Halabja (Kurdish: Helebce, هەڵەبجە) is a city in Iraqi Kurdistan, the capital of the Halabja Governorate. It is northeast of Baghdad.
The city is known for an incident in the final phase of the Iran-Iraq War. The Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas, supported by Iran, took control of the city. On March 16, 1988, after two days of ordinary artillery attacks, Iraqi Air Force planes dropped gas canisters on the town. The town and surrounding district were attacked with bombs, artillery fire and chemical weapons, the last of which proved most damaging. At least 5,000 people died as an immediate result of the chemical attack. It is estimated that a further 7,000 people were injured or suffered long-term illness. Most of the victims of the attack on the town of Halabja were Kurdish civilians.
The attack is believed to have included the nerve agents Tabun, Sarin and VX, as well as mustard gas. Another possibility, according to the former senior CIA analyst Stephen C. Pelletiere, is that Iraq did not have the nerve agent to use in the attack but did have mustard gas which had been used in the Iran–Iraq War. It is occasionally suggested that cyanide was also included among these chemical weapons, though this assertion has been cast into doubt, as cyanide is a natural byproduct of impure Tabun. The attack on Halabja took place amidst the Anfal campaign, in which Saddam Hussein powerfully suppressed Kurdish revolts during the Iran–Iraq War.
Before the war ended, Iraqi forces moved in on the ground and completely destroyed the town. In March 2010, the Iraqi High Criminal Court recognized the Halabja massacre as genocide. This decision was welcomed by the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Sejm
The Sejm of the Republic of Poland (; ) is the lower house of the Polish parliament. It is made up of 460 deputies elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the "Marshal of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland".
Since the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939), ""Sejm"" has been called only to the lower house of the parliament; the upper house is called the "Senat Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej" ("Senate of the Republic of Poland").
Jolanta Szczypińska
Jolanta Irena Szczypińska (24 June 1957 – 8 December 2018) was a Polish politician. She was born in Słupsk, Poland. Szczypińska was a member of the Sejm from 2005 until her death in 2018.
Before entering politics, she was a nurse. She became known for suing airliner company Ryanair in 2007 as they created rumors that she was in a relationship with Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński.
Szczypińska died on 8 December 2018 in Warsaw from a urinary tract infection at the age of 61.
Prime Minister of Poland
The President of the Council of Ministers (Polish: "Prezes Rady Ministrów") is the leader of the cabinet and the head of government of Poland. The responsibilities and traditions of the office are seen through the Constitution of 1997.
The President of Poland nominates and appoints the prime minister, who will then makes up the cabinet. Fourteen days following his or her appointment, the prime minister must submit a programme outlining the government's agenda to the Sejm, requiring a vote of confidence.
The current and seventeenth Prime Minister is Mateusz Morawiecki of the Law and Justice party. Morawiecki replaced incumbent premier Beata Szydło, who resigned on 7 December 2017.
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Jan Krzysztof Bielecki
Jan Krzysztof Bielecki (born 3 May 1951) is a Polish liberal politician and economist. He was Prime Minister of Poland for most of 1991.
Bielecki was president of Bank Pekao between 2003 and 2010 and president of the Polish Institute of International Affairs between 2009 to 2015.
Waldemar Pawlak
Waldemar Pawlak (born 5 September 1959) is a Polish politician. He twice was Prime Minister of Poland, briefly in 1992 and again from 1993 to 1995. From November 2007 to November 2012 he was Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Economy. Pawlak is the only person who held the office of Prime Minister twice.
Hanna Suchocka
Hanna Suchocka (born 3 April 1946) is a Polish politician and lawyer. She was a professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and Chair of the Constitutional Law Department.
She was the Prime Minister of Poland between 8 July 1992 and 26 October 1993 under the presidency of Lech Wałęsa. She is the first woman to hold this post in Poland.
Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz
Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz (, born 13 September 1950) is a Polish politician. He was born in Warsaw, Poland. From 1996 to 1997, he was the 8th Prime Minister of Poland.
Leszek Miller
Leszek Cezary Miller ( ; born 3 July 1946) is a Polish politician. He was Prime Minister of Poland from 2001 to 2004. He was leader of the Democratic Left Alliance to 2016.
Marek Belka
Marek Marian Belka (; born 9 January 1952) is a Polish politician. He is a former Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Poland. He is a former Director of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) European Department and former Head of Narodowy Bank Polski ("National Bank of Poland").
Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz
Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz () (born 20 December 1959) is a Polish conservative politician. He was Prime Minister of Poland from 31 October 2005 to 14 July 2006. He was a member of the Law and Justice party ("Prawo i Sprawiedliwość", PiS).
José de Anchieta Júnior
José de Anchieta Júnior (11 March 1965 – 6 December 2018) was a Brazilian politician. He was born in Jaguaribe, Ceará. Anchieta Júnior was a member of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB). He was the Governor of the northern Brazilian state of Roraima from December 2007 to April 2014.
Anchieta Júnior died of a heart attack on 6 December 2018 in Boa Vista, Roraima, aged 53.
Paul Reinecke
Paul Heinrich Adalbert Reinecke (September 25, 1872 – May 12, 1958) was a German prehistorian and archaeologist.
Reinecke was born in Berlin. He studied medicine and science under Rudolf Virchow (1821–1903). Interested in prehistory, he also attended classes with the anthropologist Johannes Ranke (1836-1916) and the archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler (1853-1907). During his studies, in 1893, Reinecke led an extensive study trip through Austria and Hungary.
After graduating in 1897, he worked until 1908 at the Romano-Germanic Central Museum (Mainz), and later at the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection (Die Kunstdenkmäler von Bayern).
Until his death in 1958, he worked on almost all periods of European prehistory and early history, in particular on the chronology of the European Bronze Age and Iron Age. The names Michelsberg culture (1908) and the Altheim culture (1915) as well as the periodization of the Hallstatt culture go back to him. Particularly important are his contributions in Volume V of the "Antiquities of our pagan past" (Alterthümer unserer heidnischen Vorzeit), where he developed, a chronology system, based on an historical analysis of stylistic features and on typological characteristics, that has essentially retained its validity to this day. Reinecke died in Herrsching, Bavaria.
Oltingen
Oltingen is a municipality of the district of Sissach in the canton of Basel-Landschaft in Switzerland.
Lyudmila Alexeyeva
Lyudmila Mikhaylovna Alexeyeva (, , 20 July 1927 — 8 December 2018) was a Russian historian and leading human rights activist. She was a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group. Alexeyeva was one of the last Soviet dissidents active in modern Russia. She participated in the Strategy-31 protests. She was born in Yevpatoria, Crimea, Soviet Union.
Alexeyeva died on 8 December 2018 in Moscow at the age of 91.
Ormalingen
Ormalingen is a municipality of the district of Sissach, in the canton of Basel-Landschaft in Switzerland.
Coat of arms of Ukraine
The coat of arms of Ukraine ( "Derzhavnyi Herb Ukraiyny") is the national coat of arms of Ukraine, featuring the same colors found on the Ukrainian flag. It has a blue shield with a gold trident.
Nick Ayers