lingered in parts of Western Europe and was introduced to Eastern Europe only after the Black Death There was also a change in inheritance law  Before the plague, only sons, especially the eldest son, inherited the ancestral property  After the Plague, all sons and daughters started to inherit property 

Persecutions
Renewed religious fervor and fanaticism came in the wake of the Black Death  Some Europeans targeted "groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims" lepers and Romani, who were thought to have caused the crisis 
Differences in cultural and lifestyle practices also led to persecution  As the plague swept across Europe in the mid-14th century and annihilating more than half the population, Jews were taken as scapegoats, in part because better hygiene among Jewish communities and isolation in the ghettos meant that Jews were less affected  Accusations spread that Jews had caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells  Mobs attacked Jewish settlements across Europe; by 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed, and more than 350 separate massacres had occurred 
According to Joseph P  Byrne, women also faced persecution during the Black Death  Muslim women in Cairo became scapegoats when the plague struck  Byrne writes that in 1438, the sultan of Cairo was informed by his religious lawyers, that the arrival of the plague was "Allah's punishment for the sin of fornication" and that in accordance with that theory, a law was set in place stating that women were not allowed to make public appearances, as "they may tempt men into sin"  Byrne describes that law as being lifted only when "the wealthy complained that their female servants could not shop for food" 

Religion
The Black Death hit the monasteries very hard because of their proximity with the sick who sought refuge there  That left a severe shortage of clergy after the epidemic cycle  Eventually, the losses were replaced by hastily-trained and inexperienced clergy members, many of whom knew little of the rigours of their predecessors  New colleges were opened at established universities, and the training process was sped up  The shortage of priests opened new opportunities for laywomen to assume more extensive and more important service roles in the local parish 

Flagellants practiced self-flogging (whipping of oneself) to atone for sins  The movement became popular after the Black Death  It may be that the flagellants' later involvement in hedonism was an effort to accelerate, to absorb God's wrath and to shorten the time with which others suffered  More likely, the focus of attention and popularity of their cause contributed to a sense that the world itself was ending and that their individual actions were of no consequence 
Reformers rarely pointed to failures on the part of the Church in dealing with the catastrophe 

Cultural effects
The Black Death had profound effects on art and literature  After 1350, European culture in general turned very morbid  The general mood was one of pessimism, and contemporary art turned dark with representations of death  The widespread image of the "dance of death" showed death (a skeleton) choosing victims at random  Many of the most graphic depictions come from writers such as Boccaccio and Petrarch  Peire Lunel de Montech, writing about 1348 in the lyric style long out of fashion, composed the following sorrowful sirventes "Meravilhar no·s devo pas las gens" during the height of the plague in Toulouse:

They died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in    ditches and covered with earth  And as soon as those ditches were filled, more were dug  And I, Agnolo di Tura    buried my five children with my own hands     And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world 
Boccaccio wrote:

How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, breakfast with their kinfolk and the same night supped with their ancestors in the next world! The condition of the people was pitiable to behold  They sickened by the thousands daily, and died unattended and without help  Many died in the open street, others dying in their houses, made it known by the stench of their rotting bodies  Consecrated churchyards did not suffice for the burial of the vast multitude of bodies, which were heaped by the hundreds in vast trenches, like goods in a ship's hold and covered with a little earth 

Medicine
Although the Black Death highlighted the shortcomings of medical science in the Middle Ages, it also led to positive changes in the field of medicine  As described by David Herlihy in The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, more emphasis was placed on "anatomical investigations" after the Black Death  The way that individuals studied the human body notably changed and became a process that dealt more directly with the human body in varied states of sickness and health  Furthermore, the importance of surgeons became more evident A theory put forth by Stephen O'Brien is that the Black Death is likely responsible by natural selection for the high frequency of the CCR5-Δ32 genetic defect in people of European descent  The gene affects T cell function and provides protection against HIV, smallpox and possibly plague, but for the last, no explanation exists on how it would do that  However, that is now challenged since the CCR5-Δ32 gene has been found to be just as common in Bronze Age tissue samples 

Architecture
The Black Death also inspired European architecture to move in two different directions: (1) a revival of Greco-Roman styles, and (2) a further elaboration of the Gothic style  Late medieval churches had impressive structures centred on verticality in which one's eye is drawn up towards the high ceiling  The basic Gothic style was revamped with elaborate decoration in the late medieval period  Sculptors in Italian city-states emulated the work of their Roman forefathers, and sculptors in Northern Europe, no doubt inspired by the devastation they had witnessed, gave way to a heightened expression of emotion and an emphasis on individual differences  A tough realism came forth in architecture as in literature  Images of intense sorrow, decaying corpses and individuals with faults as well as virtues emerged  North of the Alps, painting reached a pinnacle of precise realism with Early Dutch painting by artists such as Jan van Eyck (c  1390 – 1441)  The natural world was reproduced in those works with meticulous detail whose realism was not unlike photography 

See also
Economic consequences of population decline
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic



ground_truth: 30% to 65%