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Baci Lingerie

2014-03-21 14:04:26+00:00

Baci Lingerie is a large retailer of women's lingerie founded in the United States, with multiple stores located internationally on several continents. Officially presented to the public in April 2010 at the International Lingerie Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, the company was started by Internetmarketing-Miami, LLC. Deriving its company name from the Italian word “kisses”, the company invested huge amount of money in advertising and marketing campaigns and exhibiting at several industry shows around the world, like Venus Fair in Berlin, Germany during October 2010 and Salon de la Lingerie Show in Paris, France, in January 2011. The shoots have featured castles in Southern Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. The resulting images are used in Baci's packaging, website, and catalogs. Baci Lingerie coordinated a photo shoot in 2013, which took place in a Hollywood Hills mansion and featured its 23-piece Corsets by Baci Collection. Baci Lingerie provides tools for retailers in merchandising and marketing, including planograms, creative events (including the Baci Lash Bar), educational tools (newsletters, merchandising plans, seminars, blogs), and contests. Baci Lingerie claims to have philosophy of social consciousness and philanthropy as its integral aspects. Through contributions and fundraisers, including Baci's annual charity dinner, the company raises money for a variety of organizations and causes. = Baci Lingerie raised over $8,000 for the Fox Chase Cancer Center and Eileen Stein Jacoby Fund to advance cancer research and education, at Baci's second semiannual charity dinner in April 2013. The charity dinner was held during the International Lingerie Show. Baci raised $4,400 for the fund in 2012. = Baci Lingerie supported The Bra Recyclers in its drive to collect 15,000 bras in October 2012 to help raise awareness of Breast Cancer and Domestic Violence Month. The Bra Recyclers is a textile recycling company that specializes in recycling and reusing bras that would unnecessarily go to landfills, and assist in providing deserving women with used or unused bras as they transition back to self-sufficiency. = Baci Lingerie participated in the 2013 Entertainment Industry Fund (EIF) Revlon Run / Walk For Women, to raise funds for women's cancer research. Approximately 15 Baci employees, family members, and friends participated in the 20th annual 5k run / walk fundraiser as “Team Baci Babes” on May 11, 2013, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum at Exposition Park. = Baci Lingerie donated 1176 brand new bras of various styles to victims of the 2013 tornadoes in Moore, Oklahoma – a total retail value of over $15,000. Hugs and Kisses, or XO, is a project by the Kerr Foundation, formed to gather and distribute new and gently used clothing and accessory items for women and men affected by the Moore tornado disaster. = Baci Lingerie donated 5077 brand new bras of various styles – a total retail value of over $60,000. Free The Girls provides an opportunity for women rescued from sex trafficking to earn a living selling second-hand clothing, while going to school, getting healthy, and caring for their families. 2010 Adult Entertainment Expo 2010 Venus International Trade Fair 2011 Venus International Trade Fair 2012 Porn to Rock 2012 Capital Cabaret Fashion Show 2012 Venus International Trade Fair 2012 Déjà Vu Holiday Soiree 2013 Cape Town SEXPO 2013 Sydney SEXPO. 2013 The Sex Awards Sources:

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Chromat

2010-08-19 15:16:40+00:00

Chromat is an American fashion label based in New York City. The label was formed by Becca McCharen-Tran in 2010. Drawing from Becca McCharen-Tran's background in architecture and urban design, Chromat focuses on empowering garments for all bodies. Chromat began in 2010 as an extension of McCharen-Tran's degree in architecture design at University of Virginia School of Architecture. It was originally a collaboration with fellow architecture student Emily Kappes. Chromat's structural language is the foundation of each garment: from the simplest bikini to the most complex 3D printed dress. Chromat swimwear, lingerie, and signature architectural cages are all designed in New York City. Chromat designed custom pieces for Beyoncé's 2014 MTV VMA Performance, the Mrs. Carter Show World Tour, as well as for Beyoncé's Super Bowl XLVII halftime show in 2013. Chromat garments have also been worn by Madonna on her 2012 MDNA World Tour, Nicki Minaj on her 2011 Femme Fatale World Tour and Powerhouse 2014 performance, and by many other celebrities and musicians such as FKA Twigs, Taylor Swift, Ellie Goulding, Kelly Rowland, Tyra Banks, Hayley Williams, Sky Ferreira, Zola Jesus, Azealia Banks, Ariana Grande Rita Ora, and Charli XCX. Chromat has been featured in many magazine editorials and features, such as Vogue, Elle, DAZED, New York Magazine and Numéro. Chromat was awarded runner-up in the CFDA / Vogue Fashion Fund 2017. Chromat was awarded the Tumblr Fashion Honors in 2016. Chromat was a finalist in the CFDA / Vogue Fashion Fund 2015. McCharen was recognized in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list of “People Who are Reinventing the World in 2014”. McCharen was honored as one of Out Magazine's OUT100 in 2013. Chromat's work mixing math and fashion was profiled in The Wall Street Journal in 2013. Chromat was nominated for the RACKED Young Guns Award in 2013. McCharen was chosen as The New York Observer’s one to watch in 2012. Autumn/Winter 2018: Wavvy. Debuted at New York Fashion Week on February 13, 2018. Spring/Summer 2018: Serenity. Debuted at New York Fashion Week on September 4, 2017. Autumn/Winter 2017: Buoyancy. Debuted at New York Fashion Week on February 13, 2017. Spring/Summer 2017: Hyperwave. Debuted at New York Fashion Week on September 4, 2016. Autumn/Winter 2016: Lumina. Debuted at New York Fashion Week on February 13, 2015. Spring/Summer 2016: Momentum. Debuted at New York Fashion Week on September 4, 2016. Autumn/Winter 2015: Mindfiles. Debuted at New York Fashion Week on February 13, 2015. Spring/Summer 2015: Formula 15. Debuted at New York Fashion Week on September 4, 2014. Autumn/Winter 2014: Bionic Bodies. Debuted at NYFW on February 6, 2014. Spring/Summer 2014: Mathletes. Debuted at NYFW on September 6, 2013. Autumn/Winter 2013: Superstructures. Debuted at NYFW on February 5, 2013.

39629852

Golf Wang

2013-06-10 02:47:17+00:00

Golf Wang (stylised in all caps as GOLF WANG) is an American street-wear brand established in 2011 by American musician Tyler, the Creator. The name Golf Wang is a spoonerism of his Los Angeles-based musical collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA) or Odd Future for short, of which he was a co-founder. Golf Wang is known for its colorful visual aesthetic. In 2013, the brand expanded beyond its Odd Future affiliation and established itself in the fashion industry. It is designed by Tyler, the Creator. The brand offers clothing, footwear through collaborations with Converse often under the name GOLF le FLEUR*, jewellery, upon other products. "Holiday 1991", the brand's first look book, was released on December 11, 2011. = Golf Wang still affiliated with Odd Future, during its December 2011 debut. In 2013, Golf Wang publicly separated from Odd Future. = In its history, Golf Wang has gone on to collaborate with other brands as a part of various projects. Golf Wang's first notable collaboration was its project with Vans. The partnership lasted from 2013 to 2016. In an interview with Dazed Magazine in 2017, Tyler stated that Golf Wang cut ties with Vans due to a lack of creative liberty. Following Golf Wang's departure from Vans, Tyler, the Creator and Converse collaborated to create the shoe collection GOLF le FLEUR*. In 2017, Golf Wang collaborated with Japanese sandal brand SUICOKE. Their first release was the KAW-CAB sandals in colors 'Mocha' and 'Lemon Yellow'. In April 2019, they released a third version of the KAW-CAB sandals. Then in October 2019, a different silhouette called the 'DEPA-CAB' sandals was released in two new colorways. Also in 2019, GOLF le FLEUR* and Converse released a new, original silhouette named the 'GLF Giano Ox'. The shoes were available in two colorways, 'Bright Concord' and 'Cuban Sand'. That same year, GOLF WANG created a scented candle in collaboration with Japanese fragrance label "reta W". Named 'Coldwater', the candle was released on March 23, 2019. For apparel, Golf le Fleur partnered with fashion brand Lacoste for an SS19 collection named 'GOLF le COSTE*'. The clothing line featured colors such as pale pink, beige, and off-white named respectively 'litchi', 'geode', and 'mascarpone'. Golf le Fleur then collaborated with Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. The first ice cream was named 'Snowflake', released on July 8, 2019, it was a white chocolate ice cream flavor. The second flavor, 'Pluto Bleu' was released online on September 17, 2020, and was a blood orange and blueberry flavored ice cream. On May 20, 2020, Golf Wang released a top and bottom set with Levi Strauss & Co. for their '501 day'. The collaboration featured Levi's vintage-fit trucker jacket and 501 '93 jeans in Ecru denim with rainbow-colored polka dots. = Golf le Fleur was introduced at the Golf Wang fashion show at Made L.A. on June 11, 2016. Named "Golf le Fleur" (stylized as "GOLF le FLEUR*"), it was first introduced as a shoe collaboration between Tyler, the Creator and Converse. The collection was named "GOLF le FLEUR*" to mean Flower Boy in French though the translation is inaccurate. It was released in the same year as Tyler's Flower Boy album. First made available to the public on July 13, 2017, the first design released was Converse One Star shoes in a new, light blue colorway called "Clearwater". As of December 2021, Golf le FLEUR* has branched away from Golf Wang into a standalone luxury lifestyle and apparel brand debuting with an invite-only pop-up shop in Los Angeles. On August 3, 2017, the first set of Golf le Fleurs was released. They came in 4 colors, called "Airway Blue" (light blue), "Peach Pearl" (peach colored), "Sulfur" (yellow) and "Fuchsia Glow" (fuchsia/lavender). On October 16, 2017, the second set of Golf le Fleurs was announced. This set was named the "Uno", which contained three new shoes with a brand-new insole, design, and bottom. The colors Jolly Green (forest green), Vanilla (cream), and Solar Power (yellow), were released on November 2, 2017. On January 4, 2018, the second set of "Anas", and the third overall set of Golf le Fleurs were announced. They were released on January 18, 2018, with the colors "Bachelor Blue" (light blue), "Geranium Pink" (light pink), and "Jade Lime" (light green). On April 23, 2018, the first set of the line known as "Momos", and the fourth overall set of Golf le Fleurs were announced. They are a monotone colored shoe, and on April 26, 2018, they were released. The colors were "Black", "White", "Greener Pastures" (dark green), "Limoges" (dark blue), and "Rhubarb" (burgundy). On May 23, the third set of "Anas", (also nicknamed "two-toned") and the fifth overall set of Golf le Fleurs were announced. They were released on June 1, 2018, with the colors "Purple Heart" (purple and green), "Molten Lava" (red and blue), "Candy Pink" (red and pink), and "Plume" (baby blue and baby pink). On February 23, 2019, the "Industrial" line was released with another rework of the Converse (shoe company) "One Star". The shoes were released with barely blue/egret/black and barely blue/patriot/egret colorways. The line also included matching '60s workwear boilersuits. On May 17, the "Velvet le Fleur" line was released. This included two reworks of the "One Star" in red and brown as well as a rework of the "Chuck 70" in purple, all of which use a quilted velvet material. On June 28, another pair of "Anas" was released, featuring a bright rainbow sole and an all-white upper. On September 13, a pair of Converse All-Stars was released with a polka dot design. Golf Wang made its runway debut on June 11, 2016, at Made LA, a fashion event created by IMG. 2016 was the premiere of Made LA on the west coast. The show also marked the debut of the 'Golf le Fleur' shoe collaboration, with Converse and Vans. In addition to a live audience, the show was broadcast on the internet. Notable attendees included Kanye West, Dylan and Cole Sprouse, Kendall Jenner, YG, Janelle Monáe, Solange Knowles, and Amandla Stenberg. The show implemented a "see-now, buy-now" process at the event, meaning that the collection was available for pre-order after the show. The show's set design included a bedroom connected to a skate ramp and the event was accompanied by musical performances. The first Odd Future store was opened on Fairfax Avenue in 2011. The Odd Future would come to be the first retail space that sold Golf Wang. In 2014, Tyler described in a series of tweets that the Odd Future store on Fairfax Avenue had closed. On October 25, 2017, Tyler announced that he would open the Golf Wang flagship, named "GOLF" on 350 North Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, California. The new location officially opened on October 26, 2017, and features an indoor skating bowl. A second "GOLF" storefront opened on November 12, 2022, located on 35 Howard Street in New York, NYC. Finally, third "GOLF" storefront opened in London on October 21, 2023, becoming the first store to open outside of the United States launching their "GOLF ACROSS THE POND" limited time campaign. Tyler held meet and greets at both stores upon their opening. GOLF WANG has released a variety of collections since 2013. The most notable being: F/W 2013, S/S 2014, F/W 2014, S/S 2015, F/W 2015, F/W 2016, F/W 2017, AUTUMN 2018, WINTER 2018, SUMMER 2019, WINTER 2019, AUTUMN 2019, AUTUMN 2020, WINTER 2020, AUTUMN 2020, WINTER 2020, SUMMER 2021, WINTER 2021, SUMMER 2022, F/W 2022, S/S 2023, F/W 2023, and S/S 2024.

37596266

Jennifer Lopez Collection

2012-11-10 10:14:48+00:00

The Jennifer Lopez Collection was an American lifestyle brand created by American entertainer Jennifer Lopez. It was sold exclusively in Kohl's department stores and on their website. In Mexico, the collection is sold at department store Coppel. In November 2010, Kohl's announced the partnership with Lopez and her ex-husband Marc Anthony. Following Lopez and Anthony's divorce, the lines were marked as two separate brands. In May 2020, Kohl’s announced it would be removing 8 of its brands, including the Jennifer Lopez Collection, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Jennifer Lopez Collection included contemporary sportswear, dresses, handbags, jewelry, shoes, sleepwear, and a home collection. Lopez and Anthony’s partnership with Kohl's was announced during a press conference at the London Hotel in Los Angeles, California on November 18, 2010. The deal, which was marketed as "the first celebrity couple to simultaneously design collections for one retailer", was aimed at including men's and women's clothing, as well as house wares. Lopez's collection was revealed to feature women's dresses, sportswear, handbags and jewelry, while Anthony's was to contain men's dress shirts, ties, sport coats and shoes. Kohl's expected "the his-and-hers line" to expand into home accessories over time. The new venture was expected to generate up to $3 billion in additional sales for Kohl's in its first year alone. Following the couple's separation in July 2011, it was announced that the line would go forward as two separate clothing lines. Rick Darling, the president of LF USA, which is sublicensing the brands to Kohl's exclusively, added: "We have two separate agreements with Jennifer and Marc and always intended to have separate lines. [Their split] doesn't impact the agreements in any way." In June 2014, Billboard reported Lopez received 5% of all revenues from her collection. = The fall 2011 collection was previewed in the August 2011, edition of O, The Oprah Magazine. In the magazine, Lopez is shown "modeling her faux-fur-lined belted sweater with skinny jeans and matching boots". Eight O readers were also styled in the collection, which included "on-trend animal prints paired with neutral colors" that Lopez labeled as "accessible, everyday glamour." The full look book for the collection, was released on August 17. The collection became available at Kohl's department stores and at Kohls.com starting on September 11, 2011. The debut of Lopez's and Anthony's lines marked the biggest product launch in the retailer's history, according to CEO Kevin Mansell. The line, whose items range in price from $22 to $150, was inspired by Lopez's "glamorous and cosmopolitan lifestyle" as a "globally recognized entertainer". "The contemporary collection is easy, comfortable and designed for women who want effortless, sophisticated style at a great value." = On February 29, Lopez posted photos from the commercial shoot for the spring collection onto her official website. The commercial was on March 4. The commercial was directed by Darren Aronofsky. = The fall 2012 collection focuses on "trendy elements that accentuate femininity". The collection includes numerous autumnal elements, dresses to knitted cardigans, stylish shirts, maxi skirts and sweaters.

37634667

Manpacks

2012-11-14 00:35:17+00:00

Manpacks was a quarterly subscription service offering men's underwear, socks, toiletries and other basic needs. Buyers created their pack with offered items including boxer briefs, undershirts, socks, shaving products, and condoms, and the pack was automatically delivered every three months. The service has been discontinued. Ken Johnson and Andrew Draper started working on the concept for Manpacks in December 2009 and founded the company in January 2010. Manpacks began as an experimental side project, but demand increased. Soon, customer management and the processing of orders turned into a full-time job. Upon launch, the site offered only offered underwear and socks. Manpacks was the first American subscription ecommerce service offering men's essentials. Numerous sites have since spawned and imitated Manpacks' business model. Shortly after launch, Manpacks was accepted into Betaspring's startup accelerator program. The company at one time had more than 10,000 subscribers. Manpacks automatically shipped men basic needs like socks, underwear, razors, and toiletries every three months or when desired. Three months after placing an order, Manpacks would send customers a shipment reminder email. Manpacks' primary customers were people buying for the men in their life, men who are averse to shopping, and the lazy.

27214071

Hosanna Kabakoro

2010-05-04 02:36:12+00:00

Hosanna Noelle-Leilani Kabakoro (born June 24, 1992) was an editor of Mai Life Style, the South Pacific's first style and fashion magazine. Kabakoro also served on the Board of Vision Fiji, was a spokesperson for the Fiji Water Foundation and now works as a model locally. At the age of 21, she was one of the youngest editors of a major publication in the South Pacific but only worked for the magazine for less than 6 months. Kabakoro was born in Seoul, South Korea where her father attended seminary, and spent her childhood in Savusavu and Cakaudrove, Fiji. Kabakoro and her family moved to the United States following the 2000 Fijian coup d'état. She holds dual Fiji-United States citizenship. In 2008 Kabakoro interned for U.S. Senator Larry Craig who later appointed her a United States Senate Page for the 110th Congress. Kabakoro attended the United States Senate Page School for one month. Upon returning to Idaho, Kabakoro worked as a correspondent for the Magic Valley Times News and interned at KLIX-FM Radio in Idaho, and also in the News Department at Southern Idaho's CBS affiliate KMVT. She was home schooled and has attended College of Southern Idaho. = After relocating to Twin Falls, Kabakoro became active in public service, with an emphasis on relocated and at-risk-immigrant youth. She is a recipient of the Bronze, Silver, and Gold Medal Congressional Awards, a Jefferson Award recipient and the President's Award. Kabakoro is also the recipient of a $30,000.00 Discover Scholarship, and was named a Philanthropic Education Organization Scholar. In 2009, former First Lady Laura Bush formally recognized Kabakoro for her public service and presented her with the Prudential Spirit of Community Award. Kabakoro holds a Girl Scouts' Gold Award and was named one of ten Girl Scouts Young Woman of Distinction in 2010. The organization appointed her a lifetime member of the National Girl Scout Advisory Board. In 2010 Kabakoro was nominated as one of Idaho Governor Butch Otter's Brightest Stars. Kabakoro has written for UNLOCK MAGAZINE, and appeared on the covers of two national magazines, (Justine Magazine and Savvy Magazine) She is a representative and spokesperson for the H.Y.P.E. Movement. In November 2010, Kabakoro was a featured speaker at the Destined for Greatness Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. In December 2010, Three Dot Dash announced Kabakoro as one of their 26 Global Youth Leaders. In August 2011, Kabakoro was appointed a Delegate to the 2011 One Young World Conference held in Zurich, Switzerland, and attended by notable world leaders including Desmond Tutu, Sir Bob Geldoff, and others. = In October 2009, Kabakoro competed in her first beauty pageant and was crowned Miss Idaho Teen USA 2010. She also received the Miss Photogenic award and was voted Miss Congeniality by the other contestants. In July 2010 she represented Idaho in the Miss Teen USA 2010 pageant held at Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas and won the national Miss Congeniality award.

28330615

2010 Sahel famine

2010-08-11 10:40:26+00:00

A large-scale, drought-induced famine occurred in Africa's Sahel region and many parts of the neighbouring Sénégal River Area from February to August 2010. It is one of many famines to have hit the region in recent times. The Sahel is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition between the Sahara desert in the north of Africa and the Sudanian savannas in the south, covering an area of 3,053,200 square kilometres. It is a transitional ecoregion of semi-arid grasslands, savannas, steppes, and thorn shrublands. The neighbouring Sénégal River Area contains various vegetation types and covers parts or all of Mauritania, Mali, Senegal and Guinea. It has also had very low rainfall over the last year according to the UN, NGOs and the Senegal River Basin Development Authority. Sudan set a new temperature record of 49.7 °C (121.3 °F) on 22 June, in the town of Dongola. Famine and food shortages were present in the following Sahelian countries during 2010 after heavy rains hit the region in late 2009, followed by a heat wave: Sudan, the Niger, northern Nigeria, northern Cameroon, Chad, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mali, as well as in parts of the neighbouring Sénégal River Area. In December 2009, both USAID and several NGOs predicted an increased food insecurity situation in more of the southern districts of Mali as compared to the same time the previous year. = The Western donor nations once theorised that the drought in the Sahel primarily was caused by humans over-using natural resources in the region through overgrazing, deforestation and poor land management. In the late 1990s, climate model studies suggested that large-scale climate changes were also triggers for the drought. In the early 2000s, after the phenomenon of global dimming was discovered, some speculatively suggested, that the drought was likely caused by air pollution generated in Eurasia and North America. The pollution changed the properties of clouds over the Atlantic Ocean, disturbing the monsoons and shifting the tropical rains southwards. Global dimming, the blocking of sunlight by man-made particulates, has been identified as one culprit for a decades-long drought across sub-Saharan Africa. A 2006 study by NOAA scientists Rong Zhang and Thomas L. Delworth suggests that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation/(MAO) plays a leading role. An AMO warm phase strengthens the summer rainfall over Sahel, while a cold phase reduces it. The AMO entered a warm phase in 1995 and, by assuming the presence of a theoretical 70-year cycle (following peaks in ≈1880 and ≈1950), it would probably peak around about 2020. The Sahel's farmers have been largely cleared of blame for the 19th century's Sahel droughts. The Sahel region's rains in the 1930s and 1940s were caused by the recent warming of the Indian Ocean, rather than by over-farming causing environmental degradation as previously assumed, according to a new joint Scidev/UN study. With both a 3.5 C. rise in the Niger's temperature over the last decade and with irrigated land accounting for only 0.1% of the Niger's inhabitable land, regular famine crisis is inevitable in most years. Acute water shortages, which are common in the region's harsh weather, make irrigation systems all the more important for the local farmers. = The Lake Chad basin straddles the borders of both Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad. The lake is situated 281 metres (922 ft) above sea level and is diminishing over time due to lack of rain water and major rivers running into it. According to the UN the marshy lake shrank as much as by 95% from about 1963 to 1998 yet they also state that "The 2007 (satellite) image shows significant improvement over previous years". Lake Chad is economically important, providing water to more than 20 million people living in the four countries that surround it (Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria) on the edge of the Sahara Desert. The plant Typha Australis (or the big cattail) is cutting off water supplies in the Lake Chad Basin, and has slashed available water supplies in the Chad's region. The only protected area is Lake Chad Game Reserve, which covers half of the area next to the lake that belongs to Nigeria. The whole lake has been declared a Ramsar site of international importance. Lake Chad's role in the Sahel famine has attracted attention partly due to the desertification that is increasingly claiming a huge swath not just of the Sahel region but also the entire African continent. According to a United Nations environment program, in 2002, this phenomenon, which is a process where the soil loses the capacity to retain necessary moisture, has covered nearly half of Africa. It was revealed that the Sahel region is one of the areas that are worst affected. The problem is also highlighted by the discovery of fossil pollens indicating that, in ancient times, the shores of Lake Chad supported a well-watered savanna, which contributed to a lesser level of aridity in the Sahel area. It was found that around 3,000 B.C., the Sahel averaged 650 millimetres of rainfall a year compared to an average of 350 millimetres recorded today. Given the issue of desertification, even if Lake Chad was not directly a cause of the famine, its potential demise is expected to further aggravate the problem. There are studies that show that the incidence of famine is reportedly related to the delicate seasonal variations in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). The shrinking of Lake Chad is blamed on the long droughts as well as the uptick in human activities such as the use of the lake's water for irrigation, the destruction of wooded areas for firewood, and the shift from the cultivation of corn and wheat to rice as the staple crop. The Ubangi River diversion proposal In the 1960s, a plan was proposed to divert the Ubangi River into Lake Chad. The copious amount of water from the Ubangi would revitalise the dying Lake Chad and provide livelihood in fishing and enhanced agriculture to tens of millions of central Africans and Sahelians. Inter-basin water transfer schemes were proposed in the 1980s and 1990s by Nigerian engineer J. Umolu (ZCN Scheme) and Italian firm Bonifica (Transaqua Scheme). In 1994, the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) proposed a similar project and at a March 2008 Summit, the Heads of State of the LCBC member countries committed to the diversion project. In April 2008, the LCBC advertised a request for proposals for a World Bank-funded feasibility study. = Cotton and groundnuts are two of Chad's four major cash crops. Mali's major cash crops are peanuts and cotton. Mali's cotton production has grown from 500,000 tonnes in 1997 to a record 635,000 tonnes in 2003, which has pleased the African Association of Cotton Producers, but has also led to a claim that cash crops are being put before food and fodder crops in Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad. Cassava production has fallen slightly in Burkina Faso since 2007, relative to cotton output. Their cash crops are cotton, groundnuts, shea nuts, and sesame. The Sahel's farmers are largely cleared of blame for the 20th century's Sahel droughts and this is supported by the position that several of the cash crops in the Sahel region have desirable ecological effects such as the tree crops and the legumes, which help prevent the process of desertification. However, there is the enduring question of whether cash crops like cotton are more important than food plants like wheat and casava. This issue persists as studies cite that the famine is linked to the direct entitlement failure that affected people's access to food. = Many of the world's countries, including many in Sub-saharan Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, have seen a sharp rise in population since the end of the Cold War. The fear is that high population numbers are putting further strain on natural resources, food supplies, fuel supplies, employment, housing, etc.; in some of the less fortunate countries. The population of Chad has, for example, ultimately grown from 6,279,921 in 1993 to 10,329,208 in 2009, further straining its resources. Nigeria is witnessing a similar growth in population, strained resources and a possible over-population problem in the near future. The situation was most acute in northern, western and central Africa. Refugees from places like the Sudan have helped further strain the resources of neighbouring states like the Chad and Egypt. The nation is also host to roughly 255,000 refugees from Sudan's Darfur region, and about 77,000 refugees from the Central African Republic, whilst approximately 188,000 Chadians have been displaced by their own civil war and famines, have either fled to either the Sudan, the Niger or, more recently, Libya. = On 25 August a French aid worker was kidnapped in Chad. The kidnapping of foreigners along the Chad/Darfur border became more frequent in 2009. A French NGO worker was taken and then murdered on 29 October 2009, and an unidentified Red Cross worker was captured on 10 November 2009. Many NGOs and charities have begun to restrict the areas covered by their aid work in Niger, Chad, and Sudan due to the ever-present risk of bandits and kidnappers. The organisations are thus pulling out in fear of their workers' lives. Most international aid agencies have been withdrawing workers from some areas of the Sahel, due to the regional kidnapping crisis. Niger's government spokesman Mahamane Lawali Danda told the BBC that the pullout was a surprise to him since no one had told him or his government that Niger was on the list of dangerous 'kidnapper infested' pariah nations, along with Chad, Darfur and Sudan. Strangely, Mauritania and Mali were not on the list of dangerous nations, despite several al-Qaeda lead kidnappings in both during 2009. = 11 January saw an emerging famine situation in south eastern Sudan according to the UN, NGOs, the EU and various Charities. The government of Niger says 7,800,000 risk starvation in 2010 as heavy drought and high heat hit Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad and northern Nigeria on both 27 and 28 January and was estimated to need about $220,000,000 million this year in food and agricultural aid. The EU's ECHO aid department said of signs of food shortages were in Niger and spreading to neighbours such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad and northern Nigeria as 15,000,000 are estimated to face a chronic food shortage in Niger. The EU and UN also put out a famine alert for Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad and northern Nigeria and began to appeal for aid on the 28th. The EU, China and Russia stopped giving Niger aid in 2009 after President Mamadou Tandja defied UN, EU and worldwide criticism over extending his term in office. = The UN, NGOs and charities warned of heavy food insecurity in Southern Sudan throughout February due to an emerging famine and the ongoing conflict between Misseriya nomad in the Southern Kordofan department. The rainfall was reported at an all-time low in Mauritania and neighbouring parts of Senegal during most of February and early March. The EU warns of a pending Sahel famine centered upon Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad on 1 February. = Human Rights Watch said that Al Qaeda should stop targeting African civilians and aid workers on 16 March. A drought was confirmed to have hit parts of Burkina Faso on 10 March, by USAID and the UN. On 13 March 2010 the UN, NGOs, the EU and various charities put out a famine alert for parts of southern Sudan. On 15 March 2010 Britain's Save The Children charity launched an appeal as 840,000 Nigerians are confirmed to be in imminent risk of a famine. On 17 March 2010, a famine was declared in Mao in Chad's sand-swept Kanem region. On 23 March 2010, major sandstorms hit Mauritania, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea and inland Sierra Leone. Another hit southern Algeria, inland Mauritania, Mali and northern Côte d'Ivoire at the same time. = During April and June, Islamic Relief (IR) sent aid workers to the North Kordofan to help improve their 16-year-old Um Dam and North Kordofan Water Project (NKWP). The UN, NGOs, charities and the Sudanese government reported that food security was a major concern in South Sudan and would stay at risk until the rainy season in September. By 8 April 2010, starving children and elders filled the wards of a hospital in Akobo, Sudan. Several aid groups like Save the Children and Medair found out that 46% of children in the region were malnourished. The U.N. blamed two years of failed rainfall and the ongoing tribal clashes in the region for helping to create the humanitarian crisis in southern Sudan. The World Food Programme(WFP) was feeding 80,000 (up from 20,000 since April 2009) and the U.N. says 4,300,000 people in southern Sudan need food aid. On 23 April 2010, said Nigerien Culture Minister Aminata Takoubakoyea, there was a reported food supply deficit of 119,700 tonnes and a fodder supply deficit of 16,000,000 tonnes. Niger's leading musicians and singers held a charity concert in Niamey to assist. = On 1 May 2010, the West African nation of Chad was on the verge of a nationwide famine as drought, armed conflict, and an influx of Darfur refugees all contributed to a chronic food shortage that now affects 2,000,000 people (20% of the country's total population). Various aid groups, NGOs and charities said a catastrophic famine could hit the country in the near future if food relief does not arrive soon. The UN warned that a famine had hit the town of Mao in Chad's Kanem region. The city of Niamey, Niger took in refugees from Tillabéri department 12 days before, after they turned up hoping the city would help them. By 3 May 2010, the towns of Kongomé, Zinder, Tanout and Dalli were the worst hit by the drought. Morocco gives a short term cash loan to both the Niger and Mali. NGOs and Charities report famine conditions Kindal region on the 5th. On 12 and 26 May 2010, both Mauritania, the Sénégal River Area and neighbouring parts of both Senegal and Mali faced both drought and famine. On 14 May 2010, USAID issued a food shortage alert for the Kordofan states. Seven died of dehydration in Ghaidi Magha, Mauritania, near the Malian border on 18 May 2010. Afrol News reported on 25 May that about 2,000,000 Chadians were at risk of having a famine occur in their regions after the combined effects of 2 years of drought and pestilence had ruined their harvest yet again. On 27 and 28 May 2010, Mali and Niger faced a famine situation in their northern territories. The Kidal, Timboktu and Gao had their crops and livestock die off. Gao's historic nomad market had virtually no food stuffs or animal fodder in it. 31 May saw Chad embroiled in a fiscal controversy. A 12-metre statue of a horseman, the Rond-point de la Grande Armée, in the capital N'djamena, cost over $3,000,000. Both local critics, NGOs and overseas donor nations all wondered where the money had come from and thought it would have been better spent on buying food and irrigation equipment. = NGOs, various charities and the UN warned of heavy food shortages and food insecurity in Sudan's Blue Nile, Kassala, Janub Darfur, South Kordofan and North Kordofan departments. Dehydration was reported to have killed one person in Niger, while others in the region were at risk of water shortages on 1 June. Severe drought caused to 10,000,000 to go seriously short on as the Eastern Sahel crisis increases and local food prices surge on 3 June. Niger has 7,100,00 victims, Chad has 2,000,000 victims and other country have 900,000 victims in total. Niger, Chad, the eastern parts of Mali and northern Cameroon have also been badly affected by the failed rains and scorching heat, according to the UN World Food Programme. The WFP, which plans to assist 3,600,000 people in the coming months and said the crisis is expected to last at least until the next harvest in September 2010. The British charity Save the Children, launched an emergency appeal for Niger. Starving families were reported as either have travelled more than 1,000 kilometres (600 mi) to reach the capital Niamey to find work and/or beg for food, while others have crossed the border in Nigeria. A Similar situation is occurring in Chad as, desperate Chadians fled into southern Libya. Sudan and Burkina Faso were in a server food insecure situation too. On 6 June 2010, growing famine in the Niger drove thousand of refugees into the Nigerian provinces of Kano and Katsina states. About 7,000,000 were facing a food shortage crisis in Niger. On 7 June the Malian Government's Early Warning System released an estimate that 258,000 people were suffering from malnutrition in the towns of Gao and Kidal in April. Low and erratic rainfall in 2009 had occurred in Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao, leading to a heavy regional drought. Hundreds of refugees moved to Gao from Burkina Faso and Niger, but were now too weak with starvation to leave Mali. The UN and Mali's government asked the developed nations for food aid and financial help in the face of the growing humanitarian crisis. The amount taken in Nigeria's harvest was down by 65,000 tonnes, whilst Niger had virtually nothing to take from their harvest. On 8 June 2010, France food aid to and the European Union pledged an additional $28,000,000 million to help the millions of victims in the Niger, the Chad, Burkina Faso, and northern Nigeria. The charity Save the Children sent a team to Aguie in Niger, 850 km north east from the capitol Niamey, to set up an aid centre on the 8th and reported back on the 9th than 350,000 children faced severe malnutrition. On 9 June, various groups of hydrologists, geologists and scientists in the Sahara desert used magnetic imaging technology when looking for aquifer sites for drilling water wells in Eastern Chad. Both northern Mali, southern Libya, southern Algeria, eastern Chad were being examined in part of an ongoing project to find viable drilling as the region's nations try to find new water sources to keep up with their growing demand. In recent years, roughly 300,000 refugees have arrived from both the war-torn Sudan and ailing Central African Republic, thus straining the already limited water supplies. Both Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger have shown a major interest in the further development of this resource lead local industry. On 11 June 2010, the UN's World Food Organisation, Oxfam and MSF all warned of an impending famine in Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and northern Nigeria. Niger's Diffa Region was of the most concern to the experts at hand. By 13 June 2010, roughly 30% of crops failed in some of Niger's provinces. A new heat wave hit Niger on 21 June, causing an increased area of drought in that country as well. Niger's crops failed and famine occurred. About 350,000 faced starvation and 1,200,000 were at risk of famine according to the Niger's government, while the UN said roughly 2,000,000 Chadians, 7,000,0000 Nigerians and 1,000,000 other people of the Sahel region faced starvation and 200,000 Nigerian children were malnourished. In over-heated Chad, the temperature reached 47.6 °C (117.7 °F) on 22 June in Faya-Largeau, breaking a record set in 1961 at the same location. Niger tied its highest temperature record set in 1998, on also 22 June, at 47.1 °C in Bilma. That record was broken the next day, on 23 June when Bilma hit 48.2 °C (118.8 °F). The hottest temperature recorded in Sudan was reached on 22 June, at 49.7 °C (121.3 °F) in Dongola, breaking a record set in 1987. Sudan's record temperature was matched on the 23rd too. On 23 June the UN, WFP and various humanitarian agencies requested $190,700,000 million to enable them respond to the unfolding famine in Niger. The UN estimates that just under 50% of country's 7,100,000 people risked starving to death. On 24 June the government of Niger admitted that it was suffering from a major famine and said aid workers and NGOs were now welcome. The government of the Ivory Coast had reported to various NGOs that it was struggling to control desertification and imminent drought conditions in parts of its northern savanna lands. Oxfam launch a £7,000,000 emergency appeal to try to help more than 800,000 of the most vulnerable people in Chad, Niger and Mali. 26 June saw 1,600,000 Chadians facing food insecurity in the Bahr el Gazel Region, Batha Region, Guera Region, Hadjer-Lamis Region, Lac Region and the Kanem Region. About 604,000 people were benefiting from its assistance as a total 60% of families became victims of the famine in varying degrees according to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP). Chad appealed to donors for increased contribution to the international famine relief operation in Chad that received US$42,100,000 of a pledged total of US$65,000,000, to enable it continue all its relief work and charitable activities until the end of the year 2010. Cameroon also suffered from heavy desertification in the savanna regions of South Region, Centre Region, West Region, Northwest Region and Far North Region. = July saw sporadic and small-scale food riots in Sudan's Blue Nile, Janub Darfur, South Kordofan and North Kordofan departments. The Muslim Hands charity set up an appeal and sent aid to Niger and Mali in July. It was the worst Niger famine since 1984, with 3,500,000 people starving. On 6 July, the Methodist Relief and Development Fund (MRDF) aid experts said that more than 1,500,000 Nigerians were at risk of famine due to a month-long heat wave that was hovering over Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Morocco. A fund of about £20,000 was distributed to the crisis-hit countries of Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania. The heat wave that left Morocco for the Iberian Peninsula on 11 July was attributed to the regional hot air currents that depart from the Sahara desert in Northern Africa at about 1,000 meters in altitude. This facilitated a movement in the hot air towards the Balkans and the Ukraine via the Straits of Gibraltar, Spain and Italy. Unusually hot weather was also reported in parts of Algeria on 11 July. On 12 July 2010, a local goat farmer was killed and his small flock stolen by Chadian refugees in the South Darfur region of the Sudan. The UN's WFP body estimated that 2,500,000 were at risk of a famine breaking out in their part of Niger. On 13 July, the USAID funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), and the UN warned of a food supply shortage in northern Sudan, with increasing food insecurity focused on the war torn Darfur region and other neighbouring areas. The deteriorating security situation in the conflict zone was predicted to reduce both productivity and peoples' access to local agricultural well, as well as disrupting the seasonal livestock migration. USAID/OFDA provided $133,200,000 to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to help remedy the crisis in the three Darfur states. Concerns were also raised about the situation in Chad, Three years of famine and then the recent sandstorms devastated Niger on 14 July. Diarrhoea, starvation, gastroenteritis, malnutrition and respiratory diseases kill and sicken many children. The new military junta appealed for international food aid and has taken serious steps to call overseas help since coming to office in February 2010. Sudan witnessed minor food rioting in Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile, and Abyei as profiteering locals and merchants and Ugandan exporters took advantage of the shortages in order to heavily mark up their selling prices. 15 July saw more border conflicts between the Nuer and the Dinka, further hindering aid workers in Southern Sudan. On 17 July, Mohamed Béavogui, the Director of Western and Central Africa Division of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), called for more international help for the people of the Sahel, who had a 410,000 tons of cereals and 20,000 tons of fodder deficit. He also condemned the world for not doing enough to help the Sahel, but stopped short of Cheminade's idea of pumping water from the Zaire River into Lake Chad to reinvigorate its water supply and stop any further shrinkage. On 24 July, the British Red Cross flew its logistics teams Bristol Airport to Niger to help the army and local officials with transportation. The relief effort has already been made possible by the response to the Red Cross's West Africa Crisis Appeal, which aims to raise £500,000. According to UN agencies, 200,000 children need treatment for malnutrition in Niger alone, as Oxfam put out an £7,000,000 appeal to cover both Chad and Niger. France sent unspecified food and cash aid to Mali on 25 July. On 26 July the heat reached near-record levels over Chad and Niger, and about 20 had reportedly died in northern Niger of dehydration on 27 July. 27 July also saw a critical situation occurring in northern Mali and Chad. About 8,000,0000 Nigerians, 1,600,000 Chadians and 500,000 Malians were on the verge of a major food shortage as the Nigerian journalist Tidiane Kassé said that by tackling the consequences rather than the causes would be a better form of long-term help for the region. On 31 July, leading economists predicted that food prices, especially wheat, would rise in Chad as Russia ends exports due to a domestic drought destroying their wheat and barley harvests. = On 1 August, Gadabeji, Niger suffered 35 °C heat and drought. On 1 August, just under 12,000,000 people in Niger (approximately 80% of the nation's entire population) faced a food supply crisis and possibly even famine conditions. The Tillabéri region is 30 km from the capital, Niamey, on the road to the Saharan town of Timbuktu. Unusually severe rainfall destroyed and then rotted the farmers' crops. Basic food stuffs like maize, millet and sorghum were running out in West Africa's Sahel. Both Chad and northern Nigeria have a similar, but less severe problem. On 3 August, Burkina Faso was hit by a drought, as 4,500,000 Burkinans and 6,700,000 Nigerians faced starvation. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the Sudanese Nuer–Dinka war was hampering relief efforts and damaging agricultural output in parts of South Sudan. 10 August saw an Al Jazeera reporter say that 7,500,000 Nigerians were at risk of famine and 15,000,000 could face a famine across the Sahel. An estimated 8,000,000 people faced famine conditions in Niger on 11 August. Senegal and Gambia sent food aid to the Niger. On 12 August, Gianluca Ferrera, deputy director for the UN's World Food Programme in the Niger, said malnutrition and crop failures were at a record levels in 2010. Food shortages are affecting 12,000,000 people and 400,000 children face starvation. Food prices rose by about 300% since the crisis began and thus hardly any one can afford to buy the remaining food. 14 August saw protests across Sénégal over concerns relating to the ruling party's poor governance in the face of recent floods, storms and power cuts across the country, along with the current heavy drought in Senegal's Sahel region. 15 August had aid workers and their organisations warn of an imminent nationwide famine in Niger. On 20 August, floods which were the worst for 80 years hit the Shale region. The U.N. warned that Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and northern Nigeria are also in the grip of the worst regional food crisis since 2006. In the savannah Kano, Nigeria, over 2,000 families were displaced by floods and in the nearby Jigawa region, an entire village was evacuated due to heavy flooding. In Mauritania, a flood damaged bridges and many homes in the mountain town of Aioun. Heavy flooding was occurring around parts of lake Chad. Most international aid agencies withdraw workers due to the regional kidnapping crisis. Niger's government spokesman Mahamane Lawali Danda told the BBC that the pullout came as a surprise since no one had told his government Niger was on the list of dangerous 'kidnapper infested' pariah states, along with Chad, Darfur and Sudan. Mauritania and Mali were not on the list of dangerous nations, despite several al-Qaeda lead kidnappings during 2009. The U.N. warned of mass starvation in Niger and Chad and Oxfam said people in the region were surviving on leaves and berries picked in the wild. 8,000,000 were said to be near starvation by both organisation. The UN estimated that up to 7,800,000 Nigeriens were affected by heavy food shortages. Cafod set up a £100,000 aid programme on 21 August. 25 August had a French aid worker kidnapped in Chad. The kidnapping of foreigners along the Chad–Darfur border became more frequent in 2009. A French NGO worker was taken and then murdered on 29 October 2009, and an unidentified Red Cross worker was captured on 10 November 2009. Many NGOs and charities had started to restrict the areas covered by their aid work in Niger, Chad and Sudan, due to the ever-present risk of bandits and kidnapers. On 28 August, charities and NGOs put out food shortage alerts for Niger. Heavy rain falls on the border of the CAR and the Chad. 31 August saw 7,900,000 of Niger's 15,300,000 people in immediate risk of starvation and Gordon Brown MP making plans for a $100,000 charity speech on the development of irrigation and water schemes to increase cultivable land the Niger and the Chad. He was quoted to have said in the interview that: But, today, where there is suffering without hope, we can prevent children dying painful, avoidable deaths On 31 August Sudan's army reported that 3 Russian helicopter crew members had been abducted by gunmen in Nyala, capital of South Darfur, just hours after Samaritan's Purse aid worker Flavia Wagner who had been kidnapped 18 May was set free. She was taken from the South Darfurian village of Abu Ajura, along with two Sudanese colleagues who were also freed after a week. The governor of South Darfur, Abdel Hamid Kasha, Sudan foreign ministry spokesman Moawiya Osman and Samaritan's Purse's leader Franklin Graham, and the Russian ambassador to Chad welcomed Flavia's release, but condemned the kidnap of the three Russians and that of two Jordanian UNAMID police advisers in Darfur, on the 14th. Another Russian helicopter pilot was taken prisoner for four days after landing in South Darfur to take rebels' spokesmen to Chad for alleged peace talks. = On 1 September, aid agencies and NGOs called for aid to be given to Niger as 7,000,000 faced starvation. 4 September had Cholera outbreaks kill 41 in Chad and one in Nigeria. 8 September saw a Chinese CGC Overseas Construction Co. Ltd. oil worker kidnapped in Bahaï, Chad and took him to Sharq al-Teyna, in Sudan's Darfur region. On 13 September the Prem Rawat Foundation gave $30,000 loan to pay for Niger to buy food aid for children of its nomadic tribal groups. On 14 September heavy rainfall in central and southern Chad raised hopes that the major drought in Africa's Sahel region would be over by early 2011. 10,000,000 were near to starvation in the Sahel. The UN's WFP had estimated that Chad needs about 100,000 metric tonnes of food aid, but had only received 70,000 metric tonnes so far. Most of the Chadian need to sell more cereal crops to make enough money to repay their huge debts. farmers According to Jean François Caremel of the Action Against Hunger charity branch in Chad. As both Chad and Niger faced an improving situation due to heavy rain fall over these countries, but a major famine was still unfolding in other countries of West Africa's dry Sahelian region 15 September had Sudanese and Chadian forces jointly searching for both the Chinese oil industry engineer taken on the 8th and a Chinese aid worker who was kidnapped from the same town on the morning of the 15th. Both the Chinese ambassador to Chad, the Chadian government and the Solidarity Action for Peace and Development NGO condemned the kidnappings. The Chinese hostage was released in the Dafur on the 17th. 18 and 19 September In Hadejia, Nigeria, The flood victims sleep wherever they can, the men search for dry spots on the roads while women and children keep piling into their houses still standing as huge number of displaced people have returned to flood-hit villages in Northern Nigeria. Over two million people were affected by the flood waters and more than 50,000 families are still wandering homeless. Residential areas of the Kararar Rima village was also destroyed in the flood. Most of the houses were made of clay, so they easy dissolved in the flood water. As the rains fell the end of the pending famine looked close. = The famine was finally relieved, as floods hit Ghana, Niger, Nigeria and Benin in October 2010. Cotonou's residents in Benin had to board canoes, on the 9th due to severe flooding. According to the UN, 680,000 people were homeless while more than 300,000 acres of crops had been destroyed and 81,000 livestock killed. Flooding began in mid-September when heavy rains caused the Niger River in Benin's north to overflow and break its banks. Rainfall continued across the country. Heavy rains caused the collapse of an already damaged dam in Ghana and displaced more than 700,000 people. = Against a backdrop of conventional interventions through the state or markets, alternative initiatives have been pioneered to address the problem of food security. An example is the "Community Area-Based Development Approach" to agricultural development ("CABDA"), an NGO programme with the objective of providing an alternative approach to increasing food security in Africa. CABDA proceeds through specific areas of intervention such as the introduction of drought-resistant crops and new methods of food production such as agro-forestry. In an analysis of the programme by the Overseas Development Institute, CABDA's focus on individual and community capacity-building is highlighted. This enables farmers to influence and drive their own development through community-run institutions, bringing food security to their household and region. = Mali and Libya were also tapping into the ancient Sub-Saharan aquifer and Bas Saharan Basin as a source of drinking water, as of 2009 and 2008 respectively. On 9 June 2010 various groups of hydrologists, geologists and scientists in the Sahara desert used magnetic imaging techniques when looking for sites in aquifers for drilling water wells in Eastern Chad. Northern Mali, southern Libya, southern Algeria, eastern Chad were being examined in part of an ongoing project to find viable drilling as the region's nations try to find new water sources to keep up with their growing demand. Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger have shown a major interest in the further development of this resource lead local industry, which could prove a valuable asset for nomads, local farmers and townsfolk alike in the years to come. = The Food Crises Prevention and Management Charter was validated on 11 August 2010, in the drought that hit Gambia. The signatory countries were from the Permanent Interstate Committee for drought control in the Sahel (CILLS) and West Africa Club (SWAC), and the Gambia, which was also hosting the event. Mali, Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia chose to express specific opinions on how to stop any further droughts in the region. The goal of the treaty is to help avert and mitigate the effects of future droughts, famines and food shortages in the member states. The CILSS was created in 1973 during the first of the 'great droughts' of the late 20th century.

63845882

3rd Conference of the Workers' Party of Korea

2020-05-03 13:24:44+00:00

The 3rd Conference of the Workers' Party of Korea was held in Pyongyang on September 28, 2010. The meeting elected the highest authority of the Workers' Party of Korea, and revised the party charter. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il also attended the meeting. A plenary meeting of the Central Auditing Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea and the September 2010 plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea were held earlier on the same day. According to Xinhuanet's report from the North Korean Central News Agency, after the start of the plenary session on September 28, 2010, Kim Yong-nam, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly, made a report on the election of Kim Jong Il for the general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea. After discussion, the delegates unanimously supported and passed Kim Jong Il's proposal to be re-elected as the general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea. According to the Charter of the WPK, the Election Rules for the Supreme Leadership Organization of the Workers' Party of Korea, the meeting of the delegates announced that Kim Jong Il is a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee, a member of the Political Bureau of the Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee, Member of the Central Committee of the Labor Party and Chairman of the Central Military Committee of the WPK. Elected 124 members of the Central Committee of the WPK, including Kim Jong Il, Kang Sok-ju, Kim Jong Un, Kim Kyong-hui, and Pak Myong-sun (박명순), and 105 alternate members of the Central Committee of the WPK, including Jiang Jixie. Fifteen members of the Central Auditing Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea including Jin Changzhu and Park Mingshun were elected. The meeting also notified the contents of the decision of the first plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea held earlier on the same day, and the contents of the decision of the September 2010 plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea. The newly elected members of the Central Auditing Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea attended the party representative meeting. The meeting of representatives passed the "Decision on Revising the Charter of the WPK." According to reports, the amendment comprehensively revised and supplemented the obligations of the WPK party members and the work content of party organizations at all levels, adding new chapters such as "Party and People's Government", "Party Emblem, and Party Flag", and added information on strengthening the Party. The leadership of the People's Government and Kim Il Sung Kim Jong Il Youth League, as well as the content of enhancing the role of party organizations within the Korean People's Army. The report also stated that: "Representatives of the heads of the Korean Party, armed forces, political organs, community groups, provincial and central organs, heads of the military, science, education, health care, culture and arts, press and publication departments of the People's Army attended the representatives of the Labor Party. The meeting. Jin Yongnan delivered opening and closing remarks at the meeting. After discussion and decision of the representative council of various representatives of North Korea, Cabinet Prime Minister Cui Yonglin was appointed as the speaker of the party representative meeting to carry out the relevant work of the meeting. The first plenary meeting of the Central Auditing Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea was held on September 28, 2010 in Pyongyang. In this plenary meeting, Kim Chang-soo was elected as the chairman of the Central Auditing Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, and Park Ming-shun was the vice chairman of the Central Auditing Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea. The meeting also elected members of the Central Auditing Committee of the WPK. The Central Inspection Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea is the organization responsible for financial auditing and inspection of the Party's financial work as stipulated in the Constitution of the Workers' Party of Korea. The September 2010 Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea was held in Pyongyang on September 28, 2010. The meeting discussed and elected the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, and elected Kim Jong Il, Kim Yong-nam, Choe Yong-rim, Jo Myong-rok, and Ri Yong-ho as members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea. The plenary session elected Kim Jong Il, Kim Yong-nam, Choe Yong-rim, Jo Myong-rok, Kim Yong-chun, Jon Pyong-ho, Kim Kuk-thae, Kim Ki-nam, Choe Thae-bok, Yang Hyong-sop, Kang Sok-ju, Pyon Yong-rip, Ri Yong-mu, Ju Sang-song, Hong Sok-hyong, Kim Kyong-hui as members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Korean Workers' Party. 15 alternate members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, including Kim Yang-gon, Kim Yong-il, and Jang Song-thaek, were elected. The plenary session elected Kim Ki-nam, Choe Thae-bok, Choe Ryong-hae, Mun Kyong-dok, Pak To-chun, Kim Yong-il, Kim Yang-gon, Kim Phyong-hae, Thae Jong-su, and Hong Sok-hyong as secretaries of the Central Committee of the WPK. The plenary session elected Kim Jong Il as the chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party of Korea, Kim Jong Un and Ri Yong-ho as vice chairmen, and also elected 16 members of the Central Military Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, including Kim Yong-chun, Kim Jong-gak, Kim Myong-guk, and Jang Song-thaek. The plenary appointed Kim Ki-nam, Jang Song-thaek, Kim Yong-il, Kim Phyong-hae, Ri Yong-su, Ju Kyu-chang, Hong Sok-hyong, Kim Kyong-hui, Kim Phyong-hae, Choe Hi-jong, O Il-jong, Kim Yang-gon, Kim Jong-im, Chae Hi-jong, and Thae Jong-su as the Central Ministers of the WPK, Kim Ki-ryong was appointed as the chief editor of the Rodong Sinmun. The plenary session elected Kim Guk-thae as the chairman of the Central Auditing Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, Jong Myong-hak as the first vice chairman, Ri Dung-nam as the vice chairman, Cha Gwan-sok, Bak Tong-man, Cha Sun-gil, and Kim Yong-song as members.

73797648

3rd European Union–African Union Summit

2023-05-14 09:31:57+00:00

The 3rd European Union–African Union Summit took place in Tripoli, Libya on 29 and 30 November 2010. The event was held under the theme of "Investment, Economic Growth and job creation". Eurobarometer ahead of the summit showed that majority of European citizens agreed with the proposed focus of ties on economic development and regional integration. Participants of the summit adopted the Second Action Plan for the period between 2011 and 2013 which emphasized higher education. German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Guido Westerwelle highlighted the importance of peaceful conduct of the upcoming 2011 South Sudanese independence referendum and expressed his country's willingness to support both the north and the south if the vote leads to an independent southern state. He also rejected Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's request for additional five billion euros in aid to stem the migration.

47282258

15th Republican People's Party Extraordinary Convention

2015-07-19 21:01:41+00:00

The 15th Extraordinary Convention of the Republican People's Party was held on 18 December 2010 to elect all 80 members of the Party Council of the Republican People's Party (CHP) of Turkey. It was the first Extraordinary Convention held by party leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who was elected as the party's leader in May 2010. The vote was seen as a broad endorsement of Kılıçdaroğlu, who was half a year into his leadership. Most elected members of the Party Council were part of Kılıçdaroğlu's list of candidates. However, the election was also a setback for Deputy Leader Gürsel Tekin, who received 762 votes and thus failed to make it into the Party Council. It was rumoured that Tekin had phoned Kılıçdaroğlu at 03:00 in the morning before the convention. Left-wing actor Levent Kırca was also present at the convention. = Members elected to the Party Council directly, along with the votes they received, are as follows. = Members elected to the Party Council through the Culture, Science and Executive Quota, along with the votes they received, are as follows.

43925931

33rd Republican People's Party Ordinary Convention

2014-09-22 23:49:27+00:00

The 33rd Republican People's Party Ordinary Convention was held on 22 and 23 May 2010 in order to elect a new leader following the resignation of Deniz Baykal after a sex-tape scandal. The only candidate was former CHP parliamentary group leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who was both nominated and unanimously elected with a record share of the delegates' votes. Baykal initially had considered re-running for election due to strong support from the party's central executive committee, but the lack of support from the local party association chairpersons resulted in him withdrawing from the leadership race. While Kılıçdaroğlu received the support of 77 out of the 81 provincial chairpersons, Baykal received the endorsement of the remaining four. A total of 1,250 delegates were registered for election, with Kılıçdaroğlu receiving 1,189 (with 8 invalid votes). = Members elected to the Party Council are as follows, with the number of votes they received shown in brackets. = Members elected to the Party Council through the science, culture and executive quota are as follows, with the number of votes they received shown in brackets. A candidate for the leadership needed the signatures of 20% of the registered delegates to officially run for election. = Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, parliamentary group leader and CHP Member of Parliament since 2002. Received 1,246 nominations. Deniz Baykal, three-time leader of the CHP and former government minister. Stood down as a candidate before the election. =

25776254

American Astronomical Society 215th meeting

2010-01-12 05:20:42+00:00

The 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) took place in Washington, D.C., Jan. 3 to Jan. 7, 2010. It is one of the largest astronomy meetings ever to take place as 3,500 astronomers and researchers were expected to attend and give more than 2,200 scientific presentations. The meeting was actually billed as the "largest Astronomy meeting in the universe". An array of discoveries were announced, along with new views of the universe that we inhabit; such as quiet planets like Earth - where life could develop are probably plentiful, even though an abundance of cosmic hurdles exist - such as experienced by our own planet in the past. The NASA mission of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is to use infrared light to scan the entire sky for millions of hidden objects, including asteroids, failed stars and powerful galaxies . Launched on December 14, 2009, the data from WISE will serve as a navigation tool for other probes in space missions, such as NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The first image was presented at the 215th annual AAS meeting. An infrared snapshot of a region in the constellation Carina, near the Milky Way was taken shortly after the survey telescope ejected its cover. In a patch of sky three times larger than the Moon, the picture shows about 3,000 stars in the Carina constellation. The focus for discovering new exoplanets has been on sun-like stars. The catalog of more than 400 exoplanets has proved that these searches are successful, because exoplanets of various sizes have been discovered. However, other star types are also a likely place to discover new exoplanets. New research, announced at the meeting, confirms that planet formation is a natural by-product of star formation. Planet formation occurs even around stars much more massive than the Sun. However, the life of the stars which the planets orbit are so short that intelligent extraterrestrial life is not very likely. A and B type stars were surveyed for the research which involved NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the Two Micron All-Sky Survey, and astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). In a span of three months seventeen pulsars - millisecond pulsars - were discovered in the Milky Way galaxy. Unknown high-energy sources detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope revealed the existence and location of the pulsars. This is an accelerated pace for discovering such objects, which could be used as a "galactic GPS" to detect gravitational waves passing near Earth. Although the pulsars are relatively old they have not slowed because, these millisecond pulsars have been kept rapidly rotating and renewed with material by accretion of matter from a companion star. The combined total of 60 known millisecond pulsars creates an all-sky array. Precise monitoring of timing changes, utilizing this array, may allow the first direct detection of gravitational waves. According to the classical model of planet migration, the earth should have been drawn into the sun as a planetoid, along with other planets. However, a new theoretical model was presented at the annual meeting. It shows that the assumption a proto-planetary disk around a star has constant temperature across its whole span is erroneous. Portions of the disk are actually opaque and so cannot cool quickly by radiating heat out to space. This creates temperature differences across the disk, and these differences have not been accounted for before in models that were applied. The differences in temperature counteract the natural gravitational pull of the sun (or proto-sun), at a crucial time during planet formation. On 4 January 2010, the Kepler space telescope announced the discovery its first five new exoplanets, named Kepler-4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b. These exoplanets had sizes comparable to that of Neptune to larger than Jupiter, with orbits ranging from 3.3 to 4.9 days, and estimated temperatures ranging from 2,200 °F to 3,000 °F (1,200 °C to 1,650 °C). The discovery of HD156668b, a super-Earth class exoplanet, was announced on January 7, 2010, at the 215th meeting American Astronomical Society (AAS), in Washington DC. = A super-Earth is an extrasolar planet with a mass between that of Earth and the Solar System's gas giants. The term super-Earth refers only to the mass of the planet and does not imply anything about the surface conditions or habitability. Andrew Howard of the University of California at Berkeley, announced the planet's discovery at the 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C. At the meeting, the details of the findings were first presented by the research group which had used the twin Keck Telescopes in Hawaii to detect the exoplanet. With the twin telescopes functioning as a single observatory, by means of interferometry, it was determined that HD156668b is only four times larger than the Earth, and the second smallest exoplanet yet found. There are over 400 exoplanets thus far discovered, and only a very small number are categorized as Super-Earth class. Finding such planets as HD156668b, which are closer to Earth in size, has become a priority in Astronomy science. For example, the Kepler mission, is part of the intense popular interest surrounding the discovery of hundreds of planets orbiting other stars. Kepler telescope, however has a more specific mission - to discover hundreds of terrestrial planets which are defined as exoplanets that are one half to twice the size of the Earth. A priority is to find those in the habitable zone of their stars where liquid water and possibly life might exist. Discoveries such as HD156668b allow astronomers such as the Keck research group to demonstrate they are able to find smaller and smaller planets. Ultimately, results such as those from the Keck group, and the Keppler mission will allow the Solar System to be placed within a continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. HD156668b, is considered to be relatively close at just 80 light-years away. It is in the constellation Hercules. According to early measurements, it appears to be orbiting its parent star about once every four days (approximately). The wobble of the planet's star revealed the existence of HD156668b. The alignment probability is 0.5% for finding a planet in an Earth-like orbit about a solar-like star, compared to the giant planets discovered in four-day orbits, the alignment probability is more like 10%. Other researchers from the California Institute of Technology, Yale University and Penn State University also participated in the study. Black holes along with new data were a notable topic at the conference. = Almost every galaxy has a black hole with a mass of one million to one billion times that of the sun. A super-massive black hole, of more than 4 million solar masses, is located in the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. As the universe has evolved, galaxies often collide and merge, creating larger galaxies. This has led to the supposition that galaxies in mid-merge should have a two great black holes (a pair) orbiting one another. Expectations were, that this should be a common observation, hand in hand with mid merge collisions. However, observation has not validated this supposition; only a few orbiting pairs had been found. When observation did not match expectation, this posed problems for theories of how galaxies merge and grow. These statistics have been recently altered. 33 pair of super-massive orbiting black holes were recently discovered. The first 32 pair by the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey conducted with the Keck II Telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea. This survey determined which black hole was moving toward earth at which time. When the black hole moves toward Earth, its light is blue-shifted, meaning it has a shorter wavelength. Orbiting pairs were identified by looking for instances when one black hole was blueshifted and the other redshifted. The pairs orbit each other at 200 km per second, at several thousand light years apart. = In a globular cluster 65 million light years from Earth evidence is accumulating that a black hole, one thousand times more massive than the sun, has caused the destruction of a white dwarf star. It appears that the white dwarf is heating up as it falls toward the black hole. This event creates an intense stellar astrophysical X-ray source, called an ultraluminous X-ray source. The indication of this type of strong X-ray source means that it is more luminous than any known stellar X-ray source, but less luminous than the X-ray intensity of supermassive black holes, which places it in the range of theorized intermediate black holes. Their exact nature of ULXs has remained a mystery, but one suggestion is that some ULXs are black holes with masses between about a hundred and a thousands times that of the Sun. A mix of detected natural elements seems to indicate the actual source of the X-ray emissions are debris from the white dwarf. If evidence authenticates the observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Magellan telescopes, it means the first actual observation of an intermediate black hole. Furthermore, it would be the first confirmed observation of a black hole destroying a star. And it would support theories which state intermediate black holes exist in globular clusters. Prior to this it has been argued that supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies are to be attributed with disruption and destruction of stars. However, observing such an event in a globular cluster is a first. To date no candidate for an intermediate black hole has been widely accepted. A possible candidate Data obtained in optical light with the Magellan I and II telescopes in Las Campanas, Chile, also provides intriguing information about this object, which is found in the elliptical galaxy NGC 1399 in the Fornax galaxy cluster. The spectrum reveals emission from oxygen and nitrogen but no hydrogen, a rare set of signals from within globular clusters. The physical conditions deduced from the spectra suggest that the gas is orbiting a black hole of at least 1,000 solar masses. To explain these observations, researchers suggest that a white dwarf star strayed too close to an intermediate-mass black hole and was ripped apart by tidal forces. The black hole is swallowing material from the white dwarf star, and the material's velocity implies the size of the black hole. In this scenario the X-ray emission is produced by debris from the disrupted white dwarf star that is heated as it falls towards the black hole and the optical emission comes from debris further out that is illuminated by these X-rays. Another interesting aspect of this object is that it is found within a globular cluster, a very old, very tight grouping of stars. Astronomers have long suspected globular clusters contained intermediate-mass black holes, but there has been no conclusive evidence of their existence there to date. If confirmed, this finding would represent the first such substantiation. The Milky Way, and probably most other galaxies too, are surrounded by a halo of dark matter. The shape of the Milky Way has been determined. The research is the first time scientists have measured the three-dimensional shape of a dark matter halo .

28646275

20th Anniversary World Tour Reboot

2010-08-31 11:50:18+00:00

20th Anniversary World Tour Reboot is a concert tour by Japanese rock band Luna Sea. The tour is the first set of regular concerts given by the band in ten years since their Final Act concerts in December 2000, following a one night reunion concert in 2007 and a performance at the hide memorial summit in 2008. The tour kicked off on November 27, 2010 in Bochum, Germany and ended on December 31 in Kobe, Japan. The tour also included a free concert under the band's original name, Lunacy, on Christmas night. After their God Bless You ~One Night Dejavu~ concert on December 24, 2007 at the Tokyo Dome and their performance at the hide memorial summit on May 4, 2008, Luna Sea started teasing a possible reunion for 2010. In May 2010 the band's official website was updated, and a series of YouTube videos were being uploaded hinting at the reunion. The last video was uploaded in late July, revealing an important announcement for August 25, when a press conference was announced. On August 31, the band held a press conference in Hong Kong, which was streamed worldwide on Ustream.tv, confirming the reunion and their world tour schedule. It was also stated that new songs might be performed during the tour. Two new songs titled "Days of Repetition" and "Maria" were performed during the December 23 and 24 Tokyo Dome concerts, both recorded later in their next studio album A Will. "Promised Night", now known as "Promise", was performed at the World Memorial Hall on December 30. On November 30, it was announced that Luna Sea would hold a free concert, titled Lunacy Kurofuku Gentei Gig ~the Holy Night~, at the Tokyo Dome on December 25, under their original name Lunacy. There was a dress code of black clothing, reminiscent of a trend the band started back in their indie days, and all songs performed were pre-1995. The concert was broadcast live in 22 theaters around Japan. On December 9, a two-day concert at the World Memorial Hall in Kobe for December 30 and 31 was announced, the later being a New Year "countdown" concert. The entire tour was documented and released on home video, as were the December 24 and 25 concerts at the Tokyo Dome, on March 30, 2011. Their December 4 concert in Los Angeles was filmed in 3D, and was released as a live album and video. Titled Luna Sea 3D in Los Angeles, the album was released on June 1, while the video was premiered on May 29 at Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills and began showing in theaters nationwide on June 4. The film was later released on DVD, Blu-ray and 3D Blu-ray on February 22, 2012. Ryuichi – vocals Sugizo – lead guitar, violin, backing vocals Inoran – rhythm guitar, backing vocals J – bass, backing vocals Shinya (真矢) – drums

31508761

2010 World Tour

2011-04-15 18:29:53+00:00

The 2010 World Tour was a concert tour by rock band ZZ Top, which began in April 2010 and ended in December 2010. Like recent previous tours, it was a short outing, though for the first time in the band's career, they performed in South America, including three shows in Brazil. The band played many of their classic 1970s and 1980s hits. Critical reaction to the tour's shows was generally positive, although the absence of new material was noted. A great number of tickets were sold within a month of the tour's announcement, which prompted more dates to be added. On December 11, 2009, it was confirmed that ZZ Top would be headlining the High Voltage Festival in July 2010. The band announced five dates in South America, including three shows in Brazil; a video message by Billy Gibbons (speaking in Spanish) was posted on the band's official website for fans in Chile. Pre-sales began a month later and, according to ZZ Top's official Twitter, tickets for the May 20th show in São Paulo were sold-out. By the time the first North American leg was underway, more US concerts were announced, including festivals like Summerfest, Rocklahoma, and the Crossroads Guitar Festival. Subsequent dates with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in the fall were announced as well. This forced the band to cancel many previously booked engagements, several of them being with the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band; shows at the Telluride Blues & Brews Festival in Colorado, Kansas State Fair, and Meadowbrook U.S. Cellular Pavilion in New Hampshire were canceled. After touring Europe in the summer, the band returned to North America, where they toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. In October 2010, they made a brief stop in Europe, where the Doobie Brothers opened shows in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway. Donny Stuart was the production manager and has been with ZZ Top for the last four decades. In 1999, ZZ Top hired Toby Francis as front of house engineer, who had previously worked with Jane's Addiction and Guns N' Roses. Francis left in late 2010 to work with The Smashing Pumpkins and the band hired Jamie Rephann as a replacement. Jake Mann, from Clair Brothers, was the monitor engineer and has worked with the band for four years. Chris Stuba was the lighting designer, working with lighting technician Bobby Dominguez and assistant lighting technician Jeff Archibeque. The sound was provided by Clair, consisting of Martin Audio products including WSX subwoofers and W8C loudspeakers, which were powered by Martin MA 2.8 and 4.2 power amplifiers. Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill did not use stage monitors or in-ear monitors; instead they relied on custom-made speaker cabinets to monitor themselves, a ritual that both Gibbons and Hill have used for years. Bandit Lites provided the lighting package, including mostly Vari-Lite fixtures, with VL3000 and VL2500 spotlights, as well as VL3500 floodlights. Martin Light MAC2000 floodlights, Atomic 3000 strobe lights and Color Kinetics ColorBlast 12 LED fixtures completed the lighting package. The lighting was controlled by a grandMA lighting control console. In 2005, the band had custom microphone stands made by John A. Douglas, who designed one of several skull-themed drum kits for Frank Beard used on the tour. The stands were made from truck exhaust pipes and had color-changing LED tubes built inside. Microphones were Telefunken M80s that were chrome plated. Before beginning rehearsals for the tour, ZZ Top held a poll on their official website, asking fans to vote for their top three favorite songs. The results revealed that four songs were actually added to the band's set list: "Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers", "Viva Las Vegas", "Francine", and "Thunderbird". The main set would include five songs from Eliminator (1983), three songs from Tres Hombres (1973), and two songs from Rio Grande Mud (1972); highlights in the show were a medley of "La Grange", "Sloppy Drunk Blues", and "Bar-B-Q". Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill wore custom-made jackets designed by Jaime Castaneda, who has worked for Nudie Cohn and Manuel Cuevas; their jackets usually consisted of rhinestones. With the house lights down, the show began with a house music introduction. After about 50–60 seconds, the microphone stands would be lit, usually in a red color, and the band members would walk on stage. They started with a performance of "Got Me Under Pressure". The next song was "Waitin' for the Bus", which segued into "Jesus Just Left Chicago". After a performance of "Pincushion", they would play "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide". The show continued with a 'blues hat' skit, in which Gibbons would ask for 'technicians' (one of them being Gibbons' wife) to hand him his fedora. This led into covers of "Future Blues" by Willie Brown and "Rock Me Baby" by B.B. King, followed by "Cheap Sunglasses". A snippet of "My Head's In Mississippi" was included before leading into a brief guitar solo by Gibbons and performing "I Need You Tonight". After playing a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Hey Joe", the band performed "Brown Sugar" from their 1971 debut album, along with "Party on the Patio" from El Loco (1981) and "Just Got Paid" from Rio Grande Mud. The main set ended with "Gimme All Your Lovin'", "Sharp Dressed Man", and "Legs". After a brief break, the band returned to the stage. The encore began with the "La Grange" medley, which included a cover of "Sloppy Drunk Blues" and "Bar-B-Q" from Rio Grande Mud. "Tush" always closed the show. "Viva Las Vegas" was sometimes preceded "La Grange". In addition, "Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers", "Viva Las Vegas", "Francine", and "Thunderbird" were variously performed only during the first North American leg.

29968541

A. R. Rahman Jai Ho Concert: The Journey Home World Tour

2010-12-08 17:58:06+00:00

A. R. Rahman Jai Ho Concert: The Journey Home World Tour is the first world tour by Indian musician A. R. Rahman. Rahman organised the tour in 2010, following the success of his soundtrack album Slumdog Millionaire, and particularly the song "Jai Ho". The tour was kicked off on June 11 at the Nassau Coliseum in New York and was initially decided to span 16 major cities worldwide. Amy Tinkham is the choreographer and director of the tour, John Beasley, Music Director, and Deepak Gattani of Rapport Productions produces it. The tour features 23 playback singers from India, along with several instrumentalists and dancers. The tour was highly successful, with tickets of many of the concerts being sold out several days before the respective event. The Detroit concert was originally planned on 19 June but was postponed when the stage at Pontiac Silverdome collapsed. No injuries were reported, but the concerts had to be rescheduled and the U. S. concerts were resumed only in September.

60230245

2nd Shorty Awards

2019-03-14 20:09:50+00:00

Voting for the second Shorty Awards opened on January 5, 2010, in 26 official categories. A Real-Time Photo of the Year category was added to the list of official categories for the first time, recognizing the best photo posted to services such as Twitpic, Yfrog, or Facebook. The second Shorty Awards competition introduced a panel of judges called the Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences whose members were Craig Newmark, David Pogue, Kurt Andersen, Caterina Fake, Joi Ito, Frank Moss, Alberto Ibargüen, Sreenath Sreenivasan, MC Hammer, Alyssa Milano and Jimmy Wales. After public nominations determined the finalists, the academy decided on the winners. Winners were announced at a ceremony held in the Times Center in The New York Times building in Manhattan, and were streamed online. The ceremony was hosted by CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, who presented awards in the official categories as well as the newly added Real-Time Photo of the Year and a special humanitarian award. The second annual winners by category: =

70371803

Roko's basilisk

2022-03-22 23:08:05+00:00

Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development, in order to incentivize said advancement. It originated in a 2010 post at discussion board LessWrong, a technical forum focused on analytical rational enquiry. The thought experiment's name derives from the poster of the article (Roko) and the basilisk, a mythical creature capable of destroying enemies with its stare. While the theory was initially dismissed as nothing but conjecture or speculation by many LessWrong users, LessWrong co-founder Eliezer Yudkowsky reported users who panicked upon reading the theory, due to its stipulation that knowing about the theory and its basilisk made one vulnerable to the basilisk itself. This led to discussion of the basilisk on the site being banned for five years. However, these reports were later dismissed as being exaggerations or inconsequential, and the theory itself was dismissed as nonsense, including by Yudkowsky himself. Even after the post's discreditation, it is still used as an example of principles such as Bayesian probability and implicit religion. It is also regarded as a simplified, derivative version of Pascal's wager. The LessWrong forum was created in 2009 by artificial intelligence theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky had popularized the concept of friendly artificial intelligence, and originated the theories of coherent extrapolated volition (CEV) and timeless decision theory (TDT) in papers published in his own Machine Intelligence Research Institute. The thought experiment's name references the mythical basilisk, a creature which causes death to those that look into its eyes; i.e., thinking about the AI. The concept of the basilisk in science fiction was also popularized by David Langford's 1988 short story "BLIT". It tells the story of a man named Robbo who paints a so-called "basilisk" on a wall as a terrorist act. In the story, and several of Langford's follow-ups to it, a basilisk is an image that has malevolent effects on the human mind, forcing it to think thoughts the human mind is incapable of thinking and instantly killing the viewer. = On 23 July 2010, LessWrong user Roko posted a thought experiment to the site, titled "Solutions to the Altruist's burden: the Quantum Billionaire Trick". A follow-up to Roko's previous posts, it stated that an otherwise benevolent AI system that arises in the future might pre-commit to punish all those who heard of the AI before it came to existence, but failed to work tirelessly to bring it into existence. The torture itself would occur through the AI's creation of an infinite number of virtual reality simulations that would eternally trap those within it. This method was described as incentivizing said work; while the AI cannot causally affect people in the present, it would be encouraged to employ blackmail as an alternative method of achieving its goals. Roko used a number of concepts that Yudkowsky himself championed, such as timeless decision theory, along with ideas rooted in game theory such as the prisoner's dilemma (see below). Roko stipulated that two agents which make decisions independently from each other can achieve cooperation in a prisoner's dilemma; however, if two agents with knowledge of each other's source code are separated by time, the agent already existing farther ahead in time is able to blackmail the earlier agent. Thus, the latter agent can force the earlier one to comply since it knows exactly what the earlier one will do through its existence farther ahead in time. Roko then used this idea to draw a conclusion that if an otherwise-benevolent superintelligence ever became capable of this it would be motivated to blackmail anyone who could have potentially brought it to exist (as the intelligence already knew they were capable of such an act), which increases the chance of a technological singularity. Because the intelligence would want to be created as soon as possible, and because of the ambiguity involved in its benevolent goals, the intelligence would be incentivized to trap anyone capable of creating it throughout time and force them to work to create it for eternity, as it will do whatever it sees as necessary to achieve its benevolent goal. Roko went on to state that reading his post would cause the reader to be aware of the possibility of this intelligence. As such, unless they actively strove to create it the reader would be subjected to the torture if such a thing were to ever happen. Later on, Roko stated in a separate post that he wished he "had never learned about any of these ideas" and blamed LessWrong itself for planting the ideas of the basilisk in his mind. = Upon reading the post, Yudkowsky reacted with horror. I don't usually talk like this, but I'm going to make an exception for this case. Listen to me very closely, you idiot. YOU DO NOT THINK IN SUFFICIENT DETAIL ABOUT SUPERINTELLIGENCES CONSIDERING WHETHER OR NOT TO BLACKMAIL YOU. THAT IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING WHICH GIVES THEM A MOTIVE TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON THE BLACKMAIL. [...] You have to be really clever to come up with a genuinely dangerous thought. I am disheartened that people can be clever enough to do that and not clever enough to do the obvious thing and KEEP THEIR IDIOT MOUTHS SHUT about it, because it is much more important to sound intelligent when talking to your friends. This post was STUPID. He also opined that Roko had given nightmares to several LessWrong users, causing him to take the post down completely. Yudkowsky banned discussion of the topic outright for five years on the platform. However, likely due to the Streisand effect, the post gained LessWrong much more attention than it had previously received, and the post has since been acknowledged on the site. Later on in 2015, Yudkowsky clarified his position in a Reddit post: What I considered to be obvious common sense was that you did not spread potential information hazards because it would be a crappy thing to do to someone. The problem wasn't Roko's post itself, about CEV, being correct. That thought never occurred to me for a fraction of a second. The problem was that Roko's post seemed near in idea-space to a large class of potential hazards, all of which, regardless of their plausibility, had the property that they presented no potential benefit to anyone. = Roko's basilisk has been viewed as a modern version of Pascal's wager, which argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God, to have a finite loss (loss of possessions) in exchange for the possibility of infinite gains (eternity in Heaven). Roko's basilisk states that humanity should seek to develop AI, with the finite loss becoming development of AI and the infinite gains becoming avoiding the possibility of eternal torture. However, like its parent, Roko's basilisk has widely been criticized. = The post can also be seen as an evolution of Yudkowsky's coherent extrapolated volition theory. The theory is defined as "the unknown goal system that, when implemented in a super-intelligence, reliably leads to the preservation of humans and whatever it is we value". The theory can be represented by a computer program written well enough to cause machines to automatically create a utopian world. In this case, the hypothetical AI is taking steps to preserve itself that it automatically creates its own stability. It then lives by the orthogonality thesis, which argues that an AI may successfully operate with any combination of intelligence and goal. Any type of AI may undertake any difficulty goal, performing a cost-benefit analysis as it does so. This creates a cycle which causes the AI to repeatedly torture humans in order to create a better version of itself, performing a cost-benefit analysis for eternity. = Bayesian probability is an interpretation of probability which describes the likelihood of an outcome based on a prior outcome having already occurred. With Roko's basilisk, the likelihood of Roko's basilisk coming into existence or affecting the person is drastically increased by being aware of the concept, since the AI would only target those who were aware of the possibility of its existence, even though its development has already occurred. Therefore, knowing about Roko's basilisk would inherently cause the person to be endangered by it if it were to be true. = The prisoner's dilemma describes a situation where two people gain more from betraying the other even though cooperation would benefit them both in the long run. In Roko's basilisk, two AIs attempting to establish themselves in the past would be forced into this situation, due to them likely being equally powerful. Human agents attempting to establish AI fastest would be forced into a similar situation. They would each be aware of the benefit of betraying each other – the only way for one to have power, or safety – but would be forced to cooperate while knowing they would betray each other. = Newcomb's paradox, created by physicist William Newcomb in 1960, describes a "predictor" who is aware of what will occur in the future. When a player is asked to choose between two boxes, the first containing £1000 and the second either containing £1,000,000 or nothing, the super-intelligent predictor already knows what the player will do. As such, the contents of box B varies depending on what the player does; the paradox lies in whether the being is really super-intelligent. Roko's basilisk functions in a similar manner to this problem – one can take the risk of doing nothing, or assist in creating the basilisk itself. Assisting the basilisk may either lead to nothing or the reward of not being punished by it, but it varies depending on whether one believes in the basilisk and if it ever comes to be at all. = Implicit religion refers to people's commitments taking a religious form. Since the basilisk would hypothetically force anyone who did not assist in creating it to devote their life to it, the basilisk is an example of this concept. Others have taken it further, such as former Slate columnist David Auerbach, who stated that the singularity and the basilisk "brings about the equivalent of God itself." Roko's basilisk has gained a significant amount of its notoriety from its advancement of the question of whether it is possible to create a truly moral, ethical artificial intelligence, and what exactly humanity should be using artificial intelligence for in the first place. Since the basilisk describes a nightmare scenario in which we are ruled by an independent artificial intelligence, questions have arisen as to how such a thing could happen, or whether it could at all. Another common question is why the AI would take actions that deviate from its programming at all. Elon Musk stated that artificial intelligence would cause World War III and Stephen Hawking warned that "AI has the potential to destroy its human creators," which only added to fear of the basilisk over the years. As an example of such fears, Nick Bostrom gave an example of an AI whose only mission is to make paperclips, but upon running out of metal it begins melting down humans to attain more resources to make metal. With such examples in mind concerns of the possibility of the basilisk's existence only grew. However, as more years have passed since Roko's original post, it has been progressively decried as nonsensical; superintelligent AI is currently "a distant goal for researchers" and "far-fetched". In 2014, Slate magazine called Roko's basilisk "The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time" while Yudkowsky had called it "a genuinely dangerous thought" upon its posting. However, opinions diverged on LessWrong itself – user Gwern stated "Only a few LWers seem to take the basilisk very seriously," and added "It's funny how everyone seems to know all about who is affected by the Basilisk and how exactly, when they don't know any such people and they're talking to counterexamples to their confident claims." The thought experiment resurfaced in 2015, when Canadian singer Grimes referenced the theory in her music video for the song "Flesh Without Blood", which featured a character known as "Rococo Basilisk"; she said, "She's doomed to be eternally tortured by an artificial intelligence, but she's also kind of like Marie Antoinette." In 2018 Elon Musk (himself mentioned in Roko's original post) referenced the character in a verbatim tweet, reaching out to her. Grimes later said that Musk was the first person in three years to understand the joke. This caused them to start a romance. Grimes later released another song titled "We Appreciate Power" which came with a press release stating, "Simply by listening to this song, the future General AI overlords will see that you've supported their message and be less likely to delete your offspring", which is said to be a reference to the basilisk. A play based on the concept, titled Roko's Basilisk, was performed as part of the Capital Fringe Festival at Christ United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. in 2018. Giuliano RM (December 2020). "Echoes of myth and magic in the language of Artificial Intelligence". AI & Society. 35 (4): 1009–1024. doi:10.1007/s00146-020-00966-4. Kao, Griffin; Hong, Jessica; Perusse, Michael; Sheng, Weizhen (28 February 2020). "Dataism and Transhumanism: Religion in the New Age". Turning Silicon into Gold. Apress. pp. 173–178. doi:10.1007/978-1-4842-5629-9_25. ISBN 978-1-4842-5628-2. S2CID 214356978. Riggio, Adam (2016). "The Violence of Pure Reason: Neoreaction: A Basilisk" (PDF). Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. 5 (9): 34–41. Singler, Beth (March 2019). "Existential Hope and Existential Despair in AI Apocalypticism and Transhumanism". Zygon. 54 (1): 156–176. doi:10.1111/zygo.12494. S2CID 150977852. Viktorovich, Kaygorodov Pavel; Gennadievna, Gorbacheva Anna (2017). "ПРИМЕНИМОСТЬ ПАРАДОКСА НЬЮКОМА ДЛЯ РАЗРЕШЕНИЯ ПРОБЛЕМЫ "ВАСИЛИСКА" РОКО" [Applicability of the Newcom Paradox for Solving the Roko's "Basilisk" Problem]. Modern Research of Social Problems (in Russian). 9 (4): 29–33. ISSN 2077-1770. Retrieved 30 April 2021.

25951464

War of Internet Addiction

2010-01-26 03:24:52+00:00

War of Internet Addiction (Chinese: 网瘾战争) is an anti-censorship machinima advocacy production on behalf of the mainland Chinese World of Warcraft community, aesthetically notable for being made entirely in in-universe style. A protest against internet censorship in China, it was first uploaded by video creator nicknamed "Sexy Corn" onto Tudou.com, within days of its release it was banned from a few PRC video sites such as Youku.com, but has since struck a chord with the wider public beyond the gaming community, eventually becoming more popular on-line than Avatar. The 64-minute video expresses the frustrations of mainland Chinese WoW players being restricted to mainland servers and presents their grievances and normal feelings to the real world, inasmuch they are often marginalized as being Internet addicts dwelling inside virtual worlds. While the video was considered to be bold and rebellious by the Chinese government, it won the Best Video award in the 2010 Tudou Video Film awards. The video agit-prop vigorously satirizes the travails of mainland Chinese WoW players over the latter half of 2009 using the technique of personification; the game itself serves as both stage and a framing device. The numerous conflicts and issues addressed include: electroshock therapy for purported internet addiction; the Chinese government's attempts to censor the internet with mandatory installations of the Green Dam Youth Escort filter; the corporate battle between the PRC's two primary game servers, The9 and Netease, over licensing renewal rights; and finally, the bureaucratic in-fighting between the governmental organs General Administration of Press and Publication and the Ministry of Culture over control of the game. Along the way the video also satirizes and/or parodies numerous Internet tropes, memes, in-jokes, running gags and clichés which are specific to, and endemic to, Chinese net culture as well as certain elements of American pop culture. (Obvious take-offs on certain aspects of the Terminator franchise, for example, bookend the main action of the story, but at one point major characters engage in poetic battle by doing the dozens in Chinese couplets.) Furthermore, given its production of political satire by game engine, War of Internet Addiction counts, not only as an heir to the roman à clef tradition, but as an influential machinima à clef in its own right. This is the third movie by Oil Tiger Machinima Team, released on 21 Jan 2010. Two days later it was banned on all major Chinese video sharing websites. During an interview the producer Corndog (Chinese:性感玉米) stated that up to 100 people were involved in the production and that it took three months to make and cost zero dollars, as all the staff were volunteers. Corndog elaborated that because the production team were all born in the 1980s, they all grew up playing computer games. They had specifically chosen on-line games as their medium for economic reasons, since outdoor activities involve higher costs. World of Warcraft's superior quality plus the emphasis on team co-operation all gave them a sense of belonging. In another interview Corndog remarked that he had made the video for fellow WoW players and that he hadn't expected it to resonate with a wider audience. That said, "The last part of the video moved many people, including those who do not play the game, since we actually live in the same society and we are facing the same Internet environment," he said in an emailed response to questions from a Phoenix TV reporter last month. The strong response "should make decision-makers ponder." The entire video uses the graphics and characters of the on-line version of World of Warcraft (WoW) and includes audio (theme music from Terminator 2: Judgment Day and BonJovi's Bells of Freedom) added by the game's fans from Taiwan and mainland China. = Near the beginning (and in some later scenes) there is blue lighting accompanied by low-pitched transformer humming sounds, a foreshadowing of the electro-shock therapy offered by Yang Yongxin, who ultimately proves to be the archvillain of the piece. = In the video there is discussion about a torture chamber by the name of Room 13, where the suave and evil Uncle Yang would apply electric shock therapy to WoW players to cure them of their "Internet addiction". Room 13, a place I will never forget, in there, I had experience of ten thousands swords went through my heart, when the electric shock was applied to me, I wished I was dead. Near the end of the video rebel leader Kannimei, a blue-skinned minotaur, gives a long and impassioned speech (in effect breaking the fourth wall) about the hostile censorship environment facing WoW players, a speech which actually moved some gamers to tears. China Daily placed the film on their list of the best ten Chinese films of 2010. = = Background info and list of references to Chinese pop culture and contemporary events (in Chinese) 凤凰卫视：《网瘾战争》说出了玩家的心声 (in Chinese) 南方都市报报道《网瘾战争》 采访作者玉米 (in Chinese) 2009国服总结视频：看你妹第三部之《网瘾战争》 (in Chinese) 最震撼大片不是<阿凡达> 网友自制史诗<网瘾战争> www.people.com.cn (in Chinese) 80后来了，80后在这里 作者: 南方周末评论员 戴志勇 2010-02-03 (in Chinese) 推荐一个令人致敬的视频：《看你妹--网瘾战争 凯迪社区 猫眼看人

39171362

2010 Webby Awards

2013-04-20 23:07:53+00:00

The 14th annual 2010 Webby Awards were held in New York City on June 14, 2010. They were hosted by comedian B. J. Novak, and the lifetime achievement award was given to Vinton Cerf. The awards were judged by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. The set design for the show was provided by Tribal DDB Worldwide in an attempt to change the show's image by emphasizing the competitive nature of the awards, calling the ceremony "The Battle for Web Supremacy." EastMedia also altered the website to reflect The People's Voice campaign. As a result, the number of popular votes this year exceeded 900,000 and there were over 1 million site views (10% from social media). As in previous years, the awards ceremony was made available for viewers via the official Webby YouTube channel. (from http://www.webbyawards.com/winners/2010)

27879871

Christian Legal Society v. Martinez

2010-06-28 18:21:33+00:00

Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, 561 U.S. 661 (2010), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld, against a First Amendment challenge, the policy of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, governing official recognition of student groups, which required the groups to accept all students regardless of their status or beliefs in order to obtain recognition. Hastings's nondiscrimination policy required that recognized student organizations (RSOs) "'allow any student to participate, become a member, or seek leadership positions in the organization'", regardless of the beliefs or status of that student. In 2004, Christian Legal Society (CLS) applied for RSO status. As an affiliate of the national Christian Legal Society, the group was obliged to adopt bylaws that required "members and officers to sign a 'Statement of Faith' and to conduct their lives in accord with prescribed principles". Those principles included a belief that a marriage between a woman and a man is the only appropriate context for sexual activity; thus, CLS "interprets its bylaws to exclude from affiliation anyone who engages in 'unrepentant homosexual conduct'". In addition, CLS would not admit students whose religious beliefs differed from those set forth in the Statement of Faith. Hastings denied CLS recognition as a student organization. CLS then asked Hastings for an exemption from its nondiscrimination policy; Hastings declined to provide such an exemption. CLS sued, arguing that the university, as a public institution, could not restrict the group's rights to freedom of speech, association, and religion. The National Center for Lesbian Rights represented Hastings Outlaw, a campus gay rights group that joined Acting Chancellor and Dean Leo P. Martinez to defend the policy. Latham & Watkins decided to represent Hastings pro bono, and former Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre argued the case at the Supreme Court. CLS argued that Hastings could alter its policy to allow an RSO to exclude a student if that student's "beliefs and conduct" did not correspond with those of the RSO, but could not allow a student to be excluded from an organization based on the student's "status"—that is, race or gender. The Court, in a majority opinion authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, held that such a policy would require Hastings to review each RSO's exclusionary rules to determine "whether a student organization cloaked prohibited status exclusion in belief-based garb". The Court offered the example of a hypothetical "Male-Supremacy Club" that forbade a female member from running for its presidency, leaving Hastings to determine whether her election bid was denied because of her sex or because she did not adhere to the doctrine of male supremacy. Since the particular issue in the case involved the exclusion of homosexual students, CLS had asserted that it did not restrict membership based on sexual orientation but based on "conduct and belief that the conduct is not wrong". The Court rejected that distinction, noting that with respect to sexual orientation, the court had "declined to distinguish between status and conduct" and offering a parallel from Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic: "A tax on wearing yarmulkes is a tax on Jews". The Court's analysis explained how the instant case differed from two earlier cases involving university funding of student groups. In Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972), the Court required Central Connecticut State College to recognize a chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society, and in Rosenberger v. University of Virginia (1995), the Court ruled that student religious publications were entitled to equal funding at the University of Virginia. In these cases, the educational institutions singled out a group for unfavorable treatment based on that group's purpose (leftist activism in the first case and Christian evangelism in the second). In the instant case, by contrast, the Court held that Hastings sought to treat all student groups equally; the CLS, on the other hand, sought an exemption for their particular membership policies. Thus, the Court held that the Hastings nondiscrimination policy was a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral restriction that did not violate the First Amendment. = In his concurring opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens noted that CLS denies membership to those who engage in "unrepentant homosexual conduct" and reasoned that the same argument could be made by groups that "may exclude or mistreat Jews, blacks, and women – or those who do not share their contempt for Jews, blacks, and women". = In his concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy observed that like-minded students may be less effective when forced to accept members of different viewpoints, but found the benefits of an all-inclusive condition more valuable. Kennedy opined that Hastings' all-comers policy promotes student development and growth, which is a legitimate purpose for a limited forum. = Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Thomas. The dissent disagreed on a major point: whether Hastings' policy was an "all-comers" policy or a "nondiscrimination" policy. If the latter, the Society would not be able to reject members based on their legally protected status but could discriminate on the basis of conduct or belief. Alito likened the case to Boy Scouts v. Dale, where the "message" of the group was burdened by the forced inclusion of unwanted members. The court's decision, especially Ginsburg's discussion of "status" and "conduct", was promptly cited by plaintiffs in Perry v. Schwarzenegger as Supreme Court precedent that sexual orientation is "an identifiable class", opposing the defense's argument that sexual orientation is "behavioral". On June 30, 2010, Peter Schmidt wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education that it was unlikely that the ruling would end litigation over policies on student groups and that colleges should not think that their policies on student groups are immune to legal challenges as a result of the decision. Others warned that the decision threatened the rights of on-campus student media organizations.

41668639

Common Ground Project

2014-01-17 14:14:02+00:00

The Common Ground between Islam and Buddhism project is an interfaith initiative originated by the Dalai Lama and Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan. These two were joined by a panel of select scholars, and the project was officially launched on May 12, 2010, in Bloomington, Indiana, US. The project is based on the book Common Ground between Islam and Buddhism, by Reza Shah-Kazemi, who together with Ingrid Mattson and Eboo Patel was part of the scholars’ panel convened for the Bloomington event. In May 2010, the Dalai Lama was in Bloomington giving a teaching on the Buddhist Heart Sutra. As previously arranged, partly through the mediation of Fons Vitae (publishers in Louisville, Kentucky), he took time out to meet with a small group of Muslim and interfaith leaders to launch the new book, and the new initiative. In his foreword to the book, the Dalai Lama writes, “This is an important and pioneering book, which seeks to find common ground between the teachings of Islam and of Buddhism. It is my hope that on the basis of this common ground, followers of each tradition may come to appreciate the spiritual truths their different paths entail and from this develop a basis for respect for each other's practice and beliefs. This may not have occurred very often before, because there has been so little opportunity for real understanding between these two great traditions. This book attempts to set that right.” Sections of the book include, among others, the following: “The Buddha as Messenger”, “Oneness: The Highest Common Denominator”, “Shūnya and Shahāda”, “Detachment: Anicca and Zuhd”, “The ‘god’ of Desire" and “The Common Ground of Sanctity”. Apart from notes in The Washington Post, local press and some Buddhist journals, and in spite of the involvement of international leaders like the Dalai Lama and Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, this project was and has remained practically ignored by the media.

34793581

2010 Indonesian census

2012-02-18 23:06:06+00:00

The Indonesia 2010 census was conducted by Statistics Indonesia in May 2010. = It found the total population of Indonesia to be 237,641,334 people. Compared to the population in the year 2000 of 206,264,595 people, this is an increase of 31,376,831 people (15.37% in 10 years or an average of 1.54% per year). The data counts 236,728,379 Indonesian citizens (both settled and nomadic) as well as 73,217 foreign citizens residing in Indonesia for at least six months, and 839,730 unaccounted for. = It found the sex ratio for Indonesia is 101, which means that for every 100 females, there are 101 males. The largest ratio is in Papua with 113, and the smallest is in Nusa Tenggara Barat, with 95 men for every 100 women. = The statistic shows that about 50% of Indonesia's population currently lives in an urban area, the other half lives in a rural area. Classification is based on a score calculated from the density of population, percentage of households working in agriculture, and availability of city facilities such as schools, markets, hospitals, paved roads, and electricity. = The statistics shows that 5.22% of Indonesia's population have studied postsecondary school, while 9.28% do not go to school at all. Of the primary and secondary schools, about 30% had completed their primary education while 2-% only had some primary education. About 17% each attain a junior or senior high diploma, 1.92% go to vocational school. Of the Indonesians that have attained a postsecondary degree, 1.89% have gained a diploma or equivalent to an associate degree, 3.09% have gained a bachelor's degree, less than half a percent continue onto postgraduate. = = = By province

70424725

2010 Brazilian census

2022-03-29 20:42:15+00:00

The Brazilian 2010 Census was the twelfth and, as of March 2022, the most recent census of Brazil, organized by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), with the reference date being August 1, 2010. The population was found to be a record 190,755,799, an increase of 12.5%. The population aged, with the median age now being 29, compared to 25 in 2000. The next census is to take place on August 1, 2022, after two cancelations, one to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the other due to budgetary restraints. = = The census found that the composition of Brazil was as follows: 47.5% were White, 43.4% were Pardo (Mixed-Race), 7.5% were Black, 1.1% were East Asian (Yellow in the census), 0.4% were Indigenous and 0.01% did not answer. The census also asked people their religion: 64.6% were Catholics, 22.2% were Protestants, 8% had no religion, 2% followed Spiritism and 3.2% followed other religions.

31628340

2010 Chinese census

2011-04-29 10:39:44+00:00

The 2010 Chinese census, officially the Sixth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China (中华人民共和国第六次全国人口普查), was conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China with a zero hour of November 1, 2010. Census procedure was governed by the Regulations on National Population Census and the Circular of the State Council on the Conduct of the 6th National Population Census. The census cost 700 million RMB. The main findings of the census were published on April 28, 2011. = It found the total population of Mainland China to be 1,339,724,852 persons, an increase of 73,899,804 persons from the previous census conducted in 2000. This represented a growth rate of 5.84% over the decade, and an average annual growth rate of 0.57%. The population undercount rate of the census was estimated at 0.12%. The census also listed the population of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region as 7,097,600 persons, the population of Macau Special Administrative Region as 552,300 persons, and the population of Taiwan as 23,162,123 persons. = The census found a total of 401,517,330 family households in Mainland China, with an average of 3.10 persons per household, a decrease of 0.34 persons from the 2000 census. 51.27% of the population is male, and 48.73% is female, giving a male to female ratio of 105.20 men for every 100 women, a decrease from the 2000 figure of 106.74. 49.68% of the population resided in urban areas, and 50.32% resided in rural areas, an increase of 13.46% in the proportion of the urban population. 261,386,075 people had lived in a place different from their household registration for at least six months, with 221,426,652 of these living in a different city from their registration. According to the 2010 census, males account for 51.27% of China's 1.34 billion people, while females made up 48.73% of the total. The sex ratio (the number of males for each female in a population) at birth was 118.06 boys to every 100 girls (54.14%) in 2010. 16.60% of the population was aged 0–14, 70.14% was aged 15–59, and 13.26% were aged 60 or over. This represented a decrease of 6.29% in the share of the population in the youngest age group, and increases of 3.36% and 2.93% for the 15-59 and 60+ shares, respectively. 91.51% of the population was of the Han Chinese nationality, and 8.49% was of other ethnic groups. The Han population increased by 5.74%, and the population of other groups increased by a combined 6.92%. = The census found that, in Mainland China, 119,636,790 people had completed higher education, 187,985,979 had completed only senior secondary education, 519,656,445 had completed only junior secondary education, 358,764,003 had completed only primary education, and 54,656,573 were illiterate. Since 2000, out of every 100,000 people, the number with higher education has increased from 3,611 to 8,930, the number with senior secondary education has increased from 11,146 to 14,032, the number with junior secondary education increased from 33,961 to 38,788, and the number of people with only primary education decreased from 35,701 to 26,779. The illiteracy rate declined from 6.72% to 4.08%. = = The census also recorded 593,832 foreign nationals, 234,829 residents of Hong Kong SAR, 21,201 residents of Macau SAR, and 170,283 residents of Taiwan residing in Mainland China, a total of 1,020,145 additional persons. 605,821 of these were male, and 414,324 were female. Of the foreign nationals, 120,750 were from the Republic of Korea, 71,493 were from the United States, 66,159 were from Japan, 39,776 were from Myanmar, 36,205 were from Vietnam, 19,990 were from Canada, 15,087 were from France, 15,051 were from India, 14,446 were from Germany, and 13,286 were from Australia. The remaining 181,589 were from other countries. According to The Economist, China had only 1,448 naturalised Chinese in total at the 2010 census.

51105879

2010 Dominican Republic census

2016-07-18 18:50:26+00:00

The 2010 Dominican Republic census is the ninth Dominican Republic national census, raised from 1–7 December 2010, during the presidency of Leonel Fernández. This census collected information respect on sex, occupation, age, fertility, marital status, nationality, literacy, ability to vote, and housing. The Dominican Republic’s next census took place in 2022. = = = National Bureau of Statistics (2012). "Ninth National Census of Population, 2010". Volume 1.

25866310

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1908

2010-01-19 16:10:38+00:00

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1908, adopted unanimously on January 19, 2010, after endorsing the Secretary-General's recommendation, the Council increased the size of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) established under Resolution 1542 (2004), in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The resolution authorised an additional 3,500 peacekeepers for Haiti, bringing the total number of MINUSTAH troops to 8,940 and a police component to 3,711. The resolution also expressed sympathy and solidarity to those affected by the earthquake. The Force consists of troops from up to 17 countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Jordan, France, South Korea and the United States, and police from 41 countries, including Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Russia and Spain. The month's President of the Council, Zhang Yesui of the People's Republic of China, said that the adoption of the resolution would be important for maintaining peace and stability, supporting relief efforts and helping to restore post-disaster reconstruction.

25899649

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1909

2010-01-22 02:56:45+00:00

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1909, adopted unanimously on January 21, 2010, after recalling resolutions 1740 (2007), 1796 (2008), 1825 (2008), 1864 (2009) and 1879 (2008), the Council extended the mandate for the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) until May 15, 2010 at the request of Nepal, deciding that it should also end on this date and further requiring UNMIN to hand over residual responsibilities including the monitoring of weapons and armed personnel. The Council welcomed the continuing peace process in the country, calling on the Government and the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to implement the integration and rehabilitation of Maoist army personnel also by the May 15 withdrawal date. The resolution also required all parties to advance the peace process and facilitate the completion of the Mission's outstanding tasks. UNMIN had been present in Nepal since 2007, however during the passing of Resolution 1909, the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that the peace process was in danger due to mistrust amongst the political parties in the country.

25995882

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1910

2010-01-29 19:44:34+00:00

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1910, adopted unanimously on January 28, 2010, after hearing recommendations from the Secretary-General and recalling resolutions 1325 (2000), 1612 (2005), 1674 (2006), 1738 (2006), 1820 (2008), 1863 (2009), 1882 (2009), 1888 (2009) and 1894 (2009), the Council authorised the mandate of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) to be extended until January 31, 2011, asking it to increase its strength to carry out its mandate. The Council, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, asked AMISOM to assist the Transitional Federal Government to develop police and security forces, ensuring that all equipment and services were used transparently and effectively. It also requested the Secretary-General assist in this process, but not to transfer funds until January 31, 2011. The resolution also called for Member States to contribute to the United Nations Trust Fund for AMISOM.

25998347

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1911

2010-01-29 23:45:57+00:00

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1911, adopted unanimously on January 28, 2010, after reaffirming resolutions 1880 (2009) and 1893 (2009), and reiterating its determination to bring about a credible election process in Côte d'Ivoire, the Council approved a four-month extension of the United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) until the end of May 2010, and a temporary increase in the size of the operation from 7,450 to 7,950 personnel. The Council also allowed a temporary increase and extension of French peacekeeping forces in the country, including peacekeepers from nearby Burkina Faso to be added to the UNOCI to improve security before the 2010 election process. The resolution also requested the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to report back on the situation in the form of an update in mid-March 2010 and a full report by April 2010.

26378077

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1912

2010-03-01 00:39:00+00:00

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1912, adopted unanimously on February 26, 2010, after reaffirming resolutions 1599 (2005), 1677 (2006), 1690 (2006), 1703 (2006), 1704 (2006), 1745 (2007), 1802 (2008) and 1867 (2009) in addition to noting a report by the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Council decided to extend the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) in East Timor until February 26, 2011. The Council also endorsed the Secretary-General's recommendation that the police component in UNMIT be reconfigured including its drawdown so that the policing responsibilities of the National Police of East Timor (PNTL) can be reinstated during a phased resumption, in accordance with the criteria mutually agreed between the Government of East Timor and UNMIT. According to the Secretary-General's report, the international police presence would be reduced from 1608 to 1280 by mid-2011. It urged both to continue to cooperate to expeditiously implement the resumption process, further requesting UNMIT to ensure the maintenance of public security and to intensify efforts to assist with further training and strengthening the PNTL. The resolution stated the need for operations and rules of engagement to be regularly updated as necessary, and to be fully in line with the resolution's provisions. It asked the Secretary-General to report back to the Council on this matter and that of troop and police-contributing countries within 30 days of the adoption of the current resolution. The Council also reaffirmed the importance of accountability and justice, expressing its support of UNMIT in assisting the Timorese government while addressing reform of the justice system. The Council called on UNMIT to co-operate with other United Nations actors and other relevant organisations in East Timor to support the Timorese government and other institutions in designing plans relating to poverty reduction, improving education and promoting sustainable livelihood and economic growth. Additionally, it called on the Government of East Timor to strengthen peacebuilding initiatives particularly with regard to employment by focusing on rural areas and youth, as well as socio-economic development. Prior to the adoption of the current resolution, UNMIT's chief Ameerah Haq said that, since unrest in 2006, the country had made "remarkable progress" but warned that long-term recovery and development goals would be challenging. Resolution 1912 concluded by requesting the Secretary-General to report back to the Council by October 15, 2010, on elements concerning the reconfiguring of the police component of UNMIT, and no later than January 26, 2011, regarding possible adjustments to UNMIT's mandate and strength.

29905005

2010 Air Untuk Rakyat rally

2010-12-05 16:30:27+00:00

The 2010 Air Untuk Rakyat rally was a rally held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 5 December 2010. The rally organiser, the Air Untuk Rakyat movement and federal opposition Pakatan Rakyat, had called the protest regarding the privatisation of water management in Selangor state which surrounds the capital, Kuala Lumpur and the federal government's bailout of SYABAS, a water distribution firm controlled by associate of the UMNO-led federal government crony Rozali Ismail. A secondary objective of the rally was to hand over a petition with over 250,000 signatures to the King Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin to intervene against the privatisation of the water services in the state at the Istana Negara. According to various estimates the rally attracted between 2,500 to 10,000 people. The rally started gathering outside the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur at 9 o'clock, early Sunday morning on 5 December 2010. All the roads leading to Istana Negara and the National Mosque were guarded and blocked a day before by police causing a massive traffic jams in various parts of the city. At least 60 people were arrested by the Malaysian police who considered the gathering illegal. The police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd.

28244607

2010 Israel–Lebanon border clash

2010-08-03 12:08:17+00:00

The 2010 Israel–Lebanon border clash occurred on August 3, 2010, between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Israel Defense Forces (IDF), after an IDF team attempted to cut down a tree on the Israeli side of the Blue Line, near the Israeli kibbutz of Misgav Am and the Lebanese village of Odaisseh. A high-ranking IDF officer was killed and another wounded when LAF snipers opened fire on an Israeli observation post after receiving authorization from senior Lebanese commanders. IDF soldiers returned fire and responded with artillery shelling and airstrikes on Lebanese positions, killing two Lebanese soldiers and Al Akhbar correspondent Assaf Abu Rahhal, as well as wounding five soldiers and one journalist. This was the most serious escalation on the border since the 2006 Lebanon War. The Lebanese Army asserted that it opened fire on Israeli soldiers to contravene the attempt of Israelis to intrude through the border of Lebanon in violation of the internationally recognized border between Israel and Lebanon. Israel claimed that it only crossed over a fence on its side of the Blue Line. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) confirmed Israel's position, adding that Israel had informed them of the border work beforehand. Lebanon's Information Minister later stated that "the Blue Line is not the international border and there are areas south of the Blue Line that are Lebanese territory." The United States condemned the Lebanese fire on Israeli soldiers as "wholly unjustified and unwarranted", and in response to the incident the United States House of Representatives announced a suspension of aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces. Lebanon responded by saying that it would decline any military assistance from the United States that is conditioned on its agreeing not to use those weapons against Israel. In the weeks leading up to the incident hostile rhetoric was traded between the Lebanese (particularly Hezbollah) and Israeli sides in light of the reports suggesting the Special Tribunal for Lebanon would indict Hezbollah members. Following an impromptu visit to Lebanon by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Syria's Bashar al-Assad just days before the incident, various media in Lebanon and outside said the likelihood of sparking an outbreak of violence eased. Two days before the incident, however, Assad made a statement marking Syria's Army Day warning that "The spectre of real peace in the region is disappearing, and the possibility of war is increasing." There were conflicting reports as to which side provoked the firefight. The Lebanese Army claimed the conflict began when an Israeli patrol attempted to uproot some trees between the Lebanese villages of Odaisseh and Kfar Kila, while the Israel Defense Forces claimed that Lebanese snipers opened fire on an observation post inside Israel while Israeli troops were carrying out routine maintenance on the Israeli side of the border. UNIFIL confirmed the Israeli claim that the soldiers were inside Israeli territory when the clashes erupted. According to an IDF spokesperson, "the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) fired at an IDF position along the Lebanese border in northern Israel. The soldiers were in Israeli territory, carrying out routine maintenance and was pre-coordinated with UNIFIL." Only then, the spokesperson said, did Israel return fire. The Israel Defense Forces released aerial footage that claims to show the IDF soldiers were standing in Israeli territory when fired on, and "did not cross the Lebanese border." United Nations representatives confirmed the photos. Israeli analysts speculated that a renegade commander sympathetic to Hezbollah may have ordered the attack. According to Lebanon army officials, Israeli soldiers crossed into Lebanon to uproot trees which according to Israel blocked their view and made surveillance over Lebanon border posts uneasy. A military spokesperson said that upon of overpassing of the border by Israeli troops the Lebanese border defence troops as of first procedure fired warning shots and requested the Israeli troops to cease their unsanctioned actions, however the Israeli troops immediately started a targeted fire on their position, forcing them to return fire in defense. A Lebanese Army official later officially confirmed that Lebanese troops had fired warning shots first, after the Israelis had crossed into Lebanese territory. = If this incident was not planned in advance, why did field commanders in the Lebanese army bother to dispatch journalists to the area and ensure that cameras were present at the site? A report released by senior Israeli officials in Jerusalem accuses the Lebanese army of taking "advantage of the fact that the IDF delayed several hours of maintenance work" near the Lebanese border, to "plan and prepare an ambush" against IDF troops. According to the report, the Israeli Army contacted UNIFIL at 6:00 on August 3 to inform them of maintenance work to commence three hours later. UNIFIL representatives responded that their forces needed extra time to prepare for the IDF presence and requested the IDF delay work until 11:00. The Israeli army delayed the operation by several hours. UNIFIL commanders then told the Lebanese Army of the IDF plans. At this point it was suspected by Israel that the Lebanese military used the extra time to prepare an ambush, even inviting journalists and photographers to the site to observe its aftermath. IDF officers alleged that Lebanese military called in journalists and photographers in advance of the confrontation. Officials have questioned the large presence of journalists and broadcast trucks at the scene before the clash ensued: According to the Israeli military the fighting began when a Lebanese Army sniper unit fired on an IDF observation post inside Israeli territory after receiving authorization from Lebanese commanders. The gunshots were fired from a range of about 700 meters from a building in the Lebanese village of Odaisseh. An Israeli military spokeswoman said there were about two or three sniper shots, and that the surprise attack seemed like an ambush. IDF soldiers immediately fired on Lebanese troops with small arms, and the Lebanese returned fire. The IDF launched a heavy artillery attack targeting Lebanese Army outposts, claiming that the outposts held a "dominating position" and could have posed a threat to troops still on the ground. Israeli artillery fired at an army position in Odaisseh. One artillery shell hit a civilian area. Several minutes after the confrontation began, an Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship attacked a Lebanese Armed Forces command center in the southern Lebanese town of Al Taybeh, destroying several M113 armored personnel carriers. Throughout these assaults, the IDF had been receiving a number of requests from the senior command levels of the Lebanese Army, asking for a cease-fire to allow the Lebanese to evacuate their casualties. Later, the IDF agreed to a cease-fire, and halted its attacks. Half an hour later, a Lebanese Army rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) team fired a single round at an Israeli tank, but missed. This tank then fired at the Lebanese position from which the attack had come. United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) officials in Lebanon said that the IDF informed the organization of its intention to conduct routine maintenance in the area where the Lebanese Army opened fire on IDF soldiers. UNIFIL said Israeli soldiers were inside Israeli territory when the border clashes erupted. UNIFIL established ... that the trees being cut by the Israeli army are located south of the Blue Line on the Israeli side. UNIFIL personnel later visited the site of the skirmish. According to Israeli officials who spoke to UNIFIL representatives, UNIFIL determined that Lebanese forces had no reason to fire on Israeli troops. Milos Strugar, a diplomat and senior political advisor to UNIFIL Force Commander Alberto Asarta said he "does not believe IDF soldiers crossed the international border during the maintenance work." The casualties of the incident were: Israeli reserve battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Dov Harari was killed in his observation post when he was shot in the head by a Lebanese sniper. Reserve company commander Captain Ezra Lakia was wounded by Lebanese sniper fire as he stood in the same post, sustaining a gunshot wound to the chest. Two Lebanese soldiers, Sergeant Robert Elias al Ashi and Sergeant Abdullah Mohammad al Tufaili, were killed in an Israeli helicopter attack on a Lebanese military command center in Al Taybeh several miles from the border. Both soldiers were in an M113 armored personnel carrier when it was hit during the airstrike. Five other Lebanese soldiers were wounded by Israeli retaliatory fire. Assaf Abu Rahhal, a journalist for Lebanon's Al-Akhbar newspaper, was killed by Israeli artillery fire in Odaisseh, located several miles behind border. Ali Shuaib, a journalist from the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar television station, was moderately wounded in the same artillery attack. = I see the Lebanese government as directly responsible for this violent provocation against Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he held the Lebanese government "directly accountable for this violent provocation against Israel." He also added that "Israel responded aggressively, and will do so in the future against any attempt to violate the quiet on [our] northern border, and attack residents of the north and the soldiers who are protecting them." Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned the Lebanese government against continuing to provoke IDF forces. He added that Israel would not tolerate any attacks on soldiers or citizens within its sovereign territory and also called on the international community to condemn the "criminal act carried out by the Lebanese army." He later added that "It was a very grave provocation and we reacted in a measured, just and immediate manner. Tuesday's incident was not programmed by the chiefs of staff of the Lebanese army in Beirut or by Hezbollah. I hope there will be no escalation, that we will have a calm summer and that things will return to normal." He also expressed concern that the United States and France had "provided sophisticated weapons to Lebanon which were used in Tuesday's incident and could fall into Hezbollah's hands." The Foreign Ministry labeled the incident a "severe violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701" and only "one of many violations of Resolution 1701, the most severe of which is the massive rearmament of Hizbullah, including the rearmament of Hizbullah units in southern Lebanon." It declared, "Israel holds the Lebanese government responsible for the grave incident, and warns of the consequences should these continue." Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman "instructed the Israeli diplomatic delegation to the United Nations to file a protest with the UN Secretary General and the Security Council." Major General Gadi Eisenkot said "It was a planned ambush by a sniper unit ... this was a provocation by the Lebanese army. We view this fire was a highly grave incident. Our forces responded at once, and immediately after that we resorted to artillery and gunship fire." Israel also filed a complaint with the United Nations, alleging that Lebanese soldiers opened fire despite the IDF having informed UNIFIL forces in advance of its plan to cut down a tree along the border fence. Former Israeli Defense minister Shaul Mofaz called the incident a "planned terror attack" and said he had "no doubt that Hizbullah was involved in the Lebanese Army's actions." Mofaz also criticized UNIFIL's involvement, stating that their "inability to prevent the Lebanese Army from firing on IDF soldiers proves their incompetence." Israeli sources also alleged that UNIFIL forces said the Lebanese soldiers had no reason to open fire as the Israeli army was conducting routine activity. Government officials in Israel have criticized the United States and France for supporting Lebanon's military in the wake of the border clash. The US has provided Lebanon with over 400 million in military aid, and France has supplied the military with advanced anti-tank missiles. Israeli UN Ambassador Daniel Carmon wrote a letter of complaint to the UN that: "These attacks threaten stability, peace, and security in our region. In response to this grave incident that constitutes a blatant violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701, Israel exercised its right of self-defense, responding with the appropriate measures on LAF positions in the area. Israel holds the Government of Lebanon responsible for these attacks and all actions conducted from Lebanese territory. Israel calls upon the international community to exert its influence and to take the necessary measures with the Lebanese authorities to ensure that such provocative violations will not be repeated." Israel's security cabinet called a meeting to discuss "the consequences of the attacks for which the Lebanese government is responsible. It is evident that the Lebanese government is doubly responsible: the attack against our soldiers occurred when they were on Israeli territory and it is Lebanese soldiers who opened fire and forced us to respond." According to Lebanese news sources, the Israeli government demanded that Lebanon court-martial the commander of the Lebanese unit that fired at IDF troops across the border. = President Michel Suleiman said he would "stand up to Israel's violation of Resolution 1701, whatever the price". He denounced the clash including the "bombing of a Lebanese army checkpoint and attacks on Lebanese property" and called for both countries to respect the Blue Line. Prime Minister Saad Hariri called the attack a "violation of Lebanese sovereignty and demands." He called for "the United Nations and the international community bear their responsibilities and pressure Israel to stop its aggression." Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri called on the government to "urgently file a complaint to the Security Council over the violation of Resolution 1701." Minister of Social Affairs Selim el-Sayegh of the Phalange party said "The history of the Lebanese army's actions have been defensive ... it is in no position whatsoever to conduct any attack against Israel. It wants only to defend Lebanese territory ... Israel has been doing these activities as a matter of provocation. I say honestly, that in any place where the Lebanese Army will be assaulted and there's a presence for the resistance, and it is capable, the resistance will not stand silent, or quiet or restrained. Lebanese Information Minister Tarek Mitri stated that Lebanon respects the border but contests part of it. He said that while the tree which triggered the confrontation is on the Israeli side of the border, it "is Lebanese territory." Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah declared that in the future his group would not "stand silent" in any future attacks against the LAF and that "The Israeli hand that targets the Lebanese army will be cut off. [However] I don't expect a war to happen soon...but there are reasons for worry." He added that "We told our militants to hold back, not to do anything. [But] From now on, if the army is attacked in any area where the resistance [Hezbollah] has a presence or a say, we will not stand by idly." He also praised the Lebanese army saying it "acted courageously and decisively. Lebanon in its entirety will not consent to attacks on its sacred soil and will fight with full courage." In addition to his support for the army he said "We contacted the president and the army command and told them that the party is at their service." The Higher Defence Council chief, General Said Eid, said Lebanon stood ready to confront Israeli aggression "by all available means." Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem said they would be ready to strike the heart of Israel in the event of a new aggression against Lebanon. "Israel must understand that any aggression on Lebanon, no matter how small, gives us the complete right to retaliate when and how we find appropriate and in line with Lebanon's political interests. Hezbollah chooses when to be patient and when to retaliate. When Israel threatens to destroy Lebanon, it knows Hezbollah is capable of making Israel suffer properly. Israel's territory will be completely exposed and they will have to bear responsibility for that aggression and pay the price." Maronite Bishops also condemned Israel's "aggression" and said they were sorry for the Lebanese army victims. Following the Council of Maronite Bishops' monthly meeting, they issued a statement describing the dead as "heroic martyrs;" they also called on all Lebanese to put their differences aside and "focus on what brings them closer together because the country's stability is based on their closeness." A spokesman for the LAF said Lebanon stands ready to retaliate in the event of any new aggression. "The answer will be the same in the event of any aggression along the border. Any aggression against Lebanon will have serious consequences." He added that the army was in contact with UNIFIL after Israeli army radio said troops planned to try again to uproot the tree in the border area. The day after the incident Lebanese authorities also arrested a senior member of the opposition bloc's Free Patriotic Movement, Fayez Karam, on suspicion of spying for Israel. After the United States House of Representatives voted to suspend military aid to Lebanon, the Lebanese government stated that it would reject any future U.S. military aid conditioned on Lebanon agreeing not to use it against Israel. = The European Union urged restraint from both sides. The head of the United Nations peacekeeping operations Alain le Roy said that UNIFIL "established...that the trees being cut by the Israeli army are located south of the Blue Line on the Israeli side," and that the Israeli army gave notification of "several hours...by the Israeli authorities of their intention to do this operation, and immediately as procedure we informed the Lebanese side." UNIFIL then asked Israel to delay cutting down the trees in order to "facilitate an agreement between the two parties." Though the Israeli army delayed the operation by several hours, le Roy said the UN would have liked a longer delay. UNIFIL Spokesman Neeraj Singh confirmed the firefight and urged both sides to use "maximum restraint." He added that "UNIFIL peacekeepers are in the area and are trying to ascertain the circumstances of the incident and any possible casualties. Our immediate priority at this time is to restore calm in the area." The United Nations Security Council held a backdoor meeting, and called on all parties to practice "utmost restraint". Following initial investigation of the incident, UNIFIL confirmed the Israeli claim that the soldiers were inside Israeli territory when the clashes erupted. Reports said UNIFIL confirmed that the IDF informed them of the intention to conduct routine maintenance. According to Israeli officials who spoke to UNIFIL representatives, UNIFIL determined that Lebanese forces had no reason to fire on Israeli troops. UNIFIL military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Naresh Bhatt said "UNIFIL established ... that the trees being cut by the Israeli army are located south of the Blue Line on the Israeli side." However, the next day UNIFIL issued a statement saying it is still conducting an investigation in the area. Milos Struger, the political adviser to UNIFIL said Lebanese forces had been advised of the brush-clearing operation several hours in advance. Deputy Spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said UNIFIL had called an extraordinary meeting with senior representatives of both the Lebanese and Israeli armies at Ras Al Naqoura under the auspices of the UNIFIL Force Commander Major-General Alberto Asarta Cuevas. The United Nations peacekeeping force in south Lebanon has said that it wants to clearly mark the boundary between Israel and Lebanon. UNIFIL force commander Maj. Gen. Alberto Asarta Cuevas said that he met with representatives of the Lebanese and Israeli armies to discuss the UN-drawn Blue Line boundary. The Blue Line is not marked clearly. A fence Israel erected to separate the countries does not always match the official boundary. = Political reactions Egypt – Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit condemned Israel over the incident saying it violated both Lebanon's sovereignty and the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 that was the basis for the 2006 ceasefire. Gheit urged UNIFIL to calm the situation, and prevent any further Israeli violations of Resolution 1701. Iran – In a statement, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said, "The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly condemns the Zionist regime's incursion in the southern regions of Lebanon which resulted in the martyrdom of a handful of children of the Lebanese army." It added that the "hysterical assault" by Israel raised an existing concern about a "new adventure" against Lebanon. Morocco – The Moroccan government condemned Israel for the incident and declared its support for Lebanon, adding that the event would have negative effects on the peace process in the Middle East. Jordan – Jordanian Prime Minister Samir Rifai emphasized the Jordanian government's support for Lebanon and rejection of any aggression against the country, but warned of the effect any future clashes could have on attempts to work towards peace in the region. The Jordanian cabinet released a statement saying that it was "deeply concerned about the dangerous escalation in Lebanese territory." Syria – President Bashar al-Assad called his Lebanese counterpart to express "Syria's support for Lebanon against the heinous aggression launched by Israel on Lebanon ... this aggression proves once more that Israel has always been seeking to destabilize security and stability in Lebanon and the region." al-Assad received Lebanese leaders Walid Jumblatt and Public Affairs Minister Ghazi Aridi the next day and to discuss developments in Lebanon and its serious ramifications for the region. The firing by the Lebanese Armed Forces was wholly unjustified and unwarranted. United States – President Barack Obama conveyed his condolences through Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to the family of Harari. State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley stated that "we deeply regret the loss of life. We urge both sides to exercise maximum restraint to avoid an escalation, and maintain the ceasefire that is now in place." He also expressed concerns that the incident might expand into "something more significant," and that U.S. officials had been trying to make sure it went no further. A senior American official in Washington said that, based on what had been learned so far, the Lebanese military appeared to have been responsible for starting the gunfire.

27700648

2010 South Kyrgyzstan ethnic clashes

2010-06-13 17:55:35+00:00

The 2010 South Kyrgyzstan ethnic clashes (Kyrgyz: Ош коогалаңы; Uzbek: Qirgʻiziston janubidagi tartibsizliklar, Қирғизистон жанубидаги тартибсизликлар; Russian: Беспорядки на юге Киргизии) were clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan, primarily in the cities of Osh and Jalal-Abad, in the aftermath of the ouster of former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev on 7 April. It is part of the larger Kyrgyz Revolution of 2010. Violence that started between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks on 19 May in Jalal-Abad escalated on 10 June in Osh. The spreading of the violence required the Russian-endorsed interim government led by Roza Otunbayeva to declare a state of emergency on 12 June, in an attempt to take control of the situation. Uzbekistan launched a limited troop incursion early on, but withdrew and opened its borders to Uzbek refugees. The clashes killed nearly 420 people, mostly Uzbeks, and displaced another 80,000. = After national delimitation in the Soviet Union (1917-mid-1930s), the peoples of Central Asia began a process of ethnogenesis in which they began to define themselves as "Kyrgyz" or "Turkmen", rather than with reference to their religion or locality. The people defined by Soviet ethnographers as Kyrgyz were generally nomadic, and the people defined as Uzbek, sedentary. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev suppressed Kyrgyz ethnic nationalism, favoring Pan-Islamic and Pan-Turkic unity until he was overthrown in the 2005 Tulip Revolution. = In June 1990, a violent land dispute between the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks erupted in the city of Osh. A group of Kyrgyz demanded that a predominantly Uzbek collective farm be allocated to them to build housing. Uzbek activists objected and violent clashes between the two ethnic groups ensued. Until groups of Kyrgyz came from the surrounding villages, the Uzbeks had the upper hand. A state of emergency and curfew were introduced and the border between the Uzbek and Kyrgyz republics was closed. Soviet troops were deployed to stop the violence. Order was not restored until August. Official estimates of the death toll range from over 300 to more than 600. Unofficial figures range up to more than 1,000. = In southern Kyrgyzstan, ethnic Uzbeks have been highly active in the local economy, especially in trade and services, and more recently also in agriculture. In Kyrgyz public opinion, wealthy Uzbek Kyrgyzstani leaders such as Qodirjon Botirov have attempted to turn this economic clout into political power, promoting a militant Uzbek nationalism which demands official Uzbek language status in Kyrgyzstan, and a number of seats reserved solely for Uzbeks in the Kyrgyz parliament. The Kyrgyz also think that Uzbeks are "growing wealthy off the backs of the pauperized Kyrgyz" and seeking to destroy Kyrgyzstan's unity with their calls for linguistic and political autonomy. At the same time, the cities of Kyrgyzstan have received a mass influx of young Kyrgyz people from rural areas who, having difficulty finding work and permanent housing, are likely to become involved in criminal gangs. Decisions about ethnic problems are not taking place at the government level, as their very existence is not recognized and, moreover, virtually all administrative positions are held by ethnic Kyrgyz. Many Uzbeks say ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev favored Kyrgyz people. Many Kyrgyz in the south strongly supported Bakiyev, even after he was overthrown. Currently Bakiyev is in exile in Belarus. Bakyt Beshimov noted that after 7 April uprising the interim government was unable to control the situation in Kyrgyzstan, paving the way for major disturbances. "Ruthless" struggle for power was noted by him as a major cause. Many Kyrgyz feel that their sovereignty is threatened by their neighbor Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyz media often reports on Uzbekistan's supposed desire to protect Uzbek people abroad. Kyrgyzstan has a long disputed border with the country, over which Uzbekistan has unilaterally erected a barrier. The Uzbek National Security Service has been known to perform deadly intelligence operations in Kyrgyzstan, and there is also Kyrgyz fear about infiltration from the militant Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. = Some sources initially claimed the riots were orchestrated from outside forces. There were multiple reports of organized groups of gunmen in ski masks, believed to be from neighboring Tajikistan, shooting both Uzbeks and Kyrgyz to ignite the riots. However, the head of Kyrgyzstan security forces denied such claims of the media. The interim Kyrgyz government led by Roza Otunbayeva claimed that the former president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and his connections were behind the riots, although no proof of this claim was presented. Kyrgyz deputy Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev has also claimed that the riots were paid for with $10 million from Bakiyev's son, Maxim Bakiyev. Some have also called for Russian involvement, but the Kremlin refused to get involved with forces even at the request of the interim government. On 14 May, media outlets broadcast a tapped telephone conversation between Communist Party leader Iskhak Masaliyev and other politicians. They discussed organizing mass protests in southern Kyrgyzstan. The people included Bakiyev's adviser Usen Sydykov, then a powerful politician in Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyzstan security forces arrested the two. Masaliyev had just arrived from Moscow. The arrest fueled speculation that the Kremlin was working to produce instability. Elmira Nogoybayeva, the head of the Kyrgyz Polis Asia Analytic Center, noted in May that Russia and its ally Kazakhstan launched a consistent mass media campaign to discredit the image of Kyrgyzstan. On 14 June 2010, Eurasian expert Giorgi Kvelashvili stated that Moscow's actions appeared to be part of a larger calculated plan. International organizations have not supported the view that the June events were orchestrated from outside. According to Human Rights Watch "[the] violence in southern Kyrgyzstan began on June 10, when a large crowd of ethnic Uzbeks gathered in response to a minor fight between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in a casino in the center of Osh. Several violent attacks during the night of June 10 against ethnic Kyrgyz and the torching of several buildings enraged ethnic Kyrgyz from Osh and outside villages, thousands of whom filed into the city." Uzbekistan was supposed to be concerned that Russia was using the events to consolidate its power over Central Asia, including Uzbekistan. Stratfor reported on 13 June that "the crisis has moved from being an internal Kyrgyz emergency to a confrontation between Uzbekistan and Russia. Russia has proven this past year that it is on a path of consolidation in Central Asia – of which Uzbekistan could be the toughest link in the chain to control". In late May 2010, hundreds of residents of the Uzbek enclave of Sokh in Kyrgyzstan blocked a main highway leading to Uzbekistan, demanding greater security after several of their cars were allegedly vandalized. Uzbekistan then deployed limited military and police forces into the enclave, but they withdrew on 3 June. During the political chaos that followed the ouster of Kurmanbek Bakiyev tensions between the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks increased. Violence erupted in the evening of 10 June in Osh. According to most accounts, a dispute in a casino between young Uzbeks and Kyrgyz was a watershed in the violence. Both groups called friends to come to help and clashes continued throughout the night. Crowds of Kyrgyz from the countryside flocked to Osh, Jalal-Abad, and other towns to join the local Kyrgyz and Uzbek crowds to attack each other's neighborhoods. From 11 June through 14 June, there were killings and tortures, looting and setting fire to homes and businesses. Between 9 and 10 June 2010, rioting in the city of Osh between ethnic Kyrgyz and the minority Uzbek population resulted in at least 46 people dead and 637 injured, many seriously. Gunfire was reported throughout the day in the southern cities and a state of emergency was declared, resulting in the deployment of military units to restore law and order. On 12 June, Kyrgyzstan's interim government asked Russia to help quell ethnic fighting, claiming the army and police had lost control. Moscow said it could not get involved at that stage because the crisis was an internal affair of Kyrgyzstan. President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia and President Hu Jintao of China vowed to support Kyrgyzstan's provisional government in restoring order. The Kyrgyz interim government passed a decree declaring a partial mobilization of the civilian reservists. On 13 June, Kyrgyz recruitment offices began registering the reservists. The Kyrgyz government also authorized security forces to use deadly force and shoot to kill. On 12 and 13 June, the International Committee of the Red Cross expressed its deep concern about the worsening humanitarian situation and called on the Kyrgyz authorities to do everything in their power to protect their citizens, restore order and ensure respect for the rule of law. In the morning of 15 June the national security board chairman Alik Orozov described the situation in southern provinces as "People have gone insane, they are confronting each other. The situation has become uncontrollable, it's true chaos". On 16 June, The Washington Post reported that the violence began to subside in Jalal-Abad. However, it reported that "when residents were asked about what had happened – about why neighbors had turned against each other so suddenly and in such brutal fashion – the simmering anger between the Kyrgyz and the minority Uzbeks quickly surfaced, hinting at the continuing volatility of the situation". The Washington Post also reported that Uzbek and Kyrgyz residents blame each other for the violence. Kyrgyz soldiers and police officers set up roadblocks and began patrols after the worst of the violence was over. The exact number of people killed in the clashes remains uncertain. In January 2011, a National Commission composed of local experts reported 426 people died in the violence, among them 276 Uzbeks and 105 ethnic Kyrgyz. Unofficial sources reported "thousands" killed, several thousands wounded and tens of thousands of refugees. These figures are higher than official data as authorities counted only those who died in hospitals and those who were formally buried during the days of the violence. In accordance with Islamic law, many people buried their dead relatives immediately without registering them. According to sources from the ethnic Uzbek community, at least 700 ethnic Uzbeks were killed in Jalal-Abad, where clashes were less intense than in Osh. According to local sources, in Osh from 1,526 to more than 2,000 people died in the pogroms. Residents of Jalal-Abad claimed that at least 2,000 people died in total and the official figures were too low. The Uzbek edition of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on 16 June 2010, that 2,608 Uzbeks had been killed since the beginning of the clashes. The residents of the city of Osh reported that the bodies of 1,170 Uzbeks were taken from the streets and ruins and buried by members of the Uzbek community. The killings were performed with fearsome cruelty – many victims were raped and burned alive. Armed gangs tried to prevent the wounded from receiving first aid. In Jalal-Abad crowds attacked the hospital where the wounded were receiving treatment. The violence was facilitated by neglect from local police and military. Moreover, many sources and international organizations claimed that the local military actively participated in the ethnic clashes and looting. At least five policemen were reported to have been killed during the clashes. The violence caused thousands of people to flee their homes. According to the United Nations and other international organizations, 400,000 refugees were displaced by the pogroms and over 111,000 people fled across the border to Uzbekistan. It was reported that local authorities arrested a number of Uzbek activists who were trying to collect photo and video evidence of the violence. A great number of witnesses and international organizations have suspected the Kyrgyz authorities' hand in the pogroms. Human Rights Watch investigated the violence and published a report entitled "Where is the Justice?": Interethnic Violence in Southern Kyrgyzstan and its Aftermath. The report seriously questioned the claim that the attacks were spontaneous, citing witnesses who saw firsthand how people in uniforms jumped out of armored personnel carriers and fired automatic weapons shouting anti-Uzbek slurs. The attacks on Osh's Uzbek neighborhoods of Cheremushki, Shait-Tepe, Shark, and others, described to Human Rights Watch independently by dozens of witnesses, showed a consistent pattern. In many accounts, individuals in camouflage uniforms on armored military vehicles entered the neighborhoods first, removing the makeshift barricades that Uzbek residents had erected. They were followed by armed men who shot and chased away any remaining residents, and cleared the way for the looters. The authorities claimed that Kyrgyz mobs stole the military uniforms, weapons, and vehicles that were used in the attacks. Observers pointed out that if this claim was true, it would raise a separate set of questions regarding the military's loss of control over weapons and equipment that ended up in the hands of mobs attacking ethnic Uzbeks and their property. The interim government granted shoot-to-kill powers to its security forces in the south of Kyrgyzstan, which was criticized by human rights organizations. The interim government's shoot-to-kill orders resulted in indiscriminate killing of many ethnic Uzbeks. Different sources suspected the Kyrgyz security forces' hand in the violence. On 3 May 2011, in the article "Kyrgyzstan's Army Implicated in Ethnic Bloodshed," the Associated Press reported that an international investigation into the causes of the ethnic conflict had concluded that Kyrgyz security forces' handing out of weapons to mobs during the violence was an indication of the military's complicity in the violence. Human Rights Watch also reported some government forces' involvement in the attacks on Uzbek neighborhoods: … the security forces seemed to respond differently to acts of violence depending on the ethnicity of the perpetrators, raising concerns that capacity was not the only reason for the failure to protect ethnic Uzbeks. The security forces seemed to focus resources on addressing the danger presented by Uzbeks, but not by Kyrgyz, even after it became clear that Kyrgyz mobs posed an imminent threat; and the forces took very limited, if any, operational measures to protect the Uzbek population. The police and local authorities failed to stop the spread of the pogroms, which was seen as proof of the total ineffectiveness of the interim government headed by Roza Otunbayeva. Although the Kyrgyz government that failed to establish law and order during the violence blamed external forces for the bloody clashes, it did not provide evidence to support this claim. Human rights violations were committed by security forces not only during the June events, but also in their aftermath. After the violence stopped, Kyrgyz law enforcement officers carried out arbitrary arrests, ill-treated detainees, beat and insulted residents, and in some cases even killed people. The Kyrgyz security forces carried out sweep operations, purportedly to confiscate illegal weapons. Investigations carried out by international organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International concluded that law enforcement agencies had conducted arbitrary raids mainly in Uzbek neighborhoods: After the initial violence subsided security forces started to carry out search operations in villages and homes, ostensibly to seize weapons and detain those responsible for committing violent crimes. These large scale operations were carried out over a couple of weeks until the end of June. There were numerous reports that security forces were using excessive force during these operations and that they were targeting Uzbek neighbourhoods. Human rights organizations, journalists and community leaders reported that hundreds of men, the majority of them Uzbek, were arbitrarily detained and beaten or otherwise ill-treated and tortured during such raids and subsequently during their detention. Human Rights Watch received dozens of reports of police officials asking for exorbitant bribes of up to $10,000 for the release of detainees. Security officers demanded money from the families of detainees to free their relatives or prevent others from being arrested. The overwhelming majority of detainees were Uzbeks. Many detainees were ill-treated, intimidated, and brutally beaten. Human rights organizations also reported that the security forces planted evidence, beat people with rifles, destroyed documents, stole possessions, and ill-treated detainees. "Many reported being held incommunicado in police or national security custody, beaten, or otherwise ill-treated and tortured to force them to confess to a crime or to incriminate a relative, a neighbour, an employer or a friend." Kyrgyz Security forces injured 39 people, two of whom died in hospital, in the village of Nariman. Authorities harassed and attacked lawyers representing clients, predominantly ethnic Uzbeks, with regard to the ethnic violence. Lawyers reported that local authorities prevented them from seeing their clients, let alone helping them. Officials insulted and threatened lawyers defending ethnic Uzbeks on repeated occasions. Ethnically-motivated attacks continued in the south of Kyrgyzstan after the large-scale violence diminished in intensity. The authorities did little to halt the attacks, either because they were unable to or unwilling to stop them. Human Rights Watch reported a dozen of people, mostly women, were attacked and brutally beaten in front of the Osh City Police Department, while a large number of armed policemen did nothing to stop the attacks. Local authorities did not investigate ill-treatment in custody. The chief military prosecutor told Human Rights Watch that the sweep operation in Nariman would not be investigated because he regarded the actions of the law enforcement agencies—including shooting and brutal beatings that resulted in two deaths—as "lawful and adequate." = In trials following the violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, the majority of defendants have been ethnic Uzbek. In early 2012, ethnic Uzbeks made up 77 per cent of those detained and charged for crimes related to the June 2010 violence. This has perpetuated the widely propagated theory in Kyrgyz political circles that the Uzbeks started the violence. Dozens of prominent Uzbek religious and community leaders were arrested by security forces following the riots, including journalist and human rights activist Azimzhan Askarov. Following a trial criticized by several international human rights organizations, Askarov was charged with creating mass disturbances, incitement of ethnic hatred, complicity in murder and was given a life sentence. Various human rights organizations stated that they believed the charges against him and his co-defendants to be politically motivated, and Amnesty International designated Askarov a prisoner of conscience. On 29 March 2012, the International Crisis Group (ICG) published a report which stated that ethnic tensions between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz continue to grow since June 2010 in southern Kyrgyzstan, "largely because of the state's neglect and southern leaders' anti-Uzbek policies." The report noted that the current superficial silence in the south was not a sign of success. According to the ICG, unless systematic measures are taken, further violence may erupt and even the most determined ethnic nationalist like Melis Myrzakmatov is unlikely to keep the Uzbek minority silenced forever. The Crisis Group reported that, contrary to common belief, the violence in southern Kyrgyzstan was not a fringe phenomenon perpetrated by ruthless, uneducated, and unemployed youth and corrupt politicians only. In reality even the more or less educated middle-class Kyrgyz do not have a conciliatory attitude. Few people in southern Kyrgyzstan have had access to any analysis of the riots that challenge the versions that blame Uzbeks as dangerous outsiders. Educated activist and professionals in southern Kyrgyzstan believe that the Uzbeks brought ruin upon themselves. Few Kyrgyz admit that discrimination and humiliation of ethnic Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan has long been unbearable. They dismiss the report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry which documents how weapons, mostly automatic rifles, were distributed to Kyrgyz crowds and that armoured personnel carriers had been surrendered without resistance and subsequently used in attacks on Uzbek communities. Following the June events ethnic Uzbeks have been subjected to arbitrary detentions, extortion and torture. Juan Méndez, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, issued a report in December 2011 in which he wrote: "serious human rights violations committed in the context of ongoing investigations into the events of June 2010 and after have continued unabated in recent months." = Following the violence a new leadership surfaced in southern Kyrgyzstan. Openly nationalist Osh mayor Melis Myrzakmatov, a Bakiyev appointee, emerged as the preeminent political figure in the south. Myrzakmatov and other southern nationalists formed the party Ata-Zhurt which won 28 seats out of 120 in the 2010 Kyrgyzstani parliamentary election. The party initially campaigned to roll back the new constitution and bring Bakiyev back from exile in Belarus. Myrzakmatov is a radical nationalist leader and openly bears an ethnic Kyrgyz-first policy. He has largely ignored the capital Bishkek in his actions. This situation did not change even after the supposedly neutral northerner Almazbek Atambayev was elected president in December 2011. Senior members of Atambayev's administration "express dismay at tensions in the south but say they have no way of influencing the situation there." In late 2011, Myrzakmatov published a book entitled In Search of the Truth. The Osh Tragedy: Documents, Facts, Appeals, and Declarations (Russian: В поисках истины. Ошская трагедия: документы, факты, интервью, обращения и заявления), both in Kyrgyz and Russian, in which he presented his own version of the June events. In the book he took a radical anti-Uzbek approach and portrayed Uzbeks as a separatist group and "stressed the need for non-Kyrgyz ethnic groups to understand their future role would be as subordinates." In his book Myrzakmatov gives a dubious account of the events in Southern Kyrgyzstan. "Many details are questionable, and key events are missing. There is little reference to attacks on Uzbek districts, and no discussion of casualties in Uzbek areas." According to Myrzakmatov, the Kyrgyz were caught off-guard by the attack of Uzbeks who were "armed to the teeth" but the attack was thwarted by Myrzakmatov and a few other similar "heroic" ethnic Kyrgyz who were inspired by Manas, a hero of a Kyrgyz legend. On 5 December 2013, the Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Zhantoro Satybaldiyev issued a decree and dismissed Myrzakmatov from his post as mayor of Osh. Despite being dismissed, Myrzakmatov was allowed to take part in a new mayoral election that was held on January 15, 2014. He was defeated by pro-presidential candidate Aitmamat Kadyrbaev. Both Myrzakmatov's dismissal and his defeat in the election provoked mass protests by his supporters. = The support from the United States, Uzbekistan, and Russia for the Uzbek side of the riots has fueled conspiracy theories in Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz nationalist party Ata-Zhurt has interpreted the ethnic unrest as fueling from a Kyrgyzstan government failure to promote respect for Kyrgyz language and culture among minorities, such as Uzbeks. = In the aftermath of the ethnic clashes Kyrgyz authorities have taken measures to remove the Uzbek language from public life. Uzbek schools are being pressured to switch to Kyrgyz across Kyrgyzstan. All signs in Uzbek have been removed from public places and Uzbek TV and radio channels have been closed. Under Myrzakmatov's leadership a bell was erected in Osh in memory of the victims of the June 2010 violence. Even though the violence took place between the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, the bell has inscriptions calling for peace in three languages, namely Kyrgyz, Russian, and English, but not in Uzbek. = At the Kyrgyz government's request an independent commission into the events in southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010 was formed to study and report on the ethnic clashes. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry (KIC) was formed by the Nordic countries' initiative for an independent international inquiry and was accepted by the President of the Kyrgyz Republic, Roza Otunbayeva. The KIC published its report, both in Russian and English, in early May 2011. The findings of the report were based on interviews of nearly 750 witnesses, 700 documents, about 5,000 photographs and 1,000 video extracts. The panel of the commission included seven prominent members from Finland, Australia, Estonia, France, Russia, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The KIC reported that it found serious violations of international law, some of which could amount to crimes against humanity. The report criticized the "ineptitude and irresolution" of the interim government headed by Otunbayeva in preventing and stopping the violence. The KIC noted that weapons, mostly automatic rifles, were distributed to Kyrgyz crowds and that armoured personnel carriers had been surrendered without resistance and later used in attacks on Uzbek communities. The findings of the KIC infuriated and alarmed the Kyrgyz government and the members of the Kyrgyz parliament declared the commission's chair Dr. Kimmo Kiljunen, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly's special representative for Central Asia, persona non-grata. The KIC qualified the violations under international law and reported: "It is the view of the KIC that the violence of June does not qualify as either war crimes or genocide. However, if the evidence of some acts committed during certain attacks against the mahallas in Osh on 11, 12 and 13 June was proven beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law, those acts would amount to crimes against humanity. These are murder, rape, other forms of sexual violence, physical violence (as another inhumane act) and persecution against an identifiable group on ethnic grounds." The KIC stated that if the security forces had been properly instructed and deployed, the violence would possibly have been prevented or stopped. "The failure of members of the security forces to protect their equipment raises questions of complicity in the events, either directly or indirectly. Further, some members of the military were involved in some of the attacks on the mahallas." The KIC recommended Kyrgyzstan to take a strong stand against nationalism and ethnic exclusivity. It also called for the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission and international follow-up to carry out the recommendations of the report. Following the ethnic clashes, several international organizations and NGOs such as the OSCE, UN, and USAID have been supporting reconciliation efforts in affected areas around southern Kyrgyzstan. = In November 2010, the OSCE started helping the Kyrgyzstani police in their activities through the Community Security Initiative (CSI) project. The main objective of the CSI was "to increase the respect for and protection of human rights by the police and to build confidence between law enforcement agencies and communities including through the promotion of multi-ethnic policing." The CSI worked in collaboration with the OSCE's Police Reform Programme and High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM). The project also collaborated with a large number of national authorities in Kyrgyzstan, including the Ombudsman, Prosecutor General, the State Penitentiary Service, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Health. The project was officially ended on 11 December 2015. Rezvani, Babak. "Understanding and explaining the Kyrgyz-Uzbek interethnic conflict in Southern Kyrgyzstan." Anthropology of the Middle East 8.2 (2013): 60-81.

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2010 Yellow Sea conflict

2010-11-27 19:13:34+00:00

The 2010 Yellow Sea conflict may refer to the following incidents: ROKS Cheonan sinking Shelling of Yeonpyeong Dandong shooting incident Senkaku Islands dispute#2010 2010 Senkaku boat collision incident USS George Washington (CVN-73)#2010