In 1999 Fischer supported German participation in the Kosovo War. This was very extremely controversial within the largely pacifist Green Party, because it meant that, for the first time since World War II, German soldiers would actively go into combat. He justified this war with allegations that Serbia was planning to commit genocide against the Kosovo Albanians.
Fischer was also in favour of stationing German troops in Afghanistan, but he advised Schröder not to join the war in Iraq. He is known as a good friend of Kofi Annan. By 2005 he was the second longest-serving foreign minister in German postwar history (after Hans-Dietrich Genscher).
In 2005 Fischer was accused by critics of carelessly relaxing controls on visa regulations for Ukraine, thus allowing many illegal immigrants to enter Germany with fake identities. A parliamentary committee was established to examine the case, and unlike in other such committee hearings, Fischer's statement (and that of other top officials) was shown live on public TV. Fischer's appearance before the committee took twelve hours. (See German Visa Affair 2005).
After the defeat of the coalition government in the 2005 election, Fischer announced that he would retire to the backbench. "After 20 years of power, now I want my freedom back", he was quoted as saying. On 13 October 2005, it was announced that Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) would succeed Fischer as Foreign Minister.
Since the beginning of September 2006 Joschka Fischer has been a senior fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University, a visiting professor at Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He has also spoken at other American universities, notably Brandeis University, on various topic in foreign affairs and international relations.
Fischer has often been the most popular German politician, even among supporters of other parties.
Until 1996, Fischer had been an outspoken lover of good wines and food. He often bet cases of expensive wine with other politicians on the outcome of elections. Fischer had also been overweight. Within a short time he lose a lot of weight. Fischer said that this was due to his giving up alcohol completely and changing his diet. He had also been doing fitness training and even running marathons. He cashed in on his weight loss by writing the book "My long race towards myself" about his experience, which became an immediate bestseller. Recently he has been putting on weight again.
Fischer has been married five times: his first four marriages, to Edeltraud Fischer (1967-1984), Inge Vogel (1984-1987), Claudia Bohm (1987-1999), and Nicola Leske (1999-2003), all ended in divorce. In October 2005 he married (in Rome) Minu Barati, who was his common-law wife for 2 years. With Inge, his second wife, he has two children: David and Lara. In April 2005 Fischer became a grandfather for the first time.
The following sources reflect the views of U.S. adversaries of Fischer and his policies, especially Germany's decision not to participate in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Fischer writes a monthly commentary series, "The Rebel Realist", for Project Syndicate, a non-profit association of newspapers around the world.
Flora family
The Flora family of asteroids is a big group of S-type asteroids in the closer part of the main belt, whose origin and properties are not well understood right now. About 4-5% of all main belt asteroids belong to this family.
Because of its poorly defined edges, and the location of Flora itself near the edge, this asteroid group has also sometimes been called the Ariadne family, when Flora did not make it into the group during an analysis (e.g. the WAM analysis by Zappala 1995).
The biggest member is 8 Flora, which mesures 140 km in diameter, and takes up about 80% of the total family mass. Nevertheless, the parent body was almost for sure destroyed by the impact/s that made the family, and Flora is probably a gravitational aggregate of most of the pieces. 43 Ariadne makes up much of the remaining mass (about a further 9%, with the remaining family members being fairly small, below 30 km in diameter.
Because of the high background density of asteroids in this part of space, one might expect that a great number of asteroids unrelated to the collision that made the family would be present. However, few have been found. This is because unrelated asteroids are hard to distinguish from family members because the family is of the same spectral type (S) that dominates the closer main belt overall. The few unrelated asteroids that have been found are all small (Florczak "et al." 1998, and also by inspection of the PDS asteroid taxonomy data set for non S-type members.) They include 298 Baptistina, 422 Berolina, 2093 Genichesk, 2259 Sofievka (the biggest, with a 21 km diameter), 2952 Liliputia, 3533 Toyota, 3850 Peltier, 3875 Staehle, 4278 Harvey, 4396 Gressmann, and 4750 Mukai.
Tseax River Cone
The Tseax River Cone (also known as Aiyansh Volcano) is a cinder cone in British Columbia, Canada. The volcano and the area around it are protected as a provincial park called the Nisga'a Memorial Lava Beds Provincial Park.
In the 18th century it caused the death of about 2000 people.
Mike Dirnt
Mike Dirnt (born Ryan Pritchard on May 4, 1972, in Berkeley, California) is the bass guitar player from the punk rock band Green Day, he also sings back up vocals.
Mike was adopted. His adoptive parents divorced when he was 7, and both are now remarried. Mike owns a restaurant in California called "Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe". Mike married his long time girlfriend Anastasia in 1996 and their daughter, Estella-Desiree, "Stella", was born in April 1997. Mike loves his daughter very much, and his nickname for her is "Hero". Today, Mike and Anastasia are separated, but still remain very good friends. He recently was remarried in 2004, however his wife left him because he spent too much time in the studio recording American Idiot. Mike is currently married to girlfriend Brittney, and resides in Oakland, California.
Tré Cool
Tré Cool (born Frank Edwin Wright III on December 9, 1972, in Frankfurt, Germany) is a German-born American drummer for the punk band Green Day.
He has red hair and blue eyes.
He has two children, Ramona, born January 1995 to ex-wife, Lisea Lyons; Frankito ("Little Frank"), born 2001 to Claudia. Tré grew up with his father and 2 siblings. He dated The Donnas drummer Torry Castellano in 2003, they then separated in mid 2005. Tre' Cool is currently single.
Plain White T's
Plain White T's are an alternative rock band from Chicago. Their newest release, "Every Second Counts" (2006), was the first Plain White T's album to reach the mainstream. When the album came out, one song, "Hey There Delilah", an acoustic love song, was played on many radio stations daily. Another famous song of theirs is "Our Time Now".
The singer of the band, Tom Higgenson, first wanted to be a drummer. He was in many bands during his High School. However, when Plain White T's were made, he decided to become a singer and a songwriter. Bassist, Ken Fletcher, and drummer, Dave Tirio, joined the band began performing in Downers Grove, Illinois.
They started out by playing other people's songs, but in the summer of 1999 the band was beginning to become known by record labels like Atlantic Recordings. In 2000 they released their first album, "Come On Over". They toured around Chicago to try and make the album sell more and to get more fans.
At the end of 2001, Plain White T's left Atlantic Recordings and signed to Fearless Records. They began recording for their next album, called "Stop". They chose in Downers Grove, Illinois and Santa Barbara, California. The album took four months to record, being finished in April 2002. The album was shown around Plain White T's home town before being released finally on August 20th 2002, a whole twenty months after it was started.