Until its 1976 Geneva Congress, the Socialist International had few members outside Europe and no formal involvement with Latin America. In the 1980s, most SI parties gave their backing to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas (FSLN), whose left-wing government had incited hatred from the United States. Since then, the SI has admitted as member-parties not only the FSLN but also the centre-left Puerto Rican Independence Party, as well as the ex-Communist parties such as the Italian Democrats of the Left (Democratici di Sinistra (DS)) and the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO).
The Party of European Socialists, a European political party active in the European Parliament, is an associated organisation of the Socialist International.
In 2006, George Papandreou, leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, became the president of the Socialist International.
The following parties are full members:
The following parties are consultative parties:
The following parties are observer parties:
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes are three-letter country codes in the ISO 3166-1 standard to represent countries and dependent territories. They are published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as part of its ISO 3166 standard. They were first included as part of the ISO 3166 standard in its first edition in 1974.
They are used in ISO/IEC 7501-1 for machine-readable passports.
Below is a complete list of the current officially assigned ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes, with country names being English short country names officially used by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA):
The following alpha-3 codes can be user-assigned: from AAA to AAZ, from QMA to QZZ, from XAA to XZZ, and from ZZA to ZZZ. These code elements are at the disposal of users who need to add further names of countries, territories or other geographical entities to their in-house application of ISO 3166-1, and the ISO 3166/MA will never use them in the updating process of the standard.
Reserved code elements are codes which, while not ISO 3166-1 codes, are in use for some applications in conjunction with the ISO 3166 codes. The ISO 3166/MA therefore reserves them, so that they are not used for new official ISO 3166 codes, thereby creating conflicts between the standard and those applications.
The following alpha-3 codes are subject to an exceptional reservation:
The following three codes were also under exceptional reservation, until the update from 2006-03-29 included them in the standard:
The following alpha-3 codes are subject to a transitional reservation:
The following alpha-3 codes are subject to an indeterminate reservation, having been notified to the United Nations Secretary-General under the 1949 and/or 1968 Road Traffic Conventions:
The following code has been reassigned:
For the time being, ISO 3166/MA has agreed not to use the following codes, taken from ISO/IEC 7501-1 (machine readable travel documents), as alpha-3 country codes:
Besides the codes currently transitionally reserved and FXX (now exceptionally reserved), these alpha-3 codes have also been withdrawn since the first edition of ISO 3166 in 1974:
Bellows
A bellows is something that blows air into a small opening in order to make something work. The bellows will have a kind of sack which has air in it. When the sack is squeezed the air is pushed out. Bellows can be quite small and operated by hand, for example for stoking a fire in an open fireplace. They can also be very large, such as bellows that produce air for a large pipe organ to be played. Such bellows used to be pumped by hand (sometimes by several people), but nowadays electricity is used. Bellows are used by blacksmiths or metalworkers for smelting and welding. They are also used in small musical instruments such as bagpipes, accordions and concertinas. The harmonium has bellows which the player operates by pumping with the his feet.
1999 Jiji earthquake
Chi-Chi earthquake, also known as the 921 earthquake, was an earthquake in central Taiwan. The earthquake happened on September 21, 1999 at 1:47 am local time (September 20 17:47 GMT). It measured 7.3 on the Richter scale. The epicentre of the earthquake was at in Chichi Township of Nantou County, about 12.5 km west of the Sun Moon Lake. The depth of the epicenter was 7.0 km.
The earthquake caused much damage, according to the National Fire Agency, Ministry of the Interior R.O.C. This damage included:
The earthquake continued to shake Taiwan throughout the night. People tell stories about a house that was not destroyed but moved by the earthquake from one county to another. The story says that because of this, the owners of the house had to change their address.
The epicenter of the earthquake was Chichi Township. The 921 Earthquake happened along the Chelungpu fault line in western part of the island of Taiwan. The fault is located along the foothills of the Central Mountains in Nantou and Taichung counties. Some sections of land near the fault were changed in elevation by as much as 7 meters (23 feet). Near the northern end of the fault line, a 7-meter tall waterfall was created by the earthquake. In the middle-western part of the island, bridges were destroyed. This stopped traffic for weeks.
In Wufeng, a village in southern Taichung County, the damage was very bad. The village's Guangfu High School was located on the fault line. It was badly damaged by the quake. Today the high school is the site of the National Museum of Natural Science's 921 Earthquake Museum of Taiwan.
landslides where caused causing impromptu formation of lakes
Visibility
"Visibility" is a word used in meteorology. It is used to talk about how far a normal person can see depending on the weather. If there is low visibility, such as in a blizzard, a person will not be able to see far. If there is high visibility, such as on a bright, sunny day, a person will be able to see a long way.
Visibility less than is often called zero. When it is this low, roads may be closed, or lights and signs are turned on to warn drivers. These are put in areas that often have very low visibility. Warning lights help stop accidents. Automobile crashes with many cars happen often in places like this if the warning lights and signs are not put up.
Visibility is said to be good when a person can see farther than about 10 kilometers.
An advisory is put out by meteorologists to warn of low visibility, such as a dense fog advisory from the U.S. National Weather Service. These tell drivers to not travel until the fog leaves. Airport travel sometimes is delayed, or slowed down, by low visibility.
Lothar Bisky
Lothar Bisky (17 August 1941 – 13 August 2013) was a German politician. He was the chairman of the Left Party.PDS, a socialist political party with its base in the east of Germany. In June 2007 he became of the leaders of The Left, formed by a merger of Left Party.PDS and Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative.
Bisky was born in Zollbrueck, Pomerania. As a child he was very poor, so when he was 18 he moved from northern West Germany to GDR. He was allowed to join the Socialist Unity Party in 1963, but did not became a leader of the party until just after the fall of communism and the old "hardliners" were thrown out of the party.
He was rector of the University of Film and Television (Potsdam-Babelsberg) from 1986 to 1990. In 1991 he became a member of the board of directors of regional television channel ORB (now part of RBB.)
In 1990 he was a member of the Volkskammer and since 1990 he has been a member of the state parliament in Brandenburg.
He was chairman of the PDS from 1993 until his resignation in 2000. He was re-elected chairman in 2003. Bisky was seen to be on the moderate, social democratic wing of the party and he was a long-time close ally of the party's most prominent figure, Gregor Gysi.