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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bosnia and Herzegovina is located in Southeastern Europe. Situated in the western Balkans, it has a 932 km (579 mi) border with Croatia to the north and southwest, a 357 km (222 mi) border with Serbia to the east, and a 249 km (155 mi) border with Montenegro to the southeast. It borders the Adriatic Sea along its 20 km (12 mi) coastline.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The most striking features of the local terrain are valleys and mountains which measure up to 2,386 m (7,828 ft) in height. The country is mostly mountainous, encompassing the central Dinaric Alps. The northeastern parts reach into the Pannonian basin, while in the south it borders the Adriatic Sea.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The country's natural resources include coal, iron ore, bauxite, manganese, nickel, clay, gypsum, salt, sand, timber and hydropower.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The country's name comes from the two regions Bosnia and Herzegovina, which have a very vaguely defined border between them. Bosnia occupies the northern areas which are roughly four fifths of the entire country, while Herzegovina occupies the rest in the southern part of the country.", "title": "Regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The major cities are the capital Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Bihać in the northwest region known as Bosanska Krajina, Tuzla in the northeast, Zenica in the central part of Bosnia and Mostar is the capital of Herzegovina.", "title": "Regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The south part of Bosnia has Mediterranean climate and a great deal of agriculture. Central Bosnia is the most mountainous part of Bosnia featuring prominent mountains Vlašić, Čvrsnica, and Prenj. Eastern Bosnia also features mountains like Trebević, Jahorina, Igman, Bjelašnica and Treskavica. It was here that the 1984 Winter Olympics were held.", "title": "Regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Eastern Bosnia is heavily forested along the river Drina, and overall close to 50% of Bosnia and Herzegovina is forested. Most forest areas are in Central, Eastern and Western parts of Bosnia. Northern Bosnia contains very fertile agricultural land along the river Sava and the corresponding area is heavily farmed. This farmland is a part of the Parapannonian Plain stretching into neighbouring Croatia and Serbia. The river Sava and corresponding Posavina river basin hold the cities of Brčko, Bosanski Šamac, Bosanski Brod and Bosanska Gradiška.", "title": "Regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The northwest part of Bosnia is called Bosanska Krajina and holds the cities of Banja Luka, Prijedor, Sanski Most, Jajce, Cazin, Velika Kladuša and Bihać. Kozara National Park and Mrakovica World War II monument is located in this region.", "title": "Regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The country has only 20 kilometres (12.4 mi) of coastline, around the town of Neum in the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, although surrounded by Croatian peninsulas it is possible to get to the middle of the Adriatic from Neum. By United Nations law, Bosnia has a right of passage to the outer sea. Neum has many hotels and is an important tourism destination.", "title": "Regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "There are seven major rivers of Bosnia and Herzegovina:", "title": "Rivers" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The Sava is the longest river in Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, within Bosnia and Herzegovina, it only runs along the border with Croatia. It then flows into Serbia. Towns like Brčko, Bosanski Šamac, and Bosanska Gradiška lie on the river.", "title": "Rivers" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Phytogeographically, Bosnia and Herzegovina belongs to the Boreal Kingdom and is shared between the Illyrian province of the Circumboreal Region and Adriatic province of the Mediterranean Region. According to the WWF, the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina can be subdivided into three ecoregions: the Pannonian mixed forests, Dinaric Mountains mixed forests and Illyrian deciduous forests.", "title": "Phytogeography" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "The western and southern parts of the country have a transitional Mediterranean climate.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "The hills and mountains are drier, colder, windier, and cloudier.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The north region has a typical continental climate.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Various archaeological artifacts including relicts of mining activities and tools belonging to similar age groups, provide an indication of the geographical distribution, scale and methods of mining activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Paleolithic to Roman era.", "title": "Mining industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Most important of these is the so-called area of “central Bosnian mountains” located between the rivers Vrbas, Lašva, Neretva, Rama and their tributaries. The second one is the area of western Bosnia, bordered by the Vrbas and Una rivers, with its main orebearing formations found in the river-valleys of Sana and Japra, and their tributaries. The third area is eastern Bosnia, around the river Drina between the towns of Foča and Zvornik, the principal mining activity centered around Srebrenica.", "title": "Mining industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Ores of various metals, including iron, are found in these areas and exploitation has been going on for more than 5000 years – from the period of prehistoric human settlers, through Illyrian, Roman, Slavic, Turkish and Austrian rulers, into the present.", "title": "Mining industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Irrigated land: 30 km (12 sq mi) (2003)", "title": "Land use" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Total renewable water resources: 37.5 km (9.0 cu mi) (2011)", "title": "Land use" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Natural hazards:", "title": "Environment" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Current issues:", "title": "Environment" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "International agreements:", "title": "Environment" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook (2023 ed.). CIA. (Archived 2005 edition)", "title": "Notes" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Demographic features of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Source: Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "*No data for the period 1992-1995", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Source: Institute for Statistics of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Source: Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Source: Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina - Statistics of the Brčko District BiH", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "According to data from the 2013 census published by the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosniaks constitute 50.11% of the population, Bosnian Serbs 30.78%, Bosnian Croats 15.43%, and others form 2.73%, with the remaining respondents not declaring their ethnicity or not answering.", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The census results are contested by the Republika Srpska statistical office and by Bosnian Serb politicians, who oppose the inclusion of non-permanent Bosnian residents in the figures.", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The European Union's statistics office, Eurostat, determined that the methodology used by the Bosnian statistical agency was in line with international recommendations.", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "In Bosnia and Herzegovina, religion is often linked to ethnicity, i.e. (with the exception of agnostics and atheists) most Bosniaks are Muslim, Serbs are Orthodox Christian, and Croats are Roman Catholic.", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Bosnia's constitution does not specify any official languages; however, academics Hilary Footitt and Michael Kelly note that the Dayton Agreement states that it is \"done in Bosnian, Croatian, English and Serbian\", and they describe this as the \"de facto recognition of three official languages\" at the state level. The equal status of Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian was verified by the Constitutional Court in 2000. It ruled that the provisions of the Federation and Republika Srpska constitutions on language were incompatible with the state constitution, since they only recognised \"Bosniak\" and Croatian (in the case of the Federation) and Serbian (in the case of Republika Srpska) as official languages at the entity level.", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "As a result, the wording of the entity constitutions was changed and all three languages were made official in both entities. The three languages are mutually intelligible and are also known collectively as Serbo-Croatian. Use of one of the three varieties has become a marker of ethnic identity. Michael Kelly and Catherine Baker argue: \"The three official languages of today's Bosnian state...represent the symbolic assertion of national identity over the pragmatism of mutual intelligibility\".", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "All standard varieties are based on the Ijekavian varieties of the Shtokavian dialect (non-standard spoken varieties including, beside Ijekavian, also Ikavian Shtokavian). Serbian and Bosnian are written in both Latin and Cyrillic (the latter predominantly using the Latin script), whereas Croatian is written only in Latin alphabet. There are also some speakers of Italian, German, Turkish and Ladino. Yugoslav Sign Language is used with Croatian and Serbian variants.", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "According to the results of the 2013 census, 52.86% of the population consider their mother tongue to be Bosnian, 30.76% Serbian, 14.6% Croatian and 1.57% another language, with 0.21% not giving an answer.", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "According to the 2013 census, 50.7% of the population identify religiously as Muslim, 30.75% as Serbian Orthodox Christian, 15.19% as Roman Catholic, 1.15% as other, 1.1% as agnostic or atheist, with the remainder not declaring their religion or not answering. A 2012 survey found that 47% of Bosnia's Muslims are non-denominational Muslims, while 45% follow Sunnism. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, religion is strongly linked to ethnicity.", "title": "Demographic characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.", "title": "Demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Religion:", "title": "See also" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Groups:", "title": "See also" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook (2023 ed.). CIA. (Archived 2009 edition)", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democracy, whereby executive power is exercised by the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Legislative power is vested in both the Council of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Members of the Parliamentary Assembly are chosen according to a proportional representation system.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. The system of government established by the Dayton Agreement is an example of consociationalism, as representation is by elites who represent the country's three major ethnic groups termed constituent peoples, with each having a guaranteed share of power.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Bosnia and Herzegovina is divided into two Entities – the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska, which are politically autonomous to an extent, as well as the Brčko District, which is jointly administered by both. The Entities have their own constitutions. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Bosnia and Herzegovina a \"hybrid regime\" in 2022.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Due to the Dayton Agreement, signed on 14 December 1995, Bosnia and Herzegovina forms an undeclared protectorate with elements of hegemony by neighboring Croatia and Serbia as co-signatories to the Agreement, where highest power is given to the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The intention of the Agreement was to retain Bosnia's exterior border, while creating a joint multi-ethnic and democratic government based on proportional representation similar to the former socialist system, and charged with conducting foreign, economic, and fiscal policy.", "title": "Dayton Agreement" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The Dayton Agreement established the Office of the High Representative (OHR) to oversee the implementation of the civilian aspects of the agreement. About 250 international and 450 local staff members are employed by the OHR.", "title": "Dayton Agreement" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The highest political authority in the country is the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the chief executive officer for the international civilian presence in the country. The High Representative has power to remove government officials, including court justices, local government members, members of parliament, etc. From its establishment, the Office of the High Representative has sacked 192 Bosnian officials. The mandate of the High Representatives derives from the Dayton Agreement, as confirmed by the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), a body with a Steering Board composed of representatives of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the presidency of the European Union, the European Commission, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. The Peace Implementation Council has established several criteria for the OHR to be closed, two of which have been completed but must be sustained until all five are completed.", "title": "High Representative" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Due to the vast powers of the High Representative over Bosnian politics and essential veto powers, the position has also been compared to that of a viceroy.", "title": "High Representative" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The Chair of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina rotates amongst three members (a Bosniak, a Serb, and a Croat) every 8 months within their 4-year term. The three members of the Presidency are elected directly by the people, with Federation voters electing both the Bosniak and the Croat member, and Republika Srpska voters electing the Serb member. The Presidency serves as a collective head of state. The Presidency is mainly responsible for the foreign policy and proposing the budget.", "title": "Executive branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The Prime Minister, formally titled Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is nominated by the Presidency and approved by the House of Representatives. They appoint the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Foreign Trade and other ministers as may be appropriate (no more than two thirds of the ministers may be appointed from the territory of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina), who assume the office upon the approval by the House of Representatives; also, the Chair appoints deputy ministers (who may not be from the same constituent people as their ministers), who assume the office upon the approval by the House of Representatives.", "title": "Executive branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The Council is responsible for carrying out policies and decisions in the fields of diplomacy, economy, inter-entity relations and other matters as agreed by the entities.", "title": "Executive branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The two Entities have Governments that deal with internal matters not dealt with by the Council of Ministers.", "title": "Executive branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Past international high representatives: Carl Bildt, Carlos Westendorp, Wolfgang Petritsch, Paddy Ashdown, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, Miroslav Lajčák, Valentin Inzko.", "title": "Executive branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Members of the Presidency who stepped down under pressure from the Office of the High Representative: Mirko Šarović, Ante Jelavić, Dragan Čović. Alija Izetbegović also withdrew from the Presidency.", "title": "Executive branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "In February 2000, the Constitutional Court ruled that the structure of the Council of Ministers was unconstitutional; a new structure was negotiated.", "title": "Executive branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Federation president and vice-president in 1999: Ejup Ganić and Ivo Andrić-Lužanski.", "title": "Executive branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Past Republika Srpska presidents: Radovan Karadžić, Biljana Plavšić, Nikola Poplašen, Mirko Šarović, Dragan Čavić, Milan Jelić, Rajko Kuzmanović, Milorad Dodik.", "title": "Executive branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Republika Srpska president Nikola Poplašen was removed by the OHR on 5 March 1999.", "title": "Executive branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The Parliamentary Assembly or Parliamentarna skupština is the main legislative body in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It consists of two chambers:", "title": "Legislative branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "The Parliamentary Assembly is responsible for:", "title": "Legislative branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Bosnia and Herzegovina did not have a permanent election law until 2001, during which time a draft law specified four-year terms for the state and first-order administrative division entity legislatures. The final election law was passed and publicized on 9 September 2001.", "title": "Legislative branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The House of Peoples includes 15 delegates who serve two-year terms. Two-thirds of delegates come from the Federation (5 Croats and 5 Bosniaks) and one-third from the Republika Srpska (5 Serbs). Nine constitutes a quorum in the House of Peoples, provided that at least three delegates from each group are present. Federation representatives are selected by the House of Peoples of the Federation, which has 58 seats (17 Bosniaks, 17 Croats, 17 Serbs, 7 others), and whose members are delegated by cantonal assemblies to serve four-year terms. Republika Srpska representatives are selected by the 28-member Republika Srpska Council of Peoples, which was established in the National Assembly of Republika Srpska; each constituent people has eight delegates, while four delegates are representatives of \"others\".", "title": "Legislative branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "The House of Representatives comprises 42 members elected under a system of proportional representation (PR) for a four-year term. Two thirds of the members are elected from the Federation (14 Croats; 14 Bosniaks) and one third from the Republika Srpska (14 Serbs).", "title": "Legislative branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "For the 2010 general election, voters in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina elected twenty-one members in five multi-member constituencies by PR, while the remaining seven seats were allocated by compensatory PR. Voters in the Republika Srpska elected nine members in three multi-member constituencies by PR, while the five other seats were allocated by compensatory PR.", "title": "Legislative branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "National House of Representatives:", "title": "Political parties and elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "House of Peoples:", "title": "Political parties and elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Federal House of Representatives:", "title": "Political parties and elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Federal House of Peoples:", "title": "Political parties and elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Republika Srpska National Assembly:", "title": "Political parties and elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the supreme, final arbiter of constitutional matters. The court is composed of nine members: four selected by the House of Representatives of the Federation, two by the National Assembly of Republika Srpska, and three are foreign citizens appointed by the President of the European Court of Human Rights after courtesy-consultation with the Presidency.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "The initial term of appointee is 5 years, unless they resign or are removed by consensus of other judges. Appointed judges are not eligible for reappointment. Judges subsequently appointed will serve until the age of 70, unless they resign sooner or are removed. Appointments made 5 years into the initial appointments may be governed by a different regulation for selection, to be determined by the Parliamentary Assembly.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Proceedings of the Court are public, and decisions are published. Court rules are adopted by a majority in the Court. Court decisions are final and supposedly binding though this is not always the case, as noted.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "The Constitutional Court has jurisdiction over deciding in constitutional disputes that arise between the Entities or amongst Bosnia and Herzegovina and an Entity or Entities. Such disputes may be referred only by a member of the Presidency, the Chair of the Council of Ministers, the Chair or Deputy Chair of either of the chambers of the Parliamentary Assembly, or by one-fourth of the legislature of either Entity.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The Court also has appellate jurisdiction within the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina consists of three divisions – Administrative, Appellate and Criminal – having jurisdiction over cases related to the state-level law and executive, as well as appellate jurisdiction over cases initiated in the entities.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "A War Crimes Chamber was introduced in January 2005, and has adopted two cases transferred from the ICTY, as well as dozens of war crimes cases originally initiated in cantonal courts.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "The State Court also deals with organized crime, and economic crime including corruption cases. For example, the former member of the Presidency Dragan Čović was on trial for alleged involvement in organized crime.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "The Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina (Dom za ljudska prava za Bosnu i Hercegovinu) existed between March 1996 and 31 December 2003. It was a judicial body established under the Annex 6 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Dayton Agreement).", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "The two Entities have Supreme Courts. Each entity also has a number of lower courts. There are 10 cantonal courts in the Federation, along with a number of municipal courts. The Republika Srpska has five municipal courts.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "The High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (JHPC / VSTV) is the self-regulatory body of the judiciary in the country, tasked with guaranteeing its independence. It is based on the continental tradition of self-management of the judiciary. It was formed in 2004.", "title": "Judicial branch" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a transitional, upper middle income economy. Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from socialist Yugoslavia on 1 March 1992. The main trading partners are Germany, Italy, Austria, Turkey and other neighboring Balkan countries.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Bosnia and Herzegovina is an upper middle-income country which has accomplished a great deal since the mid-1990s. Today, it is an EU potential candidate country and is now embarking on a new growth model amid a period of slow growth and the global financial crisis. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a small, open economy, dominated by services, which accounted for 55% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016, with a moderately developed industrial and manufacturing sector (23% and 12%, respectively), and a limited agricultural base (about 6% of GDP).", "title": "Overview" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The konvertibilna marka (convertible mark or BAM) - the national currency introduced in 1998 - is pegged to the euro, and confidence in the currency and the banking sector has increased. Implementation of privatization, however, has been slow, and local entities only reluctantly support national-level institutions. Banking reform accelerated in 2001 as all ; foreign banks, primarily from Western Europe, now control most of the banking sector. A sizable current account deficit and very high unemployment rate remain the two most serious economic problems. The country receives substantial amounts of reconstruction assistance and humanitarian aid from the international community but will have to prepare for an era of declining assistance.", "title": "Overview" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The United States Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina produces the Country Commercial Guide – an annual report that delivers a comprehensive look at Bosnia and Herzegovina's commercial and economic environment, using economic, political, and market analysis.", "title": "Overview" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "According to Serbian American economist, Branko Milanović, Bosnia and Herzegovina did the best job in the transition from socialism to capitalism when compared to the other republics of the former Yugoslavia. From 1985 until 2021, Bosnia and Herzegovina performed the best on the annual average GDP growth per capita (1.6%), Slovenia (1.4%), Croatia (1%), Serbia without Kosovo (0.9%) and North Macedonia (0.5%).", "title": "Overview" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "At the time of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), Bosnia and Herzegovina was an important mineral processing centre and provided the other republics with basic mineral commodities in exchange for current consumption goods. While large amounts of public capital investments poured in during the 1970s, productivity levels remained low, often due to the limited capacity of public managers. Under former republican premier Džemal Bijedić, and Yugoslav president Tito, metal-product industries were promoted in the republic, resulting in the development of a large share of Yugoslavia's metal products plants.", "title": "Brief economic history until the 1990s" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Merging small firms into larger agglomerates was a common practice in the SFRY to preserve employment levels. As a result, four large conglomerates emerged in Bosnia and Herzegovina over time: Energoinvest (energy sector), Unis (automotive and defence industry, which partnered with Volkswagen in the early 1970s), Šipad (wood processing) and RMK Zenica (steel industry, later acquired by ArcelorMittal). Construction and defence were important industries of the Bosnian economy, despite their low efficiency and, ultimately, supply excess. The defence industry was particularly developed in the southern districts and around Mostar, which was also a relevant metallurgical centre (Aluminij Mostar). Machinery production was concentrated in the north, particularly around Banja Luka. The Tuzla district was renowned for its chemical industry. The automotive industry, which developed in the 1950s with the production of vehicle components, extended later on to passenger and commercial vehicles, with plants in Sarajevo, Mostar and Banja Luka. Agriculture was not highly developed, despite its importance for employment and the presence of the large Agrokomerc conglomerate based at the north-west border with Croatia.", "title": "Brief economic history until the 1990s" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Tito had pushed the development of metal industries, and electro-energetic sector, in the republic with the result that Bosnia and Herzegovina were a host of large numbers of industrial firms. Some of them were worked with World brand names, companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Marlboro, Volkswagen and SKF. Big Companies like Energoinvest, UNIS, Hidrogradnja, Vranica, RMK Zenica, TAS Sarajevo, FAMOS Sarajevo and BNT Novi Travnik, have yearly income in billions of USD$ at that time. Building sector companies bringing large amounts of income in USD$. Unemployment at that time is very low. Work force is highly skilled, with highly professional, educated managers, engineers, science experts, which use western world's newest technologies in large scale areas. Before the war, Yugoslav premier Ante Marković, made some preparations for privatization, in economy, finance, and industry sectors, but the war ceased development in these actions.", "title": "Brief economic history until the 1990s" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The economy suffered heavily from the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with over €200 billion in material damages and GDP (excluding services) reduced by 90% between 1990 and 1995. Today, most of the above-mentioned companies have been privatised. The economy remains fragile, primarily consumption driven and vulnerable to external fluctuations. This was seen with the global economic crisis, which pushed Bosnia and Herzegovina into recession in 2009 and 2012 (with GDP growth of -3% and -0.8%, respectively) and severe floods in 2014, which caused damage of approximately 15% of GDP. Since 2015, annual GDP growth has increased to more than 3%. Still, the country registered a current account deficit of 4.7% of GDP in 2017, decreasing from 5.3% in 2015, resulting from a reduction in its trade deficit, which nevertheless remains large (17.4% of GDP in 2017).", "title": "Brief economic history until the 1990s" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "A Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina was established in late 1997, debt negotiations were held with the London Club in December 1997 and with the Paris Club in October 1998, and a new currency, the Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, was introduced in mid-1998. In 1999, the Convertible Mark gained wider acceptance, and the Central Bank dramatically increased its reserve holdings. Due to Bosnia's strict currency board regime attaching the Bosnian mark to the Euro, inflation has remained low in the entire country.", "title": "Brief economic history until the 1990s" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "With an uneasy peace in place, output recovered in 1996–99 at high percentage rates from a low base; but output growth slowed in 2000–02. The country receives substantial amounts of reconstruction assistance and humanitarian aid from the international community. Support for East European Democracy (SEED) assistance accounts for 20%-25% of economic growth in Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, growth has been uneven throughout the post-war period, with the Federation outpacing the RS. According to World Bank estimates, GDP growth was 62% in the Federation and 25% in the RS in 1996, 35% in the Federation and flat in the RS in 1997, and continued growth in the Federation in 1998.", "title": "Brief economic history until the 1990s" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Movement has been slow, but considerable progress has been made in economic reform since peace was re-established. Banking reform lagged, as did the implementation of privatization. Many companies (mainly factories) that were privatized faced massive problems, causing the owners to reduce salaries and deny the workers their salaries, and some of the new owners and tycoons destroy that factories.", "title": "Brief economic history until the 1990s" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1997–2023.", "title": "Brief economic history until the 1990s" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Overall value of foreign direct investment (1999–2011):", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "From 1994 to 2011, €6.4 billion were invested in the country.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The top investor countries (1994–2007):", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Foreign investments by sector for (1994–2007):", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "By some estimates, grey economy is 25.5% of GDP.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "In 2017, exports grew by 17% when compared to the previous year, totaling €5.65 billion. The total volume of foreign trade in 2017 amounted to €14.97 billion and increased by 14% compared to the previous year. Imports of goods increased by 12% and amounted to €9.32 billion. The coverage of imports by exports has increased by 3% compared to the previous year and now it is 61 percent. In 2017, Bosnia and Herzegovina mostly exported car seats, electricity, processed wood, aluminum and furniture. In the same year, it mostly imported crude oil, automobiles, motor oil, coal and briquettes.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "The unemployment rate in 2017 was 20.5%, but The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies is predicting falling unemployment rate for the next few years. In 2018, the unemployment should be 19.4% and it should further fall to 18.8% in 2019. In 2020, the unemployment rate should go down to 18.3%.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "On December 31, 2017, Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina issued the report on public debt of Bosnia and Herzegovina, stating that the public debt was reduced by €389.97 million, or by more than 6% when compared to December 31, 2016. By the end of 2017, public debt was €5.92 billion, which amounted to 35.6 percent of GDP.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "As of December 31, 2017, there were 32,292 registered companies in the country, which together had revenues of €33.572 billion that same year.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "In 2017, the country received €397.35 million in foreign direct investment, which equals to 2.5% of the GDP.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "In 2017, Bosnia and Herzegovina ranked 3rd in the world in terms of the number of new jobs created by foreign investment, relative to the number of inhabitants.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "In 2017, 1,307,319 tourists visited Bosnia-Herzegovina, an increase of 13.7%, and had 2,677,125 overnight hotel stays, a 12.3% increase from the previous year. Also, 71.5% of the tourists came from foreign countries.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "In 2018, Bosnia and Herzegovina exported goods worth 11.9 billion KM (€6.07 billion), which is 7.43% higher than in the same period in 2017, while imports amounted to 19.27 billion KM (€9.83 billion), which is 5.47% higher.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "The average price of new apartments sold in the country in the first 6 months of 2018 is 1,639 km (€886.31) per square meter. This represents a jump of 3.5% from the previous year.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "On June 30, 2018, public debt of Bosnia and Herzegovina amounted to about €6.04 billion, of which external debt is 70.56 percent, while the internal debt is 29.4 percent of total public indebtedness. The share of public debt in gross domestic product was 34.92 percent.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "In 2018, 1,465,412 tourists visited Bosnia-Herzegovina, an increase of 12.1%, and had 3,040,190 overnight hotel stays, a 13.5% increase from the previous year. Also, 71.2% of the tourists came from foreign countries.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "In 2018, the total value of mergers and acquisitions in Bosnia and Herzegovina amounted to €404.6 million.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "In 2018, 99.5 percent of enterprises in Bosnia and Herzegovina used computers in their business, while 99.3 percent had internet connections, according to a survey conducted by the Bosnia and Herzegovina Statistics Agency.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "In 2018, Bosnia and Herzegovina received 783.4 million KM (€400.64 million) in direct foreign investment, which was equivalent to 2.3% of GDP.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "In 2018, Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina made a profit of 8,430,875 km (€4,306,347).", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The World Bank estimates that the economy grew by 2.8% in 2019.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Bosnia and Herzegovina was placed 83rd on the Index of Economic Freedom for 2019. The total rating for Bosnia and Herzegovina is 61.9. This position represents some progress relative to the 91st place in 2018. This result is below the regional level, but still above the global average, making Bosnia and Herzegovina a \"moderately free\" country.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "On 31 January 2019, total deposits in Bosnian banks were KM 21.9 billion (€11.20 billion), which represents 61.15% of nominal GDP.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "In the second quarter of 2019, the average price of new apartments sold in Bosnia and Herzegovina was 1,606 km (€821.47) per square meter.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "In the first six months of 2019, exports amounted to 5.829 billion KM (€2.98 billion), which is 0.1% less than in the same period of 2018, while imports amounted to 9.779 billion KM (€5.00 billion), which is by 4.5% more than in the same period of the previous year.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "In the first seven months of 2019, 906,788 tourists visited the country, an 11.7% jump from the previous year.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "In the first six months of 2019, foreign direct investment amounted to 650.1 million KM (€332.34 million).", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "2020 saw a contraction in the economy of around 4.7%, caused by the pandemic, with increased costs by the government, before bouncing back in 2021. Employment rates have been climbing however youth unemployment in 2022 was still over 33%.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "As of November 30th, 2023, Bosnia and Herzegovina had 1.3 million registered motor vehicles.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "Sarajevo industries now include tobacco products, furniture, hosiery, automobiles, and communication equipment. Companies based in Sarajevo include BH Telecom, Bosnalijek, Energopetrol, FlyBosnia, Sarajevo Tobacco Factory, and Sarajevska Pivara (Sarajevo Brewery).", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "Sarajevo has a strong tourist industry and was named by Lonely Planet one of the top 50 \"Best Cities in the World\" in 2006. Sports-related tourism uses the legacy facilities of the 1984 Winter Olympics, especially the skiing facilities on the nearby mountains of Bjelašnica, Igman, Jahorina, Trebević, and Treskavica. Sarajevo's 600 years of history, influenced by both Western and Eastern empires, is also a strong tourist attraction. Sarajevo has hosted travellers for centuries, because it was an important trading center during the Ottoman and Austria-Hungarian empires.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "Today, Sarajevo is one of the fastest developing cities in the region. Various new modern buildings have been built, most significantly the Bosmal City Center, ARIA Centar and the Avaz Twist Tower, which is one of the tallest skyscraper in the Balkans. A new highway was recently (2006–2011) completed between Sarajevo and the city of Kakanj. Due to growth in population, tourism and airport traffic the service sector in the city is developing fast and welcoming new investors from various businesses.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Sarajevo has one of the most representable commercial infrastructures in South-East Europe. The Sarajevo City Center is one of the biggest shopping centres in South-East Europe, after its completion in 2014. Airport Center Sarajevo which will be connected directly to the new airport terminal will offer a great variety of brands, products and services.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "In 1981, Sarajevo's GDP per capita was 133% of the Yugoslav average.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "In 2011, Sarajevo's GDP was estimated to be 16.76 billion US$ by the Central Bank of Bosnia, comprising 37% of the total GDP of the country.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "Mostar's economy relies heavily on tourism, aluminum and metal industry, banking services and telecommunication sector. The city is the seat of some of the country's largest corporations.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Along with Sarajevo, it is the largest financial center in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with two out of three largest banks in the country having their headquarters in Mostar. Bosnia-Herzegovina has three national electric, postal and telecommunication service corporations; These three companies banks and the aluminium factory make a vast portion of overall economic activity in the city.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "Aluminij is one of the most influential companies in the city, region, but also country. In relation to the current manufacturing capacity it generates an annual export of more than €150 million. The partners with which the Aluminij does business are renowned global companies, from which the most important are: Venture Coke Company L.L.C. (Venco-Conoco joint Venture) from the US, Glencore International AG from Switzerland, Debis International trading GmbH, Daimler-Chrysler and VAW Aluminium Technologie GmbH from Germany, Hydro ASA from Norway, Fiat from Italy, and TLM-Šibenik from Croatia[5]. Mostar area alone receives an income of €40 million annually from Aluminij.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "Prijedor is the sixth largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is an economically prosperous municipality hosting a wide range of industries, services and educational institutions. The city's geographical location close to major European capitals has made it an important industrial and commercial hub nationally. It has a developed financial sector, 11 international banks are represented, 5 microcredit organizations and a foundation for development. The city's huge economic potential is in the strategic geographical location being close to Zagreb, Belgrade, Budapest and Vienna. Giving it one of the best climates for economic expansion in Bosnia and Herzegovina.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "The agricultural land around the city, raw minerals in the municipality and growth of high educated population in the city proper gives it a unique combination of both being able to produce sophisticated industrial products, food and service branches.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "Zenica host today the Bosnian part of ArcelorMittal Steel Company, former RMK Zenica, which employ about 3000 workers, steel company from Luxembourg with over 320,000 employees in more than 60 countries. It also has companies specialized in the chemical industry such as Ferrox a.d., producing iron oxides-pigments. BosnaMontaza AD., one of Bosnias most specialized steel manufacturers, manufacturing: steel construction, pipelines, reservoirs, technological equipment, cranes and energy plants. Other companies such as the Croatian food company Kraš has one of its biggest facilities in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Prijedor, producing confectionery products under the brand names MIRA and Kraš. Brand names such as \"Prijedorčanka\" is one of the leading producers of the alcoholic beverage Rakija in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Prijedor is also a big enterprise producing cellulose and paper for export.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "In 2022, the sector with the highest number of companies registered in Bosnia and Herzegovina is Services with 39,707 companies followed by Retail Trade and Wholesale Trade with 12,060 and 11,970 companies respectively.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "Among this Prijedor has a fruit growing production, gardening production, crop farming production, mill and bakery industries, stock farming production, processing industries and a milk industry.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "Lake Saničani, near Prijedor, is one of the biggest commercial fish-farming lakes in the southern Europe.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "Prijedor municipality takes up 8340.6 hectares (5845.0 private property and 2495.6 state property). Plowed fields and gardens take up 340.26 hectares, orchards 23.86 hectares and vineyards 5 hectares. All cultivated soil takes up 402.06 hectares.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "The service sector in Prijedor is growing rapidly and this reflects in the growth of hotels, stores, roads, educational facilities and shoppings centers that are being built in the city. Making it a growing commercial hub in Bosnia and Hercegovina.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "Although the city itself was not directly affected by the Bosnian War in the early 1990s, its economy was. For four years, Banja Luka fell behind the world in key areas such as technology, resulting in a rather stagnant economy. However, in recent years, the financial services sector has gained in importance in the city. In 2002, the trading began on the newly established Banja Luka Stock Exchange. The number of companies listed, the trading volume and the number of investors have increased significantly. A number of big companies such as Telekom Srpske, Rafinerija ulja Modriča, Banjalučka Pivara and Vitaminka are all listed on the exchange and are traded regularly. Investors, apart from those from Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, now include a number of investment funds from the European Union, Norway, the United States, Japan and China.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "A number of financial services regulators, such as the Indirect Taxation Authority of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska Securities Commission and the RS Banking Agency are headquartered in Banja Luka. This, along with the fact that some of the major banks in Bosnia, the Deposit Insurance Agency and the Value-added tax (VAT) Authority are all based in the city, has helped Banja Luka establish itself as a major financial centre of the country.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "In 1981 Banja Luka's GDP per capita was 97% of the Yugoslav average.", "title": "Present" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "The country has been a heavy user of energy compared with the EU, with artificially low prices providing a disincentive to make savings. Heavily reliant on lignite coal for power generation, in 2021 Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of very few countries still making plans to expand coal energy generation.", "title": "Energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "The first wind farm was built in 2018.", "title": "Energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "The 2030 plan envisages 1.5 GW of solar power and 0.5 GW of wind power capacity being built.", "title": "Energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "In 2021 the country had around 2076 MW of installed hydropower capacity larger than 10 MW, with 180 MW of small hydropower units.", "title": "Energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "In 2021 electricity production came from five main lignite coal power plants generating up to 2065 MW.", "title": "Energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "Tuzla Thermal Power Plant was supposed to close unit 4 in 2022 however the government has extended this lignite coal generators life. Kakanj Power Station was also supposed to have closed unit 5 in 2022 under the 2006 Energy Community Treaty.", "title": "Energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "Under the 2030 plan a number of coal power stations will close or convert to biomass.", "title": "Energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "The tourism sector has been recovering and helping the economy altogether in the process, with popular winter skiing destinations as well as summer countryside tourism. Bosnia and Herzegovina has been a top performer in recent years in terms of tourism development; tourist arrivals have grown by an average of 24% annually from 1995 to 2000. The European region's solid growth in arrivals in 2007 was due in significant part to Southern and Mediterranean Europe's strong performance (+7%). In particular, Bosnia and Herzegovina were among the stronger players with a growth of 20%.", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "In 2012, Bosnia and Herzegovina had 747,827 tourists an increase of 9% and 1,645,521 overnight stays which is a 9,4% increase from 2012. 58.6% of the tourists came from foreign countries.", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "According to an estimate of the World Tourism Organization, Bosnia and Herzegovina will have the third highest tourism growth rate in the world between 1995 and 2020.", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "Of particular note is the diaspora population which often returns home during the summer months, bringing in an increase in retail sales and food service industry.", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "In 2017, 1,307,319 tourists visited Bosnia and Herzegovina, an increase of 13.7%, and had 2,677,125 overnight hotel stays, a 12.3% increase from the previous year. Also, 71.5% of the tourists came from foreign countries.", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "While business regulations are of comparable strictness as in most countries in Central Europe, many problems persist. Post-war high percentage of unemployment (16.85%) remains high, and the economical progress is very slow. Complicated bureaucracy system, complex procedures and often misconducted audition and regulation by public officers also make for volatile and insecure business environment, which is considered major hindrance to foreign investment into the country's industrial and manufacturing potential.", "title": "Challenges of doing business" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "The workforce is comparably cheap, with average net salary being €580, and average gross salary being €891, (as of June 2022) and good skilled, especially in sectors present in pre-war economy. However, with slow but persistent know-how obsolescence, workforce exodus, high unemployment and long average time outside labor market for the unemployed, need a foreign-owned business investing in industry sectors where the country could be competitive.", "title": "Challenges of doing business" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "Bosnia and Herzegovina is also lacking a good e-governance structure, as well as good methods to enforce administrative accountability, both of which are considered necessary for more conductive business climate. Today it takes between 3–5 weeks to register a company in the country (and in some business sectors it can still take months to acquire all required permits, mostly due to administrative inefficiency), and many other business related administrative procedures are similarly convoluted and time-consuming.", "title": "Challenges of doing business" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "Political corruption is one of the more acute problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and along with size of administration and its inefficiency, the biggest detriment to tax money being spent where it should be spent – on services to the population and the economy.", "title": "Challenges of doing business" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "Bosnia and Herzegovina has been preparing for an era of declining international assistance. Country's most immediate task remains economic revitalization to create jobs and income. After the 2014 riots, both administrations have shyly started the reform, dealing with some of the many pressing issues to local economy, but the overall process is still considered slow and tenuous by the populace and local as well as foreign economic analysts.", "title": "Challenges of doing business" }, { "paragraph_id": 79, "text": "The Bosnian government has issued an international tender for the construction of the 350 km long Pan-European Corridor Vc in Bosnia and Herzegovina which will passes along the route Budapest-Osijek-Sarajevo-Ploče. The highway along this corridor is the most significant roadway in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the shortest communication route between Central Europe and the Southern Adriatic. The routing of the road passes through the central part of the country in the north–south direction from Donji Svilaj to the border of B&H, north from the Croatian port of Ploče, following the rivers Bosna and Neretva. More than 50% of the total population and the economic activity of Bosnia and Herzegovina lies within the zone of influence along this route.", "title": "Infrastructure" }, { "paragraph_id": 80, "text": "As of August 2018, 200 km motorway has been completed.", "title": "Infrastructure" }, { "paragraph_id": 81, "text": "Due to annual growth of nearly 10% the Sarajevo International Airport extension of the passenger terminal, together with upgrading and expanding the taxiway and apron is planned to start in Fall 2012. The existing terminal will be expanded with 7.000 square metres. The upgraded airport will also be directly connected to the commercial retail center Sarajevo Airport Center making it easy for tourist and travellers to use the time before the flight for some last minute shopping.", "title": "Infrastructure" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bosnia and Herzegovina has facilities for road, rail and air transport. There are five international road routes and 20 state highways, with bus connections to many countries. Railways total just over 1,000 km with links to Croatia and Serbia. There are 25 airports, seven of them with paved runways. The Sava River is navigable, but its use is limited.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Bosnia & Herzegovina is well connected to other countries in Europe. The main bus station of Sarajevo has its own website. The main provider of international bus connection in Bosnia & Herzegovina is Eurolines. There are routes to Croatia, Germany, Austria, France, Netherlands, Montenegro, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Serbia. Despite Bosnia & Herzegovina's geographical closeness to Serbia, there is only one bus a day, which takes more than 8 hours due to the lack of proper roads.", "title": "Roadways" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Sava River (northern border) open to shipping but use is limited (2008)", "title": "Waterways" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Gradiška, Brod, Šamac, and Brčko (all inland waterway ports on the Sava none of which are fully operational), Orašje, Bosnia", "title": "Waterways" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "none (1999 est.)", "title": "Merchant marine" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Air transport begin in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the period of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia when the flag-carrier Aeroput inaugurated a regular flight linking the national capital Belgrade with Podgorica in 1930, with a stop in Sarajevo. A year later Aeroput inaugurated another regular flight starting in Belgrade and then stopping in Sarajevo and continuing towards Split, Sušak and Zagreb. By mid-1930s Aeroput inaugurated two routes linking Belgrade and Zagreb with Dubrovnik through Sarajevo, and, in 1938, it inaugurated an international route linking Dubrovnik, which was becoming a major holiday destination, through Sarajevo, to Zagreb, Vienna, Brno and Prague.", "title": "Airports" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "25 (2008)", "title": "Airports" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "total: 7 2,438 to 3,047 m: 4 1,524 to 2,437 m: 1 under 914 m: 2 (2008)", "title": "Airports" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "total: 18 1,524 to 2,437 m: 1 914 to 1,523 m: 7 under 914 m: 10 (2008)", "title": "Airports" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "6 (2013)", "title": "Airports" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.", "title": "References" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "We recommend to use for travel shuttle bus transfers in Bosnia and Hercegovina. It is one of the easiest ways to travel here.", "title": "External links" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Serbo-Croatian: Oružane snage Bosne i Hercegovine / Оружане снаге Босне и Херцеговине) is the official military force of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The BiH armed forces were officially unified in 2005 and are composed of two founding armies: the Bosniak-Croat Army of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (VFBiH) and the Bosnian Serbs' Army of Republika Srpska (VRS).", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The Ministry of Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, founded in 2004, is in charge of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "In accordance with the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Article 5.5a), Bosnian Law of defense and Bosnian Law of service the supreme civilian commander of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the collective Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The collective Presidency directs the Ministry of Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Armed Forces. Former Bosnia and Herzegovina ministers of defence include Nikola Radovanović, Selmo Cikotić, Muhamed Ibrahimović, Zekerijah Osmić, Marina Pendeš and Sifet Podžić. As of 2023, the minister is Zukan Helez. Former Chiefs of Joint Staff of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina include Lieutenant colonel general Sifet Podžić, Lieutenant colonel general Miladin Milojčić, Lieutenant colonel general Anto Jeleč and Colonel general Senad Mašović. The current Chief of Joint Staff is General Gojko Knežević. Conscription was completely abolished in Bosnia and Herzegovina effective on and from 1 January 2006.", "title": "Chain of command" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The Bosnia and Herzegovina Defence Law addresses the following areas: the Military of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Government Institutions, Entity Jurisdictions and Structure, Budget and Financing, Composition of Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, War Declaration, natural disasters, conflict of interests and professionalism, Oath to Bosnia-Herzegovina, flags, anthem and military insignia, and transitional and end orders.", "title": "Defence law" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The AFBiH was formed from three armies of the Bosnian War period: the Bosnian (dominantly Bosniak with numbers of Serbs and Croats) Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska, and the Croat Defence Council.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The Army of the Republic of Bosnia And Herzegovina was created on 15 April 1992 during the early days of the Bosnian War. Before the ARBiH was formally created, there existed Territorial Defence, an official military force of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a number of paramilitary groups such as the Green Berets, Patriotic League, and civil defense groups, as well as many criminal gangs and collections of police and military professionals. The army was formed under poor circumstances, with a very low number of tanks, APCs and no military aviation assets. The army was divided into Corps, each Corp was stationed in a territory. The first commander was Sefer Halilović.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The Army of Republika Srpska was created on 12 May 1992. Before the VRS was formally created, there were a number of paramilitary groups such as the Srpska Dobrovoljačka Garda, Beli Orlovi, as well as some Russian, Greek and other volunteers. The army was equipped with ex-JNA inventory. It had about 200 tanks, mostly T-55s and 85 M-84s, and 150 APCs with several heavy artillery pieces. The Air Defense of VRS has shot down several aircraft, like F-16, Mirage 2000, F-18 and one Croatian Air Force MiG-21. The VRS received support from the Yugoslav Army and FR Yugoslavia.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The Croatian Defence Council was the main military formation of the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia during the Bosnian War. It was first organized military force to with the aim to control the Croat populated areas, created on 8 April 1992. They ranged from men armed with shotguns assigned to village defense tasks to organized, uniformed, and well-equipped brigade-sized formations that nevertheless employed part-time soldiers. As time went on, the HVO forces became increasingly better organized and more \"professional\", but it was not until early 1994, that the HVO began to form the so-called guards brigades, mobile units manned by full-time professional soldiers.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "In 1995–96, a NATO-led international peacekeeping force (IFOR) of 60,000 troops served in Bosnia and Herzegovina, beginning on December 21, 1995, to implement and monitor the military aspects of the Dayton Peace Agreement. IFOR was succeeded by a smaller, NATO-led Stabilization Force or SFOR. The number of SFOR troops was reduced first to 12,000 and then to 7,000. SFOR was in turn succeeded by an even smaller, European Union-led European Union Force, EUFOR Althea. As of 2004, EUFOR Althea numbered around 7,000 troops.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The program to train and equip the Bosnian Federation Army after the signing of the Dayton peace agreement in 1995 was a key element of the U.S. strategy to bring a stable peace to Bosnia. The Train and Equip Program also calmed the concerns of some Congressmen about committing U.S. troops to peacekeeping duty in Bosnia. Creating a stable and functioning Federation Army that could deter Serb aggression had the prospect of allowing NATO and U.S. troops to withdraw from Bosnia within the original 12-month mandate, which the administration assured Congress was all it would take to stabilize the country.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The program conducted an “international program review” in April 1998 to demonstrate to U.S. partners that it had been well managed and successful and to solicit additional contributions. The event was attended by 20 current and potential donor countries and an air of satisfaction prevailed.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "The Dayton Peace Agreement left the country with three armies under two commands: the Bosniak and Bosnian Croat armies within the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, facing their recent adversaries the Army of the Republika Srpska. These three forces together had around 419,000 personnel in regulars and reserves. This force size and orientation was totally at odds with the international peacemakers' vision. Slow reductions did take place. By 2004, the two warring factions had reduced their forces to 12,000 regulars and 240,000 reserves but had made virtually no progress in integrating the two into one new force, though the basis of a state defence ministry had been put in place via the Standing Committee on Military Matters (SCMM). Conscription for periods of around four months continued, the costs of which were weighing down both entities.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "The restructuring of the three armies into the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina represents part of a wider process of 'thickening' the central state institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In order to mitigate some of the potential controversy around restructuring, the Office of the High Representative (OHR) made use of evidence of malpractice in Republika Srpska military institutions. Firstly, from 2002 onwards, OHR utilised a scandal around the provision of parts and assistance to Iraq in breach of a UN embargo (the so-called Orao affair) to support the cause for bringing governance of the armies under the level of central institutions. Following this, in 2004, the process was accelerated, drawing its justification from new evidence of material and other forms of support flowing from Republika Srpska armed forces to ICTY indictee Ratko Mladić. OHR condemned the ‘systematic connivance of high-ranking members of the RS military’ and noted that measures to tackle such systematic deficiencies were under consideration. This was quickly followed by the expansion of the mandate for a Defence Reform Commission, which ultimately resulted in the consolidation of three armed forces into one, governed at the level of the central state.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "As the joint AFBiH began to develop, troops began to be sent abroad. Bosnia and Herzegovina deployed a unit of 37 men to destroy munitions and clear mines, in addition to 6 command personnel as part of the Multinational force in Iraq. The unit was first deployed to Fallujah, then Talil Air Base, and is now located at Camp Echo. In December 2006, the Bosnian government formally extended its mandate through June 2007. Bosnia and Herzegovina planned to send another 49 soldiers from the 6th Infantry Division to Iraq in August 2008, their mission being to protect/guard Camp Victory in Baghdad.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The Military units are commanded by the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina Joint Staff in Sarajevo. There are two major commands under the Joint Staff: Operational Command and Support Command.", "title": "Structure" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "There are three regiments that are each formed by soldiers from the three ethnic groups of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs and trace their roots to the armies that were created during the war in BiH. These regiments have their distinct ethnic insignias and consist of three active battalions each. Headquarters of regiments have no operational authority. On the basis of the Law on Service in the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the regimental headquarters have the following tasks: to manage the regimental museum, monitor financial fund, prepare, investigate and cherish the history of the regiment, the regiment publish newsletters, maintain cultural and historical heritage, give guidance on holding special ceremonies, give guidance on customs, dress and deportment Regiment, conduct officer, NCO and military clubs. Each regiments' three battalions are divided evenly between the three active brigades of the Army.", "title": "Structure" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Overall the brigades are multinational with over 50% Bosniaks, 30% Serbs, 15% Croats and about 4% of other ethnic groups.", "title": "Structure" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Within the armed forces, there are a number of services. These include a Technical Service, Air Technology service, Military Police service, Communications service, Sanitary service, a Veterans service, Civilian service, Financial service, Information service, Legal service, Religious service, and a Musical service.", "title": "Structure" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina were unified in 2005 and at that time they needed a uniform for the newly founded Armed Forces. MARPAT was designated as the future camouflage pattern to be used on combat uniforms of the AFBiH.", "title": "Uniform and insignia" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Insignia is found on military hats or berets, on the right and left shoulder on the uniform of all soldiers of the Armed Forces. All, except for generals, wear badges on their hats or berets with either the land force badge or air force badge. Generals wear badges with the coat of arms of Bosnia surrounded with branches and two swords. All soldiers of the armed forces have on their right shoulder a flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina. All members of the three regiments wear their regiment insignia on the left shoulder. There are other insignias, brigades or other institution are worn under the regiment insignia. The name of the soldiers is worn on the left part of the chest while the name \"Armed Forces of BiH\" is worn on the right part of the chest.", "title": "Uniform and insignia" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "In 2023, members of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina began to wear a new field uniform of high-quality cloth and original camouflage schemes with the characteristics of the Bosnian environment.", "title": "Uniform and insignia" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The implementation of the Dayton Accords of 1995 has focused the efforts of policymakers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the international community, on regional stabilization in the countries-successors of the former Yugoslavia. Relations with its neighbors of Croatia and Serbia have been fairly stable since the signing of the Dayton Agreement in 1995.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "List of countries which Bosnia and Herzegovina maintains diplomatic relations with:", "title": "Diplomatic relations" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The accession of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the European Union is one of the main political objectives of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP) is the EU's policy framework. Countries participating in the SAP have been offered the possibility to become, once they fulfill the necessary conditions, member states of the EU. Bosnia and Herzegovina is therefore a potential candidate country for EU accession.", "title": "EU accession" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Bank for International Settlements, Council of Europe, Central European Initiative, EBRD, Energy Community United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, FAO, Group of 77, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, International Criminal Court, International Development Association, IFAD, International Finance Corporation, IFRCS, ILO, International Monetary Fund, International Maritime Organization, Interpol, IOC, International Organization for Migration (observer), ISO, ITU, Non-Aligned Movement (guest), Organization of American States (observer), OIC (observer), OPCW, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Southeast European Cooperative Initiative, United Nations, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UNMEE, UPU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTrO (observer)", "title": "International organizations" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "", "title": "External links" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Batswana, a term also used to denote all citizens of Botswana, refers to the country's major ethnic group (called the Tswana in Southern Africa). Prior to European contact, the Batswana lived as herders and farmers under tribal rule.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The Tsodilo Hills site in north-west Botswana has been apparently continuously inhabited since 17 000 BC. The forebears of today's Khoe-Kwadi, Kx’a and Tuu-speaking peoples (“Khoisan”) are thought to have lived in the area now corresponding to Botswana for many thousands of years.", "title": "Before European contact" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "In October 2019, researchers reported that Botswana was likely the region where modern humans first developed about 200,000-300,000 years ago. Sometime between 200 and 500 AD, the Bantu-speaking people who were living in the Katanga area (today part of the DRC and Zambia) crossed the Limpopo River, entering the area today known as South Africa as part of the Bantu expansion.", "title": "Before European contact" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "There were 2 broad waves of immigration to South Africa; Nguni and Sotho-Tswana. The former settled in the eastern coastal regions, while the latter settled primarily in the area known today as the Highveld—the large, relatively high central plateau of South Africa.", "title": "Before European contact" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "By 1000 AD the Bantu colonization of the eastern half of South Africa had been completed (but not Western Cape and Northern Cape, which are believed to have been inhabited by “Khoisan” peoples until Dutch colonisation). The Bantu-speaking societies were highly decentralized, organized on a basis of enlarged clans (kraals) headed by a chief, who owed a hazy allegiance to the nation's head chief.", "title": "Before European contact" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "In the late 19th century, hostilities broke out between the Shona inhabitants of Botswana and Ndebele tribes who were migrating into the territory from the Kalahari Desert. Tensions also escalated with the Boer settlers from the Transvaal. To block Boer and German expansionism the British Government on 31 March 1885 put \"Bechuanaland\" under its protection. The northern territory remained under direct administration as the Bechuanaland Protectorate and is today's Botswana, while the southern territory became British Bechuanaland which ten years later became part of the Cape Colony and is now part of the northwest province of South Africa; the majority of Setswana-speaking people today live in South Africa. The Tati Concessions Land, formerly part of the Matabele kingdom, was administered from the Bechuanaland Protectorate after 1893, to which it was formally annexed in 1911.", "title": "Bechuanaland Protectorate" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "To safeguard the integrity of the Protectorate against the perceived threats from the British South Africa Company and Southern Rhodesia, the three Batswana leaders Khama III, Bathoen I, and Sebele I travelled to London in 1895 to ask Joseph Chamberlain and Queen Victoria for assurances.", "title": "Bechuanaland Protectorate" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 out of the main British colonies in the region, the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana), Basutoland (now Lesotho), and Swaziland (now Eswatini) (the \"High Commission Territories\") were not included, but provision was made for their later incorporation. However, a vague undertaking was given to consult their inhabitants, and although successive South African governments sought to have the territories transferred, Britain kept delaying, and it never occurred. The election of the National Party government in 1948, which instituted apartheid, and South Africa's withdrawal from the Commonwealth in 1961, ended any prospect of incorporation of the territories into South Africa.", "title": "Bechuanaland Protectorate" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "An expansion of British central authority and the evolution of tribal government resulted in the 1920 establishment of two advisory councils representing Africans and Europeans. Proclamations in 1934 regularized tribal rule and powers. A European-African advisory council was formed in 1951, and the 1961 constitution established a consultative legislative council.", "title": "Bechuanaland Protectorate" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Following the British entry into World War II, the decision was taken to draw recruits from the High Commission Territories (HTC) of Swaziland, Basutoland and Bechuanaland. Black citizens from the HTC were to be recruited into the African Auxiliary Pioneer Corps (AAPC) labor unit due to Afrikaner opposition to armed black units. Mobilization for the AAPC was launched in late July 1941 and by October 18,000 personnel had arrived in the Middle East. The AAPC performed a wide range of manual labor, providing logistical support to the Allied war effort during the North African, Dodecanese and Italian campaigns. During the Italian campaign some AAPC relieved British field artillery units of their duty.", "title": "Bechuanaland Protectorate" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In June 1966, Britain accepted proposals for democratic self-government in Botswana. The seat of government was moved from Mafeking, South Africa, to newly established Gaborone in 1965. The 1965 constitution led to the first general elections and to independence on 30 September 1966. Seretse Khama, a leader in the independence movement and the legitimate claimant to the Ngwato chiefship, was elected as the first president, re-elected twice, and died in office in 1980. The presidency passed to the sitting vice president, Ketumile Masire, who was elected in his own right in 1984 and re-elected in 1989 and 1994. Masire retired from office in 1998. The presidency passed to the sitting vice president, Festus Mogae, who was elected in his own right in 1999 and re-elected in 2004. In April 2008, Excellency the former President Lieutenant General Dr Seretse Khama Ian Khama (Ian Khama), son of Seretse Khama the first president, succeeded to the presidency when Festus Mogae retired. On 1 April 2018 Mokgweetsi Eric Keabetswe Masisi was sworn in as the 5th President of Botswana succeeding Ian Khama. He represents the Botswana Democratic Party, which has also won a majority in every parliamentary election since independence. All the previous presidents have also represented the same party.", "title": "Independent Botswana" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Botswana is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa, north of South Africa. Botswana occupies an area of 581,730 square kilometres (224,610 sq mi), of which 566,730 km (218,820 sq mi) are land. Botswana has land boundaries of combined length 4,347.15 kilometres (2,701.19 mi), of which the constituent boundaries are shared with Namibia, for 1,544 km (959 mi); South Africa 1,969 km (1,223 mi); Zimbabwe, 834 km (518 mi) and Zambia, 0.15 km (0.093 mi). Much of the population of Botswana is concentrated in the eastern part of the country.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Sunshine totals are high all year round although winter is the sunniest period. The whole country is windy and dusty during the dry season.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The land is predominantly flat to gently undulating tableland, although there is some hilly country, where mining is carried out. The Kalahari Desert is in the central and the southwest. The Okavango Delta, one of the world's largest inland deltas, is in the northwest and the Makgadikgadi Pans, a large salt pan lies in the north-central area. The Makgadikgadi has been established as an early habitation area for primitive man; This large seasonal wetland is composed of several large component pans, the largest being Nwetwe Pan, Sua Pan and Nxai Pan. Botswana's lowest elevation point is at the junction of the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers, at a height of 513 m (1,683 ft). The highest point is Monalanong Hill, at 1,494 m (4,902 ft). The country is divided into four drainage regions, which are sometimes indistinct due to the arid nature of the climate:", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Except for the Chobe, Okavango, Boteti and Limpopo rivers, most of Botswana's rivers cease to flow during the dry and early rainy seasons.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Botswana is semi-arid, due to the short rain season. However, the relatively high altitude of the country and its continental situation gives it a subtropical climate. The country is remote from moisture-laden air flows for most of the year. The dry season lasts from April to October in the south and to November in the north where, however, rainfall totals are higher. The south of the country is most exposed to cold winds during the winter period (early May to late August) when average temperatures are around 14 °C (57.2 °F). The whole country has hot summers with average temperatures around 26 °C (78.8 °F). Sunshine totals are high all year round although winter is the sunniest period. The whole country is windy and dusty during the dry season.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Botswana is affected by periodic droughts, and seasonal August winds blow from the west, carrying sand and dust, which can obscure visibility.", "title": "Natural hazards" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Current environmental issues in Botswana are overgrazing, desertification and the existence of only limited fresh water resources.", "title": "Environment" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Research from scientists has found that the common practice of overstocking cattle to cope with drought losses actually depletes scarce biomass, making ecosystems more vulnerable. The study of the district predicts that by 2050 the cycle of mild drought is likely to become shorter —18 months instead of two years—due to climate change.", "title": "Environment" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Botswana is a party to the following international agreements: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Nuclear Test Organization, Ozone Layer Protection and Wetlands.", "title": "International agreements" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "This is a list of the extreme points of Botswana, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location.", "title": "Extreme points" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Demographic features of the population of Botswana include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Botswana, like many nations in southern Africa, suffers from a high HIV infection rate, estimated among adults ages 15 to 49 to be 20.7%.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The seven censuses of Botswana before its independence happened irregularly. Due to the Anglo-Boer War, the first census of Bechuanaland Protectorate, originally set to occur in 1901, took place on 17 April 1904. The 1931 census was postponed to 1936 because of the Great Depression. The early censuses were unreliable and took several years to tabulate; the results were outdated by the time they were calculated.", "title": "Population" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "There have been six censuses after the independence of Botswana, each occurring every ten years in the year ending in 1 (i.e. 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2022). The 1971 census was the first census in Botswana to use de facto enumeration; this method counts people based on how many people spent census night at a specific location. Previously, the citizens were counted based on their usual place of residence. The 2001 census was the first census in Botswana to comply with the SADC 2000 Census Project, the guidelines of which unify the demographic statistics in southern Africa. The 2011 Census was the fifth census after independence the 2011 Botswana Population and Housing Census, it occurred in August 2011. The most recent sixth and most recent census is the 2022 Population and Housing Census which was carried out in April 2022.", "title": "Population" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "According to the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects the total population was 2,588,423 in 2021, compared to only 413,000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2020 was about 33.4%, 62.1% were between 15 and 65 years of age, while 4.5% of the population were 65 years or older.", "title": "Population" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2020) (Based on the results of the 2011 Population Census.):", "title": "Population" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Registration of vital events is in Botswana not complete. The Population Department of the United Nations prepared the following estimates. Population estimates account for under numeration in population censuses.", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Births and deaths", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Source: Vital Statistics Report 2012.", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Life expectancy from 1950 to 2020 (UN World Population Prospects):", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Setswana 77.3%, Kalanga 7.4%, Sekgalagadi 3.4%, English 2.8%, Shona 2.0%, Sesarwa 1.7%, Sehambukushu 1.6%, Ndebele 1.0%, Others 2.8%. (2011 est.)", "title": "Languages" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2022.", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook.", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Christian 79.1%, Badimo 4.1%, other 1.4% (includes Baha'i, Hindu, Muslim, Rastafarian), none 15.2%, unspecified 0.3% (2011 est.)", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "According to the United Nations, there were 110,596 international migrants in Botswana in 2019. Their most common countries of origin were as follows:", "title": "Migrants" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook (2023 ed.). CIA. (Archived 2009 edition)", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Botswana is a parliamentary republic in which the President of Botswana is both head of state and head of government. The nation's politics are based heavily on British parliamentary politics and on traditional Batswana chiefdom. The legislature is made up of the unicameral National Assembly and the advisory body of tribal chiefs, the Ntlo ya Dikgosi. The National Assembly chooses the president, but once in office the president has significant authority over the legislature with only limited separation of powers. The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) rules as a dominant party; while elections in Botswana are considered free and fair by observers, the BDP has controlled the National Assembly since independence. Political opposition in Botswana often exists between factions in the BDP rather than through separate parties, though several opposition parties exist and regularly hold a small number of seats in the National Assembly.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Botswana achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1966. The BDP led by Seretse Khama formed the first government, and continued winning elections every five years. Quett Masire became president following Khama's death in 1980, and the BDP was enveloped by factionalism in the 1990s. This factionalism persisted through the presidencies of Festus Mogae from 1998 to 2008 and Ian Khama from 2008 to 2018. Khama's successor, Mokgweetsi Masisi, became president in 2018 and developed a strong political rivalry with Khama, which came to define politics in Botswana over the following years.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Botswana has an above average human rights record, and it is recognised by human rights groups as one of the strongest democracies in Africa. Economic policy in Botswana revolves around the nation's lucrative diamond industry, which makes up a significant portion of the economy. The country has been praised as an economic success as it pursued free market policies in the 20th century, and it has since shifted to more redistributive economic policy. Wealth inequality remains high in Botswana. Welfare programs are limited, but public services and infrastructure receive strong funding. Foreign policy in Botswana has historically emphasised multilateralism and realpolitik. Apartheid-era South Africa was the nation's primary foreign policy concern until 1994 and then instability in Zimbabwe thereafter.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The location of present day Botswana was historically controlled by Bantu peoples, primarily the Tswana people. Many legal traditions practiced by the Tswana people, such as respect for traditional authority and protection of property rights, have played a role in the development of post-colonial Botswana politics. Centralised political structures developed prior to colonisation have also been retained. Politics of the Tswana people prior to statehood was often led by chiefs, who continue to have a role in Botswana politics. In the early-19th century, these chiefdoms developed into nation states. These nation states incorporated limited government and ethnic pluralism.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The United Kingdom began involvement in the region in the 1820s, and the region became part of the British Empire in 1885 as the Bechuanaland Protectorate. The Tswana people were made subjects of the Crown and placed under British law. The first significant movement for independence was led by the radical Bechuanaland People's Party. The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) was formed by Seretse Khama in 1962 as part of a negotiated independence process. Botswana became self-governing in 1965, and it became an independent republic in 1966. The United Kingdom continued to invest in the country financially and pay some of its expenses through 1971. Institutions and traditions from both precolonial Tswana society and colonial British rule were retained following independence and continue to influence the politics of Botswana.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Upon receiving self-governance, the nation held the 1965 Bechuanaland general election, in which the BDP won a large victory: of the 31 seats in the legislature, the BDP won 28. Three members of the Botswana People's Party made up the opposition, all elected from relatively urbanised constituencies. The government under the first president, Seretse Khama, was based heavily on collaborative governance similar to that of the pre-colonial tribal governments. Policies were often considered by several ministries and a commission before being adopted. Khama also ensured that foreign involvement was welcome, opposed to a nationalism that restricted opportunity.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The Botswana National Front (BNF) was founded by Kenneth Koma as a left-wing party, and it became the opposition party in the 1969 general election. While Khama was president, his vice president, Quett Masire, held considerable power as well. In addition to being the vice president, he was the minister of finance, and he was the secretary general of the BDP. He oversaw a series of National Development Plans that dispensed much of the government's policies. Regional instability prompted the creation of the Botswana Defence Force in 1977. Prior to this, the Botswana Police Service handled all of the nation's security responsibilities.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Khama served as president until his death in 1980, at which point Vice President Masire became president. The opposition gained support in the 1980s and 1990s as the country urbanised and the BDP's rural political base shrank. HIV/AIDS in Botswana became a major political issue as its severity became apparent in the 1990s, and the government took an active role in combatting it.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The Kgabo Commission, part of a corruption controversy involving Vice President Peter Mmusi and BDP Secretary General Daniel Kwelagobe, dominated the politics of Botswana in 1991 and brought about an era of factionalism in the BDP. Mmusi's resignation led to Festus Mogae being chosen as the next vice president. The incident firmly established a growing factional conflict within the BDP: Mmusi and Kwelagobe formed the Big Two while Mompati Merafhe and his supporters—namely David Magang, Bahiti Temane, Roy Blackbeard, and Chapson Butale—were identified by them as the Big Five whom they opposed. Merafhe later took on Jacob Nkate as his closest ally, and they dubbed themselves the A-Team. Although an appeal to the courts backfired against the Big Two and saw them suspended from parliament, their supporters gained power after the 1994 general election. Amid this inter-party conflict, the BNF became a significantly stronger opposition, winning thirteen seats. Kwelagobe aligned with Ponatshego Kedikilwe following Mmusi's death, and they renamed themselves the Barata-Phathi.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "After the BDP's poor performance in the 1994 election, South African academic Lawrence Schlemmer was brought in by the party to provide a political strategy. He recommended replacing the long-standing members of the BDP with newer, non-factional members, with a particular focus on the presidency. Multiple constitutional reforms were enacted in Botswana following a referendum in 1997: the vice president was designated the automatic successor of the president, the voting age was lowered to eighteen, and an independent electoral commission was established. These reforms were championed by Masire, as automatic succession allowed him to anoint a successor.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Masire stepped down as president in 1998, and Vice President Mogae became president. He chose Ian Khama as vice president, and while the two were nominally non-factional, they effectively supported the A-Team faction of Merafhe and Nkate. This caused the factional differences in the party to further escalate. A schism also formed in the oppositional BNF, which led to the creation of the Botswana Congress Party in 1998. Enough assemblymen defected that this new party became the primary opposition, but they were replaced by BNF candidates in the 1999 general election.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Mogae's tenure as president ended in 2008, and Ian Khama, the son of President Seretse Khama, became president. The BDP underwent its first split in 2010 when Khama encouraged the Barata-Phathi faction to leave the party, and they formed the Botswana Movement for Democracy, led by Gomolemo Motswaledi. Freedom House lowered Botswana's rating in the 2010s as a crackdown took place against journalists.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Khama stepped down in 2018, and Vice President Mokgweetsi Masisi became president. He immediately reversed Khama's policies and replaced top officials who had been appointed by Khama. The two former allies quickly became political rivals, and Khama defected from the Botswana Democratic Party. He instead aligned with the newly formed Botswana Patriotic Front in addition to supporting the Umbrella for Democratic Change. This made the 2019 general election the first competitive election in the nation's history, but the BDP remained in power with 52.7% of the total vote, winning 38 of the 57 seats in the assembly. The rivalry significantly escalated when Masisi's pursued criminal charges against Khama for illegal ownership of firearms in 2022, causing Khama to seek asylum in South Africa.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Botswana is a parliamentary republic governed by the Constitution of Botswana. The constitution has been in effect since Botswana became independent from the United Kingdom on 30 September 1966. This makes it the longest uninterrupted democracy in Africa. Botswana operates under a blend of Roman-Dutch law, customary law, and common law. Its seat of government is in Gaborone.", "title": "National government" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The legislature of Botswana is derived from the Westminster system of the United Kingdom, though it has several aspects that distinguish it from this system. Unlike in the United Kingdom, the leader of the legislature has no executive powers, and it is subject to the Constitution of Botswana. Its official function under the constitution is to \"make laws for the peace, order and good government of Botswana\". The legislature is responsible for serving as a check on the power of the executive. The legislature has little power to limit the actions of the executive branch, leading to concerns that it is unable to check executive power.", "title": "National government" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The legislative body of Botswana is the National Assembly, a unicameral body consisting of 63 members. 57 of these members are directly elected by their constituents and six of these members are chosen by the National Assembly. The President of Botswana and the Speaker of the National Assembly are ex officio members. For a bill to become a law, it must be approved by the National Assembly and by the president. The assembly uses a question time procedure to obtain information.", "title": "National government" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The Ntlo ya Dikgosi is an advisory body established by the constitution. Its members include eight chiefs of the Tswana people, five members appointed by the president, and 22 members chosen by the eight chiefs. Any bill that affects the constitution or traditional tribal laws must be referred to the Ntlo ya Dikgosi, where it reads the bill and passes a resolution stating its position on the bill. It has no legislative powers of its own.", "title": "National government" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The executive branch of Botswana is headed by the President of Botswana, who serves as both the head of state and head of government. The president is indirectly elected by members of parliament, and the position has historically been associated with a major tribe. The executive is the strongest branch of government in Botswana, and the president wields significant power, effectively heading the legislative branch of government as well. The judiciary is the only de facto check on the president's power. The president has the power to veto legislation by refusing to sign it, which returns the legislation to the National Assembly. The president is also the commander-in-chief of the nation's military. The Vice-President of Botswana and the Cabinet of Botswana operate underneath the President of Botswana. The president chooses the vice president and the members of the cabinet from the members of parliament.", "title": "National government" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "The highest court of Botswana is the Court of Appeal, which is constituted under section 99 of these Constitution and consists of a President and such number of Justices of Appeal as may be prescribed by Parliament. There are currently eight judges of the Court of Appeal, who are all expatriates drawn from different parts of the Commonwealth. To date, no Motswana has ever been appointed to the Court of Appeal.", "title": "National government" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "The High Court is a superior court of record with unlimited original jurisdiction to hear and determine any criminal and civil cases under any law. The High Court is constituted under section 95 of the Constitution, and consists of a Chief Justice and such number of other judges of the High Court as may be prescribed by Parliament. There are currently sixteen permanent judges of the High Court. Until 1992, the judges of the High Court were expatriate judges who were appointed on short-term contracts of two to three years. In 1992 the first citizen judges were appointed to the bench. There are three High Court divisions in Lobatse, Gaborone and Francistown.", "title": "National government" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Most cases are settled by customary courts, which are presided over by tribal chiefs. These courts are often preferred by the community due to their relative simplicity. There are also Magistrates' Courts in Botswana. These courts are subordinate to the High Court and hear a range of civil, criminal and family law matters. There are nineteen Magistrates' Courts in the country, with fifty magistrates of whom seventeen are expatriate.", "title": "National government" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Botswana's government is centralised, and the powers of local government are determined by national law. Local government is authorised under the Local Government (District Councils) Act, 1965. The smallest division of government in Botswana is the local council. Cities in Botswana are under the jurisdiction of a mayor and a city council, which is led by a council chairperson. Smaller towns also have town councils, while rural areas are collected under district councils. These councils are primarily responsible for education, health, roads, water, local development, and general welfare. Local governmental bodies do not collect significant funds, and nearly all local spending is funded by the national government.", "title": "Local and tribal government" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Tribes are led by tribal chiefs, who often have significant influence over the affairs of local government. Chiefs are responsible for chairing kgotlas, traditional tribal meetings of the community, and for presiding over customary courts. Kgotlas predate Botswana's independence and represent the traditional mode of government in which a chief ruled as the first among equals. Tswana chiefs were historically more accountable to the people than in other African societies, as the region's main industry, cattle farming, allowed farmers more mobility and independence than would be provided by growing crops. Tribal land is held and allocated by Land Boards. These Land Boards are made up of members chosen by the tribal community and members appointed by the Minister of Lands.", "title": "Local and tribal government" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Botswana is divided into 28 districts. Each district is under the jurisdiction of a district administration, led by a district commissioner.", "title": "Local and tribal government" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Botswana is a dominant-party state led by the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP). This party was formed by Seretse Khama in 1962 during the nation's movement toward independence, and it has ruled with a majority in every government since. A multi-party system allows several opposition parties to stand for election and seek representation in the legislature. Despite never holding a majority, opposition parties in Botswana wield more power than those of most other African countries, as there are no legal barriers to restrict the creation or growth of an opposition party.", "title": "Political parties" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Historically, the Botswana National Front has been the strongest opposition party, advocating left-wing politics. The opposition in the Botswana legislature has often been fragmented, with several parties competing with one another in addition to challenging the BDP. The opposition has mainly been supported by urbanites, tribes outside of the majority Tswana population, and certain tribal chiefs. Increasing urbanisation has given more strength to opposition parties.", "title": "Political parties" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Factionalism is common in Botswana political parties, and several parties have split from the Botswana National Front, including the Botswana Congress Party that became another significant opposition party after its creation in 1998. Some attempts have been made to create alliances between opposition parties, though none have ever prevented the BDP from achieving a majority in the legislature. In 2019, the Botswana National Front, the Botswana Congress Party, the Botswana Movement for Democracy, and the Botswana People's Party joined together as the Umbrella for Democratic Change.", "title": "Political parties" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Botswana has held regular elections since its independence at five year intervals, all of which have been won by the Botswana Democratic Party. Elections are overseen by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). Elections in Botswana use first-past-the-post voting in which the winner is the candidate that receives a majority or plurality of votes. Botswana is rare among African countries in that its elections have never been associated with widespread political violence.", "title": "Elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "The independence of Botswana's elections have been the subject of scrutiny. While elections are free and opposition parties are unrestrained, the incumbent party has access to other advantages. Prior to the creation of the IEC, the ruling party controlled elections through the Office of the Supervisor of Elections. The creation of the IEC has mitigated this to some extent, though its power to regulate elections is questioned.", "title": "Elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Freedom House considers Botswana to be free with a score of 72/100 in its 2022 Freedom in the World report. It scored high in political rights, though Freedom House expressed concerns regarding the representation of women and minorities and the lack of freedom of information laws. It also scored high in civil rights, though Freedom House expressed concerns regarding freedom of the press and the right to strike. Transparency International has regularly recognised Botswana as the least corrupt country in Africa, and it is often described as comparable to the liberal democracies of Western Europe. One potential issues for human rights in Botswana is the lack of strong checks and balances in the government, which allows the president to exercise wide latitude over policy and arbitrarily curtail free speech. Early focus on public works projects after Botswana's independence rather than militarisation is credited for early legitimacy of the government, permitting stability in the nation's politics.", "title": "Human rights" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Conceptions of human rights in Botswana are shaped by collectivist traditions such as botho rather than individualist traditions. Confrontational approaches to human rights such as protest, strike action, and public condemnation are often seen as uncivil foreign inventions. Activism in Botswana instead focuses mainly on providing goods and services to those in need. Human rights non-governmental organizations are relatively uncommon in Botswana. Among the most active is the Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and HIV/AIDS, which emphasises response to HIV but also addresses other areas such as the rights of women, children, and LGBT people.", "title": "Human rights" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Botswana is an upper middle income country with a mixed economy, and it has one of the strongest economies in Africa. The foundation of Botswana's economic policy was set by the first post-independence government in the 1960s, incorporating a self-sustaining budget system through a series of national development plans. There is significant income inequality in Botswana, particularly between the relatively developed urban areas and the poorer rural areas. The unemployment rate in Botswana was 20% as of 2015. Botswana's dependence on the diamond industry has led to diversification of the economy becoming one of the nation's major economic policy goals throughout its history. Government programs such as the National Development Bank, the Botswana Development Corporation, the Financial Assistance Policy, and the Economic Diversification Drive have been implemented to spur economic growth in other industries, but they have not significantly decreased the nation's dependence on its diamond industry.", "title": "Policy issues" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The economy of colonial Bechuanaland focused on cattle farming, and this was the primary industry for the first decade of Botswana's independence. As most of the nation was involved with this field in some form, there was little cause for class conflict in the predominantly rural population. While land distribution was sometimes an issue, there was enough unclaimed land that cattle farmers could operate as nomads, further reducing disagreement over economic issues. In 1967, diamond deposits were found in Botswana. This incentivised the government to pursue a commodity economy from mining, supplemented with smaller industries such as beef farming, manufacturing, and tourism. The country's economic success is attributed to neoliberal policies of free markets and private property protections, significantly increasing the population's post-independence living standards. Botswana was one of the only sub-Saharan governments that did not engage in significant regulatory or redistributive policy following decolonisation. This, as well as its fiscally responsible management of the diamond industry, led to some of the world's largest economic growth over the following decades. More recent development has emphasised welfare statehood through redistributive economic policy.", "title": "Policy issues" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The president is responsible for the foreign policy of Botswana, overseeing the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Botswana's political and economic success relative to other countries in Africa has led it to play a larger role in regional and global affairs. By the end of the 20th century, Botswana had begun sending financial and military support to neighbouring countries and international organisations. Botswana has emphasised multilateralism in its foreign policy. Its landlocked territory and export-driven economy have incentivised it to maintain strong diplomatic ties with other countries, and it's low population and proximity to unstable governments have caused Botswana to work closely with international organisations for security and resources.", "title": "Policy issues" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "From 1966 to 1994, the countries bordering Botswana were unstable or otherwise hostile to Botswana. It did not establish relations with its largest neighbour, South Africa, during the latter's discriminatory apartheid rule. In its first years, Botswana had no military. The Botswana Defence Force was eventually created in response to regional instability. As South Africa liberalised, Botswana's primary foreign policy concern became the instability in neighbouring Zimbabwe.", "title": "Policy issues" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "For much of its history as an independent country, Botswana practiced realpolitik foreign policy. During the presidency of Ian Khama, it shifted to an idealist foreign policy, in which it routinely criticised governments for human rights violations. During this period, it was often the only member of the African Union to support the International Criminal Court or to condemn human rights violations in autocratic nations.", "title": "Policy issues" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Botswana's relative wealth compared to other countries in the region has allowed for high spending in public services such as education, health, and infrastructure. As of 2014, the Ministry of Education and Skills Development had the largest budget of any government initiative. Approximately 10,000 kilometres of road were paved in the first fifty years of the country's independence, compared to the 50 kilometres that existed before independence.", "title": "Policy issues" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Welfare programs in Botswana are relatively limited and subject to means testing, and there is no national level social security. The country's predominantly arid environment results in droughts becoming a frequent public welfare concern. HIV/AIDS is the most serious healthcare issue in the country, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Botswana is one of the most severe outbreaks in the world. Botswana received less foreign aid when combating the epidemic in the 1990s, allowing it to spread.", "title": "Policy issues" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The economy of Botswana is currently one of the world's fastest growing economies, averaging about 5% per annum over the past decade. Growth in private sector employment averaged about 10% per annum during the first 30 years of the country's independence. After a period of stagnation at the turn of the 21st century, Botswana's economy registered strong levels of growth, with GDP growth exceeding 6–7% targets. Botswana has been praised by the African Development Bank for sustaining one of the world's longest economic booms. Economic growth since the late 1960s has been on par with some of Asia's largest economies. The government has consistently maintained budget surpluses and has extensive foreign-exchange reserves.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Botswana's impressive economic record compared to some of its neighbors has been built on a foundation of diamond mining, prudent fiscal policies, and a cautious foreign policy. Botswana's economy is mostly dependent on diamond mining. Diamond mining contributes to 50% of the government revenue mainly through its 50:50 joint venture with De Beers in the Debswana Diamond Company. It is rated as the least corrupt country in Africa in the Corruption Perceptions Index by international corruption watchdog Transparency International. It has the fourth highest gross national income per capita in purchasing power in Africa and above the world average.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Trade unions represent a minority of workers in the Botswana economy. In general they are loosely organised \"in-house\" unions, although the Botswana Federation of Trade Unions (BFTU) is consolidating its role as the sole national trade union centre in the country.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Although Botswana's economy is considered a model for countries in the region, its heavy dependence on mining and its high rate of HIV/AIDS infection (one in every three adults is seropositive) and unemployment could threaten its success in the future.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Agriculture still provides a livelihood for 70% of the rural population but supplies only about 50% of food needs and accounted for only 1.8% of GDP as of 2016. Subsistence farming and cattle raising predominate. The sector is plagued by erratic rainfall and poor soils. Diamond mining and tourism are also important to the economy. Substantial mineral deposits were found in the 1970s and the mining sector grew from 25% of GDP in 1980 to 38% in 1998. Unemployment officially stood at 21% as of 2000 but unofficial estimates placed it closer to 40%.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Economic growth slowed in 2005–2008 and turned negative in 2009 as a result of the Great Recession, contracting by 5.2%. This was exacerbated by a major global downturn in the industrial sector, which shrank by 30%, Botswana's steep economic downturn contrasted with most other African nations which experienced continued growth through this period.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Some of Botswana's budget deficits can be traced to relatively high military expenditures (about 4% of GDP in 2004, according to the CIA World Factbook). Some critics have criticized this level of military spending, given the low likelihood of international conflict, though these troops are also used for multilateral operations and assistance efforts.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Botswana is part of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) with South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, and Namibia. The World Bank reports that in 2001 (the most recent year for which World Bank data is available), the SACU had a weighted average common external tariff rate of 3.6%. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, \"there are very few tariff or non-tariff barriers to trade with Botswana, apart from restrictions on licensing for some business operations, which are reserved for [Botswana] companies.\" Based on the revised trade factor methodology, Botswana's trade policy score is unchanged.", "title": "Trade" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The main export of Botswana is diamonds. As of 2017 it is the world's second largest producer of diamonds after Russia. Due to Botswana's heavy reliance on diamonds, strong global demand is vital to the health of the economy. Diamond exports provide Botswana's economy with strong supplies of foreign exchange and have offered a basis for industrial development and stimulated improvements in Botswana's infrastructure. However, despite their preeminent role in Botswana's economy, there are concerns that diamond mines are not labour-intensive enough to provide sufficient employment for Botswana's workforce, and this mismatch has been cited as a factor in the country's structurally high unemployment rate.", "title": "Trade" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Two large mining companies, Debswana (formed by the government and South Africa's De Beers in equal partnership) and Bamangwato Concessions, Ltd. (BCL, also with substantial government equity participation) operate in the country. BCL was placed in provisional liquidation in late 2016, following years of loss-making operations, and was placed into final liquidation by the High Court in June 2017.", "title": "Mining" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Since early 1980s, the country has been one of the world's largest producers of gem diamonds. Four large diamond mines have opened since independence. De Beers prospectors discovered diamonds in northern Botswana in the early 1970s. The first mine began production at Orapa in 1972, followed by a smaller mine at Letlhakane. What has become the single richest diamond mine in the world opened in Jwaneng in 1982. The mine was discovered when termites looking for water brought grains of diamond to the surface. Botswana produced a total of 21.3 million carats of diamonds from the three Debswana mines in 1999, and is the highest producer of diamonds by value in the world. The Orapa 2000 Expansion of the existing Orapa mine was opened in 2000. According to Debswana, the Orapa 2000 Expansion project increase the Orapa's mine annual output from 6 million carats to 12 million carats and raised total production to 26 million carats. In 2003, Debswana opened the Damtshaa diamond mine about 220 kilometers (140 mi) west of the city of Francistown. The mine was placed into care and maintenance in December 2015 due to weak global demand but was scheduled to reopen in January 2018.", "title": "Mining" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "In 2008, Australia's Kimberley Diamond Company opened a mine in Lerala, Botswana's fifth mine and the first not operated by Debswana. However, Kimberley shut down the mine in May 2017, citing weak market conditions.", "title": "Mining" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Most (70%) of Botswana's electricity is imported from South Africa's Eskom. 80% of domestic production is concentrated in one plant, Morupule Power Station near Palapye, operated by the Botswana Power Corporation. Debswana operates the nearby Morupule Colliery to supply coal to it. The Morupule mine exports coal to Zimbabwe, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In early 2008, the entire southern African region was hit hard by massive shortages of power, since the region works to share its power resources through the Southern African Power Pool, with most of its capacity coming from South Africa. Botswana has in turn put in place plans to become a net exporter of power to the regional pool, through governmental expansion of the Morupule power station, as well as encouraging private investment in the form of a 4 gigawatt power station by the Canadian greenfield company CIC Energy. In 2012, CIC Energy was acquired by India's Jindal Steel and Power. Jindal Africa currently aims to operate three surface mines in the coalfields of Mmamabula, as well as a power plant. According to the company, \"the mine’s development will meet the demands of 600MW power stations and export region coal markets, with the potential to employ more than 2,000 people.\"", "title": "Mining" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Botswana also produces soda ash through Botash, a joint venture between the government and South Africa's Chlor-Alkali Holdings (CAH) Group. Botash has been operating in the Sua Pan in northeastern Botswana since April 1991. Production of soda ash is estimated at around 300,000 tonnes per annum and is exported to South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.", "title": "Mining" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Tourism is an increasingly important industry in Botswana, accounting for almost 12% of GDP. One of the world's unique ecosystems, the Okavango Delta, is located in Botswana. The country offers excellent game viewing and birding both in the Delta and in the Chobe National Park—home to one of the largest herds of free-ranging elephants in the world. Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve also offers good game viewing and some of the remotest and most unspoiled wilderness in southern Africa.", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "A number of national parks and game reserves, with their abundant wildlife and wetlands, are major tourist attractions.", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The main safari destinations for tourism are Moremi Game Reserve in the Okavango Delta, and Chobe National Park. Botswana is also participating in community-based natural resource management projects by trying to involve villagers in tourism. One example is the village of Khwai and its Khwai Development Trust.", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Botswana was the setting for the 1980 movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, although the movie was mostly filmed in South Africa. The seventh season of The Amazing Race visited Botswana. Tourism has been stimulated by the series of detective novels by Alexander McCall Smith and the American dramatisation that followed them.", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "More than half of Botswana's population lives in rural areas and depends on subsistence crops and livestock farming. Agriculture meets only a small portion of food needs and contributes just 2.6% to GDP as of 2002—primarily through beef exports—but it remains a social and cultural touchstone. Cattle raising dominated Botswana's social and economic life before independence. The Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) has a monopoly on beef production. The national herd was about 2.5 million in the mid-1990s, though the 1995 government-ordered slaughter of the entire herd in Botswana's north-west Ngamiland District, to prevent the spread of \"cattle lung disease\" to other parts of the country, reduced the number by at least 200,000.", "title": "Agriculture" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Botswana produced, in 2018:", "title": "Agriculture" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products.", "title": "Agriculture" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Manufacturing industries in Botswana include food processing, predominantly beef processing, diamond processing, textile and garment manufacturing, beverage making, jewellery making, metals and metal products, soap making, construction materials manufacturing, and glass production.", "title": "Manufacturing" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "There is a growing science sector in Botswana. The number of publications by Botswanan scientists catalogued in international databases increased from 133 in 2009 to 210 in 2014. In 2018, Botswana produced 281 scientific and technical journal articles. The country has one of the highest levels of scientific productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa. The country also has a high-tech industry, being home to a number of information technology companies. In 2020, Botswana's high-tech exports were worth about $16.2 million.", "title": "Science and technology" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Botswana seeks to diversify its economy away from minerals, the earnings from which have levelled off. In 1998–99, non-mineral sectors of the economy grew at 8.9%, partially offsetting a slight 4.4% decline in the minerals sector. Foreign investment and management have been welcomed in Botswana.", "title": "Private sector development and foreign investment" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "External investment in Botswana has grown fitfully. In the early 1990s, two American companies, Owens Corning and H.J. Heinz, made major investments in production facilities in Botswana. In 1997, the St. Paul Group purchased Botswana Insurance, one of the country's leading short-term insurance providers. An American Business Council (ABC), with over 30 member companies, was inaugurated in 1995.", "title": "Private sector development and foreign investment" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Hyundai operated a car assembly plant in Botswana from 1994 to 2000.", "title": "Private sector development and foreign investment" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Botswana seeks to further diversify its economy away from minerals, which account for a quarter of GDP, down from nearly half of GDP in the early 1990s. Foreign investment and management are welcomed in Botswana and, as a result, the financial and services sectors have increased at an exponential rate in the 2000s to replace mining as the leading industry. Botswana abolished foreign exchange controls in 1999, has a low corporate tax rate (15%), no prohibitions on foreign ownership of companies, and as of 2001 had a moderate inflation rate (6.6%).", "title": "Private sector development and foreign investment" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "The government considers private-sector participation as being critical to the success of the country's Tenth National Development Plan (2009–2016) and enhancing the role of research and development as being the most effective way to nurture entrepreneurship and private-sector growth. The government is considering additional policies to enhance competitiveness, including a new Foreign Direct Investment Strategy, Competition Policy, Privatisation Master Plan and National Export Development Strategy.", "title": "Private sector development and foreign investment" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Botswana is known to have vast coal deposits making it possibly one of the most coal-rich countries in the world. Large coal mines, massive coal-fired power plants, as well as a coals to liquid plant (through the Fischer–Tropsch process) to produce synthetic automotive fuel have been planned.", "title": "Private sector development and foreign investment" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "With its proven record of good economic governance, Botswana was ranked as Africa's least corrupt country in the Corruption Perceptions Index in 2020, ahead of many European and Asian countries. The World Economic Forum rated Botswana as the third most economically competitive nation in Africa as of 2002. In 2001 Botswana was once again assigned \"A\" grade credit ratings by Moody's and Standard & Poor's. This ranks Botswana as by far the best credit risk in Africa and puts it on par with or above many countries in central Europe, East Asia, and Latin America.", "title": "Private sector development and foreign investment" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "U.S. investment in Botswana remains at relatively low levels but continues to grow. Major U.S. corporations, such as Coca-Cola and H.J. Heinz, are present through direct investments, while others, such as Kentucky Fried Chicken, are present via franchise. The sovereign credit ratings by Moody's and Standard & Poor's clearly indicate that, despite continued challenges such as small market size, landlocked location, and cumbersome bureaucratic processes, Botswana remains one of the best investment opportunities in the developing world.", "title": "Private sector development and foreign investment" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Due to its history and geography, Botswana has long and deep ties to the economy of South Africa. The Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU), presently comprising Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, and South Africa, dates from 1910. Under this arrangement, South Africa has collected levies from customs, sales, and excise duties for all five members, sharing out proceeds based on each country's portion of imports. The exact formula for sharing revenues and the decision-making authority over duties—held exclusively by the Government of South Africa—became increasingly controversial, and the members renegotiated the arrangement in 2001. The new structure has now been formally ratified and a SACU Secretariat has been established in Windhoek, Namibia. Following South Africa's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Botswana also joined; many of the SACU duties are thus declining, making products from outside the area more competitive in Botswana. Currently, the SACU countries and the U.S. are negotiating a free trade agreement. Botswana is currently also negotiating a free trade agreement with Mercosur and an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union as part of SADC.", "title": "Private sector development and foreign investment" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "Gaborone is host to the headquarters of the fourteen-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC), a successor to the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC, established in 1980), which focused its efforts on freeing regional economic development from dependence on apartheid South Africa. SADC embraced the newly democratic South Africa as a member in 1994 and has a broad mandate to encourage growth, development, and economic integration in Southern Africa. SADC's Trade Protocol, which was launched on 1 September 2000, calls for the elimination of all tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade by 2012 among the 11 signatory countries. If successful, it will give Botswana companies free access to the far larger regional market. SADC's failure to distance itself from the Mugabe government in Zimbabwe has diminished the number of opportunities for cooperation between the U.S. and SADC.", "title": "Private sector development and foreign investment" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Botswana has successfully carried an Action Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour, which was adopted in the period 2006–2007. Free the Children delisted Botswana as a nation harbouring child-labour facilities in 2008.", "title": "Private sector development and foreign investment" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Botswana has a growing financial sector, and the country's national stock market, the Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE), based in Gaborone, is given the responsibility to operate and regulate the equities and fixed interest securities market. Formally established in 1989, the BSE continues to be pivotal to Botswana's financial system, and in particular the capital market, as an avenue on which government, quasi-government and the private sector can raise debt and equity capital. Although the BSE has just under 40 companies listed, it plays host to the most pre-eminent companies doing business in Botswana. These companies represent a spectrum of industries and commerce, from Banking and financial services to Wholesaling and Retailing, Tourism and Information Technology.", "title": "Financial sector" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "To date, the BSE is one of Africa's best performing stock exchanges, averaging 24% aggregate return in the past decade. This has allowed the BSE to be the third largest stock exchange, in terms of market capitalisation, in Southern Africa.", "title": "Financial sector" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Given Botswana's lack of exchange controls, stable currency and exceptionally performing stock market, the financial sector has attracted a host of global investors seeking better returns.", "title": "Financial sector" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Botswana's currency, the pula, is fully convertible and is valued against a basket of currencies heavily weighted toward the South African Rand. Profits and direct investment can be repatriated without restriction from Botswana. The Botswana Government eliminated all exchange controls in 1999. The Central Bank devalued the Pula by 7.5% in February 2004 in a bid to maintain export competitiveness against the real appreciation of the Pula. There was a further 12% devaluation in May 2005 and the policy of a \"Crawling peg\" was adopted.", "title": "Financial sector" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "The recently established Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority (NBFIRA) is responsible for the oversight of all non-banking financial services entities in the country. As of 2005, about 54% of Botswana's population had access to formal or informal financial services, and 43% is banked (with access to at least one formal banking product). The overall access ratio is still low, especially in rural areas, where there are 3.8 branches and 73 ATMs per 100,000 people. Mobile banking services have just started to be offered. In recent years the government and Central Bank have undertaken serious steps to modernize the country's payment system infrastructure. These efforts included the establishment of a code-line clearing system for the exchange of cheques and electronic funds as well as a Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system, including SWIFT connection. The stock exchange implemented a Central Securities Depository in 2007. Remittance Flows for Botswana amounted to US$117 million in 2007, a figure that is higher than the total net value of official development assistance.", "title": "Financial sector" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "Gaborone is host to the headquarters of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC). A successor to the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), which focused its efforts on freeing regional economic development from dependence on apartheid in South Africa, SADC embraced the newly democratic South Africa as a member in 1994 and has a broad mandate to encourage growth, development, and economic integration in Southern Africa. SADC's Trade Protocol, which was launched on 1 September 2000, calls for the elimination of all tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade by 2012 among the 11 signatory countries. If successful, it will give Botswana companies free access to the far larger regional market. The Regional Centre for Southern Africa (RCSA), which implements the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) Initiative for Southern Africa (ISA), is headquartered in Gaborone as well.", "title": "Financial sector" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017.", "title": "Main indicators" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Telecommunications in Botswana include newspapers, radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "In addition to the government-owned newspaper and national radio network, there is an active, independent press (six weekly newspapers). Foreign publications are sold without restriction in Botswana. Two privately owned radio stations began operations in 1999. Botswana's first national television station, the government-owned Botswana Television (BTV), was launched in July 2000. It began broadcasting with three hours of programming on weekdays and five on weekends, offering news in Setswana and English, entertainment, and sports, with plans to produce 60% of its programming locally. The cellular phone providers Orange and MTN cover most of the country.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "One state-owned and one privately owned; privately owned satellite TV subscription service is available (2007).", "title": "Television stations" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Television sets in use:", "title": "Television stations" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Main lines in use:", "title": "Telephones" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Mobile cellular in use:", "title": "Telephones" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Telephone system", "title": "Telephones" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Features:", "title": "ISDB-T" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Internet top-level domain: .bw", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Internet users:", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Internet broadband:", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Internet hosts:", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Internet IPv4 addresses: 100,096 addresses allocated, less than 0.05% of the world total, 47.7 addresses per 1000 people (2012).", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Internet Service Providers:", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "ADSL has been introduced in the following areas: Gaborone, Tlkokweng, Mogoditsane, Phakalane, Francistown, Lobatse, Palapye, Maun, Kasane, Selibe-Phikwe, Letlhakane, Jwaneng, and Orapa.", "title": "Internet" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Transportation in Botswana is provided by an extensive network of railways, highways, ferry services and air routes that criss-cross the country. The transport sector in Botswana played an important role in economic growth following its independence in 1966. The country discovered natural resources which allowed it to finance the development of infrastructure, and policy ensured that the transport sector grew at an affordable pace commensurate with demands for services.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Rail services are provided by Botswana Railways, with most routes radiating from Gaborone. Botswana has the 93rd longest railway network in the world at 888 km, it is one of the busiest railways in Africa. The track gauge is 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) (cape gauge). Botswana is an associate member of the International Union of Railways (UIC).", "title": "Rail transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Botswana Railways run 2 nightly passenger trains, one from Lobatse to Francistown, and the other from Francistown to Lobatse, with stops in Gaborone, Mahalapye, Palapye, and Serule. The passenger train is termed the \"BR Express\" (Botswana Railways). Passenger services were suspended from 2009 to 2016, with the exception of an international link to Zimbabwe from Francistown.", "title": "Rail transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In Botswana, the (Botswana Railways) \"BR Express\" has a commuter train between Lobatse and Gaborone. The train departs to Lobatse at 0530hrs and arrives at Gaborone at 0649hrs. This train returns to Lobatse in the evening, departing in Gaborone at 1800hrs. Arrival time at Lobatse is 1934hrs. The train stops at Otse, Ramotswa, and Commerce Park Halt.", "title": "Rail transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "From the beginning, the BR decided to operate its own sleeping cars, thus building bigger-sized berths and more comfortable surroundings. Providing and operating their cars allowed better control of the services and revenue. While the food was served to passengers, the profits were never result of serving the food. Those who could afford to travel great distances expected better facilities, and favorable opinions from the overall experience would attract others to Botswana and the BR's trains.", "title": "Rail transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Over half of BRs freight traffic is in coal, grain and intermodal freight, and it also ships automotive parts and assembled automobiles, sulphur, fertilizers, other chemicals, soda ash, forest products and other types of the commodities.", "title": "Rail transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Diesel locomotives", "title": "Rail transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "As of March 2009:", "title": "Rail transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Existing", "title": "Rail transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "A-roads are highways and other major roads.", "title": "Road transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "B-roads are smaller distributor roads.", "title": "Road transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Motorways in Botswana have a set of restrictions, which prohibit certain traffic from using the road. The following classes of traffic are not allowed on Botswana motorways:", "title": "Road transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Rules for driving on motorways include the following:", "title": "Road transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "The general motorway speed limit is 120 km/h.", "title": "Road transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Traditionally, road signs in Botswana used blue backgrounds rather than the yellow, white, or orange that the rest of the world uses on traffic warning signs. In the early 2010s, officials announced plans to begin phasing out the distinctive blue signs in favour of more typical signs in order to be more in line with the neighbouring Southern African Development Community member states.", "title": "Road transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The Government of Botswana is building three interchanges along K.T Motsete Drive (Western Bypass) in Gaborone. This project started in August 2019, and deadline date is set 2022.", "title": "Road transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The Kazungula Bridge in Kazungula and the Okavango River Bridge (constructed 2022) in Mohembo are the two longest bridges.", "title": "Road transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "In most parts of Botswana, there are many taxicabs of various colours and styles. Botswana has no limitation in taxicab design, so each taxicab company adopts its own design.", "title": "Mass transit by road" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Minibus taxis, also known as Combi, are the predominant form of transport for people in urban areas of Botswana. Most of them are found within cities, towns, major villages, and even the least populated areas.", "title": "Mass transit by road" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "They also have their own minibus station within a particular area; only transporting people within that specific area using different and unique routes. This is due to their availability and affordability to the public.", "title": "Mass transit by road" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Most minibus taxis do not have a specific departure time that is allocated by the state and most of them have 15-seaters. The minibuses are owned and operated by many individual minibus owners.", "title": "Mass transit by road" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Coach buses are used for longer-distance services within and outside Botswana. These are normally operated by private companies and are the only buses that have departure times allocated by the Ministry of Transport. Coach buses have multiple departures, routes, and stations all over Botswana.", "title": "Mass transit by road" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "The Kazungula Ferry was a pontoon ferry that crossed the 400-metre-wide (1,300 ft) Zambezi River between Botswana and Zambia.", "title": "Water transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "In 2004 there were an estimated 85 airports, 10 of which (as of 2005), were paved. The country's main international airport is Sir Seretse Khama International Airport in Gaborone. The government-owned Air Botswana operates scheduled flights to Francistown, Gaborone, Maun, and Selebi-Phikwe. There is international service to Johannesburg, South Africa; Mbabane, Eswatini; and Harare, Zimbabwe. A new international airport near Gaborone was opened in 1984. Air passengers arriving to and departing from Botswana during 2003 totalled about 183,000.", "title": "Aviation" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Botswana has 4 international airports.", "title": "Aviation" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Botswana has many pedestrian elevated walkways at different places.", "title": "Pedestrian elevated walkways" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "", "title": "Water pipelines" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "NSC is a pipeline in Botswana that carries raw water, south for a distance of 360 kilometres (220 mi) to the capital city of Gaborone. It was done in phases. However, phase 1 was completed in 2000.", "title": "Water pipelines" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Phase 2 of the NSC, still under construction, will duplicate the pipeline to carry water from the Dikgatlhong Dam, which was completed in 2012.", "title": "Water pipelines" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "A proposed extension to deliver water from the Zambezi would add another 500 to 520 kilometres (310 to 320 mi) to the total pipeline length.", "title": "Water pipelines" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "The Lesotho-Botswana Water Transfer is an ongoing project which is expected to provide two hundred million cubic meters per year to transfer water to the south-eastern parts of Botswana.", "title": "Water pipelines" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "The scheme involves the supply of water to Gaborone from Lesotho via a 600 to 700 kilometres (370 to 430 mi) pipeline.", "title": "Water pipelines" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The project commenced on the 1 August 2018 and is set for completion in June 2020.", "title": "Water pipelines" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The Government of Botswana intends to sign the Sea Water Desalination Project from Namibia. The project is at a tendering stage.", "title": "Water pipelines" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Botswana has put a premium on economic and political integration in southern Africa. It has sought to make the Southern African Development Community (SADC) a working vehicle for economic development, and it has promoted efforts to make the region self-policing in terms of preventive diplomacy, conflict resolution, and good governance.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "List of countries which Botswana maintains diplomatic relations with:", "title": "Diplomatic relations" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Botswana has been a republic in the Commonwealth of Nations since independence in 1966.", "title": "Botswana and the Commonwealth of Nations" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from U.S. Bilateral Relations Fact Sheets. United States Department of State.", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The country of Brazil occupies roughly half of South America, bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Brazil covers a total area of 8,514,215 km (3,287,357 sq mi) which includes 8,456,510 km (3,265,080 sq mi) of land and 55,455 km (21,411 sq mi) of water. The highest point in Brazil is Pico da Neblina at 2,994 m (9,823 ft). Brazil is bordered by the countries of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, and France (overseas department of France, French Guiana).", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Much of the climate is tropical, with the south being relatively temperate. The largest river in Brazil, and the second longest in the world, is the Amazon.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Brazil occupies most of the eastern part of the South American continent and its geographic heartland, as well as various islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The only countries in the world that are larger are Russia, Canada, China and the United States. The national territory extends 4,397.53 kilometers (2,732 mi) from north to south (5°16'10\" N to 33°45'03\" S latitude), and 4,320.53 kilometers (2,685 mi) from east to west (34°47'35\" W to 73°58'59\" W longitude). It spans four time zones, the westernmost of which is equivalent to Eastern Standard Time in the United States. The time zone of the capital (Brasília) and of the most populated part of Brazil along the east coast (UTC-3) is two hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. The Atlantic islands are in the easternmost time zone.", "title": "Size and geographical location" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Brazil possesses the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, located 350 kilometers (217 mi) northeast of its \"horn\", and several small islands and atolls in the Atlantic - Abrolhos, Atol das Rocas, Penedos de São Pedro e São Paulo, Trindade, and Martim Vaz. In the early 1970s, Brazil claimed a territorial sea extending 362 kilometers (225 mi) from the country's shores, including those of the islands.", "title": "Size and geographical location" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "On Brazil's east coast, the Atlantic coastline extends 7,367 kilometers (4,578 mi). In the west, in clockwise order from the south, Brazil has 15,719 kilometers (9,767 mi) of borders with Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana (overseas department of France). The only South American countries with which Brazil does not share borders are Chile and Ecuador. A few short sections are in question, but there are no true major boundary controversies with any of the neighboring countries. Brazil has the 10th largest Exclusive Economic Zone of 3,830,955 km (1,479,140 sq mi).", "title": "Size and geographical location" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Brazil has six major ecosystems: the Amazon Basin, a tropical rainforest system; the Pantanal bordering Paraguay and Bolivia, a tropical wetland system; the Cerrado, a savanna system that covers much of the center of the country; the Caatinga or thorny scrubland habitat of the Northeast; the Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica) that extends along the entire coast from the Northeast to the South; and the Pampas or fertile lowland plains of the far South.", "title": "Size and geographical location" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "In contrast to the Andes, which rose to elevations of nearly 7,000 meters (22,966 ft) in a relatively recent epoch and inverted the Amazon's direction of flow from westward to eastward, Brazil's geological formation is very old. Precambrian crystalline shields cover 36% of the territory, especially its central area. The dramatic granite sugarloaf mountains in the city of Rio de Janeiro are an example of the terrain of the Brazilian shield regions, where continental basement rock has been sculpted into towering domes and columns by tens of millions of years of erosion, untouched by mountain-building events.", "title": "Geology, geomorphology and drainage" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The principal mountain ranges average elevations just under 2,000 meters (6,562 ft). The Serra do Mar Range hugs the Atlantic coast, and the Serra do Espinhaço Range, the largest in area, extends through the south-central part of the country. The highest mountains are in the Tumucumaque, Pacaraima, and Imeri ranges, among others, which traverse the northern border with the Guianas and Venezuela.", "title": "Geology, geomorphology and drainage" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "In addition to mountain ranges (about 0.5% of the country is above 1,200 m or 3,937 ft), Brazil's Central Highlands include a vast central plateau (Planalto Central). The plateau's uneven terrain has an average elevation of 1,000 meters (3,281 ft). The rest of the territory is made up primarily of sedimentary basins, the largest of which is drained by the Amazon and its tributaries. Of the total territory, 41% averages less than 200 meters (656 ft) in elevation. The coastal zone is noted for thousands of kilometers of tropical beaches interspersed with mangroves, lagoons, and dunes, as well as numerous coral reefs. A recent global remote sensing analysis also suggested that there were 5,389 km of tidal flats in Brazil, making it the 7th ranked country in terms of how much tidal flat occurs there.", "title": "Geology, geomorphology and drainage" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The Parcel de Manuel Luís Marine State Park off the coast of Maranhão protects the largest coral reef in South America.", "title": "Geology, geomorphology and drainage" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Brazil has one of the world's most extensive river systems, with eight major drainage basins, all of which drain into the Atlantic Ocean. Two of these basins—the Amazon and Tocantins-Araguaia account for more than half the total drainage area. The largest river system in Brazil is the Amazon, which originates in the Andes and receives tributaries from a basin that covers 45.7% of the country, principally the north and west. The main Amazon river system is the Amazonas-Solimões-Ucayali axis (the 6,762-kilometer (4,202 mi)-long Ucayali is a Peruvian tributary), flowing from west to east. Through the Amazon Basin flows one-fifth of the world's fresh water. A total of 3,615 kilometers (2,246 mi) of the Amazon are in Brazilian territory. Over this distance, the waters decline only about 100 meters (330 ft). The major tributaries on the southern side are, from west to east, the Javari, Juruá, Purus (all three of which flow into the western section of the Amazon called the Solimões), Madeira, Tapajós, Xingu, and Tocantins. On the northern side, the largest tributaries are the Branco, Japurá, Jari, and Rio Negro. The above-mentioned tributaries carry more water than the Mississippi (its discharge is less than one-tenth that of the Amazon). The Amazon and some of its tributaries, called \"white\" rivers, bear rich sediments and hydrobiological elements. The black-white and clear rivers—such as the Negro, Tapajós, and Xingu—have clear (greenish) or dark water with few nutrients and little sediment.", "title": "Geology, geomorphology and drainage" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "The major river system in the Northeast is the Rio São Francisco, which flows 1,609 kilometers (1,000 mi) northeast from the south-central region. Its basin covers 7.6% of the national territory. Only 277 kilometers (172 mi) of the lower river are navigable for oceangoing ships. The Paraná system covers 14.5% of the country. The Paraná flows south among the Río de la Plata Basin, reaching the Atlantic between Argentina and Uruguay. The headwaters of the Paraguai, the Paraná's major eastern tributary, constitute the Pantanal, the largest contiguous wetlands in the world, covering as much as 230,000 square kilometers (89,000 sq mi).", "title": "Geology, geomorphology and drainage" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Below their descent from the highlands, many of the tributaries of the Amazon are navigable. Upstream, they generally have rapids or waterfalls, and boats and barges also must face sandbars, trees, and other obstacles. Nevertheless, the Amazon is navigable by oceangoing vessels as far as 3,885 kilometers (2,414 mi) upstream, reaching Iquitos in Peru. The Amazon river system was the principal means of access until new roads became more important. Hydroelectric projects are Itaipu, in Paraná, with 12,600 MW; Tucuruí, in Pará, with 7,746 MW; and Paulo Afonso, in Bahia, with 3,986 MW.", "title": "Geology, geomorphology and drainage" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Natural resources include: bauxite, gold, iron ore, manganese, nickel, phosphates, platinum, tin, clay, rare earth elements, uranium, petroleum, hydropower and timber.", "title": "Geology, geomorphology and drainage" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "According to organs of the Brazilian government there are 12 major hydrographic regions in Brazil. Seven of these are river basins named after their main rivers; the other five are groupings of various river basins in areas which have no dominant river.", "title": "Rivers and lakes" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The Amazon River is the widest and second longest river (behind the Nile) in the world. This huge river drains the greater part of the world's rainforests. Another major river, the Paraná, has its source in Brazil. It forms the border of Paraguay and Argentina, then winds its way through Argentina and into the Atlantic Ocean, along the southern coast of Uruguay.", "title": "Rivers and lakes" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Brazil's tropical soils produce almost 210 million tons of grain crops per year, from about 70 million hectares of crops. The country also has the 5th largest arable land area in the world. Burning also is used traditionally to remove tall, dry, and nutrient-poor grass from pasture at the end of the dry season. Until mechanization and the use of chemical and genetic inputs increased during the agricultural intensification period of the 1970s and 1980s, coffee planting and farming, in general, moved constantly onward to new lands in the west and north. This pattern of horizontal or extensive expansion maintained low levels of technology and productivity and placed emphasis on quantity rather than the quality of agricultural production.", "title": "Soil and vegetation" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The largest areas of fertile soils, called terra roxa (red earth), are found in the states of Paraná and São Paulo. The least fertile areas are in the Amazon, where the dense rainforest is. Soils in the Northeast are often fertile, but they lack water, unless they are irrigated artificially.", "title": "Soil and vegetation" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "In the 1980s, investments made possible the use of irrigation, especially in the Northeast Region and in Rio Grande do Sul State, which had shifted from grazing to soy and rice production in the 1970s. Savanna soils also were made usable for soybean farming through acidity correction, fertilization, plant breeding, and in some cases spray irrigation. As agriculture underwent modernization in the 1970s and 1980s, soil fertility became less important for agricultural production than factors related to capital investment, such as infrastructure, mechanization, use of chemical inputs, breeding, and proximity to markets. Consequently, the vigor of frontier expansion weakened.", "title": "Soil and vegetation" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "The variety of climates, soils, and drainage conditions in Brazil is reflected in the range of its vegetation types. The Amazon Basin and the areas of heavy rainfall along the Atlantic coast have tropical rain forest composed of broadleaf evergreen trees. The rain forest may contain as many as 3,000 species of flora and fauna within a 2.6-square-kilometer (1 sq mi) area. The Atlantic Forest is reputed to have even greater biological diversity than the Amazon rain forest, which, despite apparent homogeneity, contains many types of vegetation, from high canopy forest to bamboo groves.", "title": "Soil and vegetation" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "In the semiarid Northeast, caatinga, a dry, thick, thorny vegetation, predominates. Most of central Brazil is covered with a woodland savanna, known as the cerrado (sparse scrub trees and drought-resistant grasses), which became an area of agricultural development after the mid-1970s. In the South (Sul), needle-leaved pinewoods (Paraná pine or araucaria) cover the highlands; grassland similar to the Argentine pampa covers the sea-level plains. The Mato Grosso swamplands (Pantanal Mato-grossense) is a Florida-sized plain in the western portion of the Center-West (Centro-Oeste). It is covered with tall grasses, bushes, and widely dispersed trees similar to those of the cerrado and is partly submerged during the rainy season.", "title": "Soil and vegetation" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Brazil, which is named after reddish dyewood (pau brasil), has long been famous for the wealth of its tropical forests. These are not, however, as important to world markets as those of Asia and Africa, which started to reach depletion only in the 1980s. By 1996 more than 90% of the original Atlantic forest had been cleared, primarily for agriculture, with little use made of the wood, except for araucaria pine in Paraná.", "title": "Soil and vegetation" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "The inverse situation existed with regard to clearing for wood in the Amazon rain forest, of which about 15% had been cleared by 1994, and part of the remainder had been disturbed by selective logging. Because the Amazon forest is highly heterogeneous, with hundreds of woody species per hectare, there is considerable distance between individual trees of economic value, such as mahogany and Pereira. Therefore, this type of forest is not normally cleared for timber extraction but logged through high-grading or selection of the most valuable trees. Because of vines, felling, and transportation, their removal causes destruction of many other trees, and the litter and new growth create a risk of forest fires, which are otherwise rare in rainforests. In favorable locations, such as Paragominas, in the northeastern part of Pará State, a new pattern of timber extraction has emerged: diversification and the production of plywood have led to the economic use of more than 100 tree species.", "title": "Soil and vegetation" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Starting in the late 1980s, rapid deforestation and extensive burning in Brazil received considerable international and national attention. Satellite images have helped document and quantify deforestation as well as fires, but their use also has generated considerable controversy because of problems of defining original vegetation, cloud cover, and dealing with secondary growth and because fires, as mentioned above, may occur in old pasture rather than signifying new clearing. Public policies intended to promote sustainable management of timber extraction, as well as sustainable use of nontimber forest products (such as rubber, Brazil nuts, fruits, seeds, oils, and vines), were being discussed intensely in the mid-1990s. However, implementing the principles of sustainable development, without irreversible damage to the environment, proved to be more challenging than establishing international agreements about them.", "title": "Soil and vegetation" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Although 90% of the country is within the tropical zone, the climate of Brazil varies considerably from the mostly tropical North (the equator traverses the mouth of the Amazon) to temperate zones below the Tropic of Capricorn (23°27' S latitude), which crosses the country at the latitude of the city of São Paulo. Brazil has five climatic regions: equatorial, tropical, semiarid, highland tropical, and subtropical.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Temperatures along the equator are high, averaging above 25 °C (77 °F), but not reaching the summer extremes of up to 40 °C (104 °F) in the temperate zones. There is little seasonal variation near the equator, although at times it can get cool enough for wearing a jacket, especially in the rain. At the country's other extreme, there are frosts south of the Tropic of Capricorn during the winter (June–August), and there is snow in the mountainous areas, such as Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. Temperatures in the cities of São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Brasília are moderate (usually between 15 and 30 °C or 59 and 86 °F), despite their relatively low latitude, because of their elevation of approximately 1,000 meters (3,281 ft). Rio de Janeiro, Recife, and Salvador on the coast have warm climates, with average temperatures ranging from 23 to 27 °C (73.4 to 80.6 °F), but enjoy constant trade winds. The southern cities of Porto Alegre and Curitiba have a subtropical climate similar to that in parts of the United States and Europe, and temperatures can fall below freezing in winter.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Precipitation levels vary widely. Most of Brazil has moderate rainfall of between 1,000 and 1,500 millimetres (39.4 and 59.1 in) a year, with most of the rain falling in the winter (between December and April) south of the Equator. The Amazon region is notoriously humid, with rainfall generally more than 2,000 millimetres (78.7 in) per year and reaching as high as 3,000 millimetres (118.1 in) in parts of the western Amazon and near Belém. It is less widely known that, despite high annual precipitation, the Amazon rain forest has a three- to five-month dry season, the timing of which varies according to location north or south of the equator.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "High and relatively regular levels of precipitation in the Amazon contrast sharply with the dryness of the semiarid Northeast, where rainfall is scarce and there are severe droughts in cycles averaging seven years. The Northeast is the driest part of the country. The region also constitutes the hottest part of Brazil, where during the dry season between May and November, temperatures of more than 38 °C (100 °F) have been recorded. However, the sertão, a region of semidesert vegetation used primarily for low-density ranching, turns green when there is rain. Most of the Center-West has 1,500 to 2,000 millimetres (59.1 to 78.7 in) of rain per year, with a pronounced dry season in the middle of the year, while the South and most of the year without a distinct dry season.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Brazil's 26 states and the Federal District (Distrito Federal) are divided conventionally into five regions: North (Norte), Northeast (Nordeste), Southeast (Sudeste), South (Sul), and Center-West (Centro-Oeste). In 2015 there were 5,570 municipalities (municípios), which have municipal governments. Many municipalities, which are comparable to United States counties, are in turn divided into districts (distritos), which do not have political or administrative autonomy. In 2015 there were 10,424 districts. All municipal and district seats, regardless of size, are considered officially to be urban. For purely statistical purposes, the municipalities were grouped in 1990 into 558 micro-regions, which in turn constituted 137 meso-regions. This grouping modified the previous micro-regional division established in 1968, a division that was used to present census data for 1970, 1975, 1980, and 1985.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Each of the five major regions has a distinct ecosystem. Administrative boundaries do not necessarily coincide with ecological boundaries, however. In addition to differences in physical environment, patterns of economic activity and population settlement vary widely among the regions. The principal ecological characteristics of each of the five major regions, as well as their principal socioeconomic and demographic features, are summarized below.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "The Center-West consists of the states of Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul (separated from Mato Grosso in 1979) and the Federal District, where Brasília is located, the national capital. Until 1988 Goiás State included the area that then became the state of Tocantins in the North.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "The Center-West has 1,612,077 square kilometers (622,426 sq mi) and covers 18.9% of the national territory. Its main biome is the cerrado, the tropical savanna in which natural grassland is partly covered with twisted shrubs and small trees. The cerrado was used for low-density cattle-raising in the past but is now also used for soybean production. There are gallery forests along the rivers and streams and some larger areas of forest, most of which have been cleared for farming and livestock. In the north, the cerrado blends into tropical forest. It also includes the Pantanal wetlands in the west, known for their wildlife, especially aquatic birds and caimans. In the early 1980s, 33.6% of the region had been altered by anthropic activities, with a low of 9.3% in Mato Grosso and a high of 72.9% in Goiás (not including Tocantins). In 1996 the Center-West region had 10.2 million inhabitants, or 6% of Brazil's total population. The average density is low, with concentrations in and around the cities of Brasília, Goiânia, Campo Grande, and Cuiabá. Living standards are below the national average. In 1994 they were highest in the Federal District, with per capita income of US$7,089 (the highest in the nation), and lowest in Mato Grosso, with US$2,268.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The nine states that make up the Northeast are Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Maranhão, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte, and Sergipe. The Fernando de Noronha archipelago (formerly the federal territory of Fernando de Noronha, now part of Pernambuco state) is also included in the Northeast.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The Northeast, with 1,561,178 square kilometers (602,774 sq mi), covers 18.3% of the national terrest concentration of rural population, and its living standards are the lowest in Brazil. In 1994 Piauí had the lowest per capita income in the region and the country, only US$835, while Sergipe had the highest average income in the region, with US$1,958.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "The equatorial North, also known as the Amazon or Amazônia, includes, from west to east, the states of Rondônia, Acre, Amazonas, Roraima, Pará, Amapá, and, as of 1988, Tocantins (created from the northern part of Goiás State, which is situated in the Center-West). Rondônia, previously a federal territory, became a state in 1986. The former federal territories of Roraima and Amapá were raised to statehood in 1988.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "With 3,869,638 square kilometers (1,494,076 sq mi), the North is the country's largest region, covering 45.3% of the national territory. The region's principal biome is the humid tropical forest, also known as the rain forest, home to some of the planet's richest biological diversity. The North has served as a source of forest products ranging from \"backlands drugs\" (such as sarsaparilla, cocoa, cinnamon, and turtle butter) in the colonial period to rubber and Brazil nuts in more recent times. In the mid-twentieth century, non-forest products from mining, farming, and livestock-raising became more important, and in the 1980s the lumber industry boomed. In 1990, 6.6% of the region's territory was considered altered by anthropic (man-made) action, with state levels varying from 0.9% in Amapá to 14.0% in Rondônia.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "In 1996 the North had 11.1 million inhabitants, only 7% of the national total. However, its share of Brazil's total had grown rapidly in the 1970s and early 1980s as a result of interregional migration, as well as high rates of natural increase. The largest population concentrations are in eastern Pará State and in Rondônia. The major cities are Belém and Santarém in Pará, and Manaus in Amazonas. Living standards are below the national average. The highest per capita income, US$2,888, in the region in 1994, was in Amazonas, while the lowest, US$901, was in Tocantins.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "The Southeast consists of the four states of Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo. Its total area of 927,286 square kilometers (358,027 sq mi) corresponds to 10.9% of the national territory. The region has the largest share of the country's population, 63 million in 1991, or 39% of the national total, primarily as a result of internal migration since the mid-19th century until the 1980s. In addition to a dense urban network, it contains the megacities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which in 1991 had 18.7 million and 11.7 million inhabitants in their metropolitan areas, respectively. The region combines the highest living standards in Brazil with pockets of urban poverty. In 1994 São Paulo boasted an average income of US$4,666, while Minas Gerais reported only US$2,833.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "Originally, the principal biome in the Southeast was the Atlantic Forest, but by 1990 less than 10% of the original forest cover remained as a result of clearing for farming, ranching, and charcoal making. Anthropic activity had altered 79.7% of the region, ranging from 75% in Minas Gerais to 91.1% in Espírito Santo. The region has most of Brazil's industrial production. The state of São Paulo alone accounts for half of the country's industries. Agriculture, also very strong, has diversified and now uses modern technology.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "The three states in the temperate South: Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Catarina—cover 577,214 square kilometers (222,864 sq mi), or 6.8% of the national territory. The population of the South in 1991 was 23.1 million, or 14% of the country's total. The region is almost as densely settled as the Southeast, but the population is more concentrated along the coast. The major cities are Curitiba and Porto Alegre. The inhabitants of the South enjoy relatively high living standards. Because of its industry and agriculture, Paraná had the highest average income in 1994, US$3,674, while Santa Catarina, a land of small farmers and small industries, had slightly less, US$3,405.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "In addition to the Atlantic Forest and Araucaria moist forests, much of which were cleared in the post-World War II period, the southernmost portion of Brazil contains the Uruguayan savanna, which extends into Argentina and Uruguay. In 1982, 83.5% of the region had been altered by anthropic activity, with the highest level (89.7%) in Rio Grande do Sul, and the lowest (66.7%) in Santa Catarina. Agriculture—much of which, such as rice production, is carried out by small farmers—has high levels of productivity. There are also some important industries.", "title": "Geographic regions" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "In contrast to the Andes, which rose to elevations of nearly 7,000 meters (22,966 ft) in a relatively recent epoch and inverted the Amazon's direction of flow from westward to eastward, Brazil's geological formation is very old. Precambrian crystalline shields cover 36% of the territory, especially its central area. The dramatic granite sugarloaf mountains in the city of Rio de Janeiro are an example of the terrain of the Brazilian shield regions, where continental basement rock has been sculpted into towering domes and columns by tens of millions of years of erosion, untouched by mountain-building events.", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "The principal mountain ranges average elevations just under 2,000 meters (6,562 ft). The Serra do Mar Range hugs the Atlantic coast, and the Serra do Espinhaço Range, the largest in area, extends through the south-central part of the country. The highest mountains are in the Tumucumaque, Pacaraima, and Imeri ranges, among others, which traverse the northern border with the Guianas and Venezuela.", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "In addition to mountain ranges (about 0.5% of the country is above 1,200 m or 3,937 ft), Brazil's Central Highlands include a vast central plateau (Planalto Central). The plateau's uneven terrain has an average elevation of 1,000 meters (3,281 ft). The rest of the territory is made up primarily of sedimentary basins, the largest of which is drained by the Amazon and its tributaries. Of the total territory, 41% averages less than 200 meters (656 ft) in elevation. The coastal zone is noted for thousands of kilometers of tropical beaches interspersed with mangroves, lagoons, and dunes, as well as numerous coral reefs.", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "The Parcel de Manuel Luís Marine State Park off the coast of Maranhão protects the largest coral reef in South America.", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Brazil has one of the world's most extensive river systems, with eight major drainage basins, all of which drain into the Atlantic Ocean. Two of these basins—the Amazon and Tocantins-Araguaia account for more than half the total drainage area. The largest river system in Brazil is the Amazon, which originates in the Andes and receives tributaries from a basin that covers 45.7% of the country, principally the north and west. The main Amazon river system is the Amazonas-Solimões-Ucayali axis (the 6,762-kilometer (4,202 mi)-long Ucayali is a Peruvian tributary), flowing from west to east. Through the Amazon Basin flows one-fifth of the world's fresh water. A total of 3,615 kilometers (2,246 mi) of the Amazon are in Brazilian territory. Over this distance, the waters decline only about 100 meters (330 ft). The major tributaries on the southern side are, from west to east, the Javari, Juruá, Purus (all three of which flow into the western section of the Amazon called the Solimões), Madeira, Tapajós, Xingu, and Tocantins. On the northern side, the largest tributaries are the Branco, Japurá, Jari, and Rio Negro. The above-mentioned tributaries carry more water than the Mississippi (its discharge is less than one-tenth that of the Amazon). The Amazon and some of its tributaries, called \"white\" rivers, bear rich sediments and hydrobiological elements. The black-white and clear rivers—such as the Negro, Tapajós, and Xingu—have clear (greenish) or dark water with few nutrients and little sediment.", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "The major river system in the Northeast is the Rio São Francisco, which flows 1,609 kilometers (1,000 mi) northeast from the south-central region. Its basin covers 7.6% of the national territory. Only 277 kilometers (172 mi) of the lower river are navigable for oceangoing ships. The Paraná system covers 14.5% of the country. The Paraná flows south among the Río de la Plata Basin, reaching the Atlantic between Argentina and Uruguay. The headwaters of the Paraguai, the Paraná's major eastern tributary, constitute the Pantanal, the largest contiguous wetlands in the world, covering as much as 230,000 square kilometers (89,000 sq mi).", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "Below their descent from the highlands, many of the tributaries of the Amazon are navigable. Upstream, they generally have rapids or waterfalls, and boats and barges also must face sandbars, trees, and other obstacles. Nevertheless, the Amazon is navigable by oceangoing vessels as far as 3,885 kilometers (2,414 mi) upstream, reaching Iquitos in Peru. The Amazon river system was the principal means of access until new roads became more important. Hydroelectric projects are Itaipu, in Paraná, with 12,600 MW; Tucuruí, in Pará, with 7,746 MW; and Paulo Afonso, in Bahia, with 3,986 MW.", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "Brazil occupies most of the eastern part of the South American continent and its geographic heartland, as well as various islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The only countries in the world that are larger are Russia, Canada, China, and the United States. The national territory extends 4,395 kilometers (2,731 mi) from north to south (5°16'20\" N to 33°44'32\" S latitude), and 4,319 kilometers (2,684 mi) from east to west (34°47'30\" W to 73°59'32\" W longitude). It spans four time zones, the westernmost of which is equivalent to Eastern Standard Time in the United States. The time zone of the capital (Brasília) and of the most populated part of Brazil along the east coast (UTC-3) is two hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. The Atlantic islands are in the easternmost time zone.", "title": "Locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Brazil possesses the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, located 350 kilometers (217 mi) northeast of its \"horn\", and several small islands and atolls in the Atlantic - Abrolhos, Atol das Rocas, Penedos de São Pedro e São Paulo, Trindade, and Martim Vaz. In the early 1970s, Brazil claimed a territorial sea extending 362 kilometers (225 mi) from the country's shores, including those of the islands.", "title": "Locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "On Brazil's east coast, the Atlantic coastline extends 7,367 kilometers (4,578 mi). In the west, in clockwise order from the south, Brazil has 15,719 kilometers (9,767 mi) of borders with Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana (overseas department of France). The only South American countries with which Brazil does not share borders are Chile and Ecuador. A few short sections are in question, but there are no true major boundary controversies with any of the neighboring countries. Brazil has the 10th largest Exclusive Economic Zone of 3,830,955 km (1,479,140 sq mi).", "title": "Locations" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The politics of Brazil take place in a framework of a federal presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. The political and administrative organization of Brazil comprises the federal government, the 26 states and a federal district, and the municipalities.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The federal government exercises control over the central government and is divided into three independent branches: executive, legislative and judicial. Executive power is exercised by the President, advised by a cabinet. Legislative power is vested upon the National Congress, a two-chamber legislature comprising the Federal Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Judicial power is exercised by the judiciary, consisting of the Supreme Federal Court, the Superior Court of Justice and other Superior Courts, the National Justice Council and the Regional Federal Courts.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The states are autonomous sub-national entities with their own governments that, together with the other federal units, form the Federative Republic of Brazil. Currently, Brazil is divided politically and administratively into 27 federal units, being 26 states and one federal district. The executive power is exercised by a governor elected to a four-year term. The judiciary is exercised by courts of first and second instance addressing the common justice. Each state has a unicameral legislature with deputies who vote on state laws. The Constitution of Brazil knows also two elements of direct democracy, stated in Article 14. The legislative assemblies supervise the activities of the Executive power of the states and municipalities.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The municipalities are minor federal units of the Federative Republic of Brazil. Each municipality has an autonomous local government, comprising a mayor, directly elected by the people to a four-year term, and a legislative body, also directly elected by the people.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Brazil has an unrestricted multiparty system with a large number of political parties. Some parties lack ideological consistency and it is common for congressmen to switch parties, weakening electoral coalitions. At same time, the high number of political parties makes the Executive need to gather alliances of different political parties must piece together diverse and often ideologically incoherent coalitions to pass legislation (this is known as coalition presidentialism). The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index rated Brazil as a \"flawed democracy\" in 2019 and 2020.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Brazil has had seven constitutions:", "title": "Constitution" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "According to sociologist Marcelo Ridenti, Brazilian politics is divided between internationalist liberals and statist nationalists. The first group consists of politicians arguing that internationalization of the economy is essential for the development of the country, while the latter rely on interventionism, and protection of state enterprises. According to Ridenti, who cites the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration as an example of the first group and the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration as an example of the second, \"we have it cyclically\".", "title": "Political parties and elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Lula's Workers' Party tended to the statist nationalist side, although there are privatizing forces within his party and government, while Cardoso's Social Democratic Party tended to favor the international private market side by taking neoliberal policies. Lula compares himself with Getúlio Vargas, Juscelino Kubitschek and João Goulart, presidents seen as statist nationalists.", "title": "Political parties and elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "As of May 2017, 16,668,589 Brazilians were affiliated with a political party. The largest parties are MDB (which accounts for 14.4% of affiliated voters), the PT (9.5% of affiliated voters), and PSDB (8.7% of affiliated voters).", "title": "Political parties and elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "In 2020, the scenario is that the country has more than 30 active political parties, and only one of them defines itself as a right-wing party (PL), with a clear political imbalance. The country has several far-left parties like PSOL, PCO, PSTU, PCB, UP, PCdoB, left parties like PT, PSB, PDT, PV, Rede and Solidariedade and center-left like PSDB, PMN and Cidadania. Ten parties declare themselves as the center: MDB, PSD, Agir, DC, PROS, Avante, Patriota, Podemos and PMB. Five parties declare themselves as center-right: Brazil Union, PTB, Progressistas, PSC, PRTB and Republicanos. The only party that claims to be purely liberal, without further consideration, is Novo. When asked about their ideological spectrum, Brazilian parties tend to give obtuse and non-conclusive answers on the subject.", "title": "Political parties and elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Brazil is a federal presidential constitutional republic, based on representative democracy. The federal government has three independent branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. Executive power is exercised by the executive branch, headed by the President, advised by a Cabinet. The President is both the head of state and the head of government. Legislative power is vested upon the National Congress, a two-chamber legislature comprising the Federal Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Judicial power is exercised by the judiciary, consisting of the Supreme Federal Court, the Superior Court of Justice and other Superior Courts, the National Justice Council and the Regional Federal Courts.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "The 26 Brazilian states are semi-autonomous self-governing entities organized with complete administration branches, relative financial independence and their own set of symbols, similar to those owned by the country itself. Despite their relative autonomy they all have the same model of administration, as set by the Federal Constitution.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "States hold elections every four years and exercise a considerable amount of power. The 1988 constitution allows states to keep their own taxes, set up State Houses, and mandates regular allocation of a share of the taxes collected locally by the federal government.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "The Executive role is held by the Governador (Governor) and his appointed Secretários (Secretaries); the Legislative role is held by the Assembléia Legislativa (Legislative Assembly); and the Judiciary role, by the Tribunal de Justiça (Justice Tribunal). The governors and the members of the assemblies are elected, but the members of the Judiciary are appointed by the governor from a list provided by the current members of the State Law Court containing only judges (these are chosen by merit in exams open to anyone with a law degree). The name chosen by the governor must be approved by the Assembly before inauguration. The 1988 Constitution has granted the states the greatest amount of autonomy since the Old Republic.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Each of the 26 state governors must achieve more than 50% of the vote, including a second round run-off between the top two candidates if necessary. In contrast to the federal level, state legislatures are unicameral, although the deputies are elected through similar means, involving an open-list system in which the state serves as one constituency. State level elections occur at the same time as those for the presidency and Congress. In 2002, candidates from eight different parties won the gubernatorial contest while 28 parties are represented in the country's state legislatures. The last set of elections took place in 2006.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Brazil has no clear distinction between towns and cities (in effect, the Portuguese word cidade means both). The only possible difference is regarding the municipalities that have a court of first instance and those that do not. The former are called Sedes de Comarca (seats of a comarca, which is the territory under the rule of that court). Other than that, only size and importance differs one from another.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The municipality (município) is a territory comprising one urban area, the sede (seat), from which it takes the name, and several other minor urban or rural areas, the distritos (districts). The seat of a municipality must be the most populous urban area within it; when another urban area grows too much it usually splits from the original municipality to form another one.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "A municipality is relatively autonomous: it enacts its own \"constitution\", which is called organic law (Lei Orgânica), and it is allowed to collect taxes and fees, to maintain a municipal police force (albeit with very restricted powers), to pass laws on any matter that do not contradict either the state or the national constitutions, and to create symbols for itself (like a flag, an anthem and a coat-of-arms). However, not all municipalities exercise all of this autonomy. For instance, only a few municipalities keep local police forces, some of them do not collect some taxes (to attract investors or residents) and many of them do not have a flag (although they are all required to have a coat-of-arms).", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Municipalities are governed by an elected prefeito (Mayor) and a unicameral Câmara de Vereadores (Councillors' Chamber). In municipalities with more than 200,000 voters, the Mayor must be elected by more than 50% of the valid vote. The executive power is called Prefeitura.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Brazilian municipalities can vary widely in area and population. The municipality of Altamira, in the State of Pará, with 161,445.9 square kilometres of area, is larger than many countries in the world. Several Brazilian municipalities have over 1,000,000 inhabitants, with São Paulo, at more than 9,000,000, being the most populous.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Until 1974 Brazil had one state-level municipality, the State of Guanabara, now merged with the State of Rio de Janeiro, which comprised the city of Rio de Janeiro solely.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "The Federal District is an anomalous unit of the federation, as it is not organized in the same manner as a municipality, does not possess the same autonomy as a state (though usually ranked among them), and is closely related to the central power.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "It is considered a single and indivisible entity, constituted by the seat, Brasília and some of the satellite cities. Brasília and the satellite cities are governed by the Regional Administrators individually and as a whole are governed by the Governor of the Federal District.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Throughout its modern history, Brazil has struggled to build a democratic and egalitarian society because of its origins as a plantation colony and the strong influence of slavery.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "In 1822 the Prince Pedro de Alcântara, son of King John VI of Portugal, proclaimed independence. He was the first Emperor (Pedro I) until his abdication in 1831 in favor of his elder son. Due to the son's age (five years) a regency was established and the country had its first elections, though voting was restricted to a minority of the population.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "In 1889, Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca declared the republic, by a coup d'état.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "When the republic succeeded the empire, Auguste Comte's motto \"Order and Progress\" appeared on the flag of the Republic and the 1891 Constitution was inspired by Auguste Comte's Course of Positive Philosophy and System of Positive Politics. The Republic's beginnings were marked by \"coronelism\", an equivalent of the caudillism of the Spanish-speaking countries. The \"old republic\" (1889-1930) is also known as the \"oligarchic republic\".", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Until 1930, the Brazilian republic was formally a democracy, although the power was concentrated in the hands of powerful land owners.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "In 1930, a bloodless coup led Getúlio Vargas to power. For about 15 years, he controlled the country's politics, with a brief three-year constitutional interregnum from 1934 to 1937. A longer, heavier regime, the Estado Novo had loose ties with European fascism and spanned the years 1938 to 1945.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Like most of Latin America, Brazil experienced times of political instability after the Second World War. When Vargas was ousted from the presidency in another bloodless coup d'état, in 1945, a new and modern constitution was passed and the country had its first experience with an effective and widespread democracy. But the mounting tension between populist politicians (like Vargas himself and, later, Jânio Quadros) and the right led to a crisis that ultimately brought up the military coup d'état in 1964, now known, through declassified documents, to have been supported by the American Central Intelligence Agency.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "In 1964 a military-led coup d'état deposed the democratically elected president of Brazil, João Goulart. Between 1964 and 1985, Brazil was governed by the military, with a two-party system that comprised a pro-government National Renewal Alliance Party (ARENA) and an opposition Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB). Thousands of politicians (including former president Juscelino Kubitschek) had their political rights suspended, and military-sanctioned indirect elections were held for most elected positions until political liberalization during the government of João Figueiredo.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "In 1985, the military were defeated in an election according to the scheme they had set up as a consequence of the loss of political support among the elites. The opposition candidate, Tancredo Neves, was elected president, but died of natural causes before he was able to take office. Fearing a political vacuum that might stifle the democratic effort, Neves' supporters urged vice-president, José Sarney to take the oath and govern the country. Tancredo Neves had said that his election and the demise of military régime would create a \"New Republic\" and Sarney's term of government is often referred to by this name.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "Sarney's government was disastrous in almost every field. The ongoing recession and the soaring external debt drained the country's assets while ravaging inflation (which later turned into hyperinflation) demonetized the currency and prevented any stability. In an attempt to revolutionize the economy and defeat inflation, Sarney carried on an ambitious \"heterodox\" economic plan (Cruzado) in 1986, which included price controls, default on the external debts and reduction of salaries. The plan seemed successful for some months, but it soon caused wholesale shortages of consumer goods (especially of easily exportable goods like meat, milk, automobiles, grains, sugar and alcohol) and the appearance of a black market in which such goods were sold for higher prices. Buoyed by the ensuing popularity from the apparent success of the plan, Sarney secured the largest electoral win in Brazilian history; the party he had just joined, Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), won in 26 out of 27 states and in more than 3,000 municipalities. Just after the elections, Sarney's \"corrections\" to the economy failed to control inflation and the public perception that he had used an artificial control of inflation to win the elections proved to be his undoing. His popularity never recovered and he was plagued by vehement criticism from most sectors of society until the end of his term. Despite popular rejection, Sarney managed to extend his term from four to five years, and exerted pressure on the Constitutional Assembly that was drafting the new constitution to abort the adoption of Parliamentarism.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "In 1989 Fernando Collor de Mello was elected president for the term from 1990 to 1994. The elections were marked by unanimous condemnation of José Sarney, with all candidates trying to keep distance from him.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Collor made some very bold statements, like saying that the Brazilian industry (of which the Brazilians used to be very proud) was mostly obsolete and polluting or that defaulting the debt was equal to not paying the rent. He also took quite revolutionary measures, like reducing the number of ministries to only 12 and naming Zélia Cardoso de Mello Minister of Economy or removing existing barriers to importing of goods.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "His inflation control plan was based on an attempt to control prices and a complicated currency conversion process that prevented people from cashing their bank accounts for 18 months.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "All of this made him quite unpopular and denied him support in the parliament that he needed since his own party held few seats. At the beginning of his third year in office, he resigned as a result of in a huge corruption scandal. The charges against him would later be dropped, some on mere technicalities, some for actually being irrelevant or false.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Collor desperately tried to resist impeachment by rallying the support of the youth and of the lower classes, but his call for help was answered by massive popular demonstrations, led mostly by students, demanding his resignation.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "In 1992, the vice-president, Itamar Franco, took office as president and managed to evade the most feared consequences of Collor's downfall. He had to face a country with hyper-inflation, high levels of misery and unemployment. Far-left organizations were trying to turn the anti-Collor campaign into a wider revolutionary fight to overthrow the regime. Itamar finally granted full powers to his Minister of Economy, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, so the minister could launch the Plano Real, a new economic plan that seemed to be just the same as the many unsuccessful plans launched by Sarney, Collor and their military predecessor. But the Real was a success because of Rubens Ricupero and essentially because of Ciro Gomes, according to Itamar Franco himself, and terminated inflation in a few months.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "In 1994, Cardoso with Ricupero, Ciro Gomes and others launched their Plano Real, a successful economic reform that managed to permanently rid the country of the excessive inflation that had plagued it for more than forty years. The plan consisted of replacing the discredited old currency (cruzeiro and cruzeiro real) and pegging its value temporarily to the United States dollar. Inflation – which had become a fact of Brazilian life – was cut dramatically, a change that the Brazilians took years to get used to. Because of the success of Plano Real, Cardoso was chosen by his party to run for president and, with the strong support of Franco, eventually won, beating Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had emerged as the favorite only one year earlier.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "Cardoso's term was marked by other major changes in Brazilian politics and economy. Public services and state-owned companies were privatized (some for values supposedly too cheap according to his adversaries), the strong real made it easy to import goods, forcing Brazilian industry to modernize and compete (which had the side effect of causing many of them to be bought by foreign companies). During his first term, a constitutional amendment was passed to enable a sitting Executive chief to run for re-election, after which he again beat Lula in 1998.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "In 2002, at his fourth attempt, Lula was elected president. In part his victory was derived from the significant unpopularity of Cardoso's second term, which failed to address economic inequality, and to an extent from a softening of his and the party's radical stance, including a vice-presidential candidate from the Liberal Party, acceptance of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreement from the previous government administration, and a line of discourse friendly to the financial markets.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "Despite some achievements in solving part of the country's biggest problems, his term was plagued by multiple corruption scandals that rocked his cabinet, forcing some members to resign their posts.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "In 2006 Lula regained part of his popularity and ran for re-election. After almost winning on the first round, he won the run-off against Geraldo Alckmin from the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), by a margin of 20 million votes.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "In 2010, Lula's handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff, was elected to the Presidency.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "In 2011, Rousseff became the first woman to be elected president of Brazil.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "In 2015 and 2016, many demonstrations were held against Rousseff demanding for her to be impeached because of corruption scandals. According to studies by the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics (Ibope), 70-80% of demonstrators questioned supported harsher sentences for criminal offences, and a reduction of the age of criminal responsibility to 16. Between 2010 and 2016, support for the death penalty increased from 31% to 49%, and the number of people declaring themselves conservative from 49% to 59%.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "The decline in poverty and the development of the middle class during the Lula years also allowed right-wing parties to address broader segments of the electorate on economic issues. \"The new lower middle class dream of being entrepreneurs and consumers\" according to the Perseu Abramo Foundation. \"They are very sensitive to the meritocracy rhetoric of the right and the evangelical churches, and less affected by the PT message, which is still aimed at the poor\".", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "The second presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva started on 1 January 2023, when he was inaugurated as the 39th President of Brazil. he was elected for a third term as President of Brazil on 30 October 2022, by obtaining 50.9% of the valid votes in the 2022 Brazilian general election.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "This was a set of investigations carried out by the Federal Police of Brazil, aimed at investigating a money laundering scheme that involved billions of reals in bribes. It resulted in more than a thousand search and seizure warrants, temporary arrests, preventive detentions and bench warrants. The operation started on March 17, 2014 and had 71 operational phases authorized, among others, by the then judge Sérgio Moro, during which more than one hundred people were arrested and convicted. It investigated crimes of active and passive corruption, fraudulent management, money laundering, criminal organization, obstruction of justice, fraudulent exchange operation and receipt of undue advantage. According to investigations and awarded claims, administrative members of the state-owned oil company Petrobras, politicians from the largest parties in Brazil, including presidents of the Republic, presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, and state governors, as well as businessmen from large Brazilian companies, were involved. The Federal Police considers it the largest corruption investigation in the country's history.", "title": "Political corruption" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "Brazil is one of the most dangerous countries for militant farmworkers, with sixty-five murders of farmworkers engaged in conflicts over the right to land in 2017 alone. Between 1985 and 2017, 1,722 activists of the Landless Movement were murdered.", "title": "Political conflicts" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "In 2016, at least 49 people were murdered in Brazil defending the environment against companies or landowners.", "title": "Political conflicts" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The economy of Brazil is historically the largest in Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere in nominal terms. The Brazilian economy is the second largest in the Americas. It is an upper-middle income developing mixed economy. In 2023, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF), Brazil has the 9th largest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world and has the 8th largest purchasing power parity in the world.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "In 2023, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF), Brazilian nominal GDP was US$2.126 trillion, the country has a long history of being among the largest economies in the world and the GDP per capita was US$$10,412 per inhabitant.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The country is rich in natural resources. From 2000 to 2012, Brazil was one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world, with an average annual GDP growth rate of over 5%. Its GDP surpassed that of the United Kingdom in 2012, temporarily making Brazil the world's sixth-largest economy. However, Brazil's economic growth decelerated in 2013 and the country entered a recession in 2014. The economy started to recover in 2017, with a 1% growth in the first quarter, followed by a 0.3% growth in second quarter compared to the same period of the previous year. It officially exited the recession.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "According to the World Economic Forum, Brazil was the top country in upward evolution of competitiveness in 2009, gaining eight positions among other countries, overcoming Russia for the first time, and partially closing the competitiveness gap with India and China among the BRICS economies. Important steps taken since the 1990s toward fiscal sustainability, as well as measures taken to liberalize and open the economy, have significantly boosted the country's competitiveness fundamentals, providing a better environment for private-sector development.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "In 2023, Brazil was the 9th largest country in the world by number of billionaires. Brazil is a member of diverse economic organizations, such as Mercosur, Prosur, G8+5, G20, WTO, Paris Club, Cairns Group, and is advanced to be a permanent member of the OECD.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "From a colony focused on primary sector goods (sugar, gold and cotton), Brazil managed to create a diversified industrial base during the 20th century. The steel industry is a prime example of that, with Brazil being the 9th largest steel producer in 2018, and the 5th largest steel net exporter in 2018. Gerdau is the largest producer of long steel in the Americas, and Vale is the largest producer of iron ore in the world. Petrobras, the Brazilian oil and gas company, is the most valuable company in Latin America.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "When the Portuguese explorers arrived in the 16th century, the native tribes of current-day Brazil totaled about 2.5 million people and had lived virtually unchanged since the Stone Age. From Portugal's colonization of Brazil (1500–1822) until the late 1930s, the Brazilian economy relied on the production of primary products for exports.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "In the Portuguese Empire, Brazil was a colony subjected to an imperial mercantile policy, which had three main large-scale economic production cycles – sugar, gold and from the early 19th century on, coffee. The economy of Brazil was heavily dependent on African slave labor until the late 19th century (about 3 million imported African slaves in total). In that period Brazil was also the colony with the largest number of European settlers, most of them Portuguese (including Azoreans and Madeirans) but also some Dutch (see Dutch Brazil), Spaniards, English, French, Germans, Flemish, Danish, Scottish and Sephardic Jews.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Subsequently, Brazil experienced a period of strong economic and demographic growth accompanied by mass immigration from Europe, mainly from Portugal (including the Azores and Madeira), Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Switzerland, Austria and Russia. Smaller numbers of immigrants also came from the Netherlands, France, Finland, Iceland and the Scandinavian countries, Lithuania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, Latvia, England, Ireland, Scotland, Croatia, Czech Republic, Malta, North Macedonia and Luxembourg, the Middle East (mainly from Lebanon, Syria and Armenia), Japan, the United States and South Africa, until the 1930s.In fact, international mass immigration to Brazil during the 19th century had positive effects on the country's human capital development. Immigrants usually exhibited better formal and informal training than native Brazilians and tended to have more entrepreneurial spirit. Their arrival was beneficial for the region, not only because of the skills and knowledge they brought to the country themselves, but also because of spillover effects of their human capital to the native Brazilian population. Human capital spillover effects were strongest in regions with the highest numbers of immigrants, and the positive effects are still observable today, in some regions.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "In 2007, with a population of over 190 million and abundant natural resources, Brazil is one of the ten largest markets in the world, producing tens of millions of tons of steel, 26 million tons of cement, 3.5 million television sets, and 3 million refrigerators. In addition, about 70 million cubic meters of petroleum were being processed annually into fuels, lubricants, propane gas, and a wide range of hundreds of petrochemicals.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Brazil has at least 161,500 kilometers of paved roads, more than 150 gigawatts of installed electric power capacity and its real per capita GDP surpassed US$9,800 in 2017. Its industrial sector accounts for three-fifths of the South American economy's industrial production. The country's scientific and technological development is argued to be attractive to foreign direct investment, in 2019, Brazil occupied the 4th largest destination for foreign investments, behind only the United States, China and Singapore.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "The agricultural sector, locally called the agronegócio (agro-business), has also been dynamic: for two decades this sector has kept Brazil among the most highly productive countries in areas related to the rural sector. The agricultural sector and the mining sector also supported trade surpluses which allowed for massive currency gains (rebound) and external debt paydown. Due to a downturn in Western economies, Brazil found itself in 2010 trying to halt the appreciation of the real.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Data from the Asian Development Bank and the Tax Justice Network show the untaxed \"shadow\" economy of Brazil is 39% of GDP.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "One of the most important corruption cases in Brazil concerns the company Odebrecht. Since the 1980s, Odebrecht has spent several billion dollars in the form of bribes to bribe parliamentarians to vote in favour of the group. At the municipal level, Odebrecht's corruption was aimed at \"stimulating privatisations\", particularly in water and sewer management.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2021 (with FMI estimates for 2022–2027). Inflation below 5% is in green.", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The service sector is the largest component of the gross domestic product (GDP) at 67.0 percent, followed by the industrial sector at 27.5 percent. Agriculture represents 5.5 percent of GDP (2011). The Brazilian labor force is estimated at 100.77 million of which 10 percent is occupied in agriculture, 19 percent in the industry sector and 71 percent in the service sector.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Brazil is the world's largest producer of sugarcane, soy, coffee, orange, guaraná, açaí and Brazil nut; is one of the top 5 producers of maize, papaya, tobacco, pineapple, banana, cotton, beans, coconut, watermelon and lemon; is one of the top 10 world producers of cocoa, cashew, avocado, tangerine, persimmon, mango, guava, rice, sorghum and tomato; and is one of the top 15 world producers of grape, apple, melon, peanut, fig, peach, onion, palm oil and natural rubber.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "In the production of animal proteins, Brazil is today one of the largest countries in the world. In 2019, the country was the world's largest exporter of chicken meat. It was also the second largest producer of beef, the world's third largest producer of milk, the world's fourth largest producer of pork and the seventh largest producer of eggs in the world.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Agribusiness contributes to Brazil's trade balance, in spite of trade barriers and subsidizing policies adopted by the developed countries.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "In the space of fifty five years (1950 to 2005), the population of Brazil grew from 51 million to approximately 187 million inhabitants, an increase of over 2 percent per year. Brazil created and expanded a complex agribusiness sector. However, some of this is at the expense of the environment, including the Amazon.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The importance given to the rural producer takes place in the shape of the agricultural and cattle-raising plan and through another specific subsidy program geared towards family agriculture Programa de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar (Pronaf), which guarantees financing for equipment and cultivation and encourages the use of new technology. With regards to family agriculture, over 800 thousand rural inhabitants are assisted by credit, research and extension programs. A special line of credit is available for women and young farmers.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "With The Land Reform Program, on the other hand, the country's objective is to provide suitable living and working conditions for families who live in areas allotted by the State, an initiative capable of generating jobs. Through partnerships, public policies and international partnerships, the government is working towards guaranteeing infrastructure for the settlements, following the examples of schools and health outlets. The idea is that access to land represents just the first step towards the implementation of a quality land reform program.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Over 600,000 km of land are divided into approximately five thousand areas of rural property; an agricultural area currently with three borders: the Central-western region (savannah), the northern region (area of transition) and parts of the northeastern region (semi-arid). At the forefront of grain crops, which produce over 110 million tonnes/year, is the soybean, yielding 50 million tonnes.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "In the cattle-raising sector, the \"green ox,\" which is raised in pastures, on a diet of hay and mineral salts, conquered markets in Asia, Europe and the Americas, particularly after the \"mad cow disease\" scare period. Brazil has the largest cattle herd in the world, with 198 million heads, responsible for exports of more than US$1 billion/year.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "A pioneer and leader in the manufacture of short-fiber timber cellulose, Brazil has also achieved positive results within the packaging sector, in which it is the fifth largest world producer. In the foreign markets, it answers for 25 percent of global exports of raw cane and refined sugar; it is the world leader in soybean exports and is responsible for 80 percent of the planet's orange juice, and since 2003, has had the highest sales figures for beef and chicken.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "In the mining sector, Brazil stands out in the extraction of iron ore (where it is the second world exporter), copper, gold, bauxite (one of the 5 largest producers in the world), manganese (one of the 5 largest producers in the world), tin (one of the largest producers in the world), niobium (concentrates 98% of reserves known to the world) and nickel. In terms of gemstones, Brazil is the world's largest producer of amethyst, topaz, agate and one of the main producers of tourmaline, emerald, aquamarine, garnet and opal.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "In 2019, Brazil's figures were as follows: it was the world's largest producer of niobium (88.9 thousand tons); the 2nd largest world producer of tantalum (430 tons); the 2nd largest world producer of iron ore (405 million tons); the 4th largest world producer of manganese (1.74 million tons); the 4th largest world producer of bauxite (34 million tons); the 4th largest world producer of vanadium (5.94 thousand tons); the 5th largest world producer of lithium (2.4 thousand tons); the 6th largest world producer of tin (14 thousand tons); the 8th largest world producer of nickel (60.6 thousand tons); the 8th largest world producer of phosphate (4.7 million tons); the 12th largest world producer of gold (90 tons); the 14th largest world producer of copper (360 thousand tons); the 14th largest world producer of titanium (25 thousand tons); the 13th largest world producer of gypsum (3 million tons); the 3rd largest world producer of graphite (96 thousand tons); the 21st largest world producer of sulfur (500 thousand tons); the 9th largest world producer of salt (7.4 million tons); besides having had a chromium production of 200 thousand tons.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Brazil has the second-largest manufacturing sector in the Americas. Accounting for 28.5 percent of GDP, Brazil's industries range from automobiles, steel and petrochemicals to computers, aircraft, and consumer durables. With increased economic stability provided by the Plano Real, Brazilian and multinational businesses have invested heavily in new equipment and technology, a large proportion of which has been purchased from U.S. firms.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "The World Bank lists the main producing countries each year, based on the total production value. According to the 2019 list, Brazil has the 13th most valuable industry in the world (US$173.6 billion). In the Americas, it is second only to the United States (2nd place) and Mexico (12th place). In the food industry, in 2019, Brazil was the second largest exporter of processed foods in the world. In 2016, the country was the 2nd largest producer of pulp in the world and the 8th producer of paper. In the footwear industry, in 2019, Brazil ranked 4th among world producers. In 2019, the country was the 8th producer of vehicles and the 9th producer of steel in the world. In 2018, the chemical industry of Brazil was the 8th in the world. In textile industry, Brazil, although it was among the 5 largest world producers in 2013, is very little integrated in world trade. In the aviation sector, Brazil has Embraer, the third largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, behind Boeing and Airbus.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Brazil has a diverse and sophisticated services industry as well. During the early 1990s, the banking sector accounted for as much as 16 percent of the GDP. Although undergoing a major overhaul, Brazil's financial services industry provides local businesses with a wide range of products and is attracting numerous new entrants, including U.S. financial firms. On 8 May 2008, the São Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) and the São Paulo-based Brazilian Mercantile and Futures Exchange (BM&F) merged, creating BM&F Bovespa, one of the largest stock exchanges in the world. Also, the previously monopolistic reinsurance sector is being opened up to third-party companies.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "As of 31 December 2007, there were an estimated 21,304,000 broadband lines in Brazil. Over 75 percent of the broadband lines were via DSL and 10 percent via cable modems.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Proven mineral resources are extensive. Large iron and manganese reserves are important sources of industrial raw materials and export earnings. Deposits of nickel, tin, chromite, uranium, bauxite, beryllium, copper, lead, tungsten, zinc, gold, and other minerals are exploited. High-quality coking-grade coal required in the steel industry is in short supply.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The first study into the impact of the Creative Industries on the Brazilian economy was published by FIRJAN. The creative economy in Latin America was termed the \"Orange Economy\" in a publication released by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). This 2013 study valued Brazil's Orange Economy at US$66.87 billion providing 5,280,000 jobs and responsible for US$9.414 million in exports, with the value of creative exports being higher than the US$8.016 million value of coffee exports over the same period.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "A 2021 study into the Intellectual Property Intensive Sectors in the Brazilian Economy was undertaken as part of the National Strategy on Intellectual Property 2021–2030. The study found that 450 of the 673 economic classes could be classified as IP-intensive sectors that collectively employed 19.3 million people. The share of GDP between 2014 and 2016 across these economic classes amounted to R$2.1 trillion reais or 44.2% of GDP over this time.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "In the list of world tourist destinations, in 2018, Brazil was the 48th most visited country, with 6.6 million tourists (and revenues of 5.9 billion dollars). Tourism in South America as a whole is still underdeveloped: in Europe, for example, countries obtain annual tourism figures like $73.7 billion (Spain), receiving 82.7 million tourists or 67.3 billion (France), receiving 89.4 million tourists. While Europe received 710 million tourists in 2018, Asia 347 million and North America 142.2 million, South America received only 37 million, Central America 10.8 million and the Caribbean 25.7 million.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "In 2017, 20 Brazilian companies were listed in the Forbes Global 2000 list – an annual ranking of the top 2000 public companies in the world by Forbes magazine based on a combination of sales, assets, profit, and market value. The 20 companies listed were:", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "The Brazilian government has undertaken an ambitious program to reduce dependence on imported petroleum. Imports previously accounted for more than 70% of the country's oil needs but Brazil became self-sufficient in oil in 2006–2007. Brazil was the 10th largest oil producer in the world in 2019, with 2.8 million barrels / day. Production manages to supply the country's demand. In the beginning of 2020, in the production of oil and natural gas, the country exceeded 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, for the first time. In January this year, 3.168 million barrels of oil per day and 138.753 million cubic meters of natural gas were extracted.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Brazil is one of the main world producers of hydroelectric power. In 2019, Brazil had 217 hydroelectric plants in operation, with an installed capacity of 98,581 MW, 60.16% of the country's energy generation. In the total generation of electricity, in 2019 Brazil reached 170,000 megawatts of installed capacity, more than 75% from renewable sources (the majority, hydroelectric).", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "In 2013, the Southeast Region used about 50% of the load of the National Integrated System (SIN), being the main energy consuming region in the country. The region's installed electricity generation capacity totaled almost 42,500 MW, which represented about a third of Brazil's generation capacity. The hydroelectric generation represented 58% of the region's installed capacity, with the remaining 42% corresponding basically to the thermoelectric generation. São Paulo accounted for 40% of this capacity; Minas Gerais by about 25%; Rio de Janeiro by 13.3%; and Espírito Santo accounted for the rest. The South Region owns the Itaipu Dam, which was the largest hydroelectric plant in the world for several years, until the inauguration of Three Gorges Dam in China. It remains the second largest operating hydroelectric in the world. Brazil is the co-owner of the Itaipu Plant with Paraguay: the dam is located on the Paraná River, located on the border between countries. It has an installed generation capacity of 14 GW for 20 generating units of 700 MW each. North Region has large hydroelectric plants, such as Belo Monte Dam and Tucuruí Dam, which produce much of the national energy. Brazil's hydroelectric potential has not yet been fully exploited, so the country still has the capacity to build several renewable energy plants in its territory.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "As of July 2022, according to ONS, total installed capacity of wind power was 22 GW, with average capacity factor of 58%. While the world average wind production capacity factors is 24.7%, there are areas in Northern Brazil, specially in Bahia State, where some wind farms record with average capacity factors over 60%; the average capacity factor in the Northeast Region is 45% in the coast and 49% in the interior. In 2019, wind energy represented 9% of the energy generated in the country. In 2019, it was estimated that the country had an estimated wind power generation potential of around 522 GW (this, only onshore), enough energy to meet three times the country's current demand. In 2021 Brazil was the 7th country in the world in terms of installed wind power (21 GW), and the 4th largest producer of wind energy in the world (72 TWh), behind only China, USA and Germany.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "Nuclear energy accounts for about 4% of Brazil's electricity. The nuclear power generation monopoly is owned by Eletronuclear (Eletrobrás Eletronuclear S/A), a wholly owned subsidiary of Eletrobrás. Nuclear energy is produced by two reactors at Angra. It is located at the Central Nuclear Almirante Álvaro Alberto (CNAAA) on the Praia de Itaorna in Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro. It consists of two pressurized water reactors, Angra I, with capacity of 657 MW, connected to the power grid in 1982, and Angra II, with capacity of 1,350 MW, connected in 2000. A third reactor, Angra III, with a projected output of 1,350 MW, is planned to be finished.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "As of October 2022, according to ONS, total installed capacity of photovoltaic solar was 21 GW, with average capacity factor of 23%. Some of the most irradiated Brazilian States are MG (\"Minas Gerais\"), BA (\"Bahia\") and GO (Goiás), which have indeed world irradiation level records. In 2019, solar power represented 1,27% of the energy generated in the country. In 2021, Brazil was the 14th country in the world in terms of installed solar power (13 GW), and the 11th largest producer of solar energy in the world (16.8 TWh).", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "In 2020, Brazil was also the 2nd largest country in the world in the production of energy through biomass (energy production from solid biofuels and renewable waste), with 15,2 GW installed.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "Transport in Brazil is basically carried out using the road mode, the most developed in the region. There is also a considerable infrastructure of ports and airports. The railway and fluvial sector, although it has potential, is usually treated in a secondary way.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "Brazil has more than 1.7 million km of roads, of which 215,000 km are paved, and about 17,000 km are divided highways. The two most important highways in the country are BR-101 and BR-116. Due to the Andes Mountains, Amazon River and Amazon Forest, there have always been difficulties in implementing transcontinental or bioceanic highways. Practically the only route that existed was the one that connected Brazil to Buenos Aires, in Argentina and later to Santiago, in Chile. However, in recent years, with the combined effort of South American countries, new routes have started to emerge, such as Brazil-Peru (Interoceanic Highway), and a new highway between Brazil, Paraguay, northern Argentina and northern Chile (Bioceanic Corridor).", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "There are more than 2,000 airports in Brazil. The country has the second largest number of airports in the world, behind only the United States. São Paulo International Airport, located in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, is the largest and busiest in the country – the airport connects São Paulo to practically all major cities around the world. Brazil has 44 international airports, such as those in Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Florianópolis, Cuiabá, Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, Belém and Manaus, among others. The 10 busiest airports in South America in 2017 were: São Paulo-Guarulhos (Brazil), Bogotá (Colombia), São Paulo-Congonhas (Brazil), Santiago (Chile), Lima (Peru), Brasília (Brazil), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Buenos Aires-Aeroparque (Argentina), Buenos Aires-Ezeiza (Argentina), and Minas Gerais (Brazil).", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "About ports, Brazil has some of the busiest ports in South America, such as Port of Santos, Port of Rio de Janeiro, Port of Paranaguá, Port of Itajaí, Port of Rio Grande, Port of São Francisco do Sul and Suape Port. The 15 busiest ports in South America are: Port of Santos (Brazil), Port of Bahia de Cartagena (Colombia), Callao (Peru), Guayaquil (Ecuador), Buenos Aires (Argentina), San Antonio (Chile), Buenaventura (Colombia), Itajaí (Brazil), Valparaíso (Chile), Montevideo (Uruguay), Paranaguá (Brazil), Rio Grande (Brazil), São Francisco do Sul (Brazil), Manaus (Brazil) and Coronel (Chile).", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "The Brazilian railway network has an extension of about 30,000 kilometers. It is basically used for transporting ores.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "Among the main Brazilian waterways, two stand out: Hidrovia Tietê-Paraná (which has a length of 2,400 km, 1,600 on the Paraná River and 800 km on the Tietê River, draining agricultural production from the states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás and part of Rondônia, Tocantins and Minas General) and Hidrovia do Solimões-Amazonas (it has two sections: Solimões, which extends from Tabatinga to Manaus, with approximately 1600 km, and Amazonas, which extends from Manaus to Belém, with 1650 km.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Almost entirely passenger transport from the Amazon basin is done by this waterway, in addition to practically all cargo transportation that is directed to the major regional centers of Belém and Manaus). In Brazil, this transport is still underutilized: the most important waterway stretches, from an economic point of view, are found in the Southeast and South of the country. Its full use still depends on the construction of locks, major dredging works and, mainly, of ports that allow intermodal integration.", "title": "Components" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "Brazil was the 25th largest exporter in the world in 2020, with 1.1% of the global total.", "title": "Exports and imports" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "In 2021, Brazil exported US$280.4 billion and imported US$219.4 billion, with a surplus of US$61 billion.", "title": "Exports and imports" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "The country's top ten export products were:", "title": "Exports and imports" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "The country also exports maize, coffee, cotton, tobacco, orange juice, footwear, airplanes, helicopters, cars, vehicle parts, gold, ethanol, semi-finished iron, among others.", "title": "Exports and imports" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "The main countries to which Brazil exports in 2021 were:", "title": "Exports and imports" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "The country's export model, until today, is excessively based on exports of basic or semi-manufactured products, generating criticism, since such model generates little monetary value, which prevents further growth in the country in the long run. There are several factors that cause this problem, the main ones being: the excessive collection of taxes on production (due to the country's economic and legislative model being based on State Capitalism and not on Free-Market Capitalism), the lack or deficiency of infrastructure (means of transport such as roads, railways and ports that are insufficient or weak for the country's needs, bad logistics and excessive bureaucracy) for export, high production costs (expensive energy, expensive fuel, expensive maintenance of trucks, expensive loan rates and bank financing for production, expensive export rates), the lack of an industrial policy, the lack of focus on adding value, the lack of aggressiveness in international negotiations, in addition to abusive tariff barriers imposed by other countries on the country's exports. Because of this, Brazil has never been very prominent in international trade.", "title": "Exports and imports" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "Due to its size and potential, it would be able to be among the 10 largest exporters in the world, however, its participation in global commercial transactions usually oscillates between 0.5 and 2% only. In 2019, among the ten products that Brazil exports the most and that generate the most value, eight come from the agribusiness. Although still modest, the country's exports have evolved, and today they are more diversified than they were in the past. At the beginning of the 20th century, 70% of Brazilian exports were restricted to coffee. Overall, however, global trade still concentrates its few exports on low-tech products (mainly agricultural and mineral commodities) and, therefore, with low added value.", "title": "Exports and imports" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "The main countries from which Brazil imports in 2021 were:", "title": "Exports and imports" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "Portuguese explorers arrived in 1500, but it was only in 1808 that Brazil obtained a permit from the Portuguese colonial government to set up its first factories and manufacturers. In the 21st century, Brazil became the eighth largest economy in the world. Originally, its exports were basic raw and primary goods, such as sugar, rubber and gold. Today, 84% of exports are of manufactured and semi-manufactured products.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "The period of great economic transformation and growth occurred between 1875 and 1975.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "In the last decade, domestic production increased by 32.3%. Agribusiness (agriculture and cattle-raising), which grew by 47% or 3.6% per year, was the most dynamic sector – even after having weathered international crises that demanded constant adjustments to the Brazilian economy. The Brazilian government also launched a program for economic development acceleration called Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento, aiming to spur growth.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "Brazil's transparency rank in the international world is 75th according to Transparency International.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "Among measures recently adopted to balance the economy, Brazil carried out reforms to its social security (state and retirement pensions) and tax systems. These changes brought with them a noteworthy addition: a Law of Fiscal Responsibility which controls public expenditure by the executive branches at federal, state and municipal levels. At the same time, investments were made towards administration efficiency and policies were created to encourage exports, industry and trade, thus creating \"windows of opportunity\" for local and international investors and producers.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "With these alterations in place, Brazil has reduced its vulnerability: it does not import the oil it consumes; it has halved its domestic debt through exchange rate-linked certificates and has seen exports grow, on average, by 20% a year. The exchange rate does not put pressure on the industrial sector or inflation (at 4% a year), and does away with the possibility of a liquidity crisis. As a result, the country, after 12 years, has achieved a positive balance in the accounts which measure exports/imports, plus interest payments, services and overseas payment. Thus, respected economists say that the country will not be deeply affected by the current world economic crisis.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "In 2017, President Michel Temer refused to make public the list of companies accused of \"modern slavery\". The list, made public yearly since the presidency of Lula Da Silva in 2003, was intended to persuade companies to settle their fines and conform to labor regulations, in a country where corruption of the political class risked compromising respect for the law. The relations of the president-in-office with the \"landowner lobby\" were denounced by dismissed President Dilma Rousseff on this occasion.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "Support for the productive sector has been simplified at all levels; active and independent, Congress and the Judiciary Branch carry out the evaluation of rules and regulations. Among the main measures taken to stimulate the economy are the reduction of up to 30 percent on manufactured products tax (IPI), and the investment of $8 billion on road cargo transportation fleets, thus improving distribution logistics. Further resources guarantee the propagation of business and information telecenters.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "The policy for industry, technology and foreign trade, at the forefront of this sector, for its part, invests $19.5 billion in specific sectors, following the example of the software and semiconductor, pharmaceutical and medicine product, and capital goods sectors.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "Between 1985 and 2017, 11,563 mergers & acquisitions with a total known value of US$1,185 billion with the involvement of Brazilian firms were announced. The year 2010 was a new record in terms of value with $115 billion of transactions. It is worth noticing, that in the top 100 deals by value there are only four cases of Brazilian companies acquiring a foreign company. This reflects the strong interest in the country from a direct investment perspective.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "Here is a list of the largest deals where Brazilian companies took on either the role of the acquiror or the target:", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "According to a search of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in 2011 Brazil had 27 million adults aged between 18 and 64 either starting or owning a business, meaning that more than one in four Brazilian adults were entrepreneurs. In comparison to the other 54 countries studied, Brazil was the third-highest in total number of entrepreneurs. The Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea), a government agency, found that 37 million jobs in Brazil were associated with businesses with less than 10 employees.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "Even though Brazil ranks internationally as one of the hardest countries in the region to do business due to its complicated bureaucracy, there is a healthy number of entrepreneurs, thanks to the huge internal consumer market and various government programs.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "The most recent research of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor revealed in 2013 that 50.4% of Brazilian new entrepreneurs are men, 33.8% are in the 35–44 age group, 36.9% completed high school and 47.9% earn 3–6 times the Brazilian minimum wage. In contrast, 49.6% of entrepreneurs are female, only 7% are in the 55–64 age group, 1% have postgraduate education and 1.7% earn more than 9 times the minimum wage.", "title": "Economic status" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "Brazil's credit rating was downgraded by Standard & Poor's (S&P) to BBB in March 2014, just one notch above junk. It was further downgraded in January 2018 by S&P to BB−, which is 2 notches below investment grade.", "title": "Economic status" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Brazil has both modern technologies in the center-south portion, counting with LTE, 3G HSPA, DSL ISDB based Digital TV. Other areas of the country, particularly the North and Northeast regions, lack even basic analog PSTN telephone lines. This is a problem that the government is trying to solve by linking the liberation of new technologies such as WiMax and FTTH) only tied with compromises on extension of the service to less populated regions.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The Brazilian landline sector is fully open to competition and continues to attract operators. The bulk of the market is divided between three operators: Telefónica, América Móvil, and Oi (controlled by Brazilian investors and Pharol SGPS). Telefónica operates through Telefónica Brasil, which has integrated its landline and mobile services under the brand name Vivo. The América Móvil group in Brazil comprises long distance incumbent Embratel, mobile operator Claro, and cable TV provider Net Serviços. The group has started to integrate its landline and mobile services under the brand name Claro, previously used only for mobile services. Oi offers landline and mobile services under the Oi brand name. GVT was the country's most successful alternative network provider, offering landline services only, until it was acquired by Telefónica in 2015 and integrated into Vivo.", "title": "Telephone system" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "National: extensive microwave radio relay system and a national satellite system with 64 earth stations.", "title": "Telephone system" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "International: country code - 55; landing point for a number of submarine cables, including Atlantis 2, that provide direct links to South and Central America, the Caribbean, the US, Africa, and Europe; satellite earth stations - 3 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean), 1 Inmarsat (Atlantic Ocean region east), connected by microwave relay system to Mercosur Brazilsat B3 satellite earth station (2007)", "title": "Telephone system" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Statistics", "title": "Telephone system" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The history of mobile telephony in Brazil began on 30 December 1990, when the Cellular Mobile System began operating in the city of Rio de Janeiro, with a capacity for 10,000 terminals. At that time, according to Anatel (the national telecommunications agency), there were 667 devices in the country. The number of devices rose to 6,700 in the next year, to 30,000 in 1992.", "title": "Telephone system" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "In November 2007 3G services were launched, and increased rapidly to almost 90% of the population in 2012 and the agreements signed as part of the auction specify a 3G coverage obligation of 100% of population by 2019.", "title": "Telephone system" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "After the auction that took place in June 2012, LTE tests were undertaken in several cities, tourist locations and international conference venues. The first LTE-compatible devices became available in the local market and LTE services was commercially launched in 2013. Under the 4G licence terms, operators were required to have commercial networks in all twelve state capitals which are acting as host cities for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.", "title": "Telephone system" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "5G services were commercially launched in 2020, initially only in a few cities and in DSS mode. In 2021, the regulatory agency Anatel carried out the auction of the 3.5 GHz spectrum, which allowed the operation of 5G in standalone mode (SA). In July 2022, Brasília was the first city to have 5G NR SA made available, with all state capitals being served by the three major carriers by the end of 2022. By July 2023, 753 cities had 5G coverage, which accounts for 46% of the country's population.", "title": "Telephone system" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The mobile market is ruled by 3 companies:", "title": "Telephone system" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Statistics", "title": "Telephone system" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Technology distribution", "title": "Telephone system" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Several submarine cables link Brazil to the world:", "title": "International backbones" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "All these cables have a bandwidth from 20 Gbit/s to 80 Gbit/s, and some have a projected final capacity of more than 1 Tbit/s.", "title": "International backbones" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "List of business and satellites they operate (Brazilian Geostationary Satellites)", "title": "International backbones" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Under the Brazilian constitution, television and radio are not treated as forms of telecommunication, in order to avoid creating problems with a series of regulations that reduce and control how international businesses and individuals can participate. Brazil has the second largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue, Grupo Globo.", "title": "Television and radio" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The Internet has become quite popular in Brazil, with steadily growing numbers of users as well as increased availability. Brazil holds the 6th spot in number of users worldwide. Many technologies are used to bring broadband Internet to consumers, with DSL and cable being the most common (respectively, about 13 million and 9 million connections), and 3G technologies. 4G technologies were introduced in April 2013 and presently are available in over 90% of the country.", "title": "Internet" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Transport infrastructure in Brazil is characterized by strong regional differences and lack of development of the national rail network. Brazil's fast-growing economy, and especially the growth in exports, will place increasing demands on the transport networks. However, sizeable new investments that are expected to address some of the issues are either planned or in progress. It is common to travel domestically by air because the price is low. Brazil has the second highest number of airports in the world, after the USA.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The Brazilian railway network has an extension of about 30,000 km (18,641 mi). It is basically used for transporting ores. Usually, the railway sector was treated in a secondary way in Brazil, due to logistical, economic or political difficulties to install more railways.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The Brazilian railroad system had a great expansion between 1875 and 1920. The heyday of the railway modal was interrupted during the Getúlio Vargas government, which prioritized the road modal. In the 1940s, the railway network was already facing several problems, from low-powered locomotives to uneconomical layouts. In 1957, a state-owned company was created, the National Railroad Network (RFFSA), which started to manage 18 railroads in the Union. Several deficit railways were closed under the promise of state investment in new projects, which did not happen. The actions were centralized in the government until the opening of the market in 1990. So, the National Privatization Plan was instituted, with dozens of concessions being made. However, they ended up concentrating the railways, mainly, in three large business groups, América Latina Logística (ALL), Vale S.A. and MRS Logística. The refurbishment generated an increase in productivity (cargoes transported increased by 30% with the same railway line). However, the main problem was that the reform not only gave away the railway line, but also geographical exclusivity. This resulted in the non-creation of competitive incentives for the expansion and renewal of the existing network. With the State maintaining the opening of new railways a difficult, slow and bureaucratic process, as it maintains the total monopoly of power over this sector, the railways did not expand any further in the country, and the sector was very outdated.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In 2021, a New Framework for Railways was created, allowing the construction of railways by authorization, as occurs in the exploration of infrastructure in sectors such as telecommunications, electricity and ports. It's also possible to authorize the exploration of stretches not implemented, idle, or in the process of being returned or deactivated. With the change of rules in the sector, in December 2021, there were already requests to open 15,000 km (9,321 mi) of new tracks, in 64 requests for implementation of new railways. Nine new railroads had already been authorized by the Federal Government, in 3,506 km (2,179 mi) of new tracks.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Note (*): Light Rail Transit, Light Metro, Tram or Subway-Surface fully or partially operated", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "International rail links exist between Brazil and Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Brazil had a hundred tramway systems. Currently, there are vintage tramways operating in Belém, Campinas, Campos do Jordão, Itatinga, Rio de Janeiro and Santos.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Brazil has more than 1,720,700 km (1,069,193 mi) of roads, of which 213,452 km (132,633 mi) are paved (12,4%), and about 17,000 km (10,563 mi) are divided highways, 6,300 km (3,915 mi) only in the State of São Paulo. Currently it is possible to travel from Rio Grande, in the extreme south of the country, to Brasília (2,580 km (1,603 mi)) or Casimiro de Abreu, in the state of Rio de Janeiro (2,045 km (1,271 mi)), only on divided highways. The total of paved roads increased from 35,496 km (22,056 mi) in 1967 to 215,000 km (133,595 mi) in 2018. The two most important highways in the country are BR-101 and BR-116.", "title": "Highways" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Although Brazil has the largest duplicated road network in Latin America, it's considered insufficient for the country's needs: in 2021, it was calculated that the ideal amount of duplicated roads would be something around from 35,000 km (21,748 mi) to 42,000 km (26,098 mi). The main road axes also have problems because they often have inadequate geometry and constructive characteristics that don't allow quality long-distance flow (non-interference from local traffic and high speed). The Brazilian Federal Government has never implemented a National Highway Plan at the same level as developed countries such as the USA, Japan or European countries, which specifically aimed at inter-regional travel, and which should preferably be served by highways (which would differ from the common duplicated highways by geometric pattern, access control without access to neighboring lots, zero level crossings and returns, prohibition of circulation of non-motorized vehicles such as cyclists, animal traction or human propulsion, as per the Vienna Convention). The Brazilian State, despite some planning efforts, has been guided by a reactive action to the increase in demand (only duplicating some roads with old and inadequate layout) and not by a purposeful vision, directing occupation and economic density in the territory. Another problem is the lack of directing the Union Budget towards infrastructure works: in Brazil there is no law that guarantees funds from the Federal Budget for works on highways and other modes of transport (unlike what happens in sectors such as Education and Health), depending exclusively on the goodwill of the rulers. In the US, for example, the gasoline tax can only be used for transport infrastructure works. Brazil even invested 1.5% of the country's budget in infrastructure in the 1970s, being the time when the most investment was made in highways; but in the 1990s, only 0.1% of the budget was invested in this sector, maintaining an average of 0.5% in the 2000s and 2010, insufficient amounts for the construction of an adequate road network. For comparative purposes, the average investment of the USA and the European Union was 1% between 1995 and 2013, even though they already have a much more advanced road infrastructure than Brazil.", "title": "Highways" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The country has a medium rate of car ownership of 471 per 1000 people, however in comparison to the other developing economies of the BRIC group Brazil exceeds India and China.", "title": "Highways" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The country still has several states where paved access to 100% of the state's municipalities has not yet been reached. Some states have 100% of cities with asphalt access, such as Santa Catarina, which reached this goal in 2014; Paraíba, which reached this goal in 2017, and Alagoas, which reached this goal in 2021 In states like Rio Grande do Sul, in 2020, there were still 54 cities without asphalt access. In Paraná, in 2021, there were still 4 cities without asphalt access. In Minas Gerais, in 2016, there were still 5 cities without asphalt access.", "title": "Highways" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "50,000 km navigable (most in areas remote from industry or population) (2012)", "title": "Waterways" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Among the main Brazilian waterways, two stand out: Hidrovia Tietê-Paraná (which has a length of 2,400 km, 1,600 on the Paraná River and 800 km on the Tietê River, draining agricultural production from the states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás and part of Rondônia, Tocantins and Minas Gerais) and Hidrovia do Solimões-Amazonas (it has two sections: Solimões, which extends from Tabatinga to Manaus, with approximately 1600 km, and Amazonas, which extends from Manaus to Belém, with 1650 km. Almost entirely passenger transport from the Amazon plain is done by this waterway, in addition to practically all cargo transportation that is directed to the major regional centers of Belém and Manaus). In Brazil, this transport is still underutilized: the most important waterway stretches, from an economic point of view, are found in the Southeast and South of the country. Its full use still depends on the construction of locks, major dredging works and, mainly, of ports that allow intermodal integration.", "title": "Waterways" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "The busiest port in the country, and the 2nd busiest in all of Latin America, losing only to the Port of Colón, is the Port of Santos. Other high-movement ports are the Port of Rio de Janeiro, Port of Paranaguá, Port of Itajaí, Port of Rio Grande, Port of São Francisco do Sul and Suape Port.", "title": "Seaports and harbors" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "770 ships (1,000 gross tonnage (GT) (or over) totaling 3,964,808 GT/9,909,094 tonnes deadweight (DWT)", "title": "Merchant marine" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "ships by type: (1999, 2019 and 2021 est.)", "title": "Merchant marine" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The country has the second largest number of airports in the world, behind only the United States. São Paulo/Guarulhos, is the largest and busiest in the country. Brazil has 37 international airports, such as those in Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Florianópolis, Cuiabá, Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, Belém and Manaus, among others.", "title": "Airports" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Most international flights must go to São Paulo–Guarulhos International Airport or Rio de Janeiro–Galeão International Airport. Belo Horizonte is the main international airport outside Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. A few go to Brasília, Recife, Natal, and just recently Fortaleza has accepted international flights.", "title": "Airports" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "As of 2020, Brazil had the eighth largest passenger air market in the world.", "title": "Airports" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Brazilian Armed Forces (Portuguese: Forças Armadas Brasileiras, IPA: [ˈfoʁsɐz ɐʁˈmadɐz bɾaziˈlejɾɐs]) are the unified military forces of the Federative Republic of Brazil. Consisting of three service branches, it comprises the Brazilian Army (including the Brazilian Army Aviation), the Brazilian Navy (including the Brazilian Marine Corps and Brazilian Naval Aviation) and the Brazilian Air Force (including the Aerospace Operations Command).", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Brazil's armed forces are the second largest in the Americas, after the United States, and the largest in Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere by the level of military equipment, with 334,500 active-duty troops and officers. Brazilian soldiers were in Haiti from 2004 until 2017, leading the United Nations Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH).", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The Armed Forces of Brazil are divided into 3 branches:", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The Military Police (state police) alongside the Military Firefighters Corps are described as an auxiliary and reserve force of the Army. All military branches are part of the Ministry of Defence.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The Brazilian Navy which is the oldest of the Brazilian Armed Forces, includes the Brazilian Marine Corps and the Brazilian Naval Aviation.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "18–45 years of age for compulsory military service; conscript service obligation – 10 to 12 months; 17–45 years of age for voluntary service. An increasing percentage of the ranks are \"long-service\" volunteer professionals; women were allowed to serve in the armed forces beginning in the early 1980s when the Brazilian Army became the first army in South America to accept women into career ranks; women serve in Navy and Air Force only in Women's Reserve Corps.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "South America is a relatively peaceful continent in which wars are a rare event; as a result, Brazil hasn't had its territory invaded since 1865 during the Paraguayan War. Additionally, Brazil has no contested territorial disputes with any of its neighbours and neither does it have rivalries, like Chile and Bolivia have with each other. However, Brazil is the only country besides China and Russia that has land borders with 10 or more nations. Moreover, Brazil has 16,880 kilometers (10,490 mi) of land borders and 7,367 km (4,578 mi) of coastline to be patrolled and defended. Overall, the Armed Forces have to defend 8.5 million km (around 3.2 million sq. mi.) of land and patrol 4.4 million km (around 1.7 million sq. mi.) of territorial waters – or Blue Amazon, as the Brazilian Navy calls them. To achieve this mission, significant manpower and funding is required.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Since 1648 the Brazilian Armed Forces have been relied upon to fight in defense of Brazilian sovereignty and to suppress civil rebellions. The Brazilian military also has three times intervened militarily to overthrow the Brazilian government.", "title": "Military history of Brazil" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The Brazilian Armed Forces were subordinated to the Emperor, its Commander-in-Chief. He was aided by the Ministers of War and Navy in regard to matters concerning the Army and the Armada, respectively. Traditionally, the Ministers of War and Navy were civilians but there were some exceptions. The model chosen was the British parliamentary or Anglo-American system, in which \"the country's Armed Forces observed unrestricted obedience to the civilian government while maintaining distance from political decisions and decisions referring to borders' security\".", "title": "Military history of Brazil" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The military personnel were allowed to run and serve in political offices while staying on active duty. However, they did not represent the Army or the Armada but instead the population of the city or province where elected. Dom Pedro I chose nine military personnel as Senators and five (out of 14) to the State Council. During the Regency, two were chosen to the Senate and none to the State Council as there was no Council at the time. Dom Pedro II chose four military personnel to become Senators during the 1840s, two in the 1850s and three until the end of his reign. He also chose seven military personnel to be State Counselors during the 1840s and 1850s and three after that.", "title": "Military history of Brazil" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "It has built a tradition of participating in UN peacekeeping missions such as in Haiti and East Timor. Below a list of some of the historical events in which the Brazilian Armed Forces took part:", "title": "Military history of Brazil" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Brazilian Expeditionary Force, initially composed of an infantry division, eventually covered all Brazilian military forces who participated in the conflict, including the Brazilian Air Force who did a remarkable job in the last nine months of war with 445 missions executed. Offensive: 2546, Defensive: 4.", "title": "Military history of Brazil" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Although no military coups occurred during the 67 years of the Brazilian Empire, the Republican period experienced 4 military coups d'état in the 75 years between 1889 and 1964.", "title": "Military history of Brazil" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "On 10 July 1999, the Ministry of Defence was created, with the abolition of the EMFA and the merger of all three ministries of the Armed Forces (Army, Navy and Air Force) into a singular ministry of the Cabinet.", "title": "Ministry of Defence" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Joint Staff of the Armed Forces is an agency of the Ministry of Defense of Brazil, which centralizes the coordination of command of the armed forces: Army, Navy and Air Force. It was created by Complementary Law No. 136 of 25 August 2010, and has in Ordinance No. 1429 its operating guidelines.", "title": "Ministry of Defence" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Advising the Minister of Defense in the upper direction of the armed forces, aiming the organization, preparation and employment, in order to fulfill its constitutional mission and its subsidiaries assignments, with the goals strategic planning and the joint use of the military services.", "title": "Ministry of Defence" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "It is up to JSAF plan together and integrated employment of staff of the Navy, Army and Air Force, optimizing the use of the military and logistical support in the defense of the country and in peacekeeping, humanitarian and rescue operations; border security; and civil defense actions.", "title": "Ministry of Defence" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The body has its powers and duties according to the Regimental Structure approved by Decree 7.9744, April 1, 2013. Since its inception, the JSAF has worked with the Central Administration of the Ministry of Defence, on the Esplanade of Ministries in Brasilia (DF).", "title": "Ministry of Defence" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "The head of the JSAF is private of a general officer of the last post, active or reserve, designated by the Ministry of Defence and appointed by the president. Their hierarchical level is the same of the military commanders of the Navy, Army and Air Force. Under the coordination of the Joint Armed Forces also operates the Committee of Chiefs of Staffs of the military services.", "title": "Ministry of Defence" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "The current head of JSAF is the Army General Renato Rodrigues de Aguiar Freire.", "title": "Ministry of Defence" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The following are the current commanders of the three defence branches and the Joint Staff chief as of January 2023.", "title": "Ministry of Defence" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "The Army High Command of Brazil is formed by the Army Commander and other army generals in active service. The country current have sixteen active 4-star generals, several of them in command posts. The mission of ACE include the selection of a list of candidates to the post of commander, the prospection of regional and global political situations, among others roles. All Brazilian generals are graduates of the Brazilian Superior War School.", "title": "Brazilian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "The Brazilian Army Readiness Forces (Forças de Prontidão do Exército Brasileiro in Portuguese), is a division of the Army created to be ready for real combat 365 days per year. This division composed of 15,000 infantry troops, paratroopers and armored cavalry brigades is able to operate in real missions of conventional combat, law and order guarantee and interagency operations within the Brazilian territory or as divisional forces abroad led by officers from the General Staff of the Readiness Forces subordinate to the Army High Command.", "title": "Brazilian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "The navy (Portuguese: Marinha do Brasil) has eight bases throughout Brazil.", "title": "Brazilian Navy" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The Brazilian Air Force (Portuguese: Força Aérea Brasileira, [ˌfoʁsaˈɛɾjɐ bɾaziˈlejɾɐ], also known as FAB, [ˈfabi] or [ˌɛfiaˈbe]) is the second-largest air force in the Americas (behind only the United States) and has around 70,000 active personnel. The FAB is subdivided into four operational commands.", "title": "Brazilian Air Force" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "The Aerospace Operations Command is a Brazilian air and space command created in 2017 and is part of the Brazilian Air Force. It is responsible for planning, coordinating, executing and controlling the country's air and space operations. The Brazilian Navy and Brazilian Army also are part of the organization.", "title": "Brazilian aerospace command" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Brazil has the need to patrol its 16,880 kilometers (10,490 mi) of land borders. Since the 1990s Brazil has been relocating its forces in accordance to this national security requirement.", "title": "Troop relocation" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Between 1992 and 2008, the 1st, 2nd and 16th Jungle Infantry Brigades, the 3rd Infantry Battalion, the 19th Logistics Battalion, and the 22nd Army Police Platoon were transferred by the Army from the states of Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul to the Amazon region in accordance with the friendship policy with Argentina. After those redeployments the number of Army troops in that region rose to 25,000. Also relocated from the state of Rio de Janeiro were the 1st and 3rd Combat Cars Regiment, now stationed in the city of Santa Maria, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.", "title": "Troop relocation" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "However, despite those efforts, the presence of the Armed Forces on the border regions of the Brazilian Amazon continues to be sparse and disperse, given the fact that the Army has just 28 border detachments in that area, a total of 1,600 soldiers, or 1 man for every 7 km (4.3 mi) of borders. More redeployments are expected since the states of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo still concentrate over 49,000 soldiers. In May 2008, the Navy announced new plans to reposition its forces throughout Brazil.", "title": "Troop relocation" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "The Brazilian territory corresponds to 47.3% of the South American continent, and its land border is over 16.000 km and 4,5 million km2 of sea territory. With the objective of ensuring Brazil's sovereignty, strategic monitoring and communications projects have been launched in recent years.", "title": "Communications and territorial surveillance" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "The Geostationary Defense and Strategic Communications Satellites or SGDC, are geostationary communication satellites developed by the Brazilian Air Force and the Brazilian Space Agency, created with the objective of operating strategic military, government and civil communications, also offering broadband internet throughout the national territory. The first satellite called SGDC-1, was launched in 2017 and the SGDC-2 has planned to launch in 2022. The Space Operations Center (COPE) was inaugurated in 2020, subordinated to the Aerospace Operations Command, with the objective of operating the satellites.", "title": "Communications and territorial surveillance" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "The Integrated Border Monitoring System (SISFRON) is a border system developed by the Brazilian Army for supporting operational employment decisions, operating in an integrated manner with all defense systems in the country, whose purpose is to strengthen the presence and capacity for monitoring and action in the national land border strip. Was conceived at the initiative of the Army Command, as a result of the approval of the National Defense Strategy in 2008, which guides the organization of the Armed Forces. The SISFRON are deployed along the 16,886 kilometers of the border line, favoring the employment of organizations subordinate to the North, West, Southern and the Amazon military commands.", "title": "Communications and territorial surveillance" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The Blue Amazon Management System, is a surveillance system developed by the Brazilian Navy, in order to oversee the Blue Amazon, the country's exclusive economic zone and a resource-rich area covering about 4,500,000 km (1,700,000 sq mi) off the Brazilian coast. This area is home to a huge diversity of marine species, valuable metallic minerals and other mineral resources, petroleum, and the world's second largest rare-earth reserve. The SisGAAz integrates equipment and systems composed of radars incorporated on land and vessels, as well as high resolution cameras and features such as the fusion of information received from collaborative systems.", "title": "Communications and territorial surveillance" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The Link-BR2 is a datalink developed by the Air Force and the Brazilian defence company AEL Sistemas, this technology allow the exchange of data such radar information, videos and images with other units of the three branches anytime and anywhere, using an advanced encrypted protocol with a high degree of security.", "title": "Communications and territorial surveillance" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is responsible for managing the foreign relations of Brazil. Brazil is a significant political and economic power in Latin America and a key player on the world stage. Brazil's foreign policy reflects its role as a regional power and a potential world power and is designed to help protect the country's national interests, national security, ideological goals, and economic prosperity.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Between World War II and 1990, both democratic and military governments sought to expand Brazil's influence in the world by pursuing a state-led industrial policy and an independent foreign policy. Brazilian foreign policy has recently aimed to strengthen ties with other South American countries, engage in multilateral diplomacy through the United Nations and the Organization of American States, and act at times as a countervailing force to U.S. political and economic influence in Latin America.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The President has ultimate authority over foreign policy, while Congress is tasked with reviewing and considering all diplomatic nominations and international treaties, as well as legislation relating to Brazilian foreign policy.", "title": "Overview" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also known as Itamaraty, is the government department responsible for advising the President and conducting Brazil's foreign relations with other countries and international bodies. Itamaraty's scope includes political, commercial, economic, financial, cultural and consular relations, areas in which it performs the classical tasks of diplomacy: represent, inform and administer. Foreign policy priorities are established by the President.", "title": "Overview" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Brazil's foreign policy is a by-product of the country's unique position as a regional power in Latin America, a leader among developing countries, and an emerging world power. Brazilian foreign policy has generally been based on the principles of multilateralism, peaceful dispute settlement, and non-intervention in the affairs of other countries. Brazil engages in multilateral diplomacy through the Organization of American States and the United Nations, and has increased ties with developing countries in Africa and Asia. Brazil is currently commanding a multinational U.N. stabilization force in Haiti, the MINUSTAH. Instead of pursuing unilateral prerogatives, Brazilian foreign policy has tended to emphasize regional integration, first through the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosul) and now the Union of South American Nations. Brazil is also committed to cooperation with other Portuguese-speaking nations through joint-collaborations with the rest of the Portuguese-speaking world, in several domains which include military cooperation, financial aid, and cultural exchange. This is done in the framework of CPLP, for instance. Lula da Silva visit to Africa in 2003 included State visits to three Portuguese-speaking African nations (Angola, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Mozambique). Finally, Brazil is also strongly committed in the development and restoration of peace in East Timor, where it has a very powerful influence.", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Brazil's political, business, and military ventures are complemented by the country's trade policy. In Brazil, the Ministry of Foreign Relations continues to dominate trade policy, causing the country's commercial interests to be (at times) subsumed by a larger foreign policy goal, namely, enhancing Brazil's influence in Latin America and the world. For example, while concluding meaningful trade agreements with developed countries (such as the United States and the European Union) would probably be beneficial to Brazil's long-term economic self-interest, the Brazilian government has instead prioritized its leadership role within Mercosul and expanded trade ties with countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Brazil's soft power diplomacy involves institutional strategies such as the formation of diplomatic coalitions to constrain the power of the established great powers. In recent years, it has given high priority in establishing political dialogue with other strategic actors such as India, Russia, China and South Africa through participation in international groupings such as BASIC, IBSA and BRICS. The BRICS states have been amongst the most powerful drivers of incremental change in world diplomacy and they benefit most from the connected global power shifts.", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The Brazilian foreign policy under the Lula da Silva administration (2003-2010) focused on the following directives: to contribute toward the search for greater equilibrium and attenuate unilateralism; to strengthen bilateral and multilateral relations in order to increase the country's weight in political and economic negotiations on an international level; to deepen relations so as to benefit from greater economical, financial, technological and cultural interchange; to avoid agreements that could jeopardize development in the long term.", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "These directives implied precise emphasis on: the search for political coordination with emerging and developing countries, namely India, South Africa, Russia and China; creation of the Union of South American Nations and its derivative bodies, such as the South American Security Council; strengthening of Mercosul; projection at the Doha Round and WTO; maintenance of relations with developed countries, including the United States; undertaking and narrowing of relations with African countries; campaign for the reform of the United Nations Security Council and for a permanent seat for Brazil; and defense of social objectives allowing for a greater equilibrium between the States and populations.", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The foreign policy of the Rousseff administration (2011-2016) sought to deepen Brazil's regional commercial dominance and diplomacy, expand Brazil's presence in Africa, and play a major role in the G20 on global warming and in other multilateral settings. At the United Nations, Brazil continues to oppose Economic sanctions and foreign military intervention, while seeking to garner support for a permanent seat at the Security Council. Cooperation with other emerging powers remain a top priority in Brazil's global diplomatic strategy. On the recent airstrike resolution supporting military action in Libya, Brazil joined fellow BRICS in the Council and abstained. On the draft resolution condemning violence in Syria, Brazil worked with India and South Africa to try to bridge the Western powers' divide with Russia and China.", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "After Rousseff's impeachment, Brazil started reconnecting with its western allies. In 2019 Jair Bolsonaro succeeded Michel Temer. The new foreign policy focused on a reapprochement with major governments especially the United States and Colombia in the Americas; Israel, Japan and South Korea in Asia; United Kingdom, Italy and Greece in Europe. The Brazil–Portugal relations were also strengthened, and despite disagreements over the crisis in Venezuela, Brazil remained close to the BRICS countries.", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "During the 2018 presidential campaign, Bolsonaro said he would make considerable changes to Brazil's foreign relations, saying that the \"Itamaraty needs to be in service of the values that were always associated with the Brazilian people\". He also said that the country should stop \"praising dictators\" and attacking democracies, such as the United States, Israel and Italy. In early 2018, he affirmed that his \"trip to the five democratic countries the United States, Israel, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan showed who we will be and we would like to join good people\". Bolsonaro has shown distrust towards China throughout the presidential campaign claiming they \"[want to] buy Brazil\", although Brazil recorded a US$20 billion trade surplus with China in 2018, and China is only the 13th largest source of foreign direct investment into Brazil. Bolsonaro said he wishes to continue to have business with the Chinese but he also said that Brazil should \"make better [economic] deals\" with other countries, with no \"ideological agenda\" behind it. His stance towards China has also been interpreted as an attempt to curry favor from the Trump administration to garner concessions from the US. However, Bolsonaro has mostly changed his position on China after he took office, saying that the two countries were \"born to walk together\" during his visit to Beijing in October 2019. He has also said that Brazil will stay out of the ongoing China-U.S. trade war.", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Bolsonaro said that his first international trip as president would be to Israel. Bolsonaro also said that the State of Palestine \"is not a country, so there should be no embassy here\", adding that \"you don't negotiate with terrorists.\" The announcement was warmly received by the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who welcomed Bolsonaro to Israel in March 2019 during the final weeks of a re-election campaign, but was met with condemnation from the Arab League, which warned Bolsonaro it could damage diplomatic ties. \"I love Israel,\" Bolsonaro said in Hebrew at a welcoming ceremony, with Netanyahu at his side, at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport.", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Bolsonaro also praised U.S. President Donald Trump and his foreign policy, and has been called \"the tropical Trump\". His son Eduardo has indicated that Brazil should distance itself from Iran, sever ties with Nicolás Maduro's government in Venezuela and relocate Brazil's embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Bolsonaro is widely considered the most pro-American candidate in Brazil since the 1980s. PSL members said that if elected, he would dramatically improve relations between the United States and Brazil. During an October 2017 campaign rally in Miami, he saluted the American flag and led chants of \"USA! USA!\" to a large crowd. U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton praised Bolsonaro as a \"like-minded\" partner and said his victory was a \"positive sign\" for Latin America.", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "At the regional level, Bolsonaro praised Argentine President Mauricio Macri for ending the 12-year rule of Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, which he saw as similar to Lula and Rousseff. Although he does not have plans to leave the Mercosur, he criticized it for prioritizing ideological issues over economic ones. A staunch anti-communist, Bolsonaro has condemned Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro and the current regime in that island.", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Bolsonaro praised British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, saying that he had learned from Churchill: \"Patriotism, love for your fatherland, respect for your flag – something that has been lost over the last few years here in Brazil ... and governing through example, especially at that difficult moment of the Second World War.\" Bolsonaro said he's open to the possibility of hosting a U.S. military base in Brazil to counter Russian influence in the region. With the intention to persuade Trump to make Brazil a NATO member in March 2019, Bolsonaro said: \"the discussions with the United States will begin in the coming months\".", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "With formal U.S. support for Brazil's entry to OECD in May 2019, Bolsonaro said, \"currently, all 36 members of the organization support the entry of the country, fruit of confidence in the new Brazil being built, more free, open and fair\". In October 2019, on a state visit to China, he announced the end of the need for visas for Chinese and Indian entry into Brazil. Brazil had already removed the need for visas for people from the U.S., Canada, Japan, and Australia.", "title": "Foreign policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Over the first decade of the 21st century, Brazil has firmly established itself as a regional power. It has traditionally, if controversially, been a leader in the inter-American community and played an important role in collective security efforts, as well as in economic cooperation in the Western Hemisphere. Brazilian foreign policy supports economic and political integration efforts in order to reinforce long-standing relationships with its neighbors. It is a founding member of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Treaty). It has given high priority to expanding relations with its South American neighbors and strengthening regional bodies such as the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and Mercosur. Although integration is the primary purpose of these organizations, they also serve as forums in which Brazil can exercise its leadership and develop consensus around its positions on regional and global issues. Most scholars agree that by promoting integration through organizations like Mercosur and UNASUR, Brazil has been able to solidify its role as a regional power. In addition to consolidating its power within South America, Brazil has sought to expand its influence in the broader region by increasing its engagement in the Caribbean and Central America., although some think this is still a fragile, ongoing process, that can be thwarted by secondary regional powers in South America.", "title": "Regional policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "In April 2019 Brazil left Union of South American Nations (Unasur) to become a member of Forum for the Progress and Development of South America (Prosur). In January 2020, Brazil suspended its participation in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, (Celac).", "title": "Regional policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Brazil regularly extends export credits and university scholarships to its Latin American neighbors. In recent years, the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) has provided US$5 billion worth of loans to countries in the region. Brazil has also increasingly provided Latin American nations with financial aid and technical assistance. Between 2005 and 2009, Cuba, Haiti, and Honduras were the top three recipients of Brazilian assistance, receiving over $50 million annually.", "title": "Regional policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "In November 2019, Brazil made a historic move to break with the rest of Latin America on the U.S. embargo of Cuba, becoming the first Latin American country in twenty-six years to vote against condemning the U.S.-led embargo of Cuba at the United Nations General Assembly.", "title": "Regional policy" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Brazil is a founding member of the United Nations and participates in all of its specialized agencies. It has participated in 33 United Nations peacekeeping missions and contributed with over 27,000 soldiers. Brazil has been a member of the United Nations Security Council ten times, most recently 2010–2011. Along with Japan, Brazil has been elected more times to the Security Council than any other U.N. member state.", "title": "United Nations politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Brazil is currently seeking a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. It is a member of the G4, an alliance among Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan for the purpose of supporting each other's bids for permanent seats on the Security Council. They propose the Security Council be expanded beyond the current 15 members to include 25 members. The G4 countries argue that a reform would render the body \"more representative, legitimate, effective and responsive\" to the realities of the international community in the 21st century.", "title": "United Nations politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Overseas aid has become an increasingly important tool for Brazil's foreign policy. Brazil provides aid through the Brazilian Agency of Cooperation (Abbreviation: ABC; Portuguese: Agência Brasileira de Cooperação), in addition to offering scientific, economical, and technical support. More than half of Brazilian aid is provided to Africa, whereas Latin America receives around 20% of Brazilian aid. The share of aid allocated to the Asian continent is small. Within Africa, more than 80% of Brazilian aid is received by Portuguese-speaking countries. Brazil concentrates its aid for Portuguese-speaking countries in the education sector, specially in secondary and post-secondary education, but it is more committed to agricultural development in other countries. Estimated to be around $1 billion annually, Brazil is on par with China and India and ahead of many more traditional donor countries. The aid tends to consist of technical aid and expertise, alongside a quiet non-confrontational diplomacy to development results. Brazil's aid demonstrates a developing pattern of South-South aid, which has been heralded as a 'global model in waiting'. Concomitantly, South-South relations have become a major subfield of specialisation among Brazilian foreign policy experts. Some studies have suggested that, by giving aid, Brazil could be trying to get access to mineral and energy resources.", "title": "Foreign aid" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "ACS • ACTO • AfDB • ALECSO • BIS • CAF-BDLAC • Cairns Group • CAN • CDB • CPLP • FAO • G4 • BASIC countries • G8+5 • G15 • G20 • G20+ • G24 • G77 • IADB • IDB • IAEA • IBRD • IBSA •ICAO • ICC • ICRM • IDA • IFAD • IFC • IFRCS • IHO • ILO • IMF • IMO • Inmarsat •INSARAG • Intelsat • Interpol • IOC • IOM • ISO • ITU • LAES • LAIA • Mercosul • MINUSTAH • NAM • NSG • OAS • OEI • OPANAL • OPCW • PCA • Rio Group • Rio Treaty • UN • UNASUR • UNCTAD • UNESCO • UNHCR • UNIDO • UNITAR • UNMIL • UNMIS • UNMOVIC • UNOCI • UNTAET • UNWTO • UPU • WCO • WHO • WIPO • WMO • WTO • ZPCAS", "title": "Participation in international organizations" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Brazil has a large global network of diplomatic missions, and maintains diplomatic relations with As of 2019, Brazil's diplomatic network consisted of 194 overseas posts.", "title": "Diplomatic relations" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Relations with non-UN members or observers:", "title": "Diplomatic relations" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "List of countries with which Brazil maintains diplomatic relations with:", "title": "Diplomatic relations" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Academic Journal", "title": "Bibliography" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The British Virgin Islands (BVI) are one of three political divisions of the Virgin Islands archipelago located in the Lesser Antilles, between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. The BVI are the easternmost part of the island chain. The land area totals (151 km (58 sq mi)) (about 0.9 times the size of Washington, DC) and comprises 16 inhabited and more than 20 uninhabited islands. The islands of Tortola (54 km (21 sq mi)), Anegada (36 km (14 sq mi)), Virgin Gorda (21 km (8 sq mi)) and Jost van Dyke (10 km (4 sq mi)) are the largest. Maritime claims include 12 nmi (22.2 km; 13.8 mi) territorial sea and a 200 nmi (370.4 km; 230.2 mi) exclusive fishing zone. In terms of land use, it is 20% arable land, 6.67% permanent crops and 73.33% other as of a 2005 figure. It has strong ties to nearby U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The majority of the islands are steep and hilly due to their volcanic origin. The lowest point of the island chain is the Caribbean Sea while the highest point is Mount Sage at 521 metres (1,709 ft) above sea level and there are 80 kilometres (50 mi) of coastline. Other than Anegada, the islands are composed of pyroclastic rock and mixed deposits of diorite and tonalite Anegada is geologically distinct, being composed of carbonate reef deposits. The entire archipelago, together with Puerto Rico to the west, is the above-water high points on an underwater ridge that was once a continuous land mass during the Pleistocene epoch. This bank formed from tectonic forces at the boundary where the Caribbean Plate collides with the North American Plate.", "title": "Terrain" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The capital of the territory and the main port of entry for yachts and cruise ships visiting the BVI is Road Town on Tortola. In 2010, The United Nations found that 83% or the BVI population lived on Tortola, making Road Town the largest population center of the islands.", "title": "Settlements" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Spanish Town on Virgin Gorda, also known as \"The Valley\", is the second largest settlement and the original capital of the territory. Virgin Gorda was mined for copper in the 17th through 19th centuries but declined when the mine closed in 1867. The creation of a yacht harbour and resort by Laurance Rockefeller in the early 1960's turned Spanish Town into a wealthy tourist destination.", "title": "Settlements" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Residents on Jost van Dyke, Anegada, Cooper lsland, Great Camanoe Island and other locations collectively make up just over 2% of the population.", "title": "Settlements" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The British Virgin Islands have a tropical savanna climate, moderated by the trade winds. Temperatures vary little throughout the year. In the capital, Road Town, typical daily maxima are around 32 °C (89.6 °F) in the summer and 29 °C (84.2 °F) in the winter. Typical daily minima are around 24 °C (75.2 °F) in the summer and 21 °C (69.8 °F) in the winter. Rainfall averages about 1,150 mm (45.3 in) per year, higher in the hills and lower on the coast. Rainfall can be quite variable, but the wettest months on average are September to November and the driest months on average are February and March. Hurricanes occasionally hit the islands, with the hurricane season running from June to November.", "title": "Climate" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "This is a demography of the population of the British Virgin Islands including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and various other aspects.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "A July 2009 estimate placed the population of the British Virgin Islands at 24,491. In 2003, 21.9% of the population was under 15 (male 2,401; female 2,358), 73.1% between 15 and 64 (male 8,181; female 7,709), and 5% over 64 (male 578; female 503). 40% of the total population lived in urban areas, with an estimated 1.7% annual rate of urbanization. In 2014, the average woman produced 1.25 children. The estimated population of 2021 is 31,122 (the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects).", "title": "Population" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In 2009, the infant mortality rate in the British Virgin Islands was 14.65/1000 births (16.61/1000 for females and 12.58/1000 for males). Life expectancy at birth was 77.26 years: 76.03 years for males and 78.55 years for females.", "title": "Health" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The official language of the British Virgin Islands is English. In 1991, 97.8% of people aged 15 and over could read and write. Education expenditures represented 3.7% of total GDP in 2006.", "title": "Education" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The economy of the British Virgin Islands is one of the most prosperous in the Caribbean. Although tiny in absolute terms, because of the very small population of the British Virgin Islands, in 2010 the Territory had the 19th highest GDP per capita in the world according to the CIA World factbook. In global terms the size of the Territory's GDP measured in terms of purchasing power is ranked as 215th out of a total of 229 countries. The economy of the Territory is based upon the \"twin pillars\" of financial services, which generates approximately 60% of government revenues, and tourism, which generates nearly all of the rest.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Historically the British Virgin Islands has normally produced a Government budget surplus, but during the financial crisis of 2007–2008 the Territory began to run at a deficit, which continued after the global recession receded. In 2011 the Territory had its largest ever budget deficit, of US$29 million (approximately 2.6% of GDP). By 2012 public debt had quadrupled from pre-crisis levels to approximately US$113 million (approximately 10.3% of GDP). Nearly 84% of that public debt was attributable to a new public hospital built in Road Town between 2003 and 2014. The Economist argued that deteriorating economic conditions in the British Virgin Islands were caused \"not [by] sagging revenues but public-sector profligacy\". By 2014 public debt had been reduced to US$106 million and the annual deficit reduced to US$25 million (including budgeted capital expenditure).", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "By 2016, the Government had returned to a primary budget surplus, but public debt had increased to approximately US$141 million and debt service accounted for over US$12 million of the primary surplus. However, because of an ongoing aggressive capital investment programme, and budget overruns on key public projects, the Government ran dangerously low on available cash. Cash in the consolidated fund fell below US$7 million (with average monthly expenditure at nearly US$30 million), and Government accrued over US$13 million in due but unpaid invoices.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In 2015, British Virgin Islands has been assessed as the 34th in terms of global financial centres. This was the highest ranking of any offshore financial centre, and of any Latin American country. The Territory scored strongly in areas such as local taxation, rule of law, regulatory environment and quality of law for human resources. It scored less highly on infrastructure, access to capital and access to labour. The G-20 considers it a tax haven and its banking system is described as 'opaque'.", "title": "Business environment" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The most recent national budget to be delivered was the 2017 budget (the Territory's fiscal year runs from 1 April to 31 March). That budget presented a picture of declining revenues and increasing costs. It was also delivered prior to the devastating effects of Hurricane Irma later in the year, which is likely to have a deleterious effect on the economy and on Government revenues.", "title": "2017 Government Budget" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The 2017 budget predicted that 2016 final revenue figures of $310,470,000 which was a decrease of 6.2% from the year before. It also predicted recurrent expenditure for 2016 at $288,640,000 which was an increase of 3.6% on the preceding year. That would mean a primary budget surplus of $21,830,000 which would be a decrease of 56.6% from the preceding year.", "title": "2017 Government Budget" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "In addition there was an estimated $21,000,000 of capital expenditure in 2016 (down 38.3% from the previous year), and debt service of $20,200,000 leaving a primary deficit of $19,370,000. In 2017, after accounting for transfers to reserves, there is budgeted to be a structural deficit of $31,674,000. This was to be financed by new borrowing and transfers from the consolidated fund.", "title": "2017 Government Budget" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The Government's total borrowings were $106.5 million, but the Government has also underwritten significant loans made to the BVI Electricity Corporation and the BVI Ports Authority, meaning that the Government's total loan exposure is $178.3 million.", "title": "2017 Government Budget" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Much of the Government's increased expenditure arose from staffing costs. Staffing consumes 37.7% of Government expenditure, and increased in 2016 by 10.2% from the year before. The budget calls for it to increase again, but only by 2.6% in 2017.", "title": "2017 Government Budget" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The bulk of Government revenues (60%) comes from taxes on goods and services. The next largest segment is payroll taxes, which account for a further 16%. Property taxes account for less than 1% of revenue.", "title": "2017 Government Budget" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In 2015, a total of 922,372 people visited the islands (of whom 529,354 were cruise ship passengers and 393,018 were overnight visitors), mainly from the United States. The bulk of the tourism income in the British Virgin Islands is generated by the yacht chartering industry. The Territory has relatively few large hotels compared to other tourism centres in the Caribbean. The British Virgin Islands also entertain cruise ships, although these generate relatively little revenue. However, cruise ship passengers are an important source of revenue for taxi drivers, who represent a politically important voice in the Territory.", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Between 2007 and 2011, tourist visitors to be the British Virgin Islands declined by approximately 12.4%, largely due to the global recession which particularly affected North America, a key source of visitors for the Territory. However, by November 2013 tourist numbers had begun to recover.", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "According to the World Travel and Tourism Council:", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "However, these statistics include travel as well as tourism, and so non-tourist related travel (i.e. travel relating to domestic consumption and other industries and services) are included and inflate the figures.", "title": "Tourism" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "In the mid-1980s, the government began offering offshore registration to companies wishing to incorporate in the islands, and incorporation fees now generate an estimated 51.4% of Government revenues. As of 2019, it costs $450 to form a company with fewer than 50,000 shares and another $450 a year to maintain registration.", "title": "Financial services" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "According to official statistics 447,801 BVI companies were 'active' (i.e. incorporated and not yet struck-off, liquidated or dissolved) as at 30 June 2012. There are no recent official statistics on total numbers of incorporations (including struck, liquidated and dissolved companies) but these are estimated at approximately 950,000. Many of these companies were originally formed under the International Business Companies Act, 1984, but have now been consolidated into the BVI Business Companies Act, 2004.", "title": "Financial services" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "In 2000, KPMG were commissioned by the British Government to produce a report on the offshore financial industry generally, and the report indicated that nearly 45% of the offshore companies in the world were formed in the British Virgin Islands. The British Virgin Islands is now one of the world's leading offshore financial centres, and boasts one of the highest incomes per capita in the Caribbean.", "title": "Financial services" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "In addition to basic company incorporations, the British Virgin Islands also forms limited partnerships and trusts (including signature \"VISTA\" trusts) but these have not proved to be as popular as companies.", "title": "Financial services" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "On 12 April 2007, the Financial Times reported that the British Virgin Islands was the second largest source of foreign direct investment in the world (behind Hong Kong) with over US$123,000,000,000. Almost all of these sums are directly attributable to investment through the Territory's offshore finance industry.", "title": "Financial services" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "The British Virgin Islands also promotes a number of regulated financial services products. The most important of these is the formation and regulation of offshore investment funds. The Territory is also the second largest domicile for formation of offshore investment funds (behind the Cayman Islands) with 2,422 licensed open-ended funds as at 30 June 2012 (there is no official statistics for closed-ended funds which are not regulated in the British Virgin Islands).", "title": "Financial services" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The British Virgin Islands also operates as a domicile for captive insurance services, but a prolonged period of overzealous Government regulation combined with the Government's increasing pressure to hire only locals (\"belongers\") in the insurance industry decimated the industry. Official reports from the Financial Services Commission reflect as of 30 June 2012 only 161 captives remain registered in the jurisdiction.", "title": "Financial services" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Former president of the BVI's Financial Services Commission, Michael Riegels, recites the anecdote that the offshore finance industry commenced on an unknown date in the 1970s when a lawyer from a firm in New York telephoned him with a proposal to incorporate a company in the British Virgin Islands to take advantage of a double taxation relief treaty with the United States. Within the space of a few years, hundreds of such companies had been incorporated.", "title": "Financial services" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "This eventually came to the attention of the United States government, who unilaterally revoked the Treaty in 1981.", "title": "Financial services" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "In 1984, the British Virgin Islands, trying to recapture some of the lost offshore business, enacted a new form of companies legislation, the International Business Companies Act, under which an offshore company which was exempt from local taxes could be formed. The development was only a limited success until 1991, when the United States invaded Panama to oust General Manuel Noriega. At the time Panama was one of the largest providers of offshore financial services in the world, but the business fled subsequent the invasion, and the British Virgin Islands was one of the main beneficiaries.", "title": "Financial services" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Livestock raising is the most important agricultural activity; poor soils limit the islands' ability to meet domestic food requirements. Fewer than 0.6% are estimated to work in agriculture. Despite its tiny economic impact, agriculture has its own dedicated Government minister (unlike financial services).", "title": "Agriculture" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Because of traditionally close links with the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands has used the US dollar as its currency since 1959.", "title": "Dollarisation" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Country Code: +1284 International Call Prefix: 011 (outside NANP)", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Calls from the British Virgin Islands to the US, Canada, and other NANP Caribbean nations, are dialled as 1 + NANP area code + 7-digit number. Calls from the British Virgin Islands to non-NANP countries are dialled as 011 + country code + phone number with local area code.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Number Format: nxx-xxxx", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Telephones – main lines in use: 11,700 (2002)", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Telephones – mobile cellular: 8,000 (2002)", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Telephone system: worldwide telephone service general assessment: worldwide telephone service domestic: NA international: Connected via submarine cable to Bermuda; the East Caribbean Fibre System (ECFS) submarine cable provides connectivity to 13 other islands in the eastern Caribbean (2007)", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Radio stations: AM 1, FM 5, shortwave 0 (2004)", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Television stations: 1 (ZBTV), (plus one cable company) (1997)", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Internet service providers (ISPs): 1 (1999)", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Internet country code: VG", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Internet hosts: 465 (2008)", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Internet users: 4,000 (2002)", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "In 2006, the British Virgin Islands government undertook a deregulation of the telephone industry. Prior to 2006, in common with many other Caribbean countries, Cable & Wireless (Caribbean) had a statutory monopoly on telephone and other electronic communications services. However, in the 1990s, a local company called CCT Boatphone, which had previously provided radio boatphones to tourists on charter boats, expanded into cellular (mobile) telecommunications for land-based users. Although technically in breach of the statutory monopoly, CCT Boatphone was backed by a powerful collection of local interests known as the BVI Investment Club. Negotiations between Cable & Wireless and CCT Boatphone led to a split of the monopolies, with Cable & Wireless retaining a monopoly over fixed line and internet services, and CCT Boatphone keeping a de facto monopoly over cellular telephones.", "title": "Deregulation of the telephone market" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "In 2007 the government abolished the previously existing monopolies under an order made pursuant to the new legislation. The process proved politically fraught, and the government's Minister for Communications and Works, Alvin Christopher, ended up leaving the government and joining the opposition party as a result of the furore. The process was also criticised as cumbersome and slow, the initial deregulation having been announced in 2004, and taking no less than three years to come to fruition through delays in legislation and regulation.", "title": "Deregulation of the telephone market" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Although there have been no new entrants into the fixed line industry, the government issued three licences under the new regime to cellular telephone service providers. The existing provider, CCT Boatphone, obtained one licence. Bmobile, the cellular arm of Cable & Wireless, obtained a second. The third licence was obtained by BVI Cable TV, a local cable television service. The licence in favour of BVI Cable was controversial, as the Regulator had announced in advance that only three licences in total would be issued, and BVI Cable TV had crumbling cable television infrastructure, and was in no position to offer cellular telephone services (and to date, has not offered any cellular telephone services, or anything other than simple cable television). However, bmobile's main regional competitor, Digicel, was rejected for a licence. The decision was regarded as highly controversial in the local media.", "title": "Deregulation of the telephone market" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Digicel then issued court proceedings against the Regulator, arguing that he had acted improperly by imposing an arbitrary limit of three licences (although no complaint was made about the decision to prefer BVI Cable TV's improbable licence over Digicel). Bmobile was joined to the suit as an interested party. High Court Judge Rita Joseph-Olivetti found in favour of Digicel and quashed the original decision. Digicel commenced separate proceedings against Cable and Wireless (as bmobile's parent company) in the English courts, claiming that Cable & Wireless has unfairly stifled competition in several Caribbean jurisdictions. During the intervening period, bmobile has obtained a virtual stranglehold on the cellular telecommunications market in the British Virgin Islands by a combination of low prices and aggressive advertising, as well as significant investment in infrastructure and technology.", "title": "Deregulation of the telephone market" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Digicel was finally granted a licence on 17 December 2007 and started operations in the BVI on 28 November 2008.", "title": "Deregulation of the telephone market" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from World Factbook. CIA.", "title": "References" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "", "title": "References" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "", "title": "External links" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The systems of transport in the British Virgin Islands include 113 kilometres of highway and a harbour at Road Town.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Despite using left-hand traffic, most vehicles are left-hand-drive, being imported from the United States.", "title": "Roads" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from World Factbook. CIA.", "title": "References" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Brunei is a country in Southeast Asia, bordering the South China Sea and East Malaysia. Its geographical coordinates are 4°30′N 114°40′E / 4.500°N 114.667°E / 4.500; 114.667. The country is small with a total size of 5,765 km (2,226 sq mi). It is larger in size than Trinidad and Tobago. It is close to vital sea lanes through the South China Sea linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The country has two parts physically separated by Malaysia, making it almost an enclave within Malaysia.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Brunei shares a 266 km (165 mi) border with Malaysia, and has a 161 km (100 mi) coastline. The terrain is a flat coastal plain that rises to mountainous in the east and hilly lowlands in the west. While earthquakes are quite rare, Brunei is located along the Pacific Ring of Fire.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "A tropical climate with high humidity prevails in Brunei. Typically, the entire nation experiences the same climate. The entire year is hot in the country. The monsoon winds and other wind systems in the area brought on by the distribution of air pressure in Southeast Asia, as well as the location on Borneo's northwest coast, which lies in the equatorial tropics, all have an impact on the climate. ITCZ (Intertropical Convergence Zone) is the name given to the low pressure trough that occurs around the equator. Areas in the subtropics on both hemispheres, however, experience high pressure, resulting in a pressure difference. This is due to air masses from the southern and northern hemispheres meet in this region, causing major climate shifts, the Intertropical Convergence Zone is crucial.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "It's vital that the ITCZ's position typically oscillates based on the sun's zenithal position and is not always fixed. The magnitude of the latitudinal oscillation is reduced to roughly half that of the sun because of the movement's two-month delay. There are two distinct seasons in the nation that are separated by two transitional phases as a result of the ITCZ's shifting location throughout the year and the associated trade winds. The South China Sea and Borneo are substantially impacted by northeast monsoon winds that recurve via the Inter-Tropical Convergence zone to become northwesterly winds that blow across Indonesia between December and March. The ITCZ's typical location is between latitudes 50S and 100S when it migrated south across Brunei and Borneo in late December, a time period known as the Northeast Monsoon.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone, which is positioned east of the Philippines around latitude 150N between June and September, transforms into a monsoon trough to the west. The Southwest Monsoon is created by southeast trade winds that originate in the southern hemisphere and recurve on the equator. The northeast monsoon dominates from December to March whereas the southwest monsoon blows from May to September. Transitional months are recognized as April, October, and November.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The municipality of Bandar Seri Begawan's climate is tropical equatorial with two seasons. Dry season is extremely hot (24 to 36 °C or 75.2 to 96.8 °F). Wet or rainy season is generally warm and wet (20 to 28 °C or 68.0 to 82.4 °F). Most of the country is a flat coastal plain with mountains in the east and hilly lowland in the west. The lowest point is at sea level and the highest is Bukit Pagon (1,850 m or 6,070 ft). The climatic regions of the country is as follows:", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Since the nation lies outside of the typhoon belt and mostly untouched by earthquakes, it is less likely to experience major disasters, making it a relatively safe area to live and work. Foreigners from temperate climes who want to avoid harsh winters are drawn to the country by its milder temperature. Additionally, the weather is suitable for outdoor activities and water sports.", "title": "Natural disasters" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "As of 2009, the statistics of Brunei is as follows:", "title": "Statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Area:", "title": "Statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Maritime claims: territorial sea: 12 nmi (13.8 mi; 22.2 km) exclusive economic zone: 10,090 km (3,900 sq mi) and 200 nmi (230.2 mi; 370.4 km) or to median line", "title": "Statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Elevation extremes: lowest point: South China Sea 0 m highest point: Bukit Pagon 1,850 m", "title": "Statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Natural resources: petroleum, natural gas, timber", "title": "Statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Land use: arable land: 0.76% permanent crops: 1.14% other: 98.10% (2012)", "title": "Statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Irrigated land: 10 km (3.9 sq mi) (2003)", "title": "Statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Total renewable water resources: 8.5 km (2.0 cu mi)", "title": "Statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Freshwater withdrawal (domestic/industrial/agricultural) total: 0.09 km/yr (97%/0%/3%) per capital: 301.6 m/yr (2009)", "title": "Statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Environment – current issues: seasonal smoke/haze resulting from forest fires in Indonesia", "title": "Statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Environment – international agreements: party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution", "title": "Statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The economy of Brunei, a small and wealthy country, is a mixture of foreign and domestic entrepreneurship, government regulation and welfare measures, and village traditions. It is almost entirely supported by exports of crude oil and natural gas, with revenues from the petroleum sector accounting for over half of GDP. Per capita GDP is high, and substantial income from overseas investment supplements income from domestic production. The government provides for all medical services and subsidizes food and housing. The government has shown progress in its basic policy of diversifying the economy away from oil and gas. Brunei's leaders are concerned that steadily increased integration in the world economy will undermine internal social cohesion although it has taken steps to become a more prominent player by serving as chairman for the 2000 APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) forum. Growth in 1999 was estimated at 2.5% due to higher oil prices in the second half.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Brunei is the third-largest oil producer in Southeast Asia, averaging about 180,000 barrels per day (29,000 m/d). It also is the ninth-largest producer of liquefied natural gas in the world.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "In the 1970s, Brunei invested sharply increasing revenues from petroleum exports and maintained government spending at a low and constant rate. Consequently, the government was able to build its foreign reserves and invest them around the world to help provide for future generations. Part of the reserve earnings were reportedly also used to help finance the government's annual budget deficit. Since 1986, however, petroleum revenues have decreased, and government spending has increased. The government has been running a budget deficit since 1988. The disappearance of a revenue surplus has made Brunei's economy more vulnerable to petroleum price fluctuations.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Brunei's gross domestic product (GDP) soared with the petroleum price increases of the 1970s to a peak of $5.7 billion in 1980. It declined slightly in each of the next 5 years, then fell by almost 30% in 1986.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "This drop was caused by a combination of sharply lower petroleum prices in world markets and voluntary production cuts in Brunei. The GDP recovered somewhat since 1986, growing by 12% in 1987, 1% in 1988, and 9% in 1989. In recent years, GDP growth was 3.5% in 1996, 4.0% in 1997, 1.0% in 1998, and an estimated 2.5% in 1999. However, the 1999 GDP was still only about $4.5 billion, well below the 1980 peak.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The Asian financial crisis in 1997 and 1998, coupled with fluctuations in the price of oil have created uncertainty and instability in Brunei's economy. In addition, the 1998 collapse of Amedeo Development Corporation, Brunei's largest construction firm whose projects helped fuel the domestic economy, caused the country to slip into a mild recession.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "This is a chart of trend of gross domestic product of Brunei Darussalam at market prices estimated by the International Monetary Fund with figures in millions of Bruneian dollars.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "For purchasing power parity comparisons, the US dollar is exchanged at 1.52 Bruneian dollars only. Mean wages were $25.38 per man-hour in 2009.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The government regulates the immigration of foreign labor out of concern it might disrupt Brunei's society. Work permits for foreigners are issued only for short periods and must be continually renewed. Despite these restrictions, foreigners make up a significant portion of the work force. The government reported a total work force of 122,800 in 1999, with an unemployment rate of 5.5%.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Oil and natural gas account for almost all exports. Since only a few products other than petroleum are produced locally, a wide variety of items must be imported. Brunei statistics show Singapore as the largest point of origin of imports, accounting for 25% in 1997. However, this figure includes some transshipments, since most of Brunei's imports transit Singapore. Japan and Malaysia were the second-largest suppliers. As in many other countries, Japanese products dominate local markets for motor vehicles, construction equipment, electronic goods, and household appliances. The United States was the third-largest supplier of imports to Brunei in 1998.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Brunei's substantial foreign reserves are managed by the Brunei Investment Agency (BIA), an arm of the Ministry of Finance and Economy. BIA's guiding principle is to increase the real value of Brunei's foreign reserves while pursuing a diverse investment strategy, with holdings in the United States, Japan, western Europe, and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "The Brunei Government actively encourages more foreign investment. New enterprises that meet certain criteria can receive pioneer status, exempting profits from income tax for up to 5 years, depending on the amount of capital invested. The normal corporate income tax rate is 30%. There is no personal income tax or capital gains tax.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "One of the government's most important priorities is to encourage the development of Brunei Malays as leaders of industry and commerce. There are no specific restrictions of foreign equity ownership, but local participation, both shared capital and management, is encouraged. Such participation helps when tendering for contracts with the government or Brunei Shell Petroleum.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Companies in Brunei must either be incorporated locally or registered as a branch of a foreign company and must be registered with the Registrar of Companies. Public companies must have a minimum of seven shareholders. Private companies must have a minimum of two but not more than 50 shareholders. At least half of the directors in a company must be residents of Brunei.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Between 1981 and 2013 the Sultan owned cattle stations in Australia that supplied most of the country's beef. In 1984 it was reported that at 2,262 square miles (5,860 km), the total area of the stations was larger than Brunei itself. Some of the stations were sold in 2006 and 2014. As of 2019, the Sultan still owned the Opium Creek station. Eggs and chickens are largely produced locally, but most of Brunei's other food needs must be imported. Agriculture and fisheries are among the industrial sectors that the government has selected for highest priority in its efforts to diversify the economy.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1983–2021 (with IMF staff estimates in 2022–2027). Inflation below 5% is in green.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP), a joint venture owned in equal shares by the Brunei Government and the Royal Dutch/Shell group of companies, is the chief oil and gas production company in Brunei. It also operates the country's only refinery. BSP and four sister companies constitute the largest employer in Brunei after the government. BSP's small refinery has a distillation capacity of 10,000 barrels per day (1,600 m/d). This satisfies domestic demand for most petroleum products.", "title": "Oil and gas industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The French oil company Elf Aquitaine became active in petroleum exploration in Brunei in the 1980s. Its affiliate Elf Petroleum Asia BV has discovered commercially exploitable quantities of oil and gas in three of the four wells drilled since 1987, including a particularly promising discovery announced in early 1990. Recently, UNOCAL, partnered with New Zealand's Fletcher Challenge has been granted concessions for oil exploration. Brunei is preparing to tender concessions for deep water oil and gas exploration.", "title": "Oil and gas industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Brunei's oil production peaked in 1979 at over 240,000 barrels per day (38,000 m/d). Since then it has been deliberately cut back to extend the life of oil reserves and improve recovery rates. Petroleum production is currently averaging some 200,000 barrels per day (32,000 m/d). Japan has traditionally been the main customer for Brunei's oil exports, but its share dropped from 45% of the total in 1982 to 19% in 1998. In contrast, oil exports to South Korea increased from only 8% of the total in 1982 to 29% in 1998. Other major customers include Taiwan (6%), and the countries of ASEAN (27%). Brunei's oil exports to the United States accounted for 17% of the total exported.", "title": "Oil and gas industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Almost all of Brunei's natural gas is liquefied at Brunei Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant, which opened in 1972 and is one of the largest LNG plants in the world. Over 82% of Brunei's LNG produced is sold to Japan under a long-term agreement renewed in 1993. The agreement calls for Brunei to provide over 5 million tons of LNG per year to three Japanese utilities. The Japanese company, Mitsubishi, is a joint venture partner with Shell and the Brunei Government in Brunei LNG, Brunei Coldgas, and Brunei Shell Tankers, which together produce the LNG and supply it to Japan. Since 1995, Brunei has supplied more than 700,000 tons of LNG to the Korea Gas Corporation as well. In 1999, Brunei's natural gas production reached 90 cargoes per day. A small amount of natural gas is used for domestic power generation. Brunei is the fourth-largest exporter of LNG in the Asia-Pacific region behind Indonesia, Malaysia, and Australia.", "title": "Oil and gas industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Brunei's proven oil and gas reserves are sufficient, as of 2015, to last until at least 2035. Deep sea exploration may find significant new reserves but can be prohibitively expensive. The government sought in the past decade to diversify the economy with limited success. Oil and gas and government spending still account for most of Brunei's economic activity. Brunei's non-petroleum industries include agriculture, forestry, fishing, and banking.", "title": "Oil and gas industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "In 2015, Brunei registered its third year of economic recession, the only ASEAN nation to do so. Declining oil prices and a drop in production due to maintenance and repair work at major oil wells have dented the country's budget which will see a deficit in the fiscal years 2015-16 and 2016–17.", "title": "Oil and gas industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "In 2020, more than 99% of produced electricity in Brunei was based on fossil fuels, while electricity produced from renewable energy accounted for less than 1%. It is advised for Brunei to diversify the economy away from the use of fossil fuels and focus more on renewable energy as part of climate change mitigation measures.", "title": "Oil and gas industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "In the western part of the country, Liang is currently experiencing a major development with the establishment of SPARK, which is a 271-hectare (670-acre) site developed to be a world-class petrochemical hub. The first major investment at SPARK is the US$450 million Methanol plant developed by the Brunei Methanol Company, a joint venture between Petroleum Brunei and two leading Japanese companies, Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings and Itochu. The plant design will give an output of 2,500t of methanol per day (850,000t annually). The plant was officially launched by Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah on 25 May 2010.", "title": "Petrochemical industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Brunei Darussalam in July 2009 launched its national halal branding scheme Brunei Halal which allows manufacturers in Brunei and in other countries to use the premium Brunei Halal trademark to help them penetrate lucrative markets in countries with significant numbers of Muslim consumers. The Brunei Halal brand is said to be the first proper attempt to put together a global halal brand that will reap the potential commercial returns of catering to the consumption needs of Muslims worldwide.", "title": "Halal brand" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "As envisioned by the Sultanate, the use of the Brunei Halal brand would signify to Muslim consumers the manufacturers' strict compliance with laws relating to Islamic teachings. Brunei also aims to build confidence in the brand through strategies that will both ensure the halal integrity of the products and unfaltering compliance with set rules governing the sourcing of raw materials, manufacturing process, logistics and distribution.", "title": "Halal brand" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "A new company, government-owned Brunei Wafirah Holdings Sdn Bhd, has been established as the owner of the Brunei Halal brand. Wafirah has entered into a joint venture with Brunei Global Islamic Investment and Hong Kong-based logistics firm Kerry FSDA Limited to form Ghanim International Food Corporation Sdn Bhd. Ghanim International manages the use of the Brunei Halal trademark. Producers that want to use the brand are required to first acquire the Brunei halal label (or the certification for compliance with accepted manufacturing and slaughtering practices under Islam) through the Department of Syariah Affairs' Halal Food Control Section. They can then approach Ghanim for their application to use the brand.", "title": "Halal brand" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Telephone service throughout the country is excellent; international service is good to Southeast Asia, Middle East, Western Europe, and the US", "title": "Telecommunications" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Landing points for the SEA-ME-WE-3, SJC, AAG, Lubuan-Brunei Submarine Cable via optical telecommunications submarine cables that provides links to Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa, Australia, and the US; satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (1 Indian Ocean and 1 Pacific Ocean) (2019)", "title": "Telecommunications" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "IDD Country Code: +673", "title": "Telecommunications" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Brunei has 3 major telco namely DST, Imagine (TelBru) and Progresif which offers prepaid and postpaid plan. UNN is the Single Wholesale Network with holds all the telecommunication infrastructures in Brunei.", "title": "Telecommunications" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Brunei's Internet service was monopolized by Telekom Brunei. ADSL speeds were ranging from 512 kbit/s to the maximum speed of 1 Mbit/s through ADSL2+ broadband. 1 Mbit/s was introduced in 2006 and was priced at BND$128 per month (Equivalent to Singapore currency). It was well known that the Brunei's broadband ranging from 512 kbit/s to 1 Mbit/s is one of the most expensive in the world. The limited market in Brunei means that new developments in the telecommunications sector is stagnant.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "In 2002, Telekom Brunei was incorporated become Telekom Brunei Berhad (TelBru). In 2008, the internet were improved with dramatically with speeds ranging from 1Mbit/s to maximum speed of 5Mbit/s. Price starting from B$65 to B$105 per month respectively.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "In 2012, Telekom Brunei started deploying its FTTH network capable of 100Mbit/s through a contract awarded to Huawei. They aimed to provide FTTH coverage to around 85% of the population by 2017.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "In 2016 Telbru drastically reduced the price and increased the speeds of its broadband plans. Due to the fact that a significant number of people were now connected via FTTH and not via the old copper cables.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "On 1 March 2018 Telbru rolled out their new 'high speed' broadband plans They also split the plans which have unlimited quota into 'unlimited plans'", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "In 2017 Forbes reported that Brunei had the 4th most expensive broadband service in the world", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "On 4 September 2019, The UNN took over all of the telecommunications infrastructure in Brunei. By doing so they aimed to provide equal infrastructure to all the isps in the country. This brought an end to a long held monopoly by Imagine Sdn Bhd (Formerly Known as Telbru) over the home broadband market with the introduction of Datastream Digital's 'Infinity' home broadband plans on 24 January 2020.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "In some areas residents may enjoy some of the Malaysian TV channels", "title": "Television" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "All radio stations in the country use FM. 5 radio stations are broadcast by the state controlled Radio Television Brunei. The British Forces Broadcast Service (BFBS) broadcasts 2 other stations in the country. Reception from some Malaysia stations can be received.", "title": "Radio" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from World Factbook. CIA.", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Brunei joined ASEAN on 7 January 1984, one week after resuming full independence, and gives its ASEAN membership the highest priority in its foreign relations. Brunei joined the United Nations in September 1984. It is also a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and the Commonwealth of Nations. Brunei hosted the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in November 2000. In 2005 it attended the inaugural East Asia Summit.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Brunei has a number of diplomatic missions abroad and has close relations with Singapore, sharing an interchangeable currency regime as well as close military relations with the latter island-state. Aside from relations with other ASEAN states, of which the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia are key partners, Brunei also has extensive relations with the Muslim world and the Arab world outside its own region.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Brunei became a member state of the Commonwealth in 1984, ASEAN and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in 1984, the 159th United Nations member on 21 September 1985, a major player in BIMP-EAGA in 1994, and a founding member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. Since 2009, Brunei and the Philippines signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that seeks to strengthen the bilateral co-operation of the two countries in the fields of agriculture and farm-related trade and investments.", "title": "International organizations" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "List of countries which Brunei Darussalam maintains diplomatic relations with:", "title": "Diplomatic relations" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bulgaria is a country situated in Southeast Europe that occupies the eastern quarter of the Balkan peninsula, being the largest country within its geographic boundaries. It borders Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, and the Black Sea to the east. The northern border with Romania follows the river Danube until the city of Silistra. The land area of Bulgaria is 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi) (111,002 square kilometres (42,858 sq mi)), slightly larger than that of Cuba, Iceland or the U.S. state of Tennessee. Considering its relatively compact territorial size and shape, Bulgaria has a great variety of topographical features. Even within small parts of the country, the land may be divided into plains, plateaus, hills, mountains, basins, gorges, and deep river valleys. The geographic center of Bulgaria is located in Uzana.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Bulgaria features notable diversity with the landscape ranging from the snow-capped peaks in Rila, Pirin and the Balkan Mountains to the mild and sunny Black Sea coast and southernmost valleys; from the typically continental Danubian Plain (ancient Moesia) in the north to the strong Mediterranean climatic influence in the valleys of Macedonia and in the lowlands in the southernmost of Thrace, the lowest parts of the Upper Thracian Plain, along the Maritsa River, the Southern Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. Most of the country is situated within the humid continental climate region, with Alpine climate in the highest mountains and subtropical climate in the southernmost regions.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The country has a dense river network but with the notable exception of the river Danube, rivers are mostly short and with low water flow. The average annual precipitation is 670 mm; the rainfall is lower in the lowlands and higher in the mountains. The driest region is Dobrudzha in the north-eastern part of the Danubian Plain (450 mm), while the highest rainfall has been measured in the upper valley of the river Ogosta in the western Balkan Mountains (2293 mm).", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Bulgaria has substantial land in agriculture and forest. In 2006 land use and land cover was 5% intensive human use, 52% agriculture including pasture, 31% forest, 11% woodland-shrub, grassland, and non-vegetated, and 1% water.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Phytogeographically, Bulgaria straddles the Illyrian and Euxinian provinces of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. The country falls within six terrestrial ecoregions of the Palearctic realm: Balkan mixed forests (main), Rodope montane mixed forests (main in the mountains), Euxine-Colchic deciduous forests, Aegean and Western Turkey sclerophyllous and mixed forests, East European forest steppe and Pontic–Caspian steppe.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The borders of Bulgaria have a total length of 2,245 km; of them 1,181 km are land boundary and 686 km are formed by rivers. The coastline is 378 km.", "title": "Boundaries and territory" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The northern border with Romania is 609 km. Most of the frontier (470 km) is formed by the river Danube from the mouth of the river Timok in the west to the city of Silistra in the east. The land border from Silistra to Cape Sivriburun at the Black Sea is 139 km long. The Danube, with steep bluffs on the Bulgarian side and a wide area of swamps and marshes on the Romanian side, is crossed by two bridges – New Europe Bridge between Vidin and Calafat, and Danube Bridge between Ruse and Giurgiu. There are 48 Bulgarian and 32 Romanian islands along the river Danube; the largest one, Belene (41 km), belongs to Bulgaria. The land frontier has three border crossings at Silistra, Kardam and Durankulak at the Black Sea. It is also crossed by a major gas pipeline transporting natural gas from Russia to Bulgaria.", "title": "Boundaries and territory" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The eastern border (378 km) is maritime and encompasses the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast from Cape Sivriburun in the north to the mouth of the Rezovo River in the south. Bulgaria's littoral forms 1/10 of the total Black Sea coastline, and includes two important gulfs, the Gulf of Varna and the Gulf of Burgas, harbouring the country's two major ports.", "title": "Boundaries and territory" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The southern border is 752 km long, of them 259 km are with Turkey and 493 km are with Greece. The Bulgaria–Turkey frontier runs from the mouth of the Rezovo River in the east through the Strandzha Mountains and the Dervent Heights, crosses the river Tundzha at the village of Matochina and ends at the river Maritsa at the village of Kapitan Andreevo. There are three border crossings at Malko Tarnovo, Lesovo and Kapitan Andreevo. The border with Greece runs from Kapitan Andreevo through several ridges of the Rhodope Mountains, generally following the watershed of the rivers Arda and Vacha on the Bulgarian side, runs through the Slavyanka Mountain, crosses the river Struma at the village of Kulata and runs through the crest of the Belasitsa Mountain to the Tumba Peak. There are six border checkpoints at Svilengrad, Ivaylovgrad, Makaza, Zlatograd, Ilinden and Kulata.", "title": "Boundaries and territory" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The western border is 506 km long, of them 165 km are with North Macedonia and 341 km are with Serbia. The frontier with North Macedonia runs from the Tumba Peak in the south through the mountains of Ograzhden, Maleshevo, Vlahina and Osogovo up to mount Kitka. There are three border crossings near the town of Petrich and at the villages of Logodazh and Gyueshevo. The border with Serbia runs from Kitka through the mountainous region Kraishte, including the Ruy Mountain, crosses the valley of the river Nishava, runs through the main watershed of the western Balkan Mountains and follows the river Timok for 15 km until its confluence with the Danube. There are five border checkpoints at Dolno Uyno, Strezimirovtsi, Kalotina, Vrashka Chuka and Bregovo.", "title": "Boundaries and territory" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The relief of Bulgaria is varied. In the relatively small territory of the country there are extensive lowlands, plains, hills, low and high mountains, many valleys and deep gorges. The main characteristic of Bulgaria's topography is four alternating bands of high and low terrain that extend east to west across the country. From north to south, those bands, called geomorphological regions, are the Danubian Plain, the Balkan Mountains, the Transitional region and the Rilo-Rhodope region. The easternmost sections near the Black Sea are hilly, but they gradually gain height to the west until the westernmost part of the country is entirely high ground.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Table, showing the distribution of the height zones in Bulgaria:", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "More than two-thirds of the country is plains, plateaus, or hilly land at an altitude less than 600 m. Plains (below 200 m) make up 31% of the land, plateaus and hills (200 to 600 m) 41%, low mountains (600 to 1,000 m) 10%, medium-high mountains (1,000 to 1,500 m) 10%, and high mountains (over 1,500 m) 3%. The average altitude of Bulgaria is 470 m.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "The contemporary relief of Bulgaria is a result of continuous geological evolution. The Bulgarian lands were often submerged by ancient seas and lakes, some land layers rose others sank. Volcanic eruptions were common both on land and in the water basins. All three main groups of rocks, magmatic, sedimentary and metamorphic, are found in the country. The oldest rock formations in Bulgaria date from the Precambrian period than 500 million years ago. During the Archean, Proterozoic and Paleozoic eras (4.0 billion to 252 million years ago) the magmatic rocks were formed. Throughout most of that period the only land areas were Rila, Pirin and the western Rhodope Mountains. The Mesozoic era (252 million to 66 million years ago) saw the beginning of the Alpine orogeny that has formed the mountain ranges of the Alpide belt, including the Balkan Mountains and Sredna Gora. The Cenozoic era (since 66 million years ago) is characterized with active tectonic processes, the definitive formation of the Balkan Mountains, the formation of grabens and horsts in Rila, Pirin and Kraishte region.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Examples of rock formations in Bulgaria:", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Exogenous processes such as weathering, erosion and sedimentation have an important impact on modelling the land surface and creating rock formations. The exogenous processes have formed stone rivers in Vitosha; screes in the Balkan Mountains, Rila and Pirin; earth pyramids in Melnik, Stob and Katina; landslides, mainly along the Danube banks and the northern Black Sea coast; fluvial terraces; aeolian forms, such as dunes; karst forms, including numerous caves, sinkholes, ponors, etc.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The Danubian Plain encompasses the Moesian plate and extends from the river Timok in the west to the Black Sea in the east and from the river Danube in the north to the Balkan Mountains in the south, covering 31,520 km, or almost 1/3 of Bulgaria's total area. Its width varies from 25 to 30 km in the west to 120 km in the east. The highest point is Tarnov Dyal (502 m) on the Shumen Plateau; the average altitude is 178 m. As a result of the rock weathering processes the relief is uneven with fertile alluvial plains along the Danube (Vidinska, Chernopolska, Zlatia, Belenska, Pobrezhie, Aidemirska), and hilly terrain in the remaining area, including plateaus in the east. The altitude rises from west to east. The valleys of the rivers Vit and Yantra divide the Danubian Plain into three parts – western, central and eastern. The topography of the plain is characterized with hilly heights and plateaus. Most of the heights and all plateaus are situated in the eastern parts. There are 14 basalt mounds between Svishtov and the village of Dragomirovo.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The predominant soil types are loess in the north, reaching a depth of up to 100 m at the banks of the Danube, and chernozem in the south. The climate is temperate. The flat relief and the openness of plain to the north facilitate arrival of moist air masses in spring, summer and autumn. In winter the Danubian Plain falls under the influence of the Eastern European anticyclone, which brings cold Arctic air masses. The mean temperature in January is −1 °C and in July is 24 °C, making it the geomorphological region with the highest average annual amplitude in Bulgaria – 25 °C.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "The Balkan Mountains range is a geological continuation of the Carpathian Mountains, forming part of the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt. This region is subdivided into two geomorphological units, the Pre-Balkan and the Balkan Mountains, also known in Bulgarian as Стара Планина – \"Old Mountain\". Their average altitude is 370 m and 735 m, respectively. Its total area is 26,720 km, of them the Pre-Balkan spans 15,730 km and the Balkan Mountains – almost 11,000 km. The mountain range stretches from the valley of the river Timok in the west to Cape Emine at the Black Sea coast in the east, spanning a length of 555 km and width between 20 and 70 km. The Balkan Mountains are divided into western, central and eastern part by the Zlatitsa and Vratnik Passes. The range is highest in its central part, which includes Botev Peak at 2,376 m; the altitude drops slowly to the east until it reaches the sea. The relief is varied, with many mountain passes, gorges and landforms. The southern slopes are steeper than the northern. For the most part the Balkan Range defines the most important watershed in Bulgaria with rivers draining north to the Danube or south to the river Maritsa and the Aegean Sea. Several rivers in the east drain directly into the Black Sea. In the west, the river Iskar forms a 65-km long gorge that runs north through the mountains.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "The Transitional geomorphological region encompasses the territory between the Balkan Mountains and the Rilo-Rhodope Massif and has complex, mosaic relief composed mainly of medium-high and low mountains, valleys and plains. The altitude decreases from west to east. This region includes the Sub-Balkan valleys; the mountains and valleys of the Kraishte region, such as Ruy Mountain, Miloslavska planina and Milevska Planina; the mountains Lyulin, Vitosha, Sredna Gora, Strandzha and Sakar; the Dervent Heights; as well as the fertile Upper Thracian Plain. The highest point is Cherni Vrah in Vitosha at 2,290 m.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The Sub-Balkan valleys include nine valleys, situated between the Balkan Mountains in the north and Vitosha and Sredna Gora in the south. With an area of 1,186 km and an average altitude of 550 m, Sofia Valley is the largest of the nine and contains the nation's capital, Sofia. The Rose Valley encompasses the valleys of Karlovo and Kazanlak and is renowned for its rose-growing industry, which has been thriving there for centuries, producing 85% of the world's rose oil. The Kazanlak Valley is also known as the Valley of the Thracian Kings due to the extremely high concentration and variety of monuments of the Thracian culture.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Srednogorie region stretches between the Sub-Balkan valleys in the north and the Rilo-Rhodope Massif in the south and from west to east includes the mountains Zavalska, Viskyar, Lyulin, Vitosha, Plana and Sredna Gora. The largest of these, Sredna Gora, is 280 km and reaches a maximum width of 50 km. Kraishte region covers the western parts of the Transitional geomorphological region and consists of two almost parallel mountain groups, Ruysko–Verilska and Konyavsko–Milevska, as well as numerous valleys.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "The Upper Thracian Plain encompasses the middle valley of the river Maritsa and has a roughly triangular shape, situated between Sredna Gora in the north, the Rhodope Mountains in the south and Sakar Mountain in the east. The lowland is 180 km long and up to 50 km wide, spanning an area of 6,000 km. To the east are located the Burgas Plain, Svetliyski Heights, Manastirski Heights, Dervent Heights, and the low mountains Sakar and Strandzha.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "The Rilo-Rhodope geomorphological region covers the south-western regions of Bulgaria and includes the Rhodope Mountains, Rila, Pirin, Osogovo, Vlahina, Maleshevo, Ograzhden, Slavyanka and Belasitsa, as well as the valleys of the rivers Struma and Mesta. The Rhodopes are the most extensive mountain range in Bulgaria, spanning an area of 14,730 km with an average altitude of 785 m, characterized with gentle and densely forested slopes. Their length from west to east is 249 km and reach width of 100 km. The altitude decreases from west to east.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "To the west are located Rila and Pirin, Bulgaria's two highest mountains. Rila includes Mount Musala, whose 2,925 m peak is the highest in the Balkan Peninsula, while Pirin's highest peak Vihren at 2,915 m is the third-highest in the Balkans. Both Rila and Pirin have rocky peaks, stony slopes, extensive Alpine zone and hundreds glacial lakes. Further west is the Osogovo–Belasitsa mountain group along the border with North Macedonia, whose highest peak is Ruen in Osogovo at 2,251 m.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "The Bulgarian Black Sea Coast has a total length of 378 km from Durankulak in the north to the mouth of the river Rezovska in the south. The northernmost section between the Bulgarian-Romanian border to Shabla has extensive sandy beaches and several coastal lakes, then the elevation rises as the coast reaches Cape Kaliakra, with 70 m high vertical cliffs. Near Balchik and Kavarna the limestone rocky coast is cut by wooded valleys. The landscape around the coast resorts of Albena and Golden Sands is hilly, with a clearly expressed land slides. Dense forests at the mouth of the river Batova mark the beginning of Frangensko plateau. South of Varna the coastline is densely wooded, especially at the alluvial longose groves of the Kamchia Biosphere Reserve. Cape Emine marks the end of the Balkan Mountain and divides the Bulgarian Black Sea coast in northern and southern parts. The southern section has wide and long beaches, with a number of small bays and headlands. All Bulgarian Black Sea islands are situated in the southern coast: St. Anastasia, St. Cyricus, St. Ivan, St. Peter and St. Thomas. Sandy beaches occupy 34% of the Bulgarian coastline. The two most important gulf are the Gulf of Varna in the north and the Gulf of Burgas in the south, which is the largest in the Bulgarian Black Sea coast.", "title": "Topography" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Considering its relatively small area, Bulgaria has variable and complex climate. The country occupies the southernmost part of the continental climatic zone, with small areas in the south falling within the Mediterranean climatic zone. The continental zone is predominant, because continental air masses flow easily into the unobstructed Danubian Plain. The continental influence, stronger during the winter, produces abundant snowfall; the Mediterranean influence increases during the second half of summer and produces hot and dry weather. Bulgaria is subdivided into five climatic zones: continental zone (Danubian Plain, Pre-Balkan and the higher valleys of the Transitional geomorphological region); transitional zone (Upper Thracian Plain, most of the Struma and Mesta valleys, the lower Sub-Balkan valleys); continental-Mediterranean zone (the southernmost areas of the Struma and Mesta valleys, the eastern Rhodope Mountains, Sakar and Strandzha); Black Sea zone along the coastline with an average length of 30–40 km inland; and alpine zone in the mountains above 1000 m altitude (central Balkan Mountains, Rila, Pirin, Vitosha, western Rhodope Mountains, etc.).", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Despite the large distance, the most important climate-forming factor is the Atlantic Ocean through the atmospheric circulation of the Icelandic cyclone and the Azores anticyclone, which bring cool and rainy weather in summer and relatively mild weather with abundant snowfall in winter. The influence of the Mediterranean Sea is strongest in the southern parts of Bulgaria, mainly through the Mediterranean cyclones. Due to its small area, the influence of the Black Sea only affects a 30–40 km long strip along the coastline, mainly in summer, when the daily breeze circulation is most pronounced.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Another important factor is the relief. The Bulgarian mountains and valleys act as barriers or channels for air masses, causing sharp contrasts in weather over relatively short distances. The Balkan Mountains form a barrier which effectively stops the cool air masses coming from the north and the warm masses from the south. The barrier effect of the Balkan Mountains is felt throughout the country: on the average, northern Bulgaria is about one degree cooler and receives about 192 mm more rain than lowlands of southern Bulgaria. The Rilo-Rhodope Massif bars the warm Mediterranean air masses and limits the Mediterranean influence to the southern valleys of the rivers Struma, Mesta, Maritsa and Tundzha, despite the close proximity of the Aegean Sea.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "The mean annual temperature in Bulgaria is 10.6 °C and varies from 2.9 °C at the nation's highest peak Musala to 13.9 °C at the town of Sandanski in the southern Struma valley. The average temperature in the Danubian Plain is 11.4 °C, in the Upper Thracian Plain 13.9 °C, in the lower mountains 8.1 °C and in the higher mountains 2.4 °C. The highest absolute temperature was measured at the town of Sadovo in 1916 45.2 °C; the lowest absolute temperature was measured at the town of Tran in 1947 –38.3 °C. The highest temperature in the lowlands and the hilly regions is in June, while in the higher mountains the warmest month is August. The lowest temperature is measured in January and February, respectively. Many valleys experience regular temperature inversions and fogs in winter. The country's lowest absolute temperature was measured during an inversion in the Tran valley.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "The average precipitation in Bulgaria is about 670 mm. It is uneven in terms of seasons and territory. In northern Bulgaria the highest precipitation is in May–June, while in southern Bulgaria it is in winter. The average amount of precipitation also varies in term of altitude – from 450 to 850 mm in the plains to 850–1200 mm. The lowest mean precipitation is in the eastern part of Dobrudzha and the Burgas Plain (450 mm) and in the area between Plovdiv and Pazardzhik (500 mm); the highest rainfall falls in the mountains – the Petrohan Pass in the western Balkan Mountains and Zlatograd in the Rhodope Mountains. The highest annual rainfall was measured in 1957 in the upper valley of the river Ogosta in the western Balkan Mountains (2293 mm); the highest daily rainfall was recorded at Saints Constantine and Helena resort (342 mm) near Varna in 1951. The total annual amount of the rainfall is 74 billion km; of them 70% evaporate, 20% flow into the rivers and 10% soak into the soil. Most of the country is affected by droughts in June and August. The snow cover lasts from 20 to 30 days in the lowlands to 9 months in the highest mountains.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Bulgaria has a dense network of about 540 rivers, but with the notable exception of the Danube, most have short length and low water-level. The density is highest in the mountain areas and lowest in Dobrudzha, the Danubian Plain and the Upper Thracian Plain. There are two catchment basins: the Black Sea (57% of the territory and 42% of the rivers) and the Aegean Sea (43% of the territory and 58% of the rivers) basins.", "title": "Hydrography" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The Balkan Mountains divide Bulgaria into two nearly equal drainage systems. The larger system drains northward to the Black Sea, mainly by way of the Danube. This system includes the entire Danubian Plain and a stretch of land running 48–80 km inland from the coastline in the south. The Danube gets slightly more than 4% of its total volume from its Bulgarian tributaries. As it flows along the northern border, the Danube averages 1.6 to 2.4 km in width. The river's highest water levels usually occur during the May floods; it is frozen over an average of 40 days per year. The longest river located entirely in Bulgarian territory, the Iskar, with a length of 368 km and a catchment area of 8,640 km, is the only Bulgarian Danubian tributary that does not rise in the Balkan Mountains. Instead, the Iskar has its origin in the Rila Mountains. It passes through Sofia's eastern suburbs and crosses the Balkan Mountains through a spectacular 65 km–long gorge. Other important tributaries of the Danube include the rivers Lom, Ogosta, Vit, Osam and Yantra. The longest river flowing directly to the Black Sea is the Kamchiya (254 km), while other rivers include the Batova, Provadiya, Aheloy, Ropotamo, Veleka and Rezovo.", "title": "Hydrography" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The Aegean Sea catchment basin drains the Thracian Plain and most of the higher lands to the south and southwest. Several major rivers flow directly to the Aegean Sea. Most of these streams fall swiftly from the mountains and have cut deep, scenic gorges. The 480 km–long Maritsa (of them 321 km in Bulgaria) and its tributaries drain all of the western Thracian Plain, all of Sredna Gora, the southern slopes of the Balkan Mountains, and the northern slopes of the eastern Rhodopes. After it leaves Bulgaria, the Maritsa forms most of the Greco-Turkish border. Maritsa's major tributaries are the Tundzha, Arda, Topolnitsa, Vacha, etc. The other Bulgarian rivers flowing directly to the Aegean are the Struma and the Mesta.", "title": "Hydrography" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Bulgaria has around 400 natural lakes with a total area of 95 km and volume of 278 million km. The limans and lagoons along the Black Sea coast include from north to south Lake Durankulak, Lake Shabla, Lake Varna, Lake Beloslav, Lake Pomorie, Lake Atanasovsko, Lake Burgas and Lake Mandrensko. Of them, Lake Burgas is the most extensive with 27,6 km and Lake Varna has the largest volume with 165,5 million m. The lakes along the Danube were dried to clear land for agriculture with the notable exception of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Lake Srebarna. There are 170 glacial lakes in Rila and 164 in Pirin. They are an important tourist asset. The most renown lakes include the Seven Rila Lakes, Popovo Lake, Banderishki Lakes, Vasilashki Lakes, Vlahini Lakes, etc. Swamps and marshes include Alepu, Arkutino, Aldomirovtsi Marsh, Dragoman Marsh, etc. There are around 2,200 reservoirs with a total volume of c. 7 billion km. The largest ones are Iskar Reservoir, Ogosta Reservoir, Dospat Reservoir, Batak Reservoir, Kardzhali Reservoir, Ivaylovgrad Reservoir, Studen Kladenets, Koprinka Reservoir, Ticha Reservoir, etc.", "title": "Hydrography" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Bulgaria is rich in mineral waters, with 225 mineral springs and a total discharge of 5000 L/s, mainly in the south-western and central parts of the country along the faults between the mountains. Most of them, 148, are situated in southern Bulgaria, while the other 77 are in the northern part of the country. The springs in the north tend to be with cool water, while those to the south are mainly warm and hot. The hottest spring in Bulgaria and the Balkans is situated in Sapareva Banya and reaches 101.4 °C. The Bulgarian word for spa, баня, transliterated as banya, appears in some of the names of more than 50 spa towns and resorts. They are located in several zones: Balkan Mountains zone (Varshets, Shipkovo, Voneshta Voda), Srednogorie zone (Sofia, Ovcha kupel, Bankya, Pancharevo, Strelcha, Hisarya, Banya, Pavel Banya), Maritsa zone (Kostenets (town), Kostenets (village), Dolna Banya, Momin Prohod), Rilo-Rhodope zone (Devin, Velingrad, Banite, Beden, Mihalkovo, Sapareva Banya), Struma zone (Kyustendil, Sandanski, Ognyanovo, Marikostinovo, Dobrinishte).", "title": "Hydrography" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "The soil cover of Bulgaria is diverse. The soil resources of the country are adequately researched and include 17 soil types and 28 sub-types. Of them, six types form 88.7% of the soil cover: cinnamon soils (22.0%); chernozem (20.4%); grey forest soils (17.0%); brown forest soils (14.8%); alluvial soils (9.0%) and smolnitsi (5.4%).", "title": "Soils" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "There are three soil zones. The Northern forest-steppe zone covers the Danubian Plain and the Pre-Balkan up to 600–700 m altitude. The Danubian Plain is characterised by the fertile black earth chernozem, that accounts for 54% of the zone's area, while the Pre-Balkan is dominated by grey forest soils (39%), which have good physical characteristics but are low in organic matter and phosphorus. The Southern xerothermal zone encompasses Southern Bulgaria up to 700–800 m altitude and includes several specific soil types due to the more diverse topography and climate. The most common soil types are the cinnamon forest soils with acidic (cinnamonic) traces, smolnitsi and yellow-podzolic soils. The Mountain zone covers the mountainous regions above 700–800 m altitude and has a zonal soil cover. The brown forest soils are distributed at altitudes of 1000–2000 m, the dark mountain forest soils can be found at 1700–2200 m altitude and the mountain meadow soils – above 1700 m. These soils are typically shallow and prone to erosion and are usually acid to strongly acid.", "title": "Soils" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "There are approximately 60 types of minerals that are extracted commercially in Bulgaria. The mineral resources are divided into three groups: fossil fuels, metals and industrial minerals.", "title": "Mineral resources" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "The fossil fuels include coal, petroleum and natural gas. Bulgaria possesses significant reserves of coal estimated at 4,8 billion tons. More than 92% of them, or 4,5 billion tons, is lignite, which is the lowest rank of coal due to its relatively low heat content but is widely used for electricity generation. With reserves of 2,856 billion tons Maritsa Iztok, situated in the Upper Thracian Plain, is by far the largest coal basin in the country which powers Maritsa Iztok Complex, the largest energy complex in South-Eastern Europe. Other lignite basins include Sofia valley (reserves of 870 million tons), Elhovo (656 million tons), Lom (277 million tons), Maritsa Zapad (170 million tons). The reserves of sub-bituminous coal are 300 million tons, situated mainly near Bobov Dol, Pernik and Burgas. The recoverable reserves of bituminous coal and anthracite are insignificant – only 10 and 2,5 million tons respectively. However, there is a huge basin of bituminous coal in Southern Dobruja with estimated reserves of over 1 billion tons but its large depth (1370–1950 m) is an obstacle for its commercial exploitation.", "title": "Mineral resources" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "The Bulgarian exclusive economic zone has a total size of 110,879 km (42,811 sq mi) in the Black Sea. Petroleum and natural gas are found in northern Bulgaria and its EEZ in the Black Sea. Crude oil is extracted in Dolni Dabnik and Gigen in Pleven Province and in Tyulenovo, Dobrich Province. The proven reserves are 20 million tons but there are prospects for new discovering in the EEZ. Gas fields have been discovered off cape Kaliakra (reserves of 3 billion m), Deventsi (6 billion m), between Lovech and Etropole (est. 22 billion m), as well as near Devetaki and Butan. It is estimated that the 14,220 m Khan Asparukh Block in the northern section of the Bulgarian EEZ has natural gas reserves of 100 billion m.", "title": "Mineral resources" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "Bulgaria has significant reserves of metal ores, especially copper, zinc and lead, situated mainly in the southern half of the country. The two largest iron ore mines are located in Kremikovtsi near Sofia and Krumovo, Yambol Province with total reserves of 430 million tons. Manganese ore is extracted near Obrochishte in Dobrich Province (reserves of 85 million tons), as well as in the provinces of Sofia and Varna. The reserves of chromium are small and are scattered in the Rhodope Mountains. Bulgaria possesses important reserves of lead and zinc, of them 60% are situated in the southern reaches of the Rhodope Mountains along the border with Greece at Madan, Zlatograd, Madzharovo, Rudozem, Laki, etc. Other mines are located near Ustrem and Gyueshevo. The reserves of copper ore are also significant, situated mainly at Asarel Medet near Panagyurishte, Elatsite mine near Etropole (650 million tons), Elshitsa, Medni Rid near Burgas, etc. There is gold near Tran, Chelopech and Madzharovo, as well as small quantities of platinum, silver, molybdenum, nickel and tungsten.", "title": "Mineral resources" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "Bulgaria is rich in industrial minerals, with 70 types being mined. There are important reserves of rock salt near the town of Provadia (4,4 billion tons). Solnitsata, an ancient town located nearby is believed by Bulgarian archaeologists to be the oldest in Europe and was the site of a salt production facility approximately six millennia ago. The reserves of kaolinite are estimated at 70 million tons, situated mainly in north-eastern Bulgaria – Kaolinovo, Todor Ikonomovo, Senovo and Vetovo. Marble is extracted in the mountainous regions – Pirin, Rhodopes, Strandzha, the western Balkan Mountains. There are important quantities of limestone, gypsum, baryte, perlite, feldspar, granite, etc.", "title": "Mineral resources" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "The interaction of complex climatic, hydrological, geological and topographical conditions make Bulgaria one of the most biologically diverse countries of Europe. Phytogeographically, Bulgaria straddles the Illyrian and Euxinian provinces of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. The country falls within six terrestrial ecoregions of the Palearctic realm: Balkan mixed forests, Rodope montane mixed forests, Euxine-Colchic deciduous forests, Aegean and Western Turkey sclerophyllous and mixed forests, East European forest steppe and Pontic–Caspian steppe. Around 35% of Bulgaria's land area consists of forests, which include some of the oldest trees in the world, such as Baikushev's pine and the Granit oak. Bulgaria's flora contains between 3,800 and 4,200 vascular plant species of which 170 are endemic and 150 are considered endangered. There more than 6,500 species of non-vascular plants and fungi.", "title": "Biodiversity" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "Bulgaria's vertebrate fauna is among the most diverse in Europe. The zoogeographical regions are three: the Eurosiberian region, encompassing the Danubian Plain and the mountainous regions of the country; the Irano-Turanian Region encompassing Southern Dobrudzha; and the Mediterranean region that includes the Upper Thracian Plain, the lower Struma valley and the Black Sea coast. Bulgaria is inhabited by around 100 mammal species, including Brown bears, Grey wolves, Wild boars, Golden jackals, Red foxes, Wildcats, Red deers, Roe deers, European fallow deers, European hares, Southern white-breasted hedgehogs, Badgers, Marbled polecats, European polecats, European pine martens, four species of Oceanic dolphins, Mediterranean monk seals among other. Protection, reintroductions and repopulations like those of the European bison, the Eurasian beaver, and the Eurasian lynx are intended and reported.", "title": "Biodiversity" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "The avian fauna is represented by 434 species of birds, which is the second highest number in Europe. Almost all species of the True owls live in the country, also White stork, Common crane, Demoiselle crane. Important conservation species are the Eastern imperial eagle, the Cinereous, Griffon, Egyptian and the Bearded vultures, the Great white pelican, the Dalmatian pelican, etc.", "title": "Biodiversity" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "The reptiles and the amphibians found in Bulgaria are 38 and 20 species respectively. There are four turtle and two tortoise species of four families – Cheloniidae, Emydidae, Geoemydidae and Testudinidae; fourteen lizard species of four families – Anguidae, Gekkonidae, Lacertidae and Scincidae; and eighteen snake species of four families – Boidae, Colubridae, Typhlopidae and Viperidae.", "title": "Biodiversity" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "The ichthyofauna of the country has not been fully researched, but there is a rich variety with various species of Sturgeons, Black sea shark, Longnose spurdog, Thornback ray, Common stingray, Northern pike, European eel, etc. As of 2000 there are 207 fish species.", "title": "Biodiversity" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "There are an estimated 27,000 species of insects and other invertebrates.", "title": "Biodiversity" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Concern about biodiversity conservation remains strong within the country. In 1998 the Government of Bulgaria approved the National Biological Diversity Conservation Strategy, which was inspired by the Pan European Strategy for Biological and Landscape Diversity. Bulgaria has some of the largest Natura 2000 areas in the European Union covering 33.8% of its territory. The national policy for governing and management of the protected areas is implemented by the Ministry of Environment and Water. Bulgaria's biodiversity is conserved in three national parks, 11 nature parks and 55 nature reserves. Of them, Pirin National Park, Srebarna Nature Reserve and nine forest reserves within the Central Balkan National Park are included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Spanning a territory of 1,161 square kilometres Strandzha Nature Park is the largest protected area in the country. Established in 1936 Vitosha Nature Park is the oldest in Bulgaria and in the Balkan Peninsula.", "title": "Biodiversity" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The politics of Bulgaria take place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the prime minister is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the National Assembly. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "After forty-five years of single party system, Bulgaria became an unstable party system in 1989. This system was dominated by democratic parties and opposition to socialists – the Union of Democratic Forces and several personalistic parties and the post-communist Bulgarian Socialist Party or its creatures, which emerged for a short period of time in the past decade. Personalistic parties could have been seen in the former governing (from 2001 to 2005) Simeon II's NDSV party and Boyko Borisov's GERB party.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Bulgaria has generally good freedom of speech and human rights records as reported by the US Library of Congress Federal Research Division in 2006, while Freedom House listed it as \"free\" in 2020, giving it scores of 33 for political rights and 45 for civil liberties. However, in 2014, there was some concern that the proposed new Penal Code would limit freedom of the press and assembly, and as a consequence freedom of speech. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Bulgaria a \"flawed democracy\" in 2022.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "After the fall of the communism in 1989, the former communist party was restructured and succeeded by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), which won the first post-communist elections for the Constitutional Assembly in 1990 with a small majority. Meanwhile, Zhelyu Zhelev, a communist-era dissident from the new democratic party - Union of Democratic Forces (abbreviated in Bulgarian as SDS), was elected president by the Assembly in 1990. In the first years after the change of regime, Bulgarian politics had to (re)establish the foundations of a democratic society in the country after nearly fifty years of de facto totalitarian communism. The so-called period of transition (from a Soviet socialist model to an economic structure focused on development through economic growth) began in the early 1990s. The politics of Bulgaria was aimed at joining the European Union and the NATO fold, as the alliances were recognised to have political agendas similar to the goals of the new Bulgarian democracy.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "In contemporary Bulgaria, the government and its leader - the Prime Minister, have more political influence and significance than the President. Thus, the parliamentary elections set the short-term social and political environment in the country since the cabinet (chosen by the Prime Minister and approved by the parliament) decides how the country is governed while the President can only make suggestions and impose vetoes.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "In the first parliamentary elections held under the new constitution of Bulgaria, in October 1991, the Union of Democratic Forces (SDS) party won a plurality of the seats, having won 110 out of the 240 seats, and created a cabinet alone with the support of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms—a liberal party (in Bulgarian abbreviated: DPS) which is widely perceived as a party of the ethnic Turks minority in Bulgaria. Yet, their government collapsed in late 1992, and was succeeded by a technocratic team put forward by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), which served until 1994 when it also collapsed. The President dissolved the government and appointed a provisional one to serve until early parliamentary elections could be held in December.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "BSP won convincingly these elections in December 1994 with a majority of 125 seats out of the 240. Due to the severe economic crisis in Bulgaria during their government, BSP's cabinet collapsed and in 1997 a caretaker cabinet was appointed by the President, again, to serve until early parliamentary elections could be held in April 1997.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The April 1997 elections resulted in a landslide victory for the SDS, winning a majority of 137 seats in parliament, and allowing them to form the next government. This proved to be the first post-communist government that did not collapse and served its full 4-year term until 2001.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "In 2001, the former monarch of Bulgaria Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha returned to power, this time as Prime Minister with his National Movement Simeon II (in Bulgarian abbreviated: NDSV), having won half (120) of the seats. His party entered a coalition with the DPS and invited two functionaries of the BSP (who sat as independents). In opposition were the two previously governing parties - the Socialist Party and the Union of Democratic Forces. In the four years in opposition the SDS suffered the defection of numerous splinter groups. The ruling party NDSV itself ruptured into a pro-right core and a pro-liberal fringe group. Bulgaria entered NATO in 2004.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "In the aftermath, the BSP won the parliamentary elections in 2005 with 82 out of the 240 seats, but as it did not get the majority of the seats, a coalition government was formed by the three biggest parties - BSP, NDSV and DPS. The elections also put in parliament some of the right-wing parties, as well as the extreme-right nationalist coalition led by the party Ataka as an answer to the former coalition government of NDSV with DPS. Bulgarian entered the European Union in 2007.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In the parliamentary elections of 2009, the centre-right party of Boyko Borisov, the mayor of Sofia, GERB, won with 117 seats. The party formed a minority government with the support of the right-wing parties. Once the governing party - the National Movement Simeon II did not amass enough votes to enter the parliament. The austerity measures required in the stagnation of the Global Financial Crisis led to massive protests and the resignation of the cabinet in early 2013, months before the end of GERB's term.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "In the early elections the former opposition party BSP received highest vote from the people. However, as GERB received only 84 of the 240 seats, and failed to make a coalition, they refused the mandate, handing it down to the next party BSP. The socialist party chose the non-party former Minister of Finance Plamen Oresharski to form a cabinet. His cabinet was supported by the BSP and the DPS, opposed by GERB, while Ataka was absent.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Only two weeks after its initial formation the Oresharski government came under criticism and had to deal with large-scale protests some with more than 11 000 participants. One of the main reasons for these protests was the controversial appointment of media mogul Delyan Peevski as a chief of the National Security State Agency. The protests continued over the lifetime of the Oresharski government. In all, the government survived 5 votes of no-confidence before voluntarily resigning. Following an agreement from the three largest parties (GERB, BSP and DPS) to hold early parliamentary elections for 25 March 2016, the cabinet agreed to resign, with the resignation of the cabinet becoming a fact on 13 January 2016. The next day parliament voted 180-8 (8 abstained and 44 were absent) to accept the government's resignation. Following the vote, President Plevneliev offered the mandate to GERB to try and form government, but it was refused. The next day the BSP returned the mandate as well. On 21 January, the DPS refused the mandate as well. Finally, on 26 January, a caretaker government led by Georgi Bliznashki was sworn into office and the Oresharski government was officially dissolved.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "As agreed, parliamentary elections were held on 25 March 2016 to elect the 43rd National Assembly. GERB remained the largest party, winning 84 of the 240 seats with around a third of the vote. A total of eight parties won seats, the first time since the beginning of democratic elections in 1990 that more than seven parties entered parliament. After being tasked by President Rosen Plevneliev to form a government, Borisov's GERB formed a coalition with the Reformist Bloc, had a partnership agreement for the support of the Alternative for Bulgarian Revival, and also had the outside support of the Patriotic Front. The cabinet of twenty ministers was approved by a majority of 136-97 (with one abstention). With the support of the coalition partner (the Reformist Bloc) members of the parties in the Bloc (Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB), Union of Democratic Forces (SDS), Bulgaria for Citizens Movement (DBG) and Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BZNS)) were chosen for Minister positions. The vice chairman of the Alternative for Bulgarian Revival party Ivaylo Kalfin was voted for Depute Prime Minister and Minister of Labor and Social Policy.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "In May 2017, Boyko Borisov was re-elected as Prime Minister of Bulgaria for the second time. Borisov had resigned and called early elections after his conservative GERB party lost the presidential elections previous year. He formed a coalition government with nationalist VMRO-BND and National Front for Salvation of Bulgaria. The Socialist Party and the Turkish DPS party formed the opposition.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The 2020–2021 Bulgarian protests were triggered on 9 July 2020 when the Presidency of Bulgaria was raided by police and prosecutors as a result of a long-lasting conflict between the prime minister Boyko Borisov and the president Rumen Radev. In April 2021, Borisov's party, center-right, pro-European GERB won the parliamentary election. It was again the largest party of the parliament but it did not get the absolute majority, indicating difficult coalition talks. All other parties refused to form a government, and after a brief deadlock, another elections were called for July 2021, with Stefan Yanev serving as an interim Prime Minister of a caretaker cabinet until then.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "In the July 2021 snap election, an anti-elite party called There Is Such a People (ITN) finished first with 24.08 percent and former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov's GERB-led coalition finished second with 23.51 percent of the vote. A coalition government was unable to be formed, and so a third parliamentary election was scheduled for November 2021 to align with the regularly scheduled presidential election. In the 2021 Bulgarian general election, Kiril Petkov's PP party emerged as surprise victors over the conservative GERB party, which had dominated Bulgarian politics in the last decade. In December 2021, Bulgaria’s parliament formally elected Kiril Petkov as the country's next prime minister, ending a months-long political crisis. The new centrist-led government was a coalition led by Petkov’s anti-corruption We Continue The Change party (PP) with three other political groups: the left-wing Bulgarian Socialist Party, the anti-elite There Is Such A People party, and the liberal group Democratic Bulgaria. They together control 134 seats in Bulgaria’s 240-seat parliament. The cabinet of Kiril Petkov fell after a vote of no confidence of 22 June 2022. President Radev appointed Galab Donev as acting prime minister to lead a caretaker cabinet. Bulgaria's fourth parliamentary elections in less than two years will be held on October 2, 2022.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "In April 2023, because of the political deadlock, Bulgaria held its fifth parliamentary election since April 2021. GERB was the biggest, winning 69 seats. The bloc led by We Continue the Change won 64 seats in the 240-seat parliament. In June 2023, Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov formed a new coalition between We Continue The Change and GERB. According to the coalition agreement, Denkov will lead the government for the first nine months. He will be succeeded by former European Commissioner, Mariya Gabriel, of the GERB party. She will take over as Prime Minister after nine months.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "In 1992, Zhelyu Zhelev won Bulgaria's first presidential elections and served as president until 1997. In the second, the winning President was another member of the Union of Democratic Forces, Petar Stoyanov, who served until 2002. In 2001, the leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, Georgi Parvanov defeated Stoyanov. He took office in 2002 and served until 2012, becoming the first president to be reelected, after his successful 2006 campaign. In 2011 GERB candidate Rosen Plevneliev was elected to serve as president from 2012 until January 2017. In 2016 Socialist party candidate, former air force commander Rumen Radev won the presidential election. On 18 January 2017, Rumen Radev was sworn in as the new President of Bulgaria. President Rumen Radev, a vocal critic and rival of prime minister Borisov, announced that he will run for a second five-year term in autumn 2021 presidential elections. In November 2021, President Rumen Radev was easily re-elected in the presidential election with a very low turnout of 34 per cent.", "title": "Developments since 1990" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "The president of Bulgaria is directly elected for a 5-year term with the right to one re-election. The president serves as the head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces. The President's main duties are to schedule elections and referendums, represent Bulgaria abroad, conclude international treaties, and head the Consultative Council for National Security. The President may return legislation to the National Assembly for further debate—a kind of veto—but the legislation can be passed again by an absolute majority vote.", "title": "Executive branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The Bulgarian unicameral parliament, the National Assembly or Narodno Sabranie, consists of 240 deputies who are elected for 4-year-terms by popular vote. The votes are for party or coalition lists of candidates for each of the 28 administrative divisions. A party or coalition must garner a minimum of 4% of the vote in order to enter parliament. Parliament is responsible for enactment of laws, approval of the budget, scheduling of presidential elections, selection and dismissal of the prime minister and other ministers, declaration of war, deployment of troops outside of Bulgaria, and ratification of international treaties and agreements.", "title": "Legislative branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "According to parallel counts of sample polling stations by several polling agencies, the final result was a close race between GERB—SDS and PP–DB, with all projecting GERB—SDS to be narrowly in the lead. All also suggest that V, DPS, and BSPzB would make it into the parliament, and there was conflicting data on whether ITN would win seats as well.", "title": "Elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "The following table outlines the results by party. The national threshold at 4% is calculated using total votes for parties and independent candidates only, and not the total of valid votes, which include \"None of the above\" votes. As such, ITN wins seats despite seemingly falling below 4%.", "title": "Elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Alpha Research exit polling suggested the following demographic breakdown. The parties that got below 4% of the vote are included in \"Others\".", "title": "Elections" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The Bulgarian judicial system consists of regional, district and appeal courts, as well as a Supreme Court of Cassation and one Specialized Criminal Court. In addition, there is a Supreme Administrative Court and a system of military courts. The Presidents of the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court as well as the Prosecutor General are elected by a qualified majority of two-thirds from all the members of the Supreme Judicial Council and are appointed by the President of the Republic. The Supreme Judicial Council is in charge of the self-administration and organisation of the Judiciary.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "A qualified majority of two-thirds of the membership of the Supreme Judicial Council elects the Presidents of the Supreme Court of Cassation and of the Supreme Administrative Court, as well as the Prosecutor General, from among its members; the President of the Republic then appoints those elected.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "The Supreme Judicial Council has charge of the self-administration and organization of the Judiciary.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "The Constitutional Court of Bulgaria supervises the review of the constitutionality of laws and statutes brought before it, as well as the compliance of these laws with international treaties that the Government has signed. Parliament elects the 12 members of the Constitutional Court by a two-thirds majority. The members serve for a nine-year term.", "title": "Judicial branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "The territory of the Republic of Bulgaria is divided into provinces and municipalities. In all Bulgaria has 28 provinces, each headed by a provincial governor appointed by the government. In addition, there are 265 municipalities.", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Political pressure groups and leaders:", "title": "Other data" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The economy of Bulgaria functions on the principles of the free market, having a large private sector and a smaller public one. Bulgaria is an industrialised high-income country according to the World Bank, and is a member of the European Union (EU), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC). The Bulgarian economy has experienced significant growth (538%), starting from $13.15 billion (nominal, 2000) and reaching estimated gross domestic product (GDP) of $86 billion (nominal, 2022 est.) or $203 billion (PPP, 2022 est.), GDP per capita of $31,148 (PPP, 2022 est.), average gross monthly salary of 2,009 leva (1,027 euro) (April 2023), and average net monthly salary of $2,102 (adjusted for living costs in PPP) (2022). The national currency is the lev (plural leva), pegged to the euro at a rate of 1.95583 leva for 1 euro. The lev is the strongest and most stable currency in Eastern Europe.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The strongest sectors in the economy are energy, mining, metallurgy, machine building, agriculture and tourism. Primary industrial exports are clothing, iron and steel, machinery and refined fuels.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Sofia is the capital and economic heart of Bulgaria and home to most major Bulgarian and international companies operating in the country, as well as the Bulgarian National Bank and the Bulgarian Stock Exchange. Plovdiv is the second-largest city and has one of the largest economies in Bulgaria. Varna is the third largest city in Bulgaria and the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. Situated strategically in the Gulf of Varna, economically, Varna is among the best-performing and fastest-growing Bulgarian cities.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The Bulgarian economy has developed significantly in the last 26 years, despite all difficulties after the disband of Comecon in 1991. In the early 1990s, the country's slow pace of privatization, contradictory government tax and investment policies, and bureaucratic red tape kept the foreign direct investment (FDI) among the lowest in the region. Total FDI from 1991 through 1996 was $831 million.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "In December 1996, Bulgaria joined the World Trade Organization. In the years since 1997, Bulgaria begun to attract substantial foreign investment. In 2004 alone, over 2.72 billion euro ($3.47 billion) were invested by foreign companies. In 2005, economists observed a slowdown to about 1.8 billion euro ($2.3 billion) in the FDI, which is attributed mainly to the end of the privatization of the major state owned companies.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "After joining the European Union in 2007, Bulgaria registered a peak in foreign investment of about 6 bln euro. Low productivity and competitiveness on the European and world markets alike due to inadequate R&D funding, however, still remain a significant obstacle for foreign investment. Nevertheless, according to the latest Annual report of the Economic Research Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the average salary in Bulgaria is a quarter (1/4) of the average salary in the European Union, and should be two times higher when the labour productivity is calculated in the formula.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "During the Great Recession, Bulgaria saw its economy decline by 5.5% in 2009, but quickly restored positive growth levels to 0.2% in 2010, in contrast to other Balkan countries. However, the growth continued to be weak in the following years, and GDP only reached pre-crisis levels in 2014.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "During the 17th and 18th century Bulgaria had a largely undeveloped industry with agriculture, crafts, and partly trade being the only developed industry sectors.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Bulgaria was one of the more dynamic industrial areas of the Ottoman Empire. Bulgaria experienced an economic boom in export-oriented textiles in the period 1815–65, even while the Ottoman Empire's economy was in decline. Bulgaria had comparatively weak economic growth from the 1870s to World War I. The Bulgarian export sector collapsed after Bulgarian independence in 1878. By 1903, industrial output in Bulgaria was far lower than in 1870.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "During the 1930s, the Bulgarian economy was described as an economy militarily bound to Germany. In the early 1940s, as Germany began to lose the Second World War, the Bulgarian economy suffered a decline.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In the interwar period, there was considerable economic modernization in Bulgaria's agricultural sector, setting the conditions for rapid growth after World War II.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "During the Socialism era, Bulgarian economy continued to be industrialized, although free market trade substantially decreased, as private market initiatives became state-regulated. Still, the Bulgarian economy made significant overall progress in modernizing road infrastructure, airline transportation, as well as developing the tourism sector by building tourist resorts along the Black sea coast and the mountain regions.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "From the end of World War II until the widespread change of regime in Eastern Europe in November 1989, the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) exerted complete economic, social and political control in Bulgaria. The party's ascent to power in 1944 had marked the beginning of economic change towards planned economy. During that time, Bulgaria followed the Soviet model of economic development more closely than any other member of the Eastern Bloc, while becoming one of the first members of Comecon. The new regime shifted the economy type from a predominantly agrarian one towards an industrial economy, while encouraging the relocation of the labour force from the countryside to the cities, thus providing workers for the newly built large-scale industrial complexes. At the same time, the focus of Bulgarian international trade shifted from Central Europe to Eastern Europe and the USSR.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "These new policies resulted in impressive initial rates of economic development. Bulgarian economy closely resembled that of the Soviet Union. Soviet-style centralised planning formed by consecutive five-year plan periods had more immediate benefits there compared to the other Eastern European states where it was first applied in the early 1950s. Throughout the postwar period, economic progress was also substantially assisted by a level of internal political stability unseen in other Eastern European countries during the same period. That represented a change on the Bulgarian political scene as political turbulence was common before BCP's ascent to power.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Nonetheless, beginning in the early 1960s, low capital and labour productivity, as well as expensive material inputs, plagued the Bulgarian economy. With disappointing rates of growth came a high degree of economic experimentation. This experimentation took place within the socialist economic framework, although never approaching a market-based economy.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "In the late 1980s, continuing poor economic performance intensified economic hardship. By that time, the misdirection and irrationality of BCP economic policies had become quite clear. Bulgaria's economy contracted dramatically after 1987, shortly before Comecon, with which the Bulgarian economy had integrated closely, dissolved in 1991. On 10 November 1989, at the November plenum of BCP, Todor Zhivkov was dismissed from his long-held party leader and head of state positions. The communist regime gave way to democratic elections and government. Unlike the communist parties in most other Eastern European states, the BCP (changing its name to Bulgarian Socialist Party) retained power by winning the first free national elections in June 1990. That was made possible by changes in party leadership, programme, reduction of its power base and other moves which permitted economic re-orientation toward a market system. This difficult transition combined with political vagueness and unpreparedness of the Bulgarian people for social and economic changes led to dramatically worsening economic conditions during the early 1990s.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Economic performance declined dramatically at the beginning of the 1990s after the disbandment of the Comecon system and the loss of the Soviet and Comecon market, to which the country had been entirely tied. Also, as a result of political unrest with the first attempts to re-establish a democratic political system and free market economy the standard of living fell by about 40%, and only started to stabilize significantly after 1998 after the fall of Jean Videnov's socialist government. It regained pre-1989 levels by June 2004.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "First signs of recovery showed in 1994 when GDP grew by 1.4%. This progress continued with a 2.5% rise in 1995. Inflation, which surged to 122% in 1994, fell to normal rates of 32.9% in 1995. During 1996, however, the economy collapsed during Jean Videnov's government. That was due to the Bulgarian Socialist Party's inability to introduce vital economic reforms and failure to set legislative standards for banking and financial institutions, thus forcing an unstable banking system. All this led to an inflation rate of 311%, and the collapse of the lev. In the spring 1997, the pro-reform United Democratic Forces coalition came to power with its ambitious economic reform package. The reforms included introduction of a currency board regime, which was agreed to with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and allowed the economy to stabilize. The 2000s saw a steady pace of growth and budget surpluses, but shaky inflation.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Successful foreign direct investment and successive governments have demonstrated a commitment to economic reforms and responsible fiscal planning that have contributed greatly to the Bulgarian economy, with a historical growth rate average of 6% a year. Corruption in the public administration and a weak judiciary have continued to be long-term problems, with presence of organized crime remaining very high.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Although politicians were giving warranties that the late-2000s recession would not hit Bulgaria, the economy suffered a 5.5% GDP decline in that period. Unemployment rose for at least five-quarters bringing Bulgaria's worst recession since the early 1990s. Still, economic circumstances were not too severe when compared to the rest of Europe. Future prospects are tied to the country's increasingly important integration with the European Union member states.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Members of the government promised to move forward on cash and mass privatization upon taking office in January 1995 but were slow to act. United Nations sanctions against Yugoslavia and Iraq (1990–2003), two of the country's most significant trading partners, took a heavy toll on the Bulgarian economy. The first signs of recovery emerged in 1994 when the GDP grew and inflation fell. The first round of mass privatisation finally began in January 1996, and auctions began toward the end of that year. The second and third rounds were conducted in Spring 1997 under a new government. In July 1998, the UDF-led government and the IMF reached an agreement on a 3-year loan worth about $800 million, which replaced the 14-month stand-by agreement that expired in June 1998. The loan was used to develop financial markets, improve social safety net programmes, strengthen the tax system, reform agricultural and energy sectors, and further liberalise trade. The European Commission, in its 2002 country report, recognised Bulgaria as a functioning market economy, acknowledging the progress made by Prime Minister Ivan Kostov's government toward market-oriented reforms.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "In April 1997, the Union of Democratic Forces (SDS) won pre-term parliamentary elections and introduced an IMF currency board system which succeeded in stabilizing the economy. The triple digit inflation of 1996 and 1997 has given way to an official economic growth, but forecasters predicted accelerated growth over the next several years. The government's structural reform program includes:", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Despite reforms, weak control over privatization led many successful state enterprises to bankruptcy. The SDS government also failed to stop the growing negative account balance, which has since then continued to increase, reaching a negative of $12.65 billion in 2008. The government elected in 2001 pledged to maintain the fundamental economic policy objectives adopted by its predecessor in 1997, specifically: retaining the Currency Board, implementing sound financial policies, accelerating privatisation, and pursuing structural reforms. Both governments failed to implement sound social policies.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "The economy really took off between 2003 and 2008 and growth figures quickly shot up, fluctuating between figures as high as 6.6% (2004) and 5.0% (2003). Even in the last pre-crisis year, 2008, the Bulgarian economy was growing rapidly at 6.0%, despite significantly slowing down in the last quarter.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "On 1 January 2007 Bulgaria entered the European Union. This led to some immediate international trade liberalization, but there was no shock to the economy. The government ran annual surpluses of above 3%. This fact, together with annual GDP growth of above 5%, has brought the government indebtedness to 22.8% of GDP in 2006 from 67.3% five years earlier. This is to be contrasted with enormous current account deficits. Low interest rates guaranteed availability of funds for investment and consumption. For example, a boom in the real estate market started around 2003. At the same time annual inflation in the economy was variable and during the last five years (2003–2007) has seen a low of 2.3% and high of 7.3%. Most importantly, this poses a threat to the country's accession to the Eurozone. The Bulgarian government originally planned to adopt the Euro no sooner than 2015. Although Bulgaria will have to adopt the euro as a condition to membership, plans have since been postponed for better economic times. From a political point of view, there is a trade-off between Bulgaria's economic growth and the stability required for early accession to the monetary union. Bulgaria's per-capita PPP GDP is about 60% of the EU27 average (2021), while the country's nominal GDP per capita is about 35% of the EU27 average (2021). However, Bulgaria ranks 38th (2015) in the Ease of Doing Business rank list, higher than most other Eastern European states, and 40th (2012) in the Economic Freedom of the World index, outperforming Belgium, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Portugal. Bulgaria also has the lowest personal and corporate income tax rates in the EU, as well as the second lowest public debt of all European Union member states at 16.2% of GDP in 2010.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "The country suffered a difficult start to 2009, after gas supplies were cut in the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute. Industrial output suffered, as well as public services, exposing Bulgaria's overdependence on Russian raw materials. The financial crisis of 2007–2008 applied downward pressure on growth and employment by the last quarter of 2008. The real estate market, although not plummeting, ground to a halt and growth was significantly lower in the short-to-medium run.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "During 2009, the grim forecasts for the effects of the Great Recession on the Bulgarian economy largely materialized. Although suffering less than the worst-hit countries, Bulgaria recorded its worst economic results since the 1997 meltdown. GDP shrank by around 5% and unemployment jumped. Consumer spending and foreign investment dropped dramatically and depressed growth in 2010 to 0.3%. Unemployment remains consistently high at around 10%.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "The government of Boyko Borisov elected in 2009 undertook steps to restore economic growth, while attempting to maintain a strict financial policy. The fiscal discipline set by Finance Minister Djankov proved successful and together with reduced budget spending it placed Bulgarian economy on the stage of steadily though slowly growing in the midst of world crisis. On 1 December 2009, Standard & Poor's upgraded Bulgaria's investment outlook from \"negative\" to \"stable,\" which made Bulgaria the only country in the European Union to receive positive upgrade that year. In January 2010 Moody's followed with an upgrade of its rating perspective from \"stable\" to \"positive.\"", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Bulgaria was expected to join the Eurozone in 2013 but after the rise of some instability in the zone Bulgaria is withholding its positions towards the Euro, combining positive and realistic attitudes. The Bulgarian lev is anyway bound to the euro. Bulgaria regards becoming a member of the Eurozone at present as too risky. The 2012 Transatlantic Trends poll found that 72 percent of Bulgarians did not approve of the economic policy pursued by the government of the (then) ruling center-right GERB party and Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2018.", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Household income or consumption by percentage share:", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Distribution of family income - Gini index: 36.6% (2013)", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "Industrial production growth rate: 11.3% (Third Quarter)", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Electricity:", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Electricity - production by source:", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Oil:", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Natural gas:", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Agriculture - products: vegetables, fruits, tobacco, livestock, wine, wheat, barley, sunflowers, sugar beets", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "Current account balance: $ -5.01 billion (2006 est.)", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "Reserves of foreign exchange & gold: $11.78 billion (2006 est.)", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "Exchange rates:", "title": "Data" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "In 2022, the sector with the highest number of companies registered in Bulgaria is Services with 200,853 companies followed by Retail Trade with 173,189 companies.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "Much of Bulgaria's communist-era industry was heavy industry, although biochemicals and computers were significant products beginning in the 1980s. Because Bulgarian industry was configured to Soviet markets, the end of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact caused a severe crisis in the 1990s. After showing its first growth since the communist era in 2000, Bulgaria's industrial sector has grown slowly but steadily in the early 2000s. The performance of individual manufacturing industries has been uneven, however. Food processing and tobacco processing suffered from the loss of Soviet markets and have not maintained standards high enough to compete in Western Europe. Textile processing generally has declined since the mid-1990s, although clothing exports have grown steadily since 2000.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "Oil refining survived the shocks of the 1990s because of a continuing export market and the purchase of the Burgas refinery by the Russian oil giant LUKoil. The chemical industry has remained in good overall condition but is subject to fluctuating natural gas prices. Growth in ferrous metallurgy, which is dominated by the Kremikovtsi Metals Combine, has been delayed by a complex privatization process and by obsolete capital equipment. Non-ferrous metallurgy has prospered because the Pirdop copper smelting plant was bought by Union Minière of Belgium and because export markets have been favourable.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "The end of the Warsaw Pact alliance and the loss of Third World markets were grave blows to the defence industry. In the early 2000s, the industry's plan for survival has included upgrading products to satisfy Western markets and doing cooperative manufacturing with Russian companies. The electronics industry, which also was configured in the 1980s to serve Soviet markets, has not been able to compete with Western computer manufacturers. The industry now relies on contract agreements with European firms and attracting foreign investment. The automotive industry has ceased the manufacture of cars, trucks, and buses. Manufacture of forklifts, a speciality in the communist era, also has stopped. In the early 2000s, shipbuilding has prospered at the major Varna and Ruse yards because of foreign ownership (Ruse) and privatization (Varna).", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Only in recent years electronics and electric equipment production has regained higher levels. The largest centres include Sofia, Plovdiv and the surrounding area, Botevgrad, Stara Zagora, Varna, Pravets and many other cities. Household appliances, computers, CDs, telephones, medical and scientific equipment are being produced. In 2008 the electronics industry shipped more than $260 million in exports, primarily of components, computers and consumer electronics.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "Many factories producing transportation equipment currently still do not operate at full capacity. Plants produce trains (Burgas, Dryanovo), trams (Sofia), trolleys (Dupnitsa), buses (Botevgrad), trucks (Shumen), motor trucks (Plovdiv, Lom, Sofia, Lovech). Lovech has an automotive assembly plant. Rousse serves as the main centre for agricultural machinery. Bulgarian arms production mainly operates in central Bulgaria (Kazanlak, Sopot, Karlovo).", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "Construction output fell dramatically in the 1990s as industrial and housing construction declined, but a recovery began in the early 2000s. The sector, now dominated by private firms, has resumed the foreign building programs that led to prosperity in the communist era. The Glavbolgarstroy firm has major building projects in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine as well as domestic contracts.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "One of the biggest Romanian investments in Bulgaria is in the construction/retail industry, namely the Budmax brand of construction supply stores (owned by Arabesque).", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Bulgaria relies on imported oil and natural gas (most of which comes from Russia), together with domestic generation of electricity from coal-powered and hydro plants, and the Kozloduy nuclear plant. Bulgaria imports 97% of its natural gas from Russia. The economy remains energy-intensive because conservation practices have developed slowly. The country is a major regional electricity producer. Bulgaria produced 38.07 billion kWh of electricity in 2006 (in comparison, Romania, which has a population nearly three times larger than Bulgaria, produced 51.7 billion kW·h in the same year). The domestic power-generating industry, which was privatized in 2004 by sales to interests from Europe, Japan, Russia, and the United States, suffers from obsolete equipment and a weak oversight agency. To solve the latter problem, in 2008 the government set up a state-owned energy holding-company (Bulgarian Energy Holding EAD), composed of gas company Bulgargaz, Bulgartransgaz, power company NEK EAD, Electricity System Operator EAD, Kozloduy nuclear power station, Maritza-Iztok II thermal power station, the Mini Maritza Iztok (Maritza Iztok mines), and Bulgartel EAD. The state holds a 100% stake in the holding company. Most of Bulgaria's conventional power stations will require large-scale modernization in the near future. Bulgaria has some 64 small hydroelectric plants, which together produce 19 percent of the country's power output.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "The Kozloduy nuclear plant, which in 2005 supplied more than 40 percent of Bulgaria's electric power, will play a diminishing role because two of its remaining four reactors (two were closed in 2002) must be closed by 2007 to comply with European Union (EU) standards. Kozloduy, which exported 14 percent of its output in 2006, was expected to cease all exportation in 2007. Construction of the long-delayed Belene nuclear plant resumed in 2006 although the project was canceled in 2012. Despite that there were attempts to restart the project. Belene, planned in the 1980s but then rejected, was revived by the safety controversy at Kozloduy.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "Oil exploration is ongoing offshore in the Black Sea (the Shabla block) and on the Romanian border, but Bulgaria's chief oil income is likely to come as a transfer point on east–west and north–south transit lines. Burgas is Bulgaria's main oil port on the Black Sea. Bulgaria's largest oil refinery, Neftochim, was purchased by Russian oil giant LUKoil in 1999 and underwent modernization in 2005. Bulgaria's only significant coal resource is low-quality lignite, mainly from the state-owned Maritsa-Iztok and Bobov Dol complexes and used in local thermoelectric power stations.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "Thermal power stations (TPPs) provide a significant amount of energy, with most of the capacity concentrated in the Maritsa Iztok Complex. The largest TPPs include:", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "A$1.4 bln. project for the construction of an additional 670 MW block for the 500 MW Maritza Iztok 1 Thermal Power Station was completed on 3 June 2011.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "Bulgaria ranks as a minor oil producer (97th in the world) with a total production of 3,520 bbl/day. Prospectors discovered Bulgaria's first oil field near Tyulenovo in 1951. Proved reserves amount to 15,000,000 bbl (2,400,000 m). Natural gas production halted in the late 1990s. Proved reserves of natural gas amount to 5.663 bln. cu m. The LUKOIL Neftochim oil refinery is Bulgaria's largest refining facility with annual revenues amounting to more than 4 billion leva (2 billion euro).", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "Recent years have seen a steady increase in electricity production from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. Wind energy has large-scale prospects, with up to 3,400 MW of installed capacity potential. As of 2009 Bulgaria operates more than 70 wind turbines with a total capacity of 112.6 MW, and plans to increase their number nearly threefold to reach a total capacity of 300 MW in 2010.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "From 2010 to 2017, the import of waste for energy production increased for almost five times. Since 2014, the European Commission financed the installation of a plant for cogeneration of heat and electricity from refuse-derived fuel to be located in Sofia. In 2017, the Bulgaria's Ministry of Environment and Waters reported to the Basel convention that Bulgaria had imported \"69,683 tonnes of waste for incineration in a form of RDF, SRF, pretreated mixed waste and mixed contaminated plastics.\" As of March 2021, the total amount of tons of waste annually imported is substantially unknown.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "Although the contribution of services to gross domestic product (GDP) has more than doubled in the post-communist era, a substantial share of that growth has been in government services, and the qualitative level of services varies greatly. The Bulgarian banking system, which was weak in the first post-communist years, was fully reformed in the late 1990s, including stronger oversight from the National Bank of Bulgaria and gradual privatisation. In 2003 the banking system was fully privatised, and substantial consolidation began making the system more efficient in 2004. Several smaller banks grew substantially between 2004 and 2006. These processes increased public confidence in the banks. Although the system still requires consolidation, loan activity to individuals and businesses increased in the early 2000s. The insurance industry has grown rapidly since a market reform in 1997, with the help of foreign firms. An example is the Bulgarian Insurance Group (BIG), a pension-fund and insurance management company owned by the Dutch-Israeli TBI Holding Company and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The introduction of health and pension insurance plans has expanded the private insurance industry. A series of reform laws in the early 2000s enabled the Bulgarian Stock Exchange to begin regular operation. As of 2005, stock market activity was limited by lack of transparency, although the growth rate increased beginning in 2004.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "After a decline in the 1990s, in the 21st century the tourism industry has grown rapidly. In 2016 some 10 million foreigners visited Bulgaria, up from 4 million in 2004 and 2.3 million in 2000. This trend is based on a number of attractive destinations, low costs, and restoration of facilities. Most of the industry had been privatised by 2004. Infrastructure items such as recreation facilities and booking services require improvement. Development of Bulgaria's retail sales sector was slow until the early 2000s, when a large number of Western-style outlets began to appear, and Sofia developed as a retail center. By 2006, several major European retail chains had opened stores, and others planned to enter the Bulgarian market.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "Bulgaria has attracted considerable investment from foreigners buying property either for their own use or for investment. In 2006, more than 29% of property deals were signed by foreigners, more than half of whom were British citizens. Various companies, such as Bulgarian Dreams, actively marketed Bulgarian properties to buyers overseas.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "In 2007 Bulgaria was visited by 5,200,000 tourists, ranking 39th in the world. Tourists from Greece, Romania and Germany account for 40% of visitors. Significant numbers of British (+300,000), Russian (+200,000), Serbian (+150,000), Polish (+130,000) and Danish (+100,000) tourists also visit Bulgaria. Most of them are attracted by the varying and beautiful landscapes, well-preserved historical and cultural heritage, and the tranquility of rural and mountain areas.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "In Easter of 2018 it was reported that around 90% of tourists in Varna, one of Bulgaria's largest tourism locations, came from Romania.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "Main destinations include the capital Sofia, coastal resorts Sunny Beach, Albena, Sozopol, Sveti Vlas; winter resorts Bansko, Pamporovo, Chepelare and Borovetz. Arbanasi and Bozhentsi are rural tourist destinations with well-preserved ethnographic traditions. Other popular attractions are the 10th century Rila Monastery and the 19th century Euxinograd château.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "In the communist era, Bulgaria's agriculture was heavily centralized, integrated with agriculture-related industries, and state-run. In the postcommunist era, the process of restoring agricultural land to private owners has been in a form that ensures productivity has been slow. Bank investment and insecurity in the land market contributed to slow development in the 1990s. By 2004 some 98 percent of the workforce and output of Bulgaria's agricultural sector was private, including a number of large private cooperative enterprises. A significant amount of food also is produced for direct consumption by non-farmers on small plots, which are an important support for parts of the population. In 2000 and 2003, droughts limited agricultural production, and floods had the same effect in 2005. Bulgaria's main field crops are wheat, corn, and barley. The main industrial crops are sugar beets, sunflowers, and tobacco. Tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers are the most important vegetable exports. Production of apples and grapes, Bulgaria's largest fruit products, has decreased since the communist era, but the export of wine has increased significantly. The most important types of livestock are cattle, sheep, poultry, pigs, and buffaloes, and the main dairy products are yogurt, cow and sheep cheese. Bulgaria is the world's 13th largest sheep milk producer and is the 15th largest producer of tobacco and 13th largest producer of raspberries in Europe. Specialized equipment amounts to some 25,000 tractors and 5,500 combine harvesters, with a fleet of light aircraft.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "In 2004 an estimated one-third of Bulgaria's land mass was covered by forests, of which about 40 percent was conifers. Between 1980 and 2000, the forested area increased by 4.6 percent. In 2002 a total of 4,800 tons of timber was harvested, 44 percent of which was fuel wood and 20 percent, pulpwood. Although nominal state timber standards are very strict, in 2004 an estimated 45 percent of Bulgaria's timber harvest was logged illegally because of corruption in the forest service. Some 7.5 percent of forests are protected from all uses, and 65 percent are designated for ecological and commercial use. In 2005 about 70 percent of the total forest resource was rated economically viable.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "Since Bulgaria stopped high-seas fishing in 1995, the country has imported increasing amounts of fish. The fish farming industry (particularly sturgeon) has expanded in the early 2000s, and some environmental improvements in the Black Sea and the Danube River, the principal sources of fish, may increase the take in future years. However, the catch from those sources has decreased sharply in recent decades, yielding only a few species of fish for domestic markets in 2004. Between 1999 and 2001, Bulgaria's total fish harvest, wild and cultivated, dropped from 18,600 tons to 8,100 tons, but in 2003 the harvest had recovered to 16,500 tons.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "Production of the most important crops (according to the Food and Agriculture Organization) in 2006 (in '000 tons) amounted to: wheat 3301.9; sunflower 1196.6; maize 1587.8; grapes 266.2; tobacco 42.0; tomatoes 213.0; barley 546.3; potatoes 386.1; peppers 156.7; cucumbers 61.5; cherries 18.2; watermelons 136.0; cabbage 72.7; apples 26.1; plums 18.0; strawberries 8.8.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "Bulgaria's mining industry has declined in the post-communist era. Many deposits have remained underdeveloped because of a lack of modern equipment and low funding. Mining has contributed less than 2 percent of GDP and engaged less than 3 percent of the workforce in the early 2000s. Bulgaria has the following estimated deposits of metallic minerals: 207 million tons of iron ore, 127 million tons of manganese ore, 936 million tons of copper ore, 238 million tons of chromium ore, and 150 million tons of gold ore. Several of Bulgaria's minerals are extracted commercially; 80 percent of mining is done by open-pit excavation. Iron extraction at Kremikovtsi and elsewhere is not sufficient to support the domestic steel industry, but copper, lead, and zinc deposits fully supply the nonferrous metallurgy industries. A British firm has exploratory gold mines at Dikanyite and Gornoseltsi, and a domestic copper and gold mine operates at Chelopech. About 50 nonmetallic minerals are present in significant amounts. Substantial amounts of uranium are present in the Rhodope Mountains, but no extraction has occurred in the last 10 years.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "Despite the poor performance of the mining sector, productivity has increased in recent years. Mining remains one of the most important sources of export earnings and is still a significant contributor to economic growth. The mining industry is worth $760 mln, and, along with related industries, employs 120,000 people. The rising global prices of gold, lead and copper in 2010, as well as investments in zinc and coal production, have boosted economic growth in the mining sector after the Financial crisis of 2007–2008. As of 2010 Bulgaria ranks as the 19th largest coal producer in the world, 9th largest bismuth producer, 19th largest copper producer, and the 26th largest zinc producer. In Europe, the country ranks fourth in gold production and sixth in coal production.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "The \"Elatsite\" copper mine and reprocessing facility, built during Vulko Chervenkov's rule, takes its place as one of the largest in South-Eastern Europe. It extracts 13 million tonnes of ore annually, producing about 42,000 tonnes of copper, 1.6 tonnes of gold and 5.5 tonnes of silver.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "Ferrous metallurgy has major importance. Much of the production of steel and pig iron takes place in Kremikovtsi and Stomana steel in Pernik, with a third metallurgical base in Debelt. In production of steel and steel products per capita the country heads the Balkans. As of 2009 the fate of Kremikovtsi steel factories has come under debate because of serious pollution in the capital, Sofia.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "The largest refineries for lead and zinc operate in Plovdiv, Kardzhali and Novi Iskar; for copper in Pirdop and Eliseina (now defunct); for aluminium in Shumen. In production of many metals per capita, such as zinc and iron, Bulgaria ranks first in Eastern Europe.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "Bulgaria's national road network has a total length of 40,231 kilometers (24,998 mi), of which 39,587 kilometers (24,598 mi) are paved. The motorways in Bulgaria, such as Trakia, Hemus, Struma and Maritsa, are being improved and elongated to a total length of 760 km (470 mi) as of November 2015. Railroads are a major mode of freight transportation, although highways carry a progressively larger share of freight. Bulgaria also has 6,238 kilometers (3,876 mi) of railway track and plans to construct a high-speed railway by 2017, at a cost of €3 bln. Sofia and Plovdiv are major air travel hubs, while Varna and Burgas are the principal maritime trade ports.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "Bulgaria has an extensive, but antiquated telecommunications network which requires substantial modernization. Telephone service is available in most villages, and a central digital trunk line connects most regions. Currently there are three active mobile phone operators - A1 Bulgaria, Telenor and Vivacom. Since 2000, a rapid increase in the number of Internet users has occurred – from 430,000 they grew to 1,545,100 in 2004, and 3.4 million (48% penetration rate) in 2010. In 2017, the Internet users in Bulgaria are 4.2 million people (59.8% penetration rate). Bulgaria had the 3rd fastest Average Broadband Internet Speed in the world, after Romania and South Korea, in 2011. In 2017, Bulgaria ranks 27th in the world in the Mean Download Speed chart with 17.54 Mbit/s, ranks 31st in the world in the Average Monthly Broadband Cost chart with $28.81, and holds the 18th position in the world in the Speed/Cost Ratio with as much as 0.61.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "In 2010, Bulgaria spent 0.25% of its GDP on scientific research, which represents one of the lowest scientific budgets in Europe. Chronic underinvestment in the sector since 1990 forced many scientific professionals to leave the country. As a result, Bulgaria's economy scores low in terms of innovation, competitiveness and high added value exports. Nevertheless, Bulgaria ranked 8th in the world in 2002 by total number of ICT specialists, outperforming countries with far larger populations, and it operates the only supercomputer in the Balkan region, an IBM Blue Gene/P, which entered service in September 2008.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) is the leading scientific institution in the country and employs most of Bulgaria's researchers in its numerous branches. The principal areas of research and development are energy, nanotechnology, archaeology and medicine. With major-general Georgi Ivanov flying on Soyuz 33 in 1979, Bulgaria became the 6th country in the world to have an astronaut in space. Bulgaria has deployed its own experiments on various missions, such as the RADOM-7 dosimeters on the International Space Station and Chandrayaan-1 and the space greenhouse (a Bulgarian invention) on the Mir space station. In 2011 the government announced plans to reboot the space program by producing a new microsatellite and joining the European Space Agency.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "From June 2017, Bulgaria will have its first geostationary communications satellite. BulgariaSat-1 is a geostationary communications satellite operated by Bulgaria Sat and manufactured by SSL, based on the space-proven SSL 1300 satellite platform. BulgariaSat-1 is the first in the history of the country geostationary communications satellite at the Bulgarian orbital position and it is designed to provide Direct-to-Home (DTH) television service and data communications services to the Balkans and other European regions. In this way, Bulgaria will be among other European countries with their satellites, namely Belarus, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "Due to its large-scale computing technology exports to COMECON states, in the 1980s Bulgaria became known as the Silicon Valley of the Eastern Bloc.", "title": "Sectors" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "In 2005 the labour force was estimated at 3.3 million; in 2004, 11 percent worked in agriculture, 33 percent in industry, and 56 percent in services. The unemployment rate has been in double digits throughout the post-communist era, reaching a high point of 19 percent in 2000. Since then, the rate has decreased substantially with the creation of new jobs in private and state enterprises. In 2005 the official figure was 11.5 percent, compared with 16.9 percent at the end of 2002. However, in 2003 an estimated 500,000 Bulgarians were unemployed but not officially counted because they were not seeking work. In January 2005, the government raised the minimum wage by 25 percent, to US$90 per month. The largest labour unions are Podkrepa (Support) and the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria. They represent labour in the National Council for Tripartite Partnership, in which they join government and business representatives to discuss issues of labour, social security, and living standards. The unions were an important political force in the fall of the Zhivkov regime. In late autumn of 2016 reported an unemployment rate of 7%. In 2016, the government increased the minimum wage to 215 euros per month. At the end of 2016 the average monthly salary is about 480 euros a month, but there are differences in the regions of the country. The average monthly gross salary has reached the value of 1,036 leva (530 euro) in March 2017. According to the latest Annual report of the Institute of Economic Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the average salary in Bulgaria is only a quarter (1/4) of the average salary in the EU, and should be two times higher when the labour productivity is calculated in the formula.", "title": "Labour" }, { "paragraph_id": 79, "text": "Bulgaria's unit of currency is the lev (pl., leva). In October 2006, the U.S. dollar was worth 1.57 leva. In 1999 the value of the lev was pegged to that of the German Deutschmark, which was replaced by the euro in 2001. Following Bulgaria's admission to the EU, the lev is scheduled to be replaced by the euro.", "title": "Currency and inflation" }, { "paragraph_id": 80, "text": "In 2003 Bulgaria's inflation rate was estimated at between 2.3 and 3 percent. The rate was 6 percent in 2004 and 5 percent in 2005. In 2015 and 2016 it was recorded minimum level of deflation.", "title": "Currency and inflation" }, { "paragraph_id": 81, "text": "As of 1 January 2008 the income tax for all citizens is set to a flat rate of 10%. This flat tax is one of the lowest income rates in the world and the lowest income rate in the European Union. The reform was done in pursue for higher GDP growth and greater tax collection rates. Some called it a \"revolution\" in taxation, but the changes were met with mild discussions and some protests by affected working classes. The proposal was modified to allow for compensating the perceived losers from the changes in the tax formula. The corporate income tax is also 10% as of 1 January 2007 which is also among the lowest in Europe. Currently this taxation is kept while other countries raised their taxes during the crisis. However, most of the state revenues come from VAT and excises, but share of income and corporate taxes in the revenues is increasing.", "title": "Taxation, state budget and debt" }, { "paragraph_id": 82, "text": "For 2005 Bulgaria's estimated state revenues totaled US$11.2 billion, and its estimated state expenditures, including capital expenditures, were US$10.9 billion, yielding a surplus of US$300 million. In 2004 revenues totaled US$10.1 billion and expenditures US$9.7 billion, for a surplus of US$400 million.", "title": "Taxation, state budget and debt" }, { "paragraph_id": 83, "text": "After the political changes, in 1991, Bulgaria had a US$11.25 billion state debt, which represented 180% of the GDP. The state debt peaked in 1994, when it reached US$14.4 billion. During 1998-2008 Bulgaria maintained policy of budget surpluses, which reduced the state debt to 5.07 billion euro. Combined with the economic growth in that period, the state debt dropped to a record low of 13.7% of GDP, one of the lowest in the European Union. In 2008 Bulgaria also maintained 4.286 billion euro fiscal reserve, meaning that net state debt at this moment was only 0.784 billion euro. After the 2008 financial crisis Bulgaria turned to policy of budget deficits and at the end of 2013 the state debt rose up to 7.219 billion euro, representing 18.1% of the GDP. In 2015, the debt rate increased further to 26.7% of the GDP, still remaining the third lowest in EU after Estonia and Luxembourg. Part of the increase was driven by the collapse of Corporate Commercial Bank in 2014, the fourth largest bank in the country, and the subsequent paying out of guaranteed deposits.", "title": "Taxation, state budget and debt" }, { "paragraph_id": 84, "text": "In the 1990s, Bulgaria moved gradually away from dependence on markets in the former Soviet sphere, increasing its exports to the European Union (EU). In 1999 Bulgaria joined the Central European Free-Trade Agreement (CEFTA), with whose members (Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia; Macedonia was added in 2006) it has established important trade relations. The admission of all but Croatia and Romania to the EU in 2004 reduced the significance of CEFTA trade, however. In 2004 some 54 percent of Bulgaria's import trade and 58 percent of its export trade was with EU member countries. Bulgaria has bilateral free-trade agreements with Albania, Croatia, Estonia, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, and Turkey.", "title": "Foreign economic relations" }, { "paragraph_id": 85, "text": "In the early 2000s, hydrocarbon fuels remained an important import, although beginning in the late 1990s those commodities' share of total imports decreased significantly, from 29 percent in 1996 to 13 percent in 2004. During that period, the diversification of imported products improved as the volume of machinery and equipment, consumer products, and automobiles increased. A large percentage of imports is accounted for by raw materials such as cloth, metal ore, and petroleum, which are processed and re-exported. The most important imports in 2005 were machinery and equipment, metals and ores, chemicals and plastics, fuels, and minerals. The major sources of imports, in order of volume, were Germany, Russia, Italy, Turkey, and Greece. In 2005 Bulgaria's largest export markets, in order of volume, were Italy, Germany, Turkey, Greece, and Belgium. The most important export commodities were clothing, footwear, iron and steel, machinery and equipment, and fuels. In 2005 Bulgaria's exports totaled US$11.7 billion and its imports totaled US$15.9 billion, incurring a trade deficit of US$4.2 billion. The trade deficit is especially severe with Russia, where markets for Bulgarian goods have shrunk drastically in the early 2000s.", "title": "Foreign economic relations" }, { "paragraph_id": 86, "text": "In the first half of 2006, Bulgaria had a current account deficit of US$2.3 billion, a substantial increase over the deficit for the same period of 2005, which was some US$1.4 billion. Its trade deficit was US$2.78 billion, foreign direct investment totaled US$1.8 billion, and the financial account balance was US$2.29 billion. In mid-2006 the overall balance of payments was US$883 million, compared with US$755 million for the same period of 2005.", "title": "Foreign economic relations" }, { "paragraph_id": 87, "text": "Bulgaria's large foreign debt has been an economic burden throughout the postcommunist era. At the end of 2005, Bulgaria reported an external debt of US$15.2 billion, an increase in value but a decrease as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) compared with 2002 and previous years. As a percentage of GDP, the external debt remained constant between 2004 and 2005.", "title": "Foreign economic relations" }, { "paragraph_id": 88, "text": "Beginning in the late 1990s, investment from the West and from Russia has contributed significantly to recovery from the economic crisis of 1996–97, but the rate of investment has remained lower than that in other countries of Eastern Europe. In 2003 the largest national sources of foreign direct investment, in order of volume, were Austria, Greece, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. In 1997 the Belgian Solve company bought the Deny Soda Combine, and in 1999 LUKoil of Russia bought the Neftochim Oil Refinery at Burgas. Union Minière, a Belgian mining company, bought the large Pirdop copper-smelting plant, giving an important boost to Bulgarian nonferrous metallurgy. A number of foreign companies have invested in the chemical fertilizer and food-processing industries in the early 2000s, China invested in the Bulgarian electronics industry. Some cooperative agreements have been made for manufacture of vehicle components. Daimler-Chrysler of Germany has a contract to update Bulgaria's military transport vehicles between 2003 and 2015. The French Eurocopter company has a bilateral protocol involving a variety of machinery, computer software, and other industrial products. In 2004 Bulgarian oil reserves attracted interest from Melrose Resources of Edinburgh. Russia's natural gas giant, Gazprom, has pledged investment in Bulgaria's natural gas infrastructure in exchange for increased purchase of its product. A three-company Israeli consortium agreed in 2004 to work with the domestic Overgas company (which is half-owned by Gazprom) on a major natural-gas distribution network in Bulgaria. In 2005 three European consortia submitted bids for construction of the Belene nuclear power plant. One such investor is the Italian ENEL energy consortium, which also owns the Maritsa–Iztok–3 thermal power plant. In 2006 Russia's Gazprom company bid against several European energy companies for ownership of newly privatized regional heating utilities, and the Austrian Petromaxx Energy Group invested US$120 million in a new oil refinery at Silistra.", "title": "Foreign economic relations" }, { "paragraph_id": 89, "text": "In December 1996, Bulgaria joined the World Trade Organization. In the early 1990s Bulgaria's slow pace of privatization, contradictory government tax and investment policies, and bureaucratic red tape kept foreign investment among the lowest in the region. Total direct foreign investment from 1991 through 1996 was $831 million. In the years since 1997, however, Bulgaria has begun to attract substantial foreign investment. In 2004 alone over 2.72 billion Euro (3.47 billion US dollars) were invested by foreign companies. In 2005 economists observed a slowdown to about 1.8 billion euros (2.3 billion US dollars) in FDI which is attributed mainly to the end of the privatization of the major state owned companies. After joining the EU in 2007 Bulgaria registered a peak in foreign investment of about 6 billion euros.", "title": "Foreign economic relations" }, { "paragraph_id": 90, "text": "Bulgarian households with Internet access at home", "title": "Miscellaneous data" }, { "paragraph_id": 91, "text": "The data on ICT usage in households and by individuals are based on an annual sample survey which is part of the European Community Statistical Programme. The methodology and the statistical tools are completely harmonized to Eurostat requirements and Regulation No.808/2004 of the European Parliament and the council. The aim of the survey is to collect and disseminate reliable and comparable information on the use of Information and Communication Technologies in households at European level and covers the following subjects:", "title": "Miscellaneous data" }, { "paragraph_id": 92, "text": "", "title": "Miscellaneous data" }, { "paragraph_id": 93, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material Bulgaria country profile (October 2006) from websites or documents of the Library of Congress Federal Research Division.", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Telecommunications in Bulgaria include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from World Factbook. CIA.", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Transport in Bulgaria is dominated by road transport, despite nearly half of all paved roads belonging to the lowest category of roads. As of December 2015, the country had 829 kilometers of highways.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Buses play a significant role in long-distance public transport, coaches are operated by private companies. Sofia has three major national bus terminals, the Central, the Western and the Southern Terminals. In the countryside share taxis are in operation between smaller settlements.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Railway systems are mostly outdated, and the average speed is comparatively low; however, upgrading projects are underway. BDŽ is the national railway company, but private freight operators are also present. The Sofia Metro has four lines as of 2023.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Air traffic has been growing since the 2000s, which was facilitated by the opening of a second terminal at Sofia Airport, as well as the implementation of new destinations and routes. The flag carrier is Bulgaria Air, but a number of private charter companies also exist, operating domestic and international flights.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Ports along the Danube and the Black Sea are the most important concerning Bulgaria's water transport system. The two largest ports are in Varna and in Burgas.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "After the second terminal of International Airport Sofia was built the total number of passengers for the country rose and reached 6,595,790 in 2008, and in April 2011 Airport Sofia serviced 282 694 passengers, 13% more than the same period of 2009, when the record was 250 000 passengers. In 2011 passenger traffic at Bulgaria's three major airports - Sofia, Varna and Bourgas - grew up to near 10% on the year to 3.89 million in the first half of 2011, due to rise of customers using international routes and launch of new destinations. In 2014, Bulgarian airports served 7,728,612 passengers and handled 23,101 tons of goods.", "title": "Air transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "In the past aviation compared with road and railroad transport used to be a minor mode of freight movement, and only 860,000 passengers used Bulgarian airlines in 2001. In 2013 Bulgaria had 68 airports, 57 of which had paved runways. Two airports, Sofia Airport and Burgas Airport, had a runway longer than 3,000 meters, and there were four heliports. The second- and third-largest airports, Varna Airport and Burgas Airport, serve mainly charter flights and have regular domestic links with the capital. In the early 2000s, Sofia Airport received substantial renovation, with aid from a Kuwaiti-led consortium, in anticipation of increased air connections with Europe. A three-phase expansion was scheduled for completion in 2010. The communist-era state airline, Balkan Airlines, was replaced by Bulgaria Air, which was privatised in 2006. In 2004 Bulgaria Air transported 365,465 passengers to international destinations, including all major European cities, while in 2014 this number was at 897,422.", "title": "Air transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "In 2005 Bulgaria had some 6,238 kilometers of open access track owned by the state company \"National Company Railway Infrastructure\", including a 125 kilometers long 760 mm narrow gauge railway - the Septemvri-Dobrinishte narrow gauge line and 4,316 km were considered main lines. Sofia, Plovdiv and Gorna Oriahovitsa are the hubs of the domestic system and of international rail connections.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Bulgaria's rail system has not expanded since the 1980s, in 2014 there were 4,023 kilometers of main lines. There are upgrading projects underway. After the completion of the Plovdiv - Dimitrovgrad high-speed line on 1 July 2012 the top operating speed was raised to 200 km/h and the national top speed record of 197 km/h set between Iskar and Elin Pelin with a leased Siemens Taurus electric locomotive is soon expected to be broken. There are also plans for upgrading for high speed operation and doubling (where needed) of the Plovdiv - Burgas railway. By the end of 2013, a total of 461 km of high-speed lines were expected to be built.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "In the mid-2000s, railways remained a major mode of freight transportation, but with increasing problems with the maintenance of the infrastructure and lowering speeds, highways carried a progressively larger share of freight. The national passenger and freight operator is called Bulgarian State Railways, but there are also a number of private operators including Bulgarian Railway Company and DB Schenker Rail Bulgaria.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In 2014 the Bulgarian railways carried 14,225,000 tons of freight and 21.3 million passengers in 2019.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "In 1998 the first six kilometres of an often-interrupted 52 km standard gauge subway project (the Sofia Metro) opened in Sofia. Additional stations were later built, and in 2012 a second line opened. By April 2015 the total length was 36 km with 31 stations and Line 2 serving Sofia Airport. In 2016 the expansion of the network continued, as construction works on the third line commenced, and the system reached a total length of 40 km, with 35 stations along its two lines. In 2021, the metro was expanded to 52 km total length with 47 stations on 4 lines. Further expansions are expected in the period 2021-2027.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "In the early 2000s, Bulgaria had some 37,300 kilometers of roads, but nearly half of which (18,000 kilometers) fell into the lowest international rating for paved roads. 324 kilometers of high-speed highways were in service in 2000. As of December 2014, 19,728 km (12,258 mi) of national roads and 610 km (379 mi) of motorways are in service and 98% of all national roads are paved. Another 109 km (68 mi) of highways are under various stages of construction. Roads have overtaken the railroads as the chief mode of freight transportation.", "title": "Road transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Long-term plans call for upgrading higher-quality roads and integrating the road system into the European grid. The focus is on improving road connectors with the neighbouring countries and domestic connections linking Sofia, Plovdiv, Burgas and Varna. Bulgaria has delayed building some key highway connections since the 1990s, but European Union membership is a strong incentive for completion. A 114-kilometer link between eastern Bulgaria and the Turkish border is scheduled for completion in 2013. As of 2004, two international highways passed through Bulgaria, and a major highway ran from Sofia to the Black Sea coast. Proposed international corridors would pass from north to south, from Vidin to the border with Greece and from Ruse to the border with Greece, and west to east, from Serbia through Sofia to Burgas, Varna, and Edirne (Turkey). The Vidin-Calafat bridge was completed in 2013, relieving road and railroad traffic to Romania.", "title": "Road transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Buses are frequently used in Bulgaria for long-distance travel. Long-distance coaches depart from Sofia from the Central, West and South Bus Stations, international routes are served by the Serdika Station. Besides public buses, coaches are also operated by private companies, like Union-Ivkoni, Biomet or Etap-Grup. Tickets can be purchased at the offices of these companies, at stations and from the bus driver. Some companies offer online booking. International destinations include Saloniki, Istanbul, Bucharest, Skopje and Belgrad. Share taxis called marshrutka operate in Sofia, and in the countryside between smaller settlements.", "title": "Road transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "In 2005, Bulgaria had 2,425 kilometers of natural gas pipelines, 339 kilometers of oil pipelines, and 156 kilometers of pipelines for refined products. The pipeline system was scheduled for substantial changes and additions, however. The 279-kilometer Burgas-Alexandroupolis Pipeline, still under negotiation among Bulgaria, Greece, and Russia in 2006, would provide a bypass of the overloaded Bosporus Strait. The line would enable Russian oil arriving at the Bulgarian oil port of Burgas to reach Greece's Mediterranean port at Alexandroupolis. A 900-kilometer U.S.- financed alternate route, known as the AMBO pipeline, would bring oil from Burgas across Bulgaria and North Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlore on the Adriatic Sea, bypassing both the Bosporus and Greece. As of October 2006, approval of both pipelines was expected. With international investment, Bulgaria began constructing a new domestic gas transportation network beginning in 2005. The Russian Gazprom company planned a gas pipeline from Dimitrovgrad in eastern Bulgaria across Serbia, reaching the Adriatic Sea in Croatia. Some 400 kilometers of the planned Nabucco Pipeline, bringing gas from Azerbaijan and Iran to Central Europe, were to cross Bulgaria sometime before 2011.", "title": "Pipelines" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Lom, Nikopol, Oryahovo, Ruse, Silistra, Svishtov, Tutrakan, Vidin are river ports on the Danube river.", "title": "Ports and harbours" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Sea ports", "title": "Ports and harbours" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Ahtopol, Balchik, Burgas, Nesebar, Pomorie, Sozopol, Tsarevo, Varna", "title": "Ports and harbours" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Container terminals", "title": "Ports and harbours" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The major and largest ports with international significance are Varna and Burgas.", "title": "Ports and harbours" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Yacht ports", "title": "Ports and harbours" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Balchik, Burgas, Byala, Golden Sands, Nesebar, Sozopol, Sveti Vlas, Varna", "title": "Ports and harbours" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "ships by type:", "title": "Merchant marine" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "While most urban and suburban transport in Bulgaria is composed of buses (using an increasing number of CNG vehicles), around a dozen cities also have trolley bus networks. The capital Sofia also has a tram and an underground network.", "title": "Urban transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from \"Bulgaria country profile\" (PDF). Library of Congress Federal Research Division. October 2006. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. Retrieved 2016-04-29.", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Bulgarian Army (Bulgarian: Българска армия, romanized: Bŭlgarska armiya) is the military of Bulgaria. The commander-in-chief is the president of Bulgaria. The Ministry of Defense is responsible for political leadership, while overall military command is in the hands of the Defense Staff, headed by the Chief of the Defense. There are three main branches of the Bulgarian military, named literally the Land Forces, the Air Forces and the Naval Forces (the term \"Bulgarian Army\" refers to them encompassed all together).", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Throughout history, the Army has played a major role in defending the country's sovereignty. Only several years after its inception in 1878, Bulgaria became a regional military power and was involved in several major wars – Serbo-Bulgarian War (1885), First Balkan War (1912–13), Second Balkan War (1913), First World War (1915–1918) and Second World War (1941–1945), during which the Army gained considerable combat experience. During the Cold War, the People's Republic of Bulgaria maintained one of the largest militaries in the Warsaw Pact, numbering an estimated 152,000 troops in 1988. Since the Fall of Communism, the political leadership has decided to pursue a pro-NATO policy, thus reducing military personnel and weaponry. Bulgaria joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on 29 March 2004.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The patron saint of the Bulgarian Army is St. George. The Armed Forces Day or St. George's Day (6 May) is an official holiday in Bulgaria.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The modern Bulgarian military dates back to 1878. On 22 July 1878 (10 July O.S.) a total of 12 battalions of opalchentsi who participated in the Liberation war, formed the Bulgarian armed forces. According to the Tarnovo Constitution, all men between 21 and 40 years of age were eligible for military service. In 1883 the military was reorganised in four infantry brigades (in Sofia, Pleven, Ruse and Shumen) and one cavalry brigade.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The Serbo-Bulgarian War was the first armed conflict after Bulgaria's liberation. It was a result of the unification with Eastern Rumelia, which happened on 6 September 1885. The unification was not completely recognised, however, and one of the countries that refused to recognise the act was the Kingdom of Serbia. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had been expanding its influence in the Balkans and was particularly opposed. Serbia also feared this would diminish its dominance in the region. In addition, Serbian ruler Milan Obrenović IV was annoyed that Serbian opposition leaders like Nikola Pašić, who had escaped persecution after the Timok Rebellion, had found asylum in Bulgaria. Lured by Austria-Hungary's promises of territorial gains from Bulgaria (in return for concessions in the western Balkans), Milan IV declared war on Bulgaria on 14 November 1885.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Military strategy relied largely on surprise, as Bulgaria had moved most of its troops near the border with the Ottoman Empire, in the southeast. As it happened, the Ottomans did not intervene and the Serbian army's advance was stopped after the Battle of Slivnitsa. The main body of the Bulgarian army travelled from the Ottoman border in the southeast to the Serbian border in the northwest to defend the capital, Sofia. After the defensive battles at Slivnitsa and Vidin, Bulgaria began an offensive that took the city of Pirot. At this point the Austro-Hungarian Empire stepped in, threatening to join the war on Serbia's side if Bulgarian troops did not retreat. Fighting lasted for only 14 days, from 14–28 November. A peace treaty was signed in Bucharest on 19 February 1886. No territorial changes were made to either country, but Bulgarian unification was recognised by the Great Powers.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Instability in the Balkan region in the early 1900s quickly became a precondition for a new war. Serbia's aspirations towards Bosnia and Herzegovina were thwarted by the Austrian annexation of the province in October 1908, so the Serbs focused their attention onto Kosovo, and to the south for expansion. Greek officers, revolting in August 1909, had secured the appointment of a progressive government under Eleftherios Venizelos, which they hoped would resolve the Cretan issue in Greece's favor and reverse their defeat of 1897 by the Ottomans. Bulgaria, which had secured Ottoman recognition of its independence in April 1909 and enjoyed the friendship of Russia, also looked to districts of Ottoman Thrace and Macedonia for expansion.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "In March 1910 an Albanian insurrection broke out in Kosovo. In August Montenegro followed Bulgaria's precedent by becoming a kingdom. In 1911 Italy launched an invasion of Tripolitania, which was quickly followed by the occupation of the Dodecanese Islands. The Italians' decisive military victories over the Ottoman Empire greatly influenced the Balkan states to prepare for war against Turkey. Thus, in the spring of 1912 consultations among the various Christian Balkan nations resulted in a network of military alliances that became known as the Balkan League. The Great Powers, most notably France and Austria-Hungary, reacted to this diplomatic sensation by trying to dissuade the League from going to war, but failed.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "In late September both the League and the Ottoman Empire mobilised their armies. Montenegro was the first to declare war, on 25 September (O.S.)/ 8 October. The other three states, after issuing an impossible ultimatum to the Porte on 13 October, declared war on Turkey on 17 October. The Balkan League relied on 700,000 troops, 370,000 of whom were Bulgarians. Bulgaria, often dubbed \"the Prussia of the Balkans\", was militarily the most powerful of the four states, with a large, well-trained and well-equipped army. The peacetime army of 60,000 troops was expanded during the war to 370,000, with almost 600,000 men mobilized in total out of a population of 4,300,000. The Bulgarian field army consisted of nine infantry divisions, one cavalry division and 1,116 artillery units. Commander-in-Chief was Tsar Ferdinand, while the actual command was in the hands of his deputy, Gen. Mikhail Savov. The Bulgarians also possessed a small navy of six torpedo boats, which were restricted to operations along the country's Black Sea coast.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Bulgaria's war aims were focused on Thrace and Macedonia. For the latter, Bulgaria had a secret agreement with Serbia to divide it between them, signed on 13 March 1912 during the negotiations that led to the establishment of the Balkan League. However, it was not a secret that Bulgaria's target was the fulfillment of the never-materialized Treaty of San Stefano, signed after the Russo-Turkish War, 1877–78. They deployed their main force in Thrace, forming three armies. The First Army, under Gen. Vasil Kutinchev with three infantry divisions, was deployed to the south of Yambol, with direction of operations along the Tundzha River. The Second Army, under Gen. Nikola Ivanov with two infantry divisions and one infantry brigade, was deployed west of the First and was assigned to capture the strong fortress of Adrianople (now Edirne). According to the plans, the Third Army, under Gen. Radko Dimitriev, was deployed east of and behind the First and was covered by the cavalry division hiding it from the Turkish view. The Third Army had three infantry divisions and was assigned to cross the Stranja mountain and to take the fortress of Lozengrad (Kirk Kilisse). The 2nd and 7th divisions were assigned independent roles, operating in western Thrace and eastern Macedonia, respectively.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The first great battles were at the Adrianople–Kirk Kilisse defensive line, where the Bulgarian 1st and 3rd Armies (together 110,000 men) defeated the Ottoman East Army (130,000 men) near Gechkenli, Seliolu and Petra. The fortress of Adrianople was besieged and Kirk Kilisse was taken without resistance under the pressure of the Bulgarian Third Army. The initial Bulgarian attack by First and Third Army defeated the Turkish forces, numbering some 130,000, and reached the Sea of Marmara. However, the Turks, with the aid of fresh reinforcements from the Asian provinces, established their third and strongest defensive position at the Chataldja Line, across the peninsula where Constantinople is located. New Turkish forces landed at Bulair and Şarköy, but after heavy fighting they were crushed by the newly formed 4th Bulgarian Army under the command of Gen Stiliyan Kovachev. The offensive at Chataldja failed, too. On 11 March the final Bulgarian assault on Adrianople began. Under the command of Gen. Georgi Vazov the Bulgarians, reinforced with two Serb divisions, conquered the \"untakeable\" city. On 17/30 May a peace treaty was signed between Turkey and the Balkan Alliance. The First Balkan War, which lasted from October 1912-May 1913, strengthened Bulgaria's position as a regional military power, significantly reduced Ottoman influence over the Balkans and resulted in the formation of an independent Albanian state.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "The peace settlement of the First Balkan War proved unsatisfactory for both Serbia and Bulgaria. Serbia refused to cede a part of the territories in Macedonia, which it occupied and promised to give to Bulgaria according to a secret agreement. Serbia, on its side, was not satisfied with the independence of Albania and sought a secret alliance with Greece. Armed skirmishes between Serbian and Bulgarian troops occurred.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "On 16 June 1913, just a few months after the end of the first war, the Bulgarian government ordered an attack on Serbian and Greek positions in Macedonia, without declaring war. Almost all of Bulgaria's 500,000-man standing army was positioned against these two countries, on two fronts—western and southern—while the borders with Romania and the Ottoman Empire were left almost unguarded. Montenegro sent a 12,000-strong force to assist the Serbs. Exhausted from the previous war, which took the highest toll on Bulgaria, the Bulgarian army soon turned to the defensive. Romania attacked from the north and northeast and the Ottoman Empire also intervened in Thrace. Allied numerical superiority was almost 2:1. After a month and two days of fighting, the war ended as a moral disaster for Bulgaria, and at the same time its economy was ruined and its military demoralised.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "The Kingdom of Bulgaria participated in World War I on the side of the Central Powers between 15 October 1915, when the country declared war on Serbia, and 29 September 1918, when the Armistice of Thessalonica was signed. In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, Bulgarian opinion turned against Russia and the western powers, whom the Bulgarians felt had done nothing to help them. The government of Vasil Radoslavov aligned the country with Germany and Austria-Hungary, even though this meant also becoming an ally of the Ottomans, Bulgaria's traditional enemy. However, Bulgaria now had no claims against the Ottomans, whereas Serbia, Greece and Romania (allies of Britain and France) were all in possession of lands perceived in Bulgaria as its own.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "In 1915 Germany promised to restore the boundaries according to the Treaty of San Stefano and Bulgaria, which had the largest army in the Balkans, declared war on Serbia in October of that year. In the First World War Bulgaria decisively asserted its military capabilities. The second Battle of Doiran, with Gen. Vladimir Vazov as commander, inflicted a heavy blow on the numerically superior British army, which suffered 12,000 casualties against 2,000 from the opposite side. One year later, during the third battle of Doiran, the United Kingdom, supported by Greece, once again suffered a humiliating defeat, losing 3,155 men against just about 500 on the Bulgarian side. The reputation of the French army also suffered badly. The Battle of the Red Wall was marked by the total defeat of the French forces, with 5,700 out of 6,000 men killed. The 261 Frenchmen who survived were captured by Bulgarian soldiers.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Despite the outstanding victories, Germany was near defeat, which meant that Bulgaria would be left without its most powerful ally. The Russian Revolution of February 1917 had a great effect in Bulgaria, spreading antiwar and anti-monarchist sentiment among the troops and in the cities. In June Radoslavov's government resigned. In 1919 Bulgaria officially left the war with the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine proved to be a severe blow to Bulgaria's military. According to the treaty, the country had no right to organize a conscription-based military. The professional army was to be no more than 20,000 men, including 10,000 internal forces and 3,000 border guards. Equipping the army with tanks, submarines, bombers and heavy artillery was strictly prohibited, although Bulgaria managed to get around some of these prohibitions. Nevertheless, on the eve of World War II the Bulgarian army was still well-trained and well-equipped. In fact, the Bulgarian Army had been expanded in 1935.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The government of the Kingdom of Bulgaria under Prime Minister Bogdan Filov declared a position of neutrality upon the outbreak of World War II. Bulgaria was determined to observe it until the end of the war but it hoped for bloodless territorial gains, especially in the lands with a significant Bulgarian population occupied by neighbouring countries after the Second Balkan War and World War I. However, it was clear that the central geopolitical position of Bulgaria in the Balkans would inevitably lead to strong external pressure by both World War II factions. Turkey had a non-aggression pact with Bulgaria. On 7 September 1940 Bulgaria succeeded in negotiating a recovery of Southern Dobruja with the Treaty of Craiova (see Second Vienna Award). Southern Dobruja had been part of Romania since 1913. This recovery of territory reinforced hopes for resolving other territorial problems without direct involvement in the war. The country joined the Axis Powers in 1941, when German troops preparing to invade Yugoslavia and Greece reached the Bulgarian borders and demanded permission to pass through its territory.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "On 1 March 1941, Bulgaria signed the Tripartite Pact and officially joined the Axis bloc. After a short period of inaction, the army launched an operation against Yugoslavia and Greece. The goal of reaching the shores of the Aegean Sea and completely occupying the region of Macedonia was successful. Even though Bulgaria did not send any troops to support the German invasion of the Soviet Union, its navy was involved in a number of skirmishes with the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, which attacked Bulgarian shipping. Besides this, Bulgarian armed forces garrisoned in the Balkans battled various resistance groups. The Bulgarian government declared a token war on the United Kingdom and the United States near the end of 1941, an act that resulted in the bombing of Sofia and other Bulgarian cities by Allied aircraft.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Some communist activists managed to begin a guerrilla movement, headed by the underground Bulgarian Communist Party. A resistance movement called Otechestven front (Fatherland front, Bulgarian: Отечествен фронт) was set up in August 1942 by the Communist Party, the Zveno movement and a number of other parties to oppose the elected government, after a number of Allied victories indicated that the Axis might lose the War. In 1943 Tsar Boris III died suddenly. In the summer of 1944, after having crushed the Nazi defense around Iaşi and Chişinău, the Soviet Army was approaching the Balkans and Bulgaria. On 23 August 1944 Romania quit the Axis Powers, declared war on Germany and allowed Soviet forces to cross its territory to reach Bulgaria. On 26 August 1944 the Fatherland Front made the decision to incite an armed rebellion against the government, which led to the appointment of a new government on 2 September. Support for the government was withheld by the Fatherland Front, since it was composed of pro-Nazi elements, in a desperate attempt to hold on to power. On 5 September 1944 the Soviet Union declared war and invaded Bulgaria. On 8 September 1944 the Bulgarian army joined the Soviet Union in its war against Germany.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "As the Red Army invaded Bulgaria in 1944 and installed a communist government, the armed forces were rapidly forced to reorganise following the Soviet model, and were renamed the Bulgarian People's Army (Bohlgarska Narodna Armija, BNA). Moscow quickly supplied Bulgaria with T-34-85 tanks, SU-100 guns, Il-2 attack planes and other new combat machinery. As the country was a Soviet satellite, it was a part of the Eastern Bloc and entered the Warsaw Pact as one of its founders. By this time the army had expanded to over 200,000 men with hundreds of thousands of more reserve troops. Military service was obligatory. A special defensive line, known as the Krali Marko defensive line, was constructed along the entire border with Turkey. It was heavily fortified with concrete walls and turrets of T-34, Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "The army was involved in a number of border skirmishes from 1948 to 1952, repulsing several Greek attacks, and took part in the suppression of the Prague Spring events. In the meantime, during the rule of Todor Zhivkov, a significant military-industrial complex was established, capable of producing armored vehicles, self-propelled artillery, small arms and ammunition, as well as aircraft engines and spare parts. Bulgaria provided weapons and military expertise to Algeria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Nicaragua, Egypt and Syria. Some military and medical aid was also supplied to North Korea and North Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. During the 1970s the Air Force was at the apogee of its power, possessing at least 500 modern combat aircraft in its inventory. Training in the Bulgarian People's Army was exhaustive even by Soviet standards; however, it was never seen as a major force within the Warsaw Pact. In 1989, when the Cold War was coming to its end, the army (the combined number of ground, air and naval forces) numbered about 120,000 men, most of them conscripts. There were, however, a number of services which, while falling outside of Ministry of Defense jurisdiction in peacetime, were considered part of the armed forces. These were foremost the Labour Troops (construction forces), the People's Militia (the police forces of the country, which fell under Ministry of the Interior jurisdiction, but the ministry was itself a militarized structure) and, more importantly, its Interior Troops, the Border Troops—which in different periods fell under either Ministry of Defense or Ministry of the Interior control—Civil Defense Service, the Signals Troops (government communications) and the Transport Troops (mostly railway infrastructure maintenance), which were two separate services under the Postal and Communications Committee (a ministry), etc. The combined strength of the Bulgarian People's Army and all those services reached well over 325,000 troops.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "With the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the end of the Cold War, Bulgaria could no longer support a vast military. A rapid reduction in personnel and active equipment was to be carried out in parallel with a general re-alignment of strategic interests. In 1990, Bulgaria had a total of more than 2,400 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles, 2,500 large caliber artillery systems, 300 fighter and bomber aircraft, 100 trainer aircraft, more than 40 combat and 40 transport helicopters, 4 submarines, 6 fast missile craft, 2 frigates, 5 corvettes, 6 torpedo boats, 9 patrol craft, 30 minesweepers and 21 transport vessels. Due to the economic crisis that affected most former Eastern bloc countries, a steady reform in the military could not be carried out; much of the equipment fell into disrepair and some of it was smuggled and sold to the international black market. Inadequate payments, fuel and spare part shortages and the disbandment of many capable units led to an overall drop in combat readiness, morale and discipline.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "After partially recovering from the 1990s crisis, the Bulgarian military became a part of NATO. Even before that, Bulgaria sent a total of 485 soldiers to Iraq (2003–2008) as a participant in the Iraq War, and maintained a 608-men strong force in Afghanistan as part of ISAF. Bulgaria had a significant missile arsenal, including 67 SCUD-B, 50 FROG-7 and 24 SS-23 ballistic missiles. In 2002, Bulgaria disbanded the Rocket Forces despite nationwide protests, and has disbanded its submarine component. Bulgaria is to have 27,000 standing troops by 2014, consisting of 14,310 troops in the land forces, 6,750 in the air force, 3,510 in the navy and 2,420 in the joint command. In 2018, the Bulgarian Armed Forces numbers around 33,150 soldiers, 73 aircraft, 2234 vehicles including 531 tanks, and 29 naval assets.", "title": "History of the Bulgarian Army" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The Bulgarian Armed Forces are headquartered in Sofia, where most of the Defence staff is based. Until recently the supreme military institution was the General Staff and the most senior military officer was known as the Chief of the General Staff. After the latest military reform has been implemented the General Staff became a department within the Ministry of Defence and for that matter its name had to be changed to match the new situation. For that reason the former GS became the Defence Staff and the supreme military commander became the Chief of Defence. Currently headed by Chief of Defence admiral Emil Eftimov, the Defence Staff is responsible for operational command of the Bulgarian Army and its three major branches. Deputies: Vice Admiral Petar Petrov, General Atanas Zaprianov, General Dimitar Zekhtinov.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Supreme officer rank assignments in the Bulgarian Army and other militarised services", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Established by Executive Order of the President № 85 / 28.02.2012, most recent amendment published in the State Gazette Issue 96 from December 2, 2022:", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Ministry of Defence", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "In addition to the aforementioned positions, there are general rank positions in the National Intelligence Service and the National Close Protection Service (the bodyguard service to high-ranking officials and visiting dignitaries). These two services are considered part of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Bulgaria, but are directly subordinated to the President of Bulgaria and fall out of the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "With the establishment of the State Agency for National Security - SANS (Bulgarian: Darzhavna Agentsiya za Natsionalna Sigurnost - DANS, Държавна агенция за национална сигурност - ДАНС) part of the military security personnel came under its authority. Before that the security aspects of the armed forces were handled by a unified organisation under the General Staff - the \"Military Service of Security and Military Police\". After the formation of SANS the service was split, with the military counter-intelligence personnel entering the newly formed structure and the military police personnel staying under Ministry of Defense subordination. While technically civilian servants not part of the armed forces, the military counter-intelligence personnel of the State Agency of National Security retain their military ranks.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Ministry of Defence The organisation of the Ministry of Defence includes:", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Structures directly subordinated to the Ministry of Defence include:", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The Joint Operational Command (Съвместно оперативно командване (СОК)) was established on October 15, 2004 with HQ in Sofia. The country became member of NATO in the same year and this reorganisation was done to streamline the Bulgarian Armed Forces to NATO practices. The planing and execution of military operation was transferred from the respective armed service commands to a joint organisation.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "In 2010 the Ministry of Defence completed a thorough study of the defence policy and issued a White Book, or a White Paper on Defence, calling for a major overhaul of the structure of Defence Forces. On July 1, 2011 the Joint Operational Command was reorganised into the Joint Forces Command (Съвместно командване на силите (СКС)) According to the document the military of the Republic of Bulgaria should include two mechanized brigades, four regiments (Logistics, Artillery, Engineering, SpecOps), four battalions (Reconnaissance, Mechanized, NBC, psychological operations) in the Land Forces; two air bases, SAM air defense base and Air force training base in the Air Force; and one naval base consisting of two homeports in the Navy. There are seven brigade level formations, including the two mechanised brigades and the special forces brigade of the army, the two air bases of the air force, the naval base and the logistical brigade of the JOC.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "On September 1, 2021 the Joint Forces Command was reorganised again in accordance with the Development Plant for the Armed Forces until 2026 (План за развитие на Въоръжените сили до 2026 г.), set in action by Resolution of the Government № 183/07.05.2021. The logistics brigade and the movement control units of the JFC formed the Logistics Support Command. Since then the Joint Forces Command has seven units directly subordinated to it:", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "With the introduction of the new force structure of the Bulgarian Armed Forces the commands of three armed services of the Bulgarian Army - the Land, Air and Naval Forces are responsible for the generation of combat-ready forces, which are transferred under the operational command and control of the JFC.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Under the previous structure they were subordinated to the JFC.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "The logistics units of the JFC were re-arranged into the newly-formed Logistical Support Command (Командване за логистична поддръжка (КЛП)):", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "The previous 62nd Signals Brigade at Gorna Malina was responsible for maintaining the higher military communication lines. Next to the functions of the Signals Regiment in the Sofia suburb of Suhodol, the brigade had at least three dispersed signals regiments for government communications, such as the 75th Signals Regiment (Lovech), the 65th Signals Regiment (Nova Zagora) and at least one additional unknown Signals Regiment in the Rila-Pirin mountain massif. The modern successor of the 62nd Signals Brigade are the Stationary Communication and Information System (Стационарна Комуникационна Информационна Система (СКИС)) of the Defence Staff (which fulfils also the tasks of SIGINT and Cyber Defence next to its strategic communications mission) and the Mobile Communication and Information System (Мобилна Комуникационна Информационна Система (МКИС)) of the Joint Forces Command.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "On September 1, 2021 the Stationary Communications and Information System, which was directly subordinated to the Minister of Defence, became the Communications and Information Support and Cyber-Defence Command (Командване за комуникационно-информационна поддръжка и киберотбрана (ККИПКО)).", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "The 68th Special Forces Brigade was removed from the Land Forces' ORBAT on 1 February 2017, de facto becoming the country's fourth combat service. Unlike Bulgaria's Land, Air and Naval Forces, however, it fell outside of the Joint Forces Command structure, having been assigned directly under the authority of the Chief of Defence. The brigade was transformed into the JSOC, taking effect on November 1, 2019 and its commander, Brigade General Yavor Mateev was promoted to a major general as the chief of the new command.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "Bulgaria's total military personnel as of 2014 is 37,100, of which 30,400 (80.1%) are active military personnel and 8,100 (11.9%) are civilian personnel. The Land Forces are the largest branch, with at least 18,000 men serving there. In terms of percentage, 53% of all Army personnel are in the Land Forces, 25% are in the Air Force, 13% are in the Navy and 9% are in the Joint Forces Command. Annual spending per soldier amounts to 30,000 leva (~ 15,000 euro) and is scheduled to increase to 43,600 leva by 2014.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "Unlike many former Soviet bloc militaries, discipline and morale problems are not common. During the Communist era, the army members enjoyed extensive social privileges. After the fall of Communism and Bulgaria's transition to a market economy, wages fell severely. For almost a decade social benefits were virtually non-existent, and some of them have been restored but recently. Nikolai Tsonev, defence minister under the 2005–2009 cabinet, undertook steps to provide the members of the military and their families with certain privileges in terms of healthcare and education, and to improve living conditions.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "Military education in Bulgaria is provided in military universities and academies. Due to cuts in spending and manpower some universities have been disbanded and their campuses were included as faculties of other, larger educational entities. The largest institutions of military education in Bulgaria are:", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "The Land Forces practice extensive year-round military training in various conditions. Cooperative drills with the United States are very common, the last series of them conducted in 2008. Bulgaria's most recent full-scale exercise simulating a foreign invasion was carried out in 2009. It was conducted at the Koren range, and included some 1,700 personnel with tanks, ATGMs, attack aircraft, AA guns and armored vehicles. The combat skills of individual soldiers are on a very high level, on par with troops of the U.S. Army.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Until recent years the Air Force suffered somewhat from fuel shortages; a problem which was overcome in 2008. Fighter pilots have year-round flights, but gunship pilots do not fly often due to the yet unfulfilled modernization of the Mi-24 gunships. Due to financial difficulties fighter pilots have 60 hours of flying time per year, only a third of the national norm of 180 hours.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "The Navy also has some fuel shortage problems, but military training is still effective. The most recent overseas operation of the Navy was along the coast of Libya as part of Operation Unified Protector.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "After the collapse of the Warsaw pact, Bulgaria lost the ability to acquire cheap fuel and spares for its military. A large portion of its nearly 2,000 T-55 tanks fell into disrepair, and eventually almost all of them were scrapped or sold to other countries. In the early 1990s the budget was so small, that regulars only received token-value payments. Many educated and well-trained officers lost the opportunity to educate younger soldiers, as the necessary equipment and basis lacked adequate funding. Military spending increased gradually, especially in the last 10 years. As of 2005, the budget was no more than $400 mln., while military spending for 2009 amounted to more than $1.3 bln. – almost a triple increase for 4 years. Despite this growth, the military still does not receive sufficient funds for modernisation. An example of bad spending plans is the large-scale purchasing of transport aircraft, while the Air Force has a severe need of new fighters (the MiG-29s, even though modernised, are nearing their operational limits). The planned procurement of 2–4 Gowind class corvettes has been cancelled. As of 2009, military spending was about 1.98% of GDP. In 2010 the budget is to be only 1.3% due to the international financial crisis.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "The Land Forces are functionally divided into Deployable and Reserve Forces. Their main functions include deterrence, defence, peace support and crisis management, humanitarian and rescue missions, as well as social functions within Bulgarian society. Active troops in the land forces number about 18,000 men, and reserve troops number about 13,000.", "title": "Land Forces" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "The equipment of the land forces is impressive in terms of numbers, but most of it is nonoperational and scheduled to be scrapped or refurbished and exported to other nations. Bulgaria has a military stockpile of about 5,000,000 small arms, models ranging from World War II-era MP 40 machine pistols to modern Steyr AUG, AK-74, HK MP5, HK416 and AR-M12F assault rifles.", "title": "Land Forces" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "The National Guard of Bulgaria, founded in 1879, is the successor to the personal guards of Knyaz Alexander I. On 12 July of that year, the guards escorted the Bulgarian knyaz for the first time; today the official holiday of the National Guard is celebrated on 12 July. Throughout the years the structure of the guards has evolved, going from convoy to squadron, to regiment and, subsequent to 1942, to division. Today it includes military units for army salute and wind orchestra duties.", "title": "Land Forces" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "In 2001, the National Guard unit was designated an official military unit of the Bulgarian army and one of the symbols of state authority, along with the flag, the coat of arms and the national anthem. It is a formation, directly subordinate to the Minister of Defence and while legally part of the armed forces, it is totally independent from the Defence Staff.", "title": "Land Forces" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "Note: This table shows combined active and reserve force.Most are listed here. In 2019 what remained from the scrapping of the previous new equipment some but not all of the T-72 Main battle tanks were sent for mechanical service for the first time in years. Most of the equipment that should be battle ready is in dire condition, old, rusty or non-functional, the rest about 50,000 tons of what was sold as scrap\" can be found in some of the scrap depots near the railroad in Sofia including battle tanks, artillery, and other battle soviet era equipment.", "title": "Land Forces" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "The Navy has traditionally been the smallest component of the Bulgarian military. Established almost simultaneously with the Ground forces in 1879, initially it consisted of a small fleet of boats on the Danube river. Bulgaria has a coastline of about 354 kilometres – thus, naval warfare is not considered a priority.", "title": "Navy" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "After the downturn in 1990, the Navy was largely overlooked and received almost no funding. No projects for modernisation were carried out until 2005, when a Wielingen class frigate (F912 Wandelaar) was acquired from Belgium. By 2009, Bulgaria acquired two more frigates of the same class. The first of them was renamed 41 Drazki and took part in several operations and exercises, most notably the UNIFIL Maritime Patrol along the coast of Lebanon in 2006, and Operation Active Endeavour. It also participated in the enforcement of the naval blockade against Muammar Gaddafi's regime off the coast of Libya from 2011 until 2012.", "title": "Navy" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "The equipment is typical for a small navy, consisting mostly of light multi-purpose vessels – four frigates, three corvettes, five minesweepers, three fast missile craft and two landing ships. Other equipment includes a coastal defence missile battalion armed with locally modified P-15 Termit missiles, a coastal artillery battery, a naval helicopter airbase and a marine special forces unit.", "title": "Navy" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "The Bulgarian Navy is centered in two main bases – in Varna and in Burgas.", "title": "Navy" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "In the past decade Bulgaria has been trying actively to restructure its army as a whole and a lot of attention has been placed on keeping the aging Russian aircraft operational. Currently the attack and defence branches of the Bulgarian air force are mainly MiG-29s and Su-25s. About 15 MiG-29 fighters have been modernised in order to meet NATO standards. The first aircraft arrived on 29 November 2007 and final delivery was due in 03/09. In 2006 the Bulgarian government signed a contract with Alenia Aeronautica for the delivery of five C-27J Spartan transport aircraft in order to replace the Soviet made An-24 and An-26, although the contract was later changed to only three aircraft. Modern EU-made transport helicopters were purchased in 2005 and a total of 12 Eurocopter Cougar have been delivered (eight transport and four CSAR).Three Eurocopter AS565 Panther for the Bulgarian Navy in 2016.", "title": "Air Force" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "Branches of the Air Force include: fighter aviation, assault aviation, intelligence aviation and transportation aviation, aid defence troops, radio-technical troops, communications troops, radio-technical support troops, logistics and medical troops.", "title": "Air Force" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "The Bulgarian Ministry of Defense has announced plans to withdraw and replace the MiG-29 fighters with new F-16V Fighting Falcon by 2025–2026.", "title": "Air Force" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "With the exception of the Navy's small helicopter fleet, the Air Forces are responsible for all military aircraft in Bulgaria. The Air Forces' inventory numbers <50 aircraft, including combat jets and helicopters. Aircraft of western origin have only begun to enter the fleet, numbering of the total in service.Most is unusable, old and inactive", "title": "Air Force" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "The Bulgarian-American Joint Military Facilities were established by a Defence Cooperation Agreement signed by the United States and Bulgaria in April 2006. Under the agreement, U.S. forces can conduct training at several bases in the country, which remain under Bulgarian command and under the Bulgarian flag. Under the agreement, no more than 2,500 U.S. military personnel can be located at the joint military facilities.", "title": "Bulgarian-American cooperation" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "Foreign Policy magazine lists Bezmer Air Base as one of the six most important overseas facilities used by the USAF.", "title": "Bulgarian-American cooperation" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "Both during Communist rule and after, Bulgaria has deployed troops with different tasks in various countries. The table below lists Bulgarian military deployments in foreign countries. Active missions are shown in bold.", "title": "Deployments" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) is a landlocked Sahel country that shares borders with six nations. It lies between the Sahara desert and the Gulf of Guinea, south of the loop of the Niger River, mostly between latitudes 9° and 15°N (a small area is north of 15°), and longitudes 6°W and 3°E. The land is green in the south, with forests and fruit trees, and semi-arid in the north. Most of central Burkina Faso lies on a savanna plateau, 198–305 metres (650–1,001 ft) above sea level, with fields, brush, and scattered trees. Burkina Faso's game preserves – the most important of which are Arly, Nazinga, and W National Park—contain lions, elephants, hippopotamus, monkeys, common warthogs, and antelopes. Previously the endangered painted hunting dog, Lycaon pictus occurred in Burkina Faso, but, although the last sightings were made in Arli National Park, the species is considered extirpated from Burkina Faso.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Burkina Faso has a total area of 274,200 km (105,870 sq mi), of which 273,800 km (105,710 sq mi) is land and 400 km (150 sq mi) water. Comparatively, it is slightly larger than New Zealand and Colorado. Its borders total 3,611 kilometres (2,244 mi): Benin 386 kilometres (240 mi), Ivory Coast 545 kilometres (339 mi), Ghana 602 kilometres (374 mi), Mali 1,325 kilometres (823 mi), Niger 622 kilometres (386 mi), and Togo 131 kilometres (81 mi). It has no coastline or maritime claims.", "title": "Area" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "This is a list of the extreme points of Burkina Faso, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location.", "title": "Area" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "It is made up of two major types of countryside. The larger part of the country is covered by a peneplain, which forms a gently undulating landscape with, in some areas, a few isolated hills, the last vestiges of a Precambrian massif. The southwest of the country, on the other hand, forms a sandstone massif, where the highest peak, Ténakourou, is found at an elevation of 749 metres (2,457 feet). The massif is bordered by sheer cliffs up to 150 meters (490 feet) high. The average altitude of Burkina Faso is 400 meters (1,300 feet) and the difference between the highest and lowest terrain is no greater than 600 metres (2,000 feet). Burkina Faso is therefore a relatively flat country. Its elevation extremes are a lowest point at the Mouhoun (Black Volta) River (200 metres or 656 feet) and highest point at Tena Kourou (749 metres or 2,457 feet).", "title": "Terrain" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The country is divided into 13 administrative regions. These regions encompass 45 provinces and 351 departments.", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The country owes its former name of Upper Volta to three rivers which cross it: the Black Volta (or Mouhoun), the White Volta (Nakambé) and the Red Volta (Nazinon). The Black Volta is one of the country's only two rivers which flow year-round, the other being the Komoé, which flows to the southwest. The basin of the Niger River also drains 27% of the country's surface.", "title": "Hydrography" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The Niger's tributaries – the Béli, the Gorouol, the Goudébo and the Dargol – are seasonal streams and flow for only four to six months a year. They still, however, can cause large floods. The country also contains numerous lakes – the principal ones are Tingrela, Bam and Dem. The country contains large ponds, as well, such as Oursi, Béli, Yomboli and Markoye. Water shortages are often a problem, especially in the north of the country.", "title": "Hydrography" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Burkina Faso has a primarily tropical climate with two very distinct seasons. In the rainy season, the country receives between 600 and 900 millimetres (23.6 and 35.4 in) of rainfall; in the dry season, the harmattan – a hot dry wind from the Sahara – blows. The rainy season lasts approximately four months, May/June to September, and is shorter in the north of the country. Three climatic zones can be defined: the Sahel, the Sudan-Sahel, and the Sudan-Guinea. The Sahel in the north typically receives less than 600 millimeters (24 inches) of rainfall per year and has high temperatures, 5–47 degrees Celsius (41–117 degrees Fahrenheit).", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "A relatively dry tropical savanna, the Sahel extends beyond the borders of Burkina Faso, from the Horn of Africa to the Atlantic Ocean, and borders the Sahara to its north and the fertile region of the Sudan to the South. Situated between 11°3' and 13°5' north latitude, the Sudan-Sahel region is a transitional zone with regards to rainfall and temperature. Further to the south, the Sudan-Guinea zone receives more than 900 millimeters (35 inches) of rain each year and has cooler average temperatures.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Burkina Faso's natural resources include manganese, limestone, marble, phosphates, pumice, salt and small deposits of gold. 21.93% of its land is arable, and 0.26% has permanent crops as of 2012. As of 2003, 250 km were irrigated. Its total renewable water resources as of 2011 were 12.5 m, with a total freshwater withdrawal of 0.72 km/yr (46% domestic, 3% industrial, 51% agricultural; this amounts to a per-capita withdrawal of 54.99 m/yr.", "title": "Resources and environment" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Burkina Faso's fauna and flora are protected in two national parks and several reserves: see List of national parks in Africa, Nature reserves of Burkina Faso.", "title": "Resources and environment" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Recurring droughts and floods are a significant natural hazard. Current environmental issues include: recent droughts and desertification severely affecting agricultural activities, population distribution, and the economy; overgrazing; soil degradation; deforestation.", "title": "Resources and environment" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Burkina Faso is party to the following international environmental agreements: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Marine Life Conservation, Ozone Layer Protection, Wetlands. It has signed, but not ratified, the Law of the Sea and the Nuclear Test Ban.", "title": "Resources and environment" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from World Factbook. CIA.", "title": "Line note references" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Burkina Faso's 22.1 million people belong to two major West African cultural groups: the Gur (Voltaic) and the Mandé. The Voltaic are far more numerous and include the Mossi, who make up about one-half of the population. The Mossi claim descent from warriors who migrated to present-day Burkina Faso and established an empire that lasted more than 800 years. Predominantly farmers, the Mossi are still bound by the traditions of the Mogho Naba, who hold court in Ouagadougou.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "About 12,000 Europeans reside in Burkina Faso, the majority of whom are French.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Most of Burkina Faso's population is concentrated in the south and center of the country, with a population density sometimes exceeding 48 inhabitants per square kilometer (120 inhabitants per square mile). This population density, high for Africa, causes annual migrations of hundreds of thousands of Burkinabé to Ivory Coast and Ghana for seasonal agricultural work. About a third of Burkinabé adhere to traditional African religions. The introduction of Islam to Burkina Faso was initially resisted by the Mossi rulers. Christians, predominantly Roman Catholics, are largely concentrated among the urban elite.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Few Burkinabé have had formal education. Schooling is free but not compulsory, and only about 29% of Burkina's primary school-age children receive a basic education. The University of Ouagadougou, founded in 1974, was the country's first institution of higher education. The Polytechnic University of Bobo-Dioulasso in Bobo-Dioulasso was opened in 1995.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "According to the United Nations' Population Division, the population was 20,903,000 in 2020, compared to only 4,284,000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2020 was 44.4%, 53.2% of the population was between 15 and 65 years of age, while 2.4% was 65 years or older.", "title": "Population" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (1.VII.2021) (Data refer to national projections.):", "title": "Population" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Registration of vital events is not complete in Burkina Faso. The website Our World in Data prepared the following estimates based on statistics from the Population Department of the United Nations.", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR):", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Fertility data as of 2013 (DHS Program):", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2022.", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Burkina Faso has a young age structure – the result of declining mortality combined with steady high fertility – and continues to experience rapid population growth, which is putting increasing pressure on the country's limited arable land. More than 65% of the population is under the age of 25, and the population is growing at 3% annually. Mortality rates, especially those of infants and children, have decreased because of improved health care, hygiene, and sanitation, but women continue to have an average of almost 6 children. Even if fertility were substantially reduced, today's large cohort entering their reproductive years would sustain high population growth for the foreseeable future. Only about a third of the population is literate and unemployment is widespread, dampening the economic prospects of Burkina Faso's large working-age population.", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Muslim 63.2%, Roman Catholic 24.6%, Protestant 6.9%, traditional/animist 4.2%, none 0.7%, unspecified 0.4% (2017-18 est.)", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "note: on 21 March 2022, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Travel Alert for polio in Africa; Burkina Faso is currently considered a high risk to travelers for polio; the CDC recommends that before any international travel, anyone unvaccinated, incompletely vaccinated, or with an unknown polio vaccination status should complete the routine polio vaccine series; before travel to any high-risk destination, CDC recommends that adults who previously completed the full, routine polio vaccine series receive a single, lifetime booster dose of polio vaccine", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Religion in Burkina Faso (2017-2018)", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "In 2018, an estimated 82,000 people in the country were living under \"modern slavery\" according to the Global Slavery Index. News reports also indicate that \"most child slaves on cocoa farms (Ivory Coast and Ghana) come from Mali and Burkina Faso, two of the poorest nations on Earth. The children, some as young as ten, are sent by their families or trafficked by agents with the promise of money. They are made to work long hours for little or no money.\"", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Attribution:", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Politics of Burkina Faso takes place in a framework of a semi-presidential republic, whereby the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. The President of Burkina Faso is the head of state. Executive power is exercised by both the President and the Government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament. The party system was dominated by the Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP) until 2014. Burkina Faso's CDP fell victim to a series of demonstrations and riots, to alter the constitution and extend the former president's term in office - referred to as the 2014 Burkinabé uprising. The military then declared itself to be in power and the state shifted to an electoral autocracy. Burkina Faso lacks the foundation that would support a democracy, with its current transition to a military regime, but not all hope is lost. After an internal coup ousted Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, the previous military head of state, a new transitional charter was adopted, naming Captain Ibrahim Traoré as president. Mr. Damiba's progressional failures on the state's security front “swung a majority of domestic opinion in favour of the MPSR”. Mr. Traoré pledged a major reinforcement of armed forces to strengthen frontline units and recruited over 3,000 more troops. As the violence becomes so entrenched, it is nonetheless expected that the security situation will remain dire in the medium term. “However, we expect that elections will still be held in 2024 as part of the army's plan to stabilise the security situation by boosting counter-terrorism operations.”", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Important questions facing the state were the length of the MPSR rule, who would be president, and which institutions would run the country. Immediately after Mr. Damiba's ouster, the junta declared that it accepted a previous agreement to hold elections by July 2024, ending debate about the timeline. The MPSR initially suggested that the president might be \"civilian or military\", but widespread demonstrations expressed strong preferences for Mr. Traoré. This tilted the balance among contending military factions in his favor. Within the varieties of authoritarian regimes and transitions, we see how the rivalries between the officer corps and coups can be shaped by citizen preferences and with lots of time dedicated to internal consensus, democracy is one of the future.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "In 1990, the Popular Front held its first National Congress, which formed a committee to draft a national constitution. The constitution was approved by referendum in 1991. In 1992, Blaise Compaoré was elected president, running unopposed after the opposition boycotted the election because of Compaoré's refusal to accede to demands of the opposition such as a Sovereign National Conference to set modalities. The opposition did participate in the following year's legislative elections, in which the ODP/MT won a majority of the seats contested for.", "title": "Political history" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The government of the Fourth Republic includes a strong presidency, a prime minister, a Council of Ministers presided over by the president, a National Assembly, and the judiciary. The legislature and judiciary are independent but remain susceptible to outside influence.", "title": "Political history" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "In 1995, Burkina held its first multiparty municipal elections since it gained independence. The president's ODP/MT won over 1,100 of some 1,700 councilor seats being contested.", "title": "Political history" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "In February 1996, the ruling ODP/MT merged with several small opposition parties to form the Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP). This effectively co-opted much of what little viable opposition to Compaoré existed. The remaining opposition parties regrouped in preparation for 1997 legislative elections and the 1998 presidential election. The 1997 legislative elections, which international observers pronounced to be substantially free, fair, and transparent, resulted in a large CDP majority—101 to 111 seats.", "title": "Political history" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "In January 2022 a coup d'état took place, the military announced on television that Kaboré had been deposed from his position as President. After the announcement, the military declared that the parliament, government and constitution had been dissolved. On 31 January, the military junta restored the constitution and appointed Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba as interim president. A few months later, On 30 September 2022, Damiba was himself ousted by Ibrahim Traoré, his military colleague. President Damiba resigned and left the country. On 6 October 2022, Captain Ibrahim Traore was officially appointed as president of Burkina Faso.", "title": "Political history" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The president is elected by popular vote for a five-year term and may serve up to two terms. The prime minister is appointed by the president with the consent of the legislature. The constitution of 2 June 1991, established a semi-presidential government with a parliament (French: Assemblée) which can be dissolved by the President of the Republic, who is elected for a term of 5 years. The year 2000 saw a constitutional amendment reducing the presidential term from 7 to 5 years, which was enforced during the 2005 elections. Another change according to the amendment would have prevented sitting president Blaise Compaoré from being re-elected. However, notwithstanding a challenge by other presidential candidates, in October 2005, the constitutional council ruled that because Compaoré was already a sitting president in 2000, the amendment would not apply to him until the end of his second term in office, thereby clearing the way for his candidacy in the 2005 election. On 13 November Compaoré was reelected in a landslide due to a divided political opposition. In 2010, Compaoré was once again re-elected, and the term limit requirement was held to not apply to him. A proposed constitutional amendment in 2014 would have permitted him to run again, but public resistance led to the 2014 Burkinabé uprising, and Compaoré resigned on 31 October 2014. A transitional government headed by President Michel Kafando and Prime Minister Isaac Zida took power for a one-year mandate. Elections were to have been held in October 2015, but members of the Regiment of Presidential Security launched a coup on 16 September 2015, detaining President Kafando and Prime Minister Zida. RSP commander Gilbert Diendéré named himself the head of the new military junta, but popular resistance, backed by army and gendarmerie forces not aligned with the RSP, forced his resignation and the restoration of the transitional government a week later.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "According to the constitution, the Parliament votes on the law, consents to taxation, and controls the actions of the government under provisions of the constitution. The Parliament, which is made up of the National Assembly and Senate, meets each year in two ordinary sessions, each of which may not exceed ninety days. The first session opens on the first Wednesday of March and the second the last Wednesday of September. If either of these days lands on a holiday, the session opens the next first working day. Each chamber of Parliament meets in extraordinary session on request of the President, demand of the Prime Minister, or of an absolute majority of half of the Deputies or Senators on a specific agenda and closes at the completion of said agenda.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale) has 111 members, named Deputies, and are elected for a five-year term by proportional representation.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The Senate, as described in the Constitution of Burkina Faso, would consist of representatives from local government divisions, customary and religious authorities, workers, employers, Burkinabes abroad and people appointed by the President of Burkina Faso and serve a term of six years. The constitution requires that anyone elected or appointed must be 45 years old by the day of the ballot.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "In May 2013, then-President Compaoré announced the establishment of a new Senate with 89 members, 29 of which would be selected by the president themselves, and the rest appointed by local officials. With Senate elections being held in July 2013, government opposition groups warned against a legislative body with a majority of handpicked sympathizers by the president. Compaoré was successful in appointing 1/3rd of the Senate, prompting protesters rallying in the streets of Bobo-Dioulasso and the capital Ouagadougou to protest the establishment of the Senate, which has since been postponed.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "The Presidents of both the Senate and National Assembly are elected for the duration of the legislator by an absolute majority of half the chamber in the first round of voting, or a simple majority in the second round. Their functions can be terminated during the course of a legislature at the demand of two-fifths and a vote of the absolute majority of the members of the Assembly. In the case of vacancy of the presidency of either chamber of Parliament by death, resignation, or other reason, said chamber elects a new president by the same method. Each chamber has financial autonomy, with the President of the said chamber managing the credits allocated to them for the functioning of the chamber, but with a vote of the absolute majority, the chamber can dismiss the President for incompetence in managing finances.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Unless discovered in flagrante delicto, any member of Parliament can only be prosecuted or arrested in a penal or criminal matter with the authorization of at least one-third members of the chamber which they reside.", "title": "Government" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Burkinabé General Confederation of Labor (CGTB); Burkinabé Movement for Human Rights (HBDHP); Group of 14 February; National Confederation of Burkinabé Workers (CNTB); National Organization of Free Unions (ONSL); watchdog/political action groups throughout the country in both organizations and communities", "title": "Political pressure groups" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Burkina Faso is divided into 13 regions and 45 provinces:", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Regions:", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Provinces:", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "ACCT, ACP, AfDB, AU, ECA, ECOWAS, Entente, FAO, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC, ITUC, ICRM, IDA, IDB, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, Intelsat, Interpol, IOC, ITU, NAM, OAU, OIC, OPCW, PCA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WADB, WADB (regional), WAEMU, WCO, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTOO, WTrO.", "title": "International organization participation" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "The ambassador of Burkina Faso to Canada is Juliette Bonkoungou.", "title": "International relationships" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The ambassador of Burkina Faso to Mexico is Jonathan Hodgson.", "title": "International relationships" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "The former ambassador of Burkina Faso to the United States was Tertius Zongo, he left his post when appointed Prime Minister in July 2007; the US Ambassador to Burkina Faso is Andrew Robert Young.", "title": "International relationships" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The economy of Burkina Faso is based primarily on subsistence farming and livestock raising. Burkina Faso has an average income purchasing-power-parity per capita of $1,900 and nominal per capita of $790 in 2014. More than 80% of the population relies on subsistence agriculture, with only a small fraction directly involved in industry and services. Highly variable rainfall, poor soils, lack of adequate communications and other infrastructure, a low literacy rate, and a stagnant economy are all longstanding problems of this landlocked country. The export economy also remained subject to fluctuations in world prices.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The country has a high population density, few natural resources, and a fragile soil. Industry remains dominated by unprofitable government-controlled corporations. Following the African franc currency devaluation in January 1994 the government updated its development program in conjunction with international agencies, and exports and economic growth have increased. Maintenance of its macroeconomic progress depends on continued low inflation, reduction in the trade deficit, and reforms designed to encourage private investment.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The Burkinabé financial system represents 30% of the country's GDP and is dominated by the banking sector, which accounts for 90% of total financial system assets. Eleven banks and five non-bank financial institutions operate in the country.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The banking sector is highly concentrated, with the three largest banks holding nearly 60% of total financial sector assets. Banks are generally adequately capitalized, but remain vulnerable due to their overexposure to the cotton sector, the prices of which are subject to significant oscillations.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "A December 2018 report from the World Bank indicates that cotton had become the most important cash crop, while gold exports were increasing in recent years. In 2017, economic growth increased to 6.4% in 2017 (vs. 5.9% in 2016) primarily due to gold production and increased investment in infrastructure. The increase in consumption linked to growth of the wage bill also supported economic growth. Inflation remained low, 0.4% that year but the public deficit grew to 7.7% of GDP (vs. 3.5% in 2016). The government was continuing to get financial aid and loans to finance the debt. To finance the public deficit, the Government combined concessional aid and borrowing on the regional market. The World Bank said that the economic outlook remained favorable in the short and medium term, although that could be negatively impacted. Risks included high oil prices (imports), lower prices of gold and cotton (exports) as well as terrorist threat and labour strikes.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "This is a chart of trend of gross domestic product of Burkina Faso at market prices estimated by the International Monetary Fund with figures in millions of CFA Francs.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "For purchasing power parity comparisons, the US Dollar is exchanged at 470.70 CFA Francs only. Mean wages were $0.56 per man-hour in 2009.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Current GDP per capita of Burkina Faso grew 13% in the Sixties reaching a peak growth of 237% in the Seventies. But this proved unsustainable and growth consequently scaled back to 23% in the Eighties. Finally, it shrank by 37% in the Nineties. Average wages in 2007 hover around 2 to 3 dollars per day.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Although disadvantaged by an extremely resource-deprived domestic economy, Burkina Faso remains committed to the structural adjustment program it launched in 1991. It has largely recovered from the devaluation of the CFA in January 1994, with a 1996 growth rate of 5.9%.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Many Burkinabé migrate to neighbouring countries for work, and their remittances provide a substantial contribution to the balance of payments. Burkina Faso is attempting to improve the economy by developing its mineral resources, improving its infrastructure, making its agricultural and livestock sectors more productive and competitive, and stabilizing the supplies and prices of cereals.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The agricultural economy remains highly vulnerable to fluctuations in rainfall. The Mossi Plateau in north central Burkina Faso faces encroachment from the Sahara. The resultant southward migration means heightened competition for control of very limited water resources south of the Mossi Plateau. Most of the population ekes out a living as subsistence farmers, living with problems of climate, soil erosion, and rudimentary technology. The staple crops are pearl millet, sorghum, maize, and rice. The cash crops are cotton, groundnuts, karite (shea nuts), and sesame. Livestock, once a major export, has declined.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "A 2018 report by the African Development Bank Group discussed a macroeconomic evolution: \"higher investment and continued spending on social services and security that will add to the budget deficit\". This group's prediction for 2018 indicated that the budget deficit would be reduced to 4.8% of GDP in 2018 and to 2.9% in 2019. Public debt associated with the National Economic and Social Development Plan was estimated at 36.9% of GDP in 2017.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Burkina Faso produced in 2018:", "title": "Agriculture" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products.", "title": "Agriculture" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Industry, still in an embryonic stage, is located primarily in Bobo-Dioulasso, Ouagadougou, Banfora, and Koudougou. Manufacturing is limited to food processing, textiles, and other import substitution heavily protected by tariffs. Some factories are privately owned, and others are set to be privatized. Burkina Faso's exploitable natural resources are limited, although a manganese ore deposit is located in the remote northeast. Gold mining has increased greatly since the mid-1980s and, along with cotton, is a leading export moneyearner. However, both gold and cotton are listed as goods produced mostly by child labor and forced labor according to a recent U.S. Department of Labor report.", "title": "Agriculture" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "According to Burkina Faso's United States Department of Labor in 2012, 37.8% of children in Burkina Faso, between the ages of 5–14 years, were working in granite quarries and gold mines. These children have worked 6 to 7 days a week for up to 14 hours per day. So-called \"payment\" is in the form of food to eat and a place to sleep. Since that time, the Government has adopted a National Action Plan, and in collaboration with Interpol, have since have rescued many children from child trafficking.", "title": "Child labour" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Telecommunications in Burkina Faso include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The telephony market in Burkina Faso is still relatively underdeveloped. Although mobile penetration is just over 100%, it is still below the African average. Fixed-line telephony and internet connections are very low, due in large part to poor network infrastructure. The government has a number of policies intended to improve the levels of investment and usage of networks but the impact of the SARS-Cov2 pandemic has hampered such efforts.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Radio is the country's most popular communications medium. Use of telecommunications in Burkina Faso are extremely low, limited due to the low penetration of electricity, even in major cities. There were just 141,400 fixed line phones in use in 2012, in a country with a population of 17.4 million. Use of mobile phones has skyrocketed from 1.0 million lines in 2006 to 10 million in 2012. Internet use is also low, with only 3.7 users per 100 inhabitants in 2012, just over 643,000 users total. The Internet penetration rate in Africa as a whole was 16 users per 100 inhabitants in 2013.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and of the press, and the government generally respects these rights in practice.", "title": "Regulation and control" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "All media are under the administrative and technical supervision of the Ministry of Communications, which is responsible for developing and implementing government policy on information and communication. The Superior Council of Communication (SCC), a semiautonomous body under the Office of the President, monitors the content of radio and television programs, newspapers, and Internet Web sites to ensure compliance with professional ethics standards and government policy. The SCC may summon journalists and issue warnings for subsequent violations. Hearings may concern alleged libel, disturbing the peace, inciting violence, or violations of state security.", "title": "Regulation and control" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Journalists occasionally face criminal libel prosecutions and other forms of harassment and intimidation. In addition to the prohibition against insulting the head of state, the law also prohibits the publication of shocking images and lack of respect for the deceased. Although the government does not attempt to impede criticism, some journalists practice self-censorship.", "title": "Regulation and control" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The Burkinabé government, in its telecommunications development strategy, has stated its aim to make telecommunications a universal service accessible to all. A large portion of this strategy is the privatization of the National Telecommunications Office (ONATEL), with an additional focus on a rural telephony promotion project. In 2006 the government sold a 51 percent stake in the national telephone company, ONATEL, and ultimately planned to retain only a 23 percent stake in the company.", "title": "Regulation and control" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Radio is the country's most popular communications medium. Dozens of private and community radio stations and a handful of private TV channels operate alongside their state-run counterparts. The BBC World Service, Voice of America, and Radio France Internationale are all on the air in the capital, Ouagadougou.", "title": "Radio and television" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The state-run Office National Des Telecommunications (ONATEL) launched the first mobile network based on CDMA2000 technology in 1998. Competition was introduced to the mobile telephone segment in 2000 with the introduction of new GSM network operators Celtel, Télécel Faso and ONATEL's Telmob. This pushed rates down even as density and coverage area increased. Use of mobile phones grew quickly in the 2000s, growing from 2,700 subscribers in 1998, to 1.0 million in 2006, to 10.0 million in 2012. and to 21.4 million in 2020. ARPU remained low, however, as mobile subscribers adopted behaviours such as \"flashing\" to minimize their costs and Burkina Faso's ancient oral tradition and talking drum culture harmonized with the introduction of mobile phone technologies. Additionally, mobile phone owners acquired status by being able to lend their phones to others in their communities.", "title": "Early Development of the Mobile Market" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "In 2006, Maroc Telecom(itself part of Etisalat group) took a majority stake in ONATEL, which it increased to 61% in 2018 and from July 1, 2019 Maroc Telecom consolidated Onatel, Mauritel, Gabon Télécom, Sotelma, Casanet, AT Côte d'Ivoire, Etisalat Benin, AT Togo, AT Niger, AT Centrafrique, and Tigo Tchad in its accounts. In January 2021, Maroc Telecom rebranded all of its African subsidiaries as Moov Africa.", "title": "International Group Involvement" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In 2005 Celtel was acquired by the Kuwaiti Zain Group. In 2010 Zain Group decided to sell most of the Celtel group to Indian group Bharti Airtel, which rebranded Celtel as Airtel Burkina Faso. In June 2016 Orange S.A. acquired the network and 4.6M subscribers of Airtel Burkina Faso. Following an ambitious network modernization plan, 9 months later the network rebranded as Orange Burkina Faso boasting a subscriber base of 6.3M.", "title": "International Group Involvement" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "According to the website of the Communication Regulator of Burkina Faso, at the end of 2020 the Mobile Telecommunications Market (21.4M subscriptions) was shared as follows:", "title": "International Group Involvement" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Internet use is low, but the sector began to improve following installation of a 22 Mbit/s fiber optic international link, a vast improvement over the previous 128 kbit/s link. Secondary access nodes began to appear in major cities, and cybercafés were providing Internet access to a broader spectrum of end users.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "ONATEL's FasoNet is the country's leading wired Internet service provider, dominating the broadband market with its ADSL and EV-DO fixed-wireless offerings.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The mobile operators are offering data services using GPRS and EDGE technology, and third generation (3G) mobile broadband technology was not introduced until 2013 by Bharti Airtel.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "A March 2013 ITU Study on international Internet connectivity in sub-Saharan Africa reports that the Burkina Faso \"Internet market is not sufficiently dynamic and competitive\" and that the high costs for Internet capable mobile phones (more than six times the cost of a basic mobile phone) and mobile Internet subscriptions (up to seven times the cost for basic mobile) limit the number of Internet users.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet; however, the Superior Council of Communication (SCC) monitors Internet Web sites and discussion forums to ensure compliance with existing regulations. For example, in May 2012 the SCC issued a warning to a Web site on which a user had allegedly insulted President Compaore in an Internet forum.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and of the press, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. The law prohibits persons from insulting the head of state or using derogatory language with respect to the office; however, individuals criticize the government publicly or privately without reprisal.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "The constitution and law prohibit arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, and the government generally respects these prohibitions in practice. In cases of national security, however, the law permits surveillance, searches, and monitoring of telephones and private correspondence without a warrant.", "title": "Internet" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Transport in Burkina Faso consists primarily of road, air and rail transportation. The World Bank classified country's transportation as underdeveloped but noted that Burkina Faso is a natural geographic transportation hub for West Africa.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "In 2002, there were a total of 12,506 kilometres (7,771 mi) of highway in Burkina Faso, of which 2,001 kilometres (1,243 mi) are paved.", "title": "Highways" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "In 2000, the Government of Burkina Faso classified 15,000 kilometers of road as part of the national road network managed under the Ministry of Infrastructures Transport and Housing (MITH) through the Directorate of Roads (DGR). This network includes main inter-city roads and access roads for départments' capital cities. Only ten of the network's main roads are even partially paved, and the paved roads are plagued by dangerous potholes, missing signage, missing barriers and guardrails near roadside hazards, and no pavement markings to separate traffic moving in opposite directions", "title": "Highways" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "As of May 2011 the country's road infrastructure was rated by the World Bank to be in relatively good condition and noted that country was regional hub with paved roads linking the country to Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, and Niger. Nevertheless, \"trucking cartels and red tape contribute to high transportation costs and diminished international competitiveness.\" 58% of firms in Burkina Faso identified roads as major business constraint, maintenance and rehabilitation needs of the main road network are said to be underfunded.", "title": "Highways" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "There are international airports at Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso and numerous smaller airfields. In 2004, the number of airports totaled 23, only 2 of which had paved runways as of 2005. Air Burkina, which began in 1967, is government-run and has a monopoly on domestic service but also flies to neighboring countries.", "title": "Air transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Ouagadougou airport handles about 98% percent of all scheduled commercial air traffic in Burkina Faso. Air Burkina and Air France handle about 60% of all scheduled passenger traffic. Between 2005 and 2011, air passenger traffic at Ouagadougou airport grew at an average annual rate of 7.0 percent per annum reaching about 404,726 passengers in 2011 and was estimated to reach 850,000 by 2025. In 2007 Ouagadougou airport was the fifteenth busiest airport in West Africa in passenger volume, just ahead of Port Harcourt (Nigeria) and behind Banjul (Gambia). The total air cargo at Ouagadougou airport grew 71% from 4,350 tons in 2005 to about 7,448 tons in 2009.", "title": "Air transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The government plans to close the Ouagadougou airport upon construction of the new Ouagadougou-Donsin Airport, approximately 35 km northeast of Ouagadougou. The new airport is expected to be completed around 2018 and the government received an $85 million loan from the World Bank to help finance the construction. The government of Burkino Faso believed that the project would cost $618 million.", "title": "Air transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "There are 622 kilometres of railway in Burkina Faso, of which 517 km run from Ouagadougou to Abidjan, Ivory Coast; and 105 km from Ouagadougou to Kaya. As of June 2014 Sitarail operates a passenger train three times a week along the route from Ouagadougou to Abidjan via Banfora, Bobo-Dioulasso and Koudougou.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "All of the railways in the country are of 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) metre gauge. Only Ivory Coast is connected to Burkina Faso by rail.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Instability in Ivory Coast in 2003 forced a rerouting of rail freight from the Abidjan corridor to ports in Togo, Benin, and Ghana via the road network. A proposed rail link between Ouagadougou and Pô in Burkina Faso and Kumasi and Boankra in Ghana, has been discussed with Ghanaian officials, and feasibility studies are being undertaken to explore this possibility, which would provide rail access to the inland port of Bonakra. Burkina Faso and Ghana use different rail gauges and this break-of-gauge can be overcome to a greater or lesser extent with a number of methods.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In 2006, an Indian proposal surfaced to link the railways in Benin and Togo with landlocked Niger and Burkina Faso. Additionally, a Czech proposal also surfaced to link Ghana railways with Burkina Faso. The manganese deposits near Dori are one source of traffic. Burkina Faso would also be a participant in the AfricaRail project.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "In May, 2011 the World Bank reported that Sitarail had recovered well from the political crisis in Ivory Coast but was experiencing financial distress, needed to re-balance its financial structure and find alternative funding for rehabilitation backlog.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "The following towns of Burkina Faso are served by the country's railways:", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Burkina Faso Armed Forces (French: Forces armées du Burkina Faso) is the term used for the national military of Burkina Faso. The service branches of the armed forces include its Army, Air Force, National Gendarmerie and People's Militia. Being a landlocked country, Burkina Faso has no navy.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "In 1966 a military coup deposed the first president of Upper Volta, Maurice Yaméogo, suspended the constitution, dissolved the National Assembly, and placed Lieutenant Colonel Sangoulé Lamizana at the head of a government of senior army officers. The army remained in power for 4 years; on June 14, 1970, the Voltans ratified a new constitution that established a 4-year transition period toward complete civilian rule. Lamizana remained in power throughout the 1970s as president of military or mixed civil-military governments. After conflict over the 1970 constitution, a new constitution was written and approved in 1977, and Lamizana was reelected by open elections in 1978.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Lamizana's government faced problems with the country's traditionally powerful trade unions and on November 25, 1980, Colonel Saye Zerbo overthrew President Lamizana in a bloodless coup. Colonel Zerbo established the Military Committee of Recovery for National Progress as the supreme governmental authority, thus eradicating the 1977 constitution.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Colonel Zerbo also encountered resistance from trade unions and was overthrown two years later on November 7, 1982, by Major Dr. Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo and the Council of Popular Salvation (CSP). The CSP continued to ban political parties and organisations, yet promised a transition to civilian rule and a new constitution.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Factional infighting developed between moderates in the CSP and radicals led by Captain Thomas Sankara, who was appointed prime minister in January 1983. The internal political struggle and Sankara's leftist rhetoric led to his arrest and subsequent efforts to bring about his release, directed by Captain Blaise Compaoré. This release effort resulted in yet another military coup d'état on August 4, 1983. Compaoré came to power in a 1987 coup that led to the death of Sankara.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "On February 15, 2011, soldiers mutinied in Ouagadougou over unpaid housing allowances. On April 18, 2011, it was reported that the mutiny had spread to Kaya after demonstrations in Pô and Tenkodogo. On April 29, 2011, the army said the mutiny would end after Compaoré promised to improve the military's housing, clothing and food allowances, though there were later protests by soldiers.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "After a coup by members of the Regiment of Presidential Security on September 16, 2015, army units marched on Ouagadougou to oppose the coup, resulting in the restoration of Burkina Faso's transitional government (which was appointed after the 2014 Burkinabe uprising) on September 23, 2015.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "In a coup attempt on January 24, 2022, mutinying soldiers arrested President Roch Kabore following gunfire.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The Army of Burkina Faso (L'Armée de Terre or LAT – Ground Forces) is a skeletonised force structure of some 5,800–6,000 officers and men, augmented by a conscript force or People's Militia of some 45,000 men and women. Unlike the police and security forces, the Army and the People's Militia are organised along Soviet/Chinese models and precepts. The Army is equipped with light wheeled armoured cars, some mounting cannons.", "title": "Ground forces" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated in 2011–12 that Burkina Faso had 6,400 personnel in L'Armée de Terre in three military regions, one tank battalion (two tank platoons), five infantry regiments that may be under-strength, and an airborne regiment. Artillery and engineer battalions are also listed.", "title": "Ground forces" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In recent years, the United States has begun providing military assistance and training to Burkina Faso's ground forces. It has trained three 750-man battalions for peace support operations in Darfur. During a recent UN inspection, a U.S. Department of Defense evaluation team found Burkina's Laafi battalion fit to deploy to Sudan. Using a small Department of Defense International Military Education and Training (IMET) budget, the U.S. Embassy has established English-language courses at an LAT military base, and has brought LAT officers to attend officer basic training courses in the U.S. The government of Burkina Faso has also accepted additional U.S. training assistance in counter-terrorism tactics and humanitarian assistance. Burkina Faso has recently become a member of the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP).", "title": "Ground forces" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Three years of increasingly frequent and deadly attacks, by various jihadist groups, prompted the replacement of the Army Chief of Staff, Sadou Oumarou, appointed three years ago with the same mandate, with General Moise Minoungou on 6 January 2019.", "title": "Ground forces" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "There is a multi-national training camp in Loumbila Department, staffed by Czech and Polish instructors.", "title": "Ground forces" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "The Air Force was founded in 1964 as the Escadrille de la République de Haute-Volta (EHV) or the Republic of Upper Volta Air Squadron, a subordinate unit of the Army. That year, a transient air support base was created with the assistance of the French Air Force. After acquiring an initial fleet of utility and transport aircraft, the squadron was attached to an inter-army support regiment. In 1970, the Escadrille was renamed the Force Aérienne de Haute-Volta, or FAHV, and in 1977 became an autonomous force. In October 1985, the Force Aérienne du Burkina Faso, or FABF, was officially inaugurated.", "title": "Air Force" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The EHV was initially formed with two Douglas C-47 Skytrain and three MH.1521M Broussard aircraft. These were later followed by two Alouette III SA.316 B helicopters, used mostly for liaison purposes, one twin-engined Aero Commander 500 light utility aircraft, two Hawker-Siddeley HS.748-2A twin turboprop transport aircraft, and two Nord 262 twin turboprop transport aircraft. Two escadrilles (squadrons) or sub-formations were created: the Escadrille de Transport (Transport Unit), and the Escadrille d'Hélicoptères (Helicopter Unit). Later, the Escadrille d'Entraînement (Training Unit) was added. All squadrons were initially based at Ouagadougou.", "title": "Air Force" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "In mid-1984, Libyan military aid brought eight Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 jet fighters, along with two MiG-21U combat trainer versions. These ex-Libyan Air Force MiG-21 \"Fishbed\" fighters were based in Ouagadougou, although they were actually operated by the Libyan Air Force on loan by Libya, and were removed in 1985 without seeing combat. A single MiG-17F Fresco that was also operated by the FABF did see combat service in the Agacher Strip War in 1985–86. In 1985, the FABF also acquired two ex-Soviet Mi-4 transport helicopters from an unknown supplier, followed by an additional two Mi-4s. The Mi-4s were operated by the FABF until the late 1980s, when they were taken out of service. Five Mi-8/17 transport helicopters were later added to the Escadrille d'Hélicoptères. While supervising the ceasefire after the Agacher Strip War, an FABF SA.316B Alouette III crashed at Kouni on 14 January 1986, leaving only one SA.316B still in service with the Escadrille d'Hélicoptères.", "title": "Air Force" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "In 1986, the FABF formed a new unit, the Escadrille de Chasse (EdC) (Attack Unit). In mid-1986 six ex-Philippine Air Force SF.260WP Warrior armed trainers/light strike aircraft were acquired from a dealer in Belgium, which offered the FABF a much simpler and less expensive alternative in tactical air support to the expensive MiGs. The Warriors were not only used for pilot training, but also as light strike aircraft, and a number of them were employed by the FABF's Escadrille de Chasse (EdC). Four additional SF.260WPs were subsequently bought directly from Italy. The six ex-Philippine SF.260WP aircraft were taken out of service in 1993 and returned to their previous owner, although the four newly built SF.260WP aircraft were retained in service, and stationed at Bobo Dioulasso air base.", "title": "Air Force" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Most of the other light aircraft acquired by the FABF in the 1970s and 1980s have also now been retired along with the Mi-4 helicopters, but some recent acquisitions have been made, including a Beechcraft King Air, a Piper PA-34 Seneca, a CEAPR Robin light training aircraft, and a single Air Tractor AT-802 aerial sprayer aircraft for spraying insecticides, purchased after the northern part of the country suffered heavy crop damage from a 2004 invasion of swarming locusts. In 2009, two Xenon Gyroplane autogyros were purchased for use by police and security forces.", "title": "Air Force" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "In late 2005, the FABF acquired two Mil Mi-35 \"Hind\" attack helicopters from Russia in an apparent response to moves by neighbouring Ivory Coast to bolster its own air attack capabilities during the Ivorian Civil War.", "title": "Air Force" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Burkina Faso has good relations with the European Union, African and certain Asian countries. France, the former colonial power, in particular, continues to provide significant aid and supports Compaoré's developing role as a regional powerbroker.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "According to the U.S. State Department, \"U.S. relations with Burkina Faso are good but subject to strains in the past because of the Compaoré government's past involvement in arms trading and other sanctions-breaking activity.\" Burkina Faso cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan in May 2018 (being the most populous state to do so in the 21st century) and the foreign ministry of China stated it approved of its decision.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Burkina Faso's relations with its West African neighbors have improved in recent years. Relations with Ghana, in particular, have warmed. President Compaoré had mediated a political crisis in Togo and helped to resolve the Tuareg conflict in Niger. Burkina maintains cordial relations with Libya, but recalled its in ambassador in 2017 over issues of treatment of migrants trying to reach Europe, and the reemergence of the slave trade there. A territorial dispute with Mali was mediated by Ghana and Nigeria, which has led to lessening of tensions between the two nations.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Nineteen provinces of Burkina Faso are joined with contiguous areas of Mali and Niger under the Liptako-Gourma Authority, a regional economic organization.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Burkina Faso is also a member of the International Criminal Court with a bilateral immunity agreement of protection for the United States-military (as covered under Article 98).", "title": "" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Burundi is located in East Africa, to the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, at the coordinates 3°30′S 30°0′E / 3.500°S 30.000°E / -3.500; 30.000.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Burundi occupies an area equal to 27,830 square kilometres (10,750 sq mi) in size, of which 25,680 square kilometres (9,920 sq mi) is land. The country has 1,140 kilometres (710 mi) of land border: 236 kilometres (147 mi) of which is shared with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 315 kilometres (196 mi) with Rwanda and 589 kilometres (366 mi) with Tanzania. As a landlocked country, Burundi possesses no coastline. It straddles the crest of the Congo-Nile Divide which separates the basins of the Congo and Nile rivers. The farthest headwaters of the Nile, the Ruvyironza River, has its source in Burundi.", "title": "Physical geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The terrain of Burundi is hilly and mountainous, dropping to a plateau in the east. The southern and eastern plains have been categorised by the World Wide Fund for Nature as part of the Central Zambezian miombo woodlands ecoregion.", "title": "Physical geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The lowest point in the country is at Lake Tanganyika, at 772 metres (2,533 ft), with the highest point being on Mount Heha, at 2,684 metres (8,806 ft). Natural hazards are posed in Burundi by flooding and landslides.", "title": "Physical geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Burundi possesses reserves of: nickel, uranium, rare earth oxides, peat, cobalt, copper, platinum (not yet exploited), vanadium, niobium, tantalum, gold, tin, tungsten, kaolin, and limestone. There is also arable land and the potential for hydropower. Burundi has 214.3 square kilometres (82.7 sq mi) of land that is irrigated. The table below describes land use in Burundi.", "title": "Physical geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The climate of Burundi is equatorial in nature and is marked by high mean annual temperatures, small temperature ranges, and rainfall throughout the year. The temperature and amount of rainfall varies dependent upon altitude. Burundi experiences its dry season between May and August, and its rainy season between February and May. Due to climate change, Burundi is becoming more susceptible to both excess and deficit rainfall, leading alternately to floods and droughts.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Soil erosion is an issue for Burundi, and is as a result of overgrazing and the expansion of agriculture into marginal lands. Other issues include: deforestation, due to the uncontrolled cutting-down of trees for fuel; and habitat loss threatens wildlife populations.", "title": "Environment" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Burundi is a party to the following international agreements that relate to the environment: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes and Ozone Layer Protection. The following have been signed but not yet ratified by Burundi: Law of the Sea and Nuclear Test Ban.", "title": "Environment" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "This is a list of the extreme points of Burundi, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location.", "title": "Extreme points" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from World Factbook. CIA.", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Demographic features of the population of Burundi include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "At 206.1 persons per km², Burundi has the second-largest population density in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most people live on farms near areas of fertile volcanic soil. The population is made up of three major ethnic groups – Hutu (Bahutu), Tutsi (Batutsi or Watusi), and Twa (Batwa). Kirundi is the common language. Intermarriage takes place frequently between the Hutus and Tutsis. The terms \"pastoralist\" and \"agriculturist\", often used as ethnic designations for Watusi and Bahutu, respectively, are only occupational titles which vary among individuals and groups. Although Hutus encompass the majority of the population, historically Tutsis have been politically and economically dominant.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "According to the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects, the total population was 11,891,000 in 2020, compared to only 2 309 000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2020 was 45.3%, 52.4% were between 15 and 65 years of age, while 2.4% of the population was 65 years or older. .", "title": "Population" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2015) (Unrevised data.):", "title": "Population" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2020):", "title": "Population" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Numbers are in thousands. UN medium variant projections", "title": "UN population projections" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Registration of vital events is in Burundi not complete. The Population Departement of the United Nations prepared the following estimates.", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Source: UN DESA, World Population Prospects, 2022", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR):", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Fertility data as of 2010 (DHS Program): The fertility rate in the Bujumbura Mairie Province fell to 3.7 by 2016-2017; the other regions were not aggregated in the report, for easy reference and comparison to the below chart. Per the 2016-2017 report, the average number of desired children in Burundi, nationwide, by both men and women of 15 to 49 years of age who are either paired up or married, is 4 children or less, and slightly less for men than for women. Per the report, this suggests an excess fecundity (more children than desired) of 1.8 children per couple nationwide; 1.1 in urban areas (where 3.0 children are desired, and the fertility rate is 4.1) and 2.0 in rural areas (where 3.7 children are desired and the fertility rate is 5.7). However, the number of desired children appears to be based on the lowest-desired rate - that of paired but unmarried men (3.7 children) rather than the highest (4.0, desired by married women) or even an overall average.", "title": "Vital statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2019.", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Roman Catholic 58.6%, Protestant 35.3% (includes Adventist 2.7% and other Protestant 32.6%), Muslim 3.4%, other 1.3%, none 1.3% (2016-17 est.)", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "One of Africa's most densely populated countries; concentrations tend to be in the north and along the northern shore of Lake Tanganyika in the west; most people live on farms near areas of fertile volcanic soil", "title": "Other demographic statistics" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Attribution: This article incorporates public domain material from World Factbook (2023 ed.). CIA. (Archived 2008 edition)", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Politics of Burundi takes place in a framework of a transitional presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Burundi is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the Senate and the National Assembly.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The political landscape of Burundi has been dominated in recent years by the civil war and a long peace process and move to democracy. Pierre Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader of the Hutu National Council for the Defense of Democracy – Forces for the Defense of Democracy, was elected to become president in a vote by parliament on 19 August 2005. Nkurunziza, who was the sole candidate, was the first president chosen through democratic means since the start of the civil war in 1993 and was sworn in on 26 August, replacing transitional president Domitien Ndayizeye.", "title": "Political landscape after the civil war" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Incumbent president Évariste Ndayishimiye took office on 18 June 2020, ten days after the death of Nkurunziza.", "title": "Political landscape after the civil war" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In November 1995, the presidents of Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zaire (currently Democratic Republic of Congo) announced a regional initiative for a negotiated peace in Burundi facilitated by former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere. In July 1996, former Burundian President Buyoya returned to power in a bloodless coup. He declared himself president of a transitional republic, even as he suspended the National Assembly, banned opposition groups, and imposed a nationwide curfew. Widespread condemnation of the coup ensued, and regional countries imposed economic sanctions pending a return to a constitutional government. Buyoya agreed in 1996 to liberalize political parties. Nonetheless, fighting between the army and Hutu militias continued. In June 1998, Buyoya promulgated a transitional constitution and announced a partnership between the government and the opposition-led National Assembly. After facilitator Julius Nyerere's death in October 1999, the regional leaders appointed Nelson Mandela as Facilitator of the Arusha peace process. Under Mandela the peace process has revived and important progress has taken place.", "title": "Political landscape after the civil war" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "In April 2015 the 2015 Burundian unrest broke out after the ruling party announced President Pierre Nkurunziza would seek a third term in office. Protests in the capital lasted over a week, and while President Nkurunziza was in Tanzania for talks at resolving the situation, Major General Godefroid Niyombare declared a coup, leading to gun battles in the capital for control of key locations.", "title": "Political landscape after the civil war" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Elections took place in 2020; despite concerns that these elections would be severely compromised, following the announcement that the President would not seek reelection, the opposition announced that they would be taking part in the election. Evariste Ndayishimiye, a candidate who was hand-picked as Nkurunziza's successor by the CNDD-FDD, won the election with 71.45% of the vote. Shortly after, on 9 June 2020, Nkurunziza died of a cardiac arrest, at the age of 55. As per the constitution, Pascal Nyabenda, the president of the national assembly, led the government until Ndayishimiye's inauguration on 18 June 2020.", "title": "Political landscape after the civil war" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The president is popularly elected by a two-round system. They nominate a vice-president and a prime minister, who form together with the Council of Ministers the executive branch.", "title": "Executive branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The National Assembly (Assemblée nationale) has 118 members, elected for a five-year term by proportional representation with a 2% barrier. The Senate (Sénat) has 49 members, elected for a five-year term by electoral colleges of communal councilors. Extra seats in both chambers can be added to ensure that ethnic and gender quotas are met. Burundi has a multi-party system, with two or three strong parties and a third party that is electorally successful. Parties are usually based on ethnic background.", "title": "Legislative branch" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Burundi has 18 provinces: Bubanza, Bujumbura Mairie, Bujumbura Rural, Bururi, Cankuzo, Cibitoke, Gitega, Karuzi, Kayanza, Kirundo, Makamba, Muramvya, Muyinga, Mwaro, Ngozi, Rutana, Rumonge and Ruyigi.", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Burundi is member of the AfDB, CEEAC, CEPGL, ECA, FAO, G-77, IBRD, ICAO, ICRM, IDA, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, Intelsat (nonsignatory user), Interpol, IOC, ITU, NAM, OAU, OPCW, PMAESA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, and WTrO.", "title": "International relations" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The economy of Burundi is $3.436 billion by gross domestic product as of 2018, being heavily dependent on agriculture, which accounts for 32.9% of gross domestic product as of 2008. Burundi itself is a landlocked country lacking resources, and with almost nonexistent industrialization. Agriculture supports more than 70% of the labor force, the majority of whom are subsistence farmers.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Although Burundi is potentially sufficient in food production, civil unrest, overpopulation, and soil erosion have contributed to the contraction of the subsistence economy by 25% in recent years. Large numbers of internally displaced persons have been unable to produce their own food and are largely dependent on international humanitarian assistance. Burundi is a net food importer, with food accounting for 17% of imports in 1997. Burundi is a least developed country according to the United Nations.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Burundi produced in 2018:", "title": "Agriculture" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products, like sorghum (28 thousand tons) and coffee (14 thousand tons).", "title": "Agriculture" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Little industry exists except for the processing of agricultural exports. Although potential wealth in petroleum, nickel, copper, and other natural resources is being explored, the uncertain security situation has prevented meaningful investor interest. Industrial development also is hampered by Burundi's distance from the sea and high transport costs. Lake Tanganyika remains an important trading point. The trade embargo, lifted in 1999, negatively impacted trade and industry. Since October 1993 the nation has suffered from massive ethnic-based violence which has resulted in the death of perhaps 250,000 people and the displacement of about 800,000 others. Foods, medicines, and electricity remain in short supply.", "title": "Industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Burundi is heavily dependent on bilateral and multilateral aid, with external debt totaling $1.247 billion (1.247 G$) in 1997. A series of largely unsuccessful 5-year plans initiated in July 1986 in partnership with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund attempted to reform the foreign exchange system, liberalize imports, reduce restrictions on international transactions, diversify exports, and reform the coffee industry.", "title": "Industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "IMF structural adjustment programs in Burundi were suspended following the outbreak of the crisis in 1993. The World Bank has identified key areas for potential growth, including the productivity of traditional crops and the introduction of new exports, light manufactures, industrial mining, and services. Other serious problems include the state's role in the economy, the question of governmental transparency, and debt reduction.", "title": "Industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "To protest the 1996 coup by President Pierre Buyoya, neighboring countries imposed an economic embargo on Burundi. Although the embargo was never officially ratified by the United Nations Security Council, most countries refrained from official trade with Burundi. Following the coup, the United States also suspended all but humanitarian aid to Burundi. The regional embargo was lifted on January 23, 1999, based on progress by the government in advancing national reconciliation through the Burundi peace process.", "title": "Industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "In an article titled \"The Blood Cries Out,\" Foreign Policy (FP) reported that the Burundian population growth rate is 2.5 percent per year, more than double the average global pace, and that a Burundian woman has on average 6.3 children, nearly triple the international fertility rate. FP further reported that \"The vast majority of Burundians rely on subsistence farming, but under the weight of a booming population and in the long-standing absence of coherent policies governing land ownership, many people barely have enough earth to sustain themselves.\" In 2014, the average size for a farm was about one acre. FP added that \"The consequence is remarkable scarcity: In the 2013 Global Hunger Index, Burundi had the severest hunger and malnourishment rates of all 120 countries ranked.\"", "title": "Industry" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017.", "title": "Macro-economic trend" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Communications in Burundi include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, the Internet, and the postal service in Burundi.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Radio is the main source of information for many Burundians.", "title": "Radio and television" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The BBC World Service broadcasts on 90.2 FM in the largest city and former capital, Bujumbura, and on 105.6 in Mount Manga; Radio France Internationale and the Voice of America are also available in the capital.", "title": "Radio and television" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet or credible reports that the government monitors e-mail or Internet chat rooms. Operating in a turbulent political climate, Burundi's media are subject to occasional government censorship and may practice self-censorship.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and press, and the government generally respects these rights. The law prohibits the media from spreading \"hate\" messages or from using abusive or defamatory language against public servants acting in their official role that could damage the dignity of or respect for the public office. Libel laws prohibit the public distribution of information that exposes a person to \"public contempt\" and carry penalties of prison terms and fines. The crime of treason, which includes knowingly demoralizing the military or the nation in a manner that endangers national defense during a time of war, carries a criminal penalty of life imprisonment. It is a crime for anyone knowingly to disseminate or publicize false rumors likely to alarm or excite the public against the government or to promote civil war. It is illegal for anyone to display drawings, posters, photographs, or other items that may disturb the public peace. Penalties range from two months' to three years' imprisonment and fines. Some journalists, lawyers, and political party, civil society, and NGO leaders allege the government uses these laws to intimidate and harass them.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The constitution and law provide for the right to privacy, but the government does not always respect this right in practice. Authorities do not always respect the law requiring search warrants.", "title": "Internet" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Régie Nationale des Postes (RNP, National Postal Administration) is responsible for postal service in Burundi. Operating as an independent state-owned company since 1992, the RNP has reported to the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, Posts and Tourism since 2010.", "title": "Postal Service" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "There are a number of systems of transport in Burundi, including road and water-based infrastructure, the latter of which makes use of Lake Tanganyika. Furthermore, there are also some airports in Burundi.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Burundi has limited ferry services on Lake Tanganyika, few road connections to neighboring countries, no rail connections, and only one airport with a paved runway. Public transport is extremely limited and private bus companies operate buses on the route to Kigali, Uganda, Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Roads total 12,322 kilometres (7,657 mi) as of 2004. On paper, there are 90 public buses in the country but few of these are operational. Transport is extremely limited, and private bus companies operate buses on the route to Kigali, Uganda, Tanzania or the Democratic Republic of Congo.", "title": "Roads" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Lake Tanganyika is used for transport, with the major port on the lake being Bujumbura. Most freight is transported down waterways.", "title": "Waterways" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "As of May 2015, MV Mwongozo, a passenger and cargo ferry, connects Bujumbura with Kigoma in Tanzania.", "title": "Waterways" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Burundi possesses eight airports, of which one has paved runways, whose length exceeds 3,047m. Bujumbura International Airport is the country's primary airport and the country's only airport with a paved runway. There are also a number of helicopter landing strips.", "title": "Airports and air services" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "As of May 2015, the airlines serving Burundi are: Brussels Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, flydubai, Kenya Airways, and RwandAir. Kigali is the city with the most daily departures.", "title": "Airports and air services" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Burundi does not possess any railway infrastructure, although there are proposals to connect Burundi to its neighbours via railway.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "At a meeting in August 2006 with members of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, Wu Guanzheng, of the Chinese Communist Party, confirmed the intention of China to fund a study into the feasibility of constructing a railway connecting at Isaka with the existing Tanzanian railway network, and running via Kigali in Rwanda through to Burundi. Tanzanian railways use 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) metre gauge, although TAZARA and other neighbouring countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) use the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge, leading to some potential difficulties.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Another project was launched in the same year, which aims to link Burundi and Rwanda (which also has no railways) to the DRC and Zambia, and therefore to the rest of Southern Africa. At a meeting to inaugurate the Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination Authority (NCTTCA), the governments of Uganda and Burundi backed the proposed new railway from the Ugandan western railhead at Kasese into the DRC.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Additionally, Burundi has been added to a planned railway project to connect Tanzania and Rwanda.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "A project started in November 2013 to build a Standard Gauge line from Mombassa, Kenya, to Burundi, via Rwanda and Uganda. The main line from Mombasa will also feature branches in other directions, including Ethiopia and DR Congo.", "title": "Railways" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "This article incorporates public domain material from The World Factbook. CIA.", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Burundi National Defence Force (French: Force de Défense Nationale Burundaise, or FDNB) is the state military organisation responsible for the defence of Burundi.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "A general staff (État-Major Général) commands the armed forces, consisting of a joint staff (État-Major inter-armes); a training staff (État-Major de la Formation), and a logistics staff (État-Major de la Logistique). Naval and aviation commands exist, as well as specialised units.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Under Belgian colonial rule, the mandatory status of Ruanda-Urundi established limits on the recruitment of Barundi for military service. Instead, Ruanda-Urundi was garrisoned by a small unit of the Force Publique recruited in the Belgian Congo which combined its military role with the role of gendarmerie. Its members were popularly known as Bamina in Burundi, after the large military base at Kamina in the Congo. Amid the Congo's independence, the Belgian colonial administration formed the Burundian National Guard (Garde Nationale Burundaise) in 1960. It consisted of 650 men, recruited equally from the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups (though the Tutsi mostly consisted of those from the Hima subgroup). When Burundi became independent in 1962 the force was renamed the Burundian National Army (Armée Nationale Burundaise) and assumed a purely military function. The gendarmarie function was allocated to a civilian authority called the National Gendarmerie (Gendarmerie nationale) after independence in 1962, though this became part of the army on 7 March 1967.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Burundi became independent on 1 July 1962 with the army organised into eight platoons. A coup attempt in October 1965 led by the Hutu-dominated police was carried out but failed. The Tutsi dominated army, then led by Tutsi officer Captain Michel Micombero purged Hutu from their ranks and carried out reprisal attacks which ultimately claimed the lives of up to 5,000 people in a predecessor to Burundian genocides. Micombero then became Prime Minister.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "King Mwambutsa IV, who had fled the country during the October 1965 coup attempt, was deposed by a coup in July 1966 and his teenage son, Crown Prince Charles Ndizeye, claimed the throne as King Ntare V. Later that same year, Prime Minister, then-Colonel, Michel Micombero, carried out another coup in November 1966, this time deposing Ntare, abolishing the monarchy and declaring the nation a republic. His one-party government was effectively a military dictatorship. As president, Micombero became an advocate of African socialism and received support from China. He imposed a staunch regime of law and order and sharply repressed Hutu militarism. After Micombero's coup d’etat which deposed the monarchy, he became the first general in Burundian history. He was also commissioned by the National Council of the Revolution (French: Conseil National de la Révolution (CNR)), and made a Lieutenant Général. In his turn, Micombero raised Thomas Ndabemeye to the grade of Major General. They were the sole generals of the First Republic.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "In 1972 the Tutsi-dominated Burundi Army and government carried out a series of mass killings, the Ikiza, often characterised as a genocide, primarily against educated and elite Hutus who lived in the country. Conservative estimates place the death toll of the event between 100,000 and 150,000 killed, while some estimates of the death toll go as high as 300,000. This included a purge of all Hutus and some politically unfavorable Tutsis from the military, shrinking it to about 2,300 members On 30 December 1974 a naval division was created.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "In 1981–82 the IISS estimated that the Burundian armed forces were 6,000 strong, with 2 infantry battalions, 1 airborne battalion, 1 commando battalion, and an armoured car company. The same estimate was repeated in the 1988–89 edition except that the strength figure had been dropped to 5,500.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "In 1993, Hutu President Melchior Ndadaye was elected in the 1 June presidential election and was sworn in on 10 July.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "On 21 October, a coup was attempted by a Tutsi–dominated National Defence Force faction, led by Chief of Staff Lt. Col. Jean Bikomagu, ex-President Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, and former interior minister François Ngeze. The coup attempt resulted in the assassination of Ndadaye and numerous other casualties. Following the coup, the Committee of Public Salvation (CSP) was created as the ruling junta, and François Ngeze (a prominent Hutu member of UPRONA) was installed as the new president. Ngeze himself comdemned the assassination of Ndadaye. Faced with widespread condemnation, the Army leaders urged civilian politicians to resume control. Consequently, Prime Minister Sylvie Kinigi (who took refuge in the French embassy with other senior government figures) was installed as Acting President on 27 October.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The 1996 UN inquiry names three units - para 122-3 indicates that at the time of the October coup, the 2e Commando were the presidential guard and the 1er Parachutiste and 11e Blinde were the units involved in the coup. (Para 115 notes that some officers of the 2e Commando were previously involved in an attempted coup in July, before Ndadaye was sworn in, but presumably by October the unit was thought to be loyal). In addition, U.S. Ambassador Bob Krueger mentions members of the 1st Parachute Battalion being active during the coup in his book.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The coup attempted sparked the Burundian Civil War, which lasted from 1993 to 2005, killing an estimated 300,000 people. The Arusha Accords ended 12 years of war and stopped decades of ethnic killings. The 2005 constitution provided guaranteed representation for both Hutu and Tutsi, and 2005 parliamentary elections that led to Pierre Nkurunziza, from the Hutu FDD, becoming president.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "According to a 2004 report by Child Soldiers International, Burundi's military used conscripted child soldiers. Children in military service were subject to military courts which fell short of international law standards.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "The armed forces have deployed significant numbers of troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia since c. 2007. On February 1, 2007 Burundi committed to the mission, pledging up to 1,000 troops. By March 27, it was confirmed that 1700 Burundian troops would be sent to Somalia. In 2011 the IISS estimated that three Burundian battalions were deployed there. The army's forces in 2011 included, according to IISS estimates, 2 light armoured battalions (squadrons), seven infantry battalions and independent companies; and artillery, engineer, and air defence battalions (SA-7 'Grail' man-portable SAMs and 14.5mm, 23mm and 37mm guns were reported). Separately reported were the 22nd commando battalion (Gitega) and 124th commando battalion Bujumbura). Despite the elapse of another six years, the 2017 listing from the Military Balance was essentially unchanged except for an increase in size to some 30,000 and the addition of ten reserve infantry battalions.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "In the wake of the Burundian unrest, personnel faced a choice between supporting President Pierre Nkurunziza, with whom some fought when he was a military commander, or opposing him. Interviewed by Reuters on May 14, 2015, an Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft said a coup then reported in progress by Major General Godefroid Niyombare, former director of the intelligence service, \"starkly highlight[ed] Nkurunziza’s lack of unified support among his military chiefs.\" \"Even if Niyombare’s attempt fails, Nkurunziza’s political credibility may be damaged irreparably.\"", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The 121e Régiment de Parachutistes were mentioned in French news articles as one of the units that supported the attempted coup in 2015.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "In the aftermath of the coup and the later disputed election, armed forces chief of staff Major General Prime Niyongabo survived an assassination attempt on September 11, 2015.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "In 2015/16, Laurent Touchard wrote that the BNDF included ten two-battalion infantry brigades. (Touchard 2016)", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "In 2011 the IISS estimated that three Burundian battalions were deployed in Somalia. The army's forces in 2011 included, according to IISS estimates, 2 light armoured battalions (squadrons), seven infantry battalions and independent companies; and artillery, engineer, and air defence battalions (SA-7 'Grail' man-portable SAMs and 14.5mm, 23mm and 37mm guns were reported).", "title": "Structure" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Separately reported were the 22nd commando battalion (Gitega) and 124th commando battalion Bujumbura).", "title": "Structure" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Despite the elapse of another six years, the 2017 listing from the Military Balance was essentially unchanged except for an increase in size to some 30,000 and the addition of ten reserve infantry battalions.", "title": "Structure" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The Burundi Army's air unit operates 10 aircraft, including one combat aircraft and six helicopters, of which two are non-operational as of 2012.", "title": "Equipment" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Burundi's relations with its neighbours have often been affected by security concerns. Hundreds of thousands of Burundian refugees have at various times crossed to neighboring Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hundreds of thousands of Burundians are in neighboring countries as a result of the ongoing civil war. Most of them, more than 340,000 since 1993, are in Tanzania. Some Burundian rebel groups have used neighboring countries as bases for insurgent activities. The 1993 embargo placed on Burundi by regional states hurt diplomatic relations with its neighbors; relations have improved since the 1999 suspension of these sanctions.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Burundi is a member of various international and regional organizations, including the United Nations, the African Union, the African Development Bank and the Francophonie. The Swedish Minister for Integration and Gender Equality, Nyamko Sabuni, was born in Burundi.", "title": "" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Bosporus or Bosphorus Strait (/ˈbɒspərəs, ˈbɒsfərəs/ BOSS-pər-əs, BOSS-fər-əs; Ancient Greek: Βόσπορος, romanized: Bósporos, IPA: [bósporos]; Turkish: İstanbul Boğazı, lit. 'Istanbul strait', colloquially Boğaz) is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Istanbul in northwestern Turkey that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It forms part of the continental boundary between Asia and Europe, and divides Turkey by separating Anatolia from Thrace. It is the world's narrowest strait used for international navigation.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Most of the shores of the Bosporus Strait, except for the area to the north, are heavily settled, with the city of Istanbul's metropolitan population of 17 million inhabitants extending inland from both banks.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The Bosporus Strait and the Dardanelles Strait at the opposite end of the Sea of Marmara are together known as the Turkish Straits.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Sections of the shore of the Bosporus in Istanbul have been reinforced with concrete or rubble and those sections of the Strait prone to deposition are periodically dredged.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The name of the strait comes from the Ancient Greek Βόσπορος (Bósporos), which was folk-etymologised as βοὸς πόρος, i.e. \"cattle strait\" (or \"Ox-ford\"), from the genitive of boûs βοῦς 'ox, cattle' + poros πόρος 'passage', thus meaning 'cattle-passage', or 'cow passage'. This is a reference to the Greek mythological story of Io, who was transformed into a cow and condemned to wander the Earth until she crossed the Bosporus, where she met the Titan Prometheus, who comforted her by telling her that she would be restored to human form by Zeus and become the ancestor of the greatest of all heroes, Heracles (Hercules).", "title": "Name" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Io supposedly went ashore near Chrysopolis (present-day Üsküdar), which was named Bous 'the Cow'. The same site was also known as Damalis (Δάμαλις), as it was where the Athenian general Chares had erected a monument to his wife Damalis, which included a colossal statue of a cow (the name δαμάλις translating to 'heifer').", "title": "Name" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The English spelling with -ph- (Bosphor) is not justified by the ancient Greek name, and dictionaries prefer the spelling with -p-. However -ph- occurs as a variant in medieval Latin (as Bosphor, and occasionally Bosphorus or Bospherus), and in medieval Greek sometimes as Βόσφορος, giving rise to the French Bosphore, the Spanish Bósforo, the Italian Bosforo and the Russian Босфор. The 12th-century Greek scholar John Tzetzes calls it Damaliten Bosporon (after Damalis), but he also reports that in popular usage the strait was known as Prosphorion during his day, the name of the most ancient northern harbour of Constantinople. In English, the preferred spelling tends to be Bosphorus.", "title": "Name" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Historically, the Bosporus was also known as the \"Strait of Constantinople\", or the Thracian Bosporus to distinguish it from the Cimmerian Bosporus in Crimea. These are expressed in Herodotus's Histories, 4.83; as Bosporus Thracius, Bosporus Thraciae, and Βόσπορος Θρᾴκιος (Bósporos Thráikios), respectively. Other names used by Herodotus to refer to the strait include Chalcedonian Bosporus (Bosporus Chalcedoniae, Βόσπορος τῆς Χαλκηδονίης [Bosporos tes Khalkedonies], Herodotus 4.87), or Mysian Bosporus (Bosporus Mysius).", "title": "Name" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The term eventually came to be used as the common noun βόσπορος, meaning \"a strait\", and was also formerly applied to the Hellespont in Classical Greek by Aeschylus and Sophocles.", "title": "Name" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "As a maritime waterway, the Bosporus connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and thence to the Aegean and Mediterranean seas via the Dardanelles. It also connects various seas along the Eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Near East, and Western Eurasia. Thus, the Bosporus allows maritime connections from the Black Sea all the way to the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean via Gibraltar, and to the Indian Ocean through the Suez Canal, making it a crucial international waterway, in particular for the passage of goods coming from Russia.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "There is one very small island in the Bosporus just off Kuruçeşme. Now generally known as Galatasaray Island (Galatasaray Adası), this was given to the Armenian architect Sarkis Balyan by Sultan Abdülhamid II in 1880. The house he built on it was later demolished and the island became a walled garden and then a water sports centre before being given to the Galatasaray Sports Club, hence its name. However, in the 2010s it was completely overbuilt with nightclubs which were torn down in 2017. It reopened to the public in the summer of 2022.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "The exact cause and date of the formation of the Bosporus remain a subject of debate among geologists. One recent hypothesis, dubbed the Black Sea deluge hypothesis, which was launched by a study of the same name in 1997 by two scientists from Columbia University, postulates that the Bosporus was flooded around 5600 BCE (revised to 6800 BCE in 2003) when the rising waters of the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of Marmara broke through to the Black Sea, which at the time, according to the hypothesis, was a low-lying body of fresh water.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Many geologists, however, claim that the strait is much older, even if relatively young on a geologic timescale.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "The limits of the Bosporus are defined as the line connecting the lighthouses of Rumeli Feneri and Anadolu Feneri in the north, and between the Ahırkapı Feneri and the Kadıköy İnciburnu Feneri in the south (\"Fener\" is Turkish for lighthouse). Between these limits, the strait is 31 km (17 nmi) long, with a width of 3,329 m (1.798 nmi) at the northern entrance and 2,826 m (1.526 nmi) at the southern entrance. Its maximum width is 3,420 m (1.85 nmi) between Umuryeri and Büyükdere Limanı, and minimum width is 700 m (0.38 nmi) between Kandilli Point and Aşiyan.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The depth of the Bosporus varies from 13 to 110 m (43 to 361 ft) in midstream with an average of 65 m (213 ft). The deepest point is between Kandilli and Bebek, at 110 m (360 ft). The shallowest locations are off Kadıköy İnciburnu at 18 m (59 ft) and off Aşiyan Point at 13 m (43 ft).", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The southbound flow of water is 16 000 m/s (fresh water at the surface) and the northbound flow is 11 000 m/s (salt water near the bottom). Dan Parsons and researchers at the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment describe a Black Sea undersea river.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The Golden Horn is an estuary off the main strait that historically acted as a moat to protect Constantinople from attack, as well as providing sheltered anchorage for the imperial navies of various empires until the 19th century, after which it became a historic neighbourhood at the heart of Istanbul.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Before the 20th century it was already known that the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara flow into each other in a geographic example of \"density flow\". Then in August 2010, a continuous 'underwater channel' of suspension composition was discovered flowing along the floor of the Bosporus, which would be the sixth largest river on Earth if it were on land. The 2010 team of scientists, led by the University of Leeds, used a robotic \"yellow submarine\" to observe detailed flows within this \"undersea river\", scientifically referred to as a submarine channel, for the first time. Submarine channels are similar to land rivers, but they are formed by density currents—underwater flow mixtures of sand, mud and water that are denser than sea water and so sink and flow along the bottom. These channels are the main transport pathway for sediments to the deep sea where they form sedimentary deposits.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "The team studied the detailed flow within these channels and its findings included that:", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "The channel complex and the density flow provide the ideal natural laboratory for investigating and detailing the structure of the flow field through the channel. Our initial findings show that the flow in these channels is quite different to the flow in river channels on land. Specifically, as flow moves around a bend it spirals in the opposite direction in the deep sea compared to the spiral found in river channels on land. This is important in understanding the sedimentology and layers of sediment deposited by these systems.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The central tenet of the Black Sea deluge hypothesis is that as the ocean rose 72.5 metres (238 ft) at the end of the last Ice Age when the massive ice sheets melted, the sealed Bosporus was overwhelmed by a spectacular flood that increased the then fresh water Black Sea Lake by 50%, and drove people back from the shores for many months. This hypothesis was supported by the findings of undersea explorer Robert Ballard, who discovered settlements along the old shoreline; scientists dated the flood to 7500 BP or 5500 BC from fresh-salt water microflora. Driven out by the rapidly rising water, which must have been terrifying and inexplicable, people spread to all corners of the Western world carrying the story of a major flood. As the waters surged, they scoured a network of sea-floor channels less resistant to denser suspended solids in liquid, which remains a very active layer today.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "The first images of these submarine channels showing them to be of great size, were obtained in 1999 during a NATO SACLANT Undersea Research project using jointly the NATO RV Alliance, and the Turkish Navy survey ship Çubuklu. In 2002, a survey carried out on board the Ifremer RV Le Suroit for BlaSON project (Lericolais, et al., 2003) completed the multibeam mapping of this underwater channel fan-delta. A complete map was published in 2009 using these previous results together with high quality mapping obtained in 2006 (by researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland who were project partners in the study).", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "The project was led by Jeff Peakall and Daniel Parsons at the University of Leeds, in collaboration with the University of Southampton, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the Institute of Marine Sciences. The survey was run and coordinated from the Institute of Marine Sciences research ship, the R/V Koca Piri Reis.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "The shores of the Bosporus were once lined with small fishing villages that had grown up since Byzantine times but really came into their own in the 19th century. Until the early 20th century most were only accessible by boat (known as caiques) along the Bosporus since there were no coast roads. Today the villages are no more than suburbs of Greater Istanbul but many retain the memory of their original village status in the suffix '-köy (village' to their names. e.g. Ortaköy, Yeniköy, Arnavutköy, Çengelköy and Vaniköy. These villages often had distinct identities associated with agriculture: Arnavutköy, for example, was associated with strawberry-growing while Çengelköy was famous for its sweet cucumbers.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "As part of the only passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, the Bosporus has always been of great importance from a commercial and military point of view, and it remains strategically important today. It is a major sea access route for numerous countries, including Russia and Ukraine. Control over it has been an objective of a number of conflicts in modern history, notably the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), as well as of the attack of the Allied Powers on the Dardanelles during the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli in the course of World War I. In 2022 during the Russian invasion of Ukraine the Bosporus' importance as a route by which grain reached the world was thrown into sharp profile.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "The strategic importance of the Bosporus dates back millennia. In the 5th century BC the Greek city-state of Athens, which depended on grain imports from the Black Sea ports of Scythia, maintained critical alliances with cities which controlled the straits, such as the Megarian colony of Byzantium.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "In an attempt to subdue the Scythian horsemen who roamed across the north of the Black Sea, the Persian King Darius I the Great (r. 522 BC – 486 BC) crossed the Bosporus, then marched towards the River Danube. His army crossed the Bosporus using an enormous bridge made by connecting boats. This bridge essentially connected the farthest geographic tip of Asia to Europe, encompassing at least some 1,000 metres of open. Years later, Xerxes I would construct a similar boat bridge across the Dardanelles (Hellespont) strait (480 BC), during his invasion of Greece.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "The Byzantines called the Bosporus \"Stenon\" and used the following major toponyms in the area:", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "The strategic significance of the Strait was one of the factors in the decision of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great to found his new capital, Constantinople, there in AD 330. This then became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "On 29 May 1453, the then-emergent Ottoman Empire conquered the city of Constantinople following a lengthy campaign during which the Ottomans constructed fortifications on each side of the strait, the Anadoluhisarı (Anatolian Castle, 1393) and the Rumelihisarı (European Castle, 1451), in preparation for not only the primary battle but to assert long-term control over the Bosporus and surrounding waterways. The final 53-day campaign, which resulted in Ottoman victory, constituted an important turn in world history. Together with Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, the 1453 conquest of Constantinople is commonly noted as among the events that brought an end to the Middle Ages and marked the transition to the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "The event also marked the end of the Byzantines—the final remnants of the Roman Empire—and the transfer of the control of the Bosporus into Ottoman hands. The Ottomans then made Constantinople their new capital, and the base from which they expanded their empire in the centuries that followed.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "At its peak between the 16th and 18th centuries, the Ottoman Empire was able to use the strategic importance of the Bosporus to wrest control of the entire Black Sea area, which they regarded as an \"Ottoman lake\", from which Russian warships were prohibited.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "Subsequently, several international treaties have governed access to the Strait. Under the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi of 8 July 1833, the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits were to be closed to the naval vessels of other powers on Russian demand. By the terms of the London Straits Convention, concluded on 13 July 1841 between the Great Powers of Europe (Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Austria and Prussia), the \"ancient rule\" of the Ottoman Empire was re-established by closing the Turkish Straits to all warships, barring those of the Sultan's allies during wartime. This benefited British naval power at the expense of the Russians, as the latter then lacked direct access to the Mediterranean.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "During the 19th century many of the foreign powers represented in Constantinople maintained second embassies up the Bosporus and would relocate their staff there during the hot, humid summer months. Most of these summer embassies were on the European shore at Yeniköy (Austrian), Tarabya (German, English, French, Italian) and Büyükdere (Spanish, Russian). Some of the buildings still survive today although the British Summer Embassy burnt down in 1911 and the Italian Summer Embassy, a fine building by Raimondo d'Aronco, survives in very dilapidated condition.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Following the First World War, the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres demilitarised the Strait and made it an international territory under the control of the League of Nations. This was amended by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which restored the straits to Turkey but allowed all foreign warships and commercial shipping to traverse the straits freely. Turkey eventually rejected the terms of that treaty, and remilitarised the straits area. The reversion was formalised under the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Turkish Straits of 20 July 1936. That convention - which is still in force - treats the straits as an international shipping lane except that Turkey retains the right to restrict the naval traffic of non–Black Sea states.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Turkey was neutral in the Second World War until February 1945, and the straits were closed to the warships of belligerent nations during this time, although some German auxiliary vessels were permitted to transit. In diplomatic conferences, Soviet representatives had expressed an interest in obtaining naval bases on the straits. This, together with Stalin's demands for the restitution of the Turkish provinces of Kars, Artvin and Ardahan to the Soviet Union (which were lost by Turkey in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, but were regained with the Treaty of Kars in 1921), was a consideration in Turkey's decision to abandon neutrality in foreign affairs. Turkey declared war against Germany in February 1945, but did not engage in offensive actions.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Turkey joined NATO in 1952, thus affording the straits even more strategic importance as a commercial and military waterway.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "During the early 21st century, the Turkish Straits have become particularly important for the oil industry. Russian oil, from ports such as Novorossiysk, was exported by tankers primarily to the U.S. via the Bosporus and the Dardanelles straits.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "In 2011, Turkey proposed to build a 50 km (31 mi) canal west of the Bosporus, suggesting that it would reduce the risk presented to the Bosporus by oil tankers and other cargo ships. The project proved highly controversial and, as of 2022, work had not been started on building the canal even though a route for it had been established.", "title": "Human history" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "The Bosphorus takes its name from the Greek mythological story of Io, who was transformed into a cow and, pursued by a gadfly, was condemned to wander the Earth until she reached the Strait. There she met the Titan Prometheus, who comforted her by telling her that she would be restored to human form by Zeus and become the ancestor of the greatest of all heroes, Heracles (Hercules).", "title": "In mythology" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "According to ancient Greek mythology, it was said that colossal floating rocks known as the Symplegades, or Clashing Rocks, once guarded both sides of the Bosporus and destroyed any ship that attempted to pass through the strait by crushing them. Their destructive power was finally overcome by the Argonaut hero Jason who managed to pass between them unscathed, whereupon the rocks became fixed, opening Greek access to the Black Sea.", "title": "In mythology" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "The Bosporus is traversed by numerous passenger and vehicular ferries daily, as well as by recreational and fishing boats ranging from dinghies to yachts owned by both public and private entities.", "title": "Crossings" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "The Strait also serves a significant amount of international commercial shipping traffic in the form of freighters and tankers. Between its northern limits at Rumeli Feneri and Anadolu Feneri and its southern ones at Ahırkapı Feneri and Kadıköy İnciburnu Feneri, there are numerous dangerous points for large-scale maritime traffic that require sharp turns and management of visual obstructions. Famously, the stretch between Kandilli Point and Aşiyan requires a 45-degree course alteration in a location where the currents can reach 7 to 8 knots (3.6 to 4.1 m/s). To the south, at Yeniköy, the necessary course alteration is 80 degrees. Compounding these difficult changes in trajectory, the rear and forward sight lines at Kandilli and Yeniköy are also completely blocked prior to and during the course alteration, making it impossible for ships approaching from the opposite direction to see around the bends. The risks posed by this geography are further multiplied by the heavy ferry traffic across the Strait, linking the European and Asian sides of the city. As such, all the dangers and obstacles characteristic of narrow waterways are present and acute in this vital sea lane.", "title": "Crossings" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "In 2011, the Turkish Government started to discuss creating a man-made canal roughly 80 kilometres (50 mi) long that would run north–south through the western edges of Istanbul Province as a second route from the Black Sea to the Marmara. It was suggested that this would reduce the risk from shipping to the Bosporus. The controverislal Kanal İstanbul project continues to be debated.", "title": "Crossings" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "In 2022 the dues levied by Turkey for freight ships increased 500% to US$4 per ton, the first change since 1983.", "title": "Crossings" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "The Bosporus is fairly deep and there is no definite limit on the depth and length of a ship, but ships over 150 metres long or 10 metres deep must pre-book their passage. Those over 300 metres long must follow a special clearance procedure. There is an air draft limit of 57 metres.", "title": "Crossings" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "Two suspension bridges and a cable-stayed bridge cross the Bosporus. The first of these, the 1,074 m (3,524 ft) long 15th July Martyrs Bridge was completed in 1973 when it was called the Bosporus Bridge. The second, named Fatih Sultan Mehmet (Bosporus II) Bridge, is 1,090 m (3,576 ft) long, and was completed in 1988 about 5 km (3 mi) north of the first bridge. The first Bosporus Bridge forms part of the O1 Motorway, while the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge forms part of the Trans-European Motorway. The third and most recent bridge, the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge, is 2,164 m (7,100 ft) long and was completed in 2016. It is located near the northern end of the Bosporus, between the villages of Garipçe on the European side and Poyrazköy on the Asian side, as part of the \"Northern Marmara Motorway\", integrated into the existing Black Sea Coastal Highway, and allowing transit traffic to bypass city traffic.", "title": "Crossings" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "The Marmaray project, featuring a 13.7 km (8.5 mi) long undersea railway tunnel, opened on 29 October 2013. Approximately 1,400 m (4,593 ft) of the tunnel runs under the strait, at a depth of about 55 m (180 ft).", "title": "Crossings" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "An undersea water supply tunnel with a length of 5,551 m (18,212 ft), named the Bosporus Water Tunnel, was constructed in 2012 to transfer water from the Melen Creek in Düzce Province (to the east of the Bosporus strait, in northwestern Anatolia) to the European side of Istanbul, a distance of 185 km (115 mi).", "title": "Crossings" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "The Eurasia Tunnel is a 5.4 km (3.4 mi) undersea highway tunnel designed for vehicular traffic between Kazlıçeşme on the European side of Istanbul and Göztepe on the Asian side. Construction began in February 2011, and the tunnel opened on 20 December 2016.", "title": "Crossings" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "Up to four submarine fibre optics lines (MedNautilus and possibly others) approach Istanbul, coming from the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles.", "title": "Crossings" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "The Bosporus is the only way for Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia (south-western part) and Ukraine to reach the Mediterranean Sea and other seas. Thus sovereignty over the straits is an important issue for these countries, as well as Turkey, the state the Bosporus actually flows through.", "title": "Strategic importance" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "Turkey does not receive tolls from ships passing through the strait. Turkey's military has broad powers in accordance with the terms of the Montreux Convention. As of 2021, the Bosporus Command is located on the shores of the Bosporus and the military ships connected to the Command are anchored in the Bosporus waters.", "title": "Strategic importance" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "Located on a peninsula at the intersection of the Black Sea, the Bosporus and the Marmara Sea, Istanbul has historically been one of the most protected and hardest-to-conquer cities from Roman times to the Ottoman Empire. Divided by the Bosporus, it is one of very few intercontinental cities in the world.", "title": "Strategic importance" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "The Bosporus has 620 waterfront houses (yalı) built during the Ottoman period along the Strait's European and Asian shorelines. Ottoman palaces such as the Topkapı Palace, Dolmabahçe Palace, Yıldız Palace, Çırağan Palace, Feriye Palaces, Beylerbeyi Palace, Küçüksu Palace, Ihlamur Palace, Hatice Sultan Palace and Adile Sultan Palace also stand on or near its shores. Other buildings and landmarks on the Bosporus include the Kılıç Egyptian Consulate at Bebek, Bebek Mosque, Boğaziçi University, Robert College, Rumeli Castle (RumelihisarI), Borusan Museum of Contemporary Art, Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Sadberk Hanım Museum, Üsküdar Mihrimah Sultan Mosque, Şemsipaşa Mosque, Maiden's Tower (Kızkulesi), Beylerbeyi Mosque, Anadolu Castle (Anadoluhisarı), Kuleli Military High School, Adile Sultan Palace, Küçüksu Pavilion, Khedive's Villa, Beykoz Mecidiye Pavilion and Yoros Castle (Anadaolu Kavağı).", "title": "Sightseeing" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "Most of the public ferries that traverse the Strait leave from Eminönü on the historic peninsula of Istanbul and travel as far as Anadolu Kavağı near the Black Sea. On the way they call briefly at points on both the European and Asian shores. Private ferries, also leaving from Eminönü, travel only as far as one of the first two Bosporus bridges. Ferries from Eminönü also travel as far as Rumeli Kavaği, stopping only at points on the European shore, while other ferries from Üsküdar travel as far as Anadolu Kavağı, stopping only at points on the Asian shore. Frequent public ferries from Eminõnü, Karaköy, Beşiktaş, Kadıköy and Usküdar offer short hops from one side of the Bosporus to the other throughout the day.", "title": "Sightseeing" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "Catamaran sea buses offer high-speed commuter services between the European and Asian shores of the Bosporus, but they stop at fewer ports and piers in comparison to the public ferries. Both the public ferries and the sea buses also provide commuter services between the Bosporus and the Prince Islands in the Sea of Marmara.", "title": "Sightseeing" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "Tourist cruises are available from various points along the Bosporus, including Ortaköy. The prices vary considerably, and some feature music and dining.", "title": "Sightseeing" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "The many yalı (waterside mansions) which were constructed along the shores of the Bosporus during the Ottoman period have long been synonymous with the Strait. Those that still preserve their original form are among the most expensive real estate in Turkey although many have been lost to time, weather and 'accidental' fires. The oldest yalı on the European shore is the Şerifler Yalı at Emirgan which was built in the 18th century and belonged for a while to the Şerifs, the hereditary rulers of Mecca. It is still in good condition unlike the oldest yalı on the Asian side which is the Köprülü Amcazade Hüseyin Paşa Yalı at Anadolu Hisarı, built in 1698. Only the central section of this yalı survives and it has been behind hoardings promising restoration since 2009.", "title": "Architecture" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "Most of the yalıs originally sat right on the water's edge and came with private docks and ports where boats (caiques) could be stored. On the Anatolian shore some yalıs are still right beside the water but on the European shore most now stand back behind a coast road built on reclaimed land.", "title": "Architecture" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "The original yalıs usually had two main sections: the selamlık which was the public area and the part of the house used by the men, and the haremlik which was the private part of the house reserved for women and the family. These were the luxurious dwellings of the wealthy and some came with their own private hamams (Turkish baths).", "title": "Architecture" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Egyptian royal family took a great liking to the Bosporus and often spent their summers on its shores. They left behind a legacy of fine buildings on or overlooking its shores, including the building at Bebek that now houses the Egyptian Consulate and the Khedive's Villa (Hıdiv Kasrı) high on the hill above Çubuklu.", "title": "Architecture" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Brussels (French: Bruxelles [bʁysɛl] or [bʁyksɛl] ; Dutch: Brussel [ˈbrʏsəl] ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (French: Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; Dutch: Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest), is a region of Belgium comprising 19 municipalities, including the City of Brussels, which is the capital of Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region is located in the central portion of the country and is a part of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community, but is separate from the Flemish Region (within which it forms an enclave) and the Walloon Region.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Brussels is the most densely populated region in Belgium, and although it has the highest GDP per capita, it has the lowest available income per household. The Brussels Region covers 162 km (63 sq mi), a relatively small area compared to the two other regions, and has a population of over 1.2 million. The five times larger metropolitan area of Brussels comprises over 2.5 million people, which makes it the largest in Belgium. It is also part of a large conurbation extending towards the cities of Ghent, Antwerp, and Leuven and the province of Walloon Brabant, in total home to over 5 million people.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Brussels grew from a small rural settlement on the river Senne to become an important city-region in Europe. Since the end of the Second World War, it has been a major centre for international politics and home to numerous international organisations, politicians, diplomats and civil servants. Brussels is the de facto capital of the European Union, as it hosts a number of principal EU institutions, including its administrative-legislative, executive-political, and legislative branches (though the judicial branch is located in Luxembourg, and the European Parliament meets for a minority of the year in Strasbourg). Because of this, its name is sometimes used metonymically to describe the EU and its institutions. The secretariat of the Benelux and the headquarters of NATO are also located in Brussels.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "As the economic capital of Belgium and a top financial centre of Western Europe with Euronext Brussels, Brussels is classified as an Alpha global city. It is also a national and international hub for rail, road and air traffic, and is sometimes considered, together with Belgium, as the geographic, economic and cultural crossroads of Europe. The Brussels Metro is the only rapid transit system in Belgium. In addition, both its airport and railway stations are the largest and busiest in the country.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Historically Dutch-speaking, Brussels saw a language shift to French from the late 19th century. Nowadays, the Brussels-Capital Region is officially bilingual in French and Dutch, although French is the majority language and lingua franca with over 90% of the inhabitants being able to speak it. Brussels is also increasingly becoming multilingual. English is spoken as a second language by nearly a third of the population and many migrants and expatriates speak other languages as well.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Brussels is known for its cuisine and gastronomic offer (including its local waffle, its chocolate, its French fries and its numerous types of beers), as well as its historical and architectural landmarks; some of them are registered as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Principal attractions include its historic Grand-Place/Grote Markt (main square), Manneken Pis, the Atomium, and cultural institutions such as La Monnaie/De Munt and the Museums of Art and History. Due to its long tradition of Belgian comics, Brussels is also hailed as a capital of the comic strip.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The most common theory of the origin of the name Brussels is that it derives from the Old Dutch Bruocsella, Broekzele or Broeksel, meaning 'marsh' (bruoc / broek) and 'home, settlement' (sella / zele / sel) or 'settlement in the marsh'. Saint Vindicianus, the Bishop of Cambrai, made the first recorded reference to the place Brosella in 695, when it was still a hamlet. The names of all the municipalities in the Brussels-Capital Region are also of Dutch origin, except for Evere, which is Celtic.", "title": "Toponymy" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "In French, Bruxelles is pronounced [bʁysɛl] (the x is pronounced /s/, like in English, and the final s is silent) and in Dutch, Brussel is pronounced [ˈbrʏsəl] . Inhabitants of Brussels are known in French as Bruxellois (pronounced [bʁysɛlwa] ) and in Dutch as Brusselaars (pronounced [ˈbrʏsəlaːrs]). In the Brabantian dialect of Brussels (known as Brusselian, and also sometimes referred to as Marols or Marollien), they are called Brusseleers or Brusseleirs.", "title": "Toponymy" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Originally, the written x noted the group /ks/. In the Belgian French pronunciation as well as in Dutch, the k eventually disappeared and z became s, as reflected in the current Dutch spelling, whereas in the more conservative French form, the spelling remained. The pronunciation /ks/ in French only dates from the 18th century, but this modification did not affect the traditional Brussels usage. In France, the pronunciations [bʁyksɛl] and [bʁyksɛlwa] (for bruxellois) are often heard, but are rather rare in Belgium.", "title": "Toponymy" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "County of Leuven c. 1000–1183 Duchy of Brabant 1183–1430 Burgundian Netherlands 1430–1482 Habsburg Netherlands 1482–1556 Spanish Netherlands 1556–1714 Austrian Netherlands 1714–1746 Kingdom of France 1746–1749 Austrian Netherlands 1749–1794 French First Republic 1795–1804 First French Empire 1804–1815 United Kingdom of the Netherlands 1815–1830 Kingdom of Belgium 1830–present", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The history of Brussels is closely linked to that of Western Europe. Traces of human settlement go back to the Stone Age, with vestiges and place-names related to the civilisation of megaliths, dolmens and standing stones (Plattesteen near the Grand-Place/Grote Markt and Tomberg in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, for example). During late antiquity, the region was home to Roman occupation, as attested by archaeological evidence discovered on the current site of Tour & Taxis, north-west of the Pentagon (Brussels' city centre). Following the decline of the Western Roman Empire, it was incorporated into the Frankish Empire.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "According to local legend, the origin of the settlement which was to become Brussels lies in Saint Gaugericus' construction of a chapel on an island in the river Senne around 580. The official founding of Brussels is usually said to be around 979, when Duke Charles of Lower Lorraine transferred the relics of the martyr Saint Gudula from Moorsel (located in today's province of East Flanders) to Saint Gaugericus' chapel. When King Lothair II appointed the same Charles (his brother) to become Duke of Lower Lotharingia in 977, Charles ordered the construction of the city's first permanent fortification, doing so on that same island.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Lambert I of Leuven, Count of Leuven, gained the County of Brussels around 1000, by marrying Charles' daughter. Because of its location on the banks of the Senne, on an important trade route between Bruges and Ghent, and Cologne, Brussels became a commercial centre specialised in the textile trade. The town grew quite rapidly and extended towards the upper town (Treurenberg, Coudenberg and Sablon/Zavel areas), where there was a smaller risk of floods. As it grew to a population of around 30,000, the surrounding marshes were drained to allow for further expansion. Around this time, work began on what is now the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula (1225), replacing an older Romanesque church. In 1183, the Counts of Leuven became Dukes of Brabant. Brabant, unlike the county of Flanders, was not fief of the king of France but was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "In the early 13th century, the first walls of Brussels were built, and after this, the city grew significantly. To let the city expand, a second set of walls was erected between 1356 and 1383. Traces of these walls can still be seen, although the Small Ring, a series of boulevards bounding the historical city centre, follows their former course.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "In the 15th century, the marriage between heiress Margaret III of Flanders and Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, produced a new Duke of Brabant of the House of Valois, namely Antoine, their son. In 1477, the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold perished in the Battle of Nancy. Through the marriage of his daughter Mary of Burgundy (who was born in Brussels) to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, the Low Countries fell under Habsburg sovereignty. Brabant was integrated into this composite state, and Brussels flourished as the Princely Capital of the prosperous Burgundian Netherlands, also known as the Seventeen Provinces. After the death of Mary in 1482, her son Philip the Handsome succeeded as Duke of Burgundy and Brabant.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Philip died in 1506, and he was succeeded by his son Charles V who then also became King of Spain (crowned in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula) and even Holy Roman Emperor at the death of his grandfather Maximilian I in 1519. Charles was now the ruler of a Habsburg Empire \"on which the sun never sets\" with Brussels serving as one of his main capitals. It was in the Coudenberg Palace that Charles V was declared of age in 1515, and it was there in 1555 that he abdicated all of his possessions and passed the Habsburg Netherlands to King Philip II of Spain. This palace, famous all over Europe, had greatly expanded since it had first become the seat of the Dukes of Brabant, but it was destroyed by fire in 1731.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "In the 16th and 17th centuries, Brussels was a centre for the lace industry. In addition, Brussels tapestry hung on the walls of castles throughout Europe. In 1695, during the Nine Years' War, King Louis XIV of France sent troops to bombard Brussels with artillery. Together with the resulting fire, it was the most destructive event in the entire history of Brussels. The Grand-Place was destroyed, along with 4,000 buildings—a third of all the buildings in the city. The reconstruction of the city centre, effected during subsequent years, profoundly changed its appearance and left numerous traces still visible today.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Following the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Spanish sovereignty over the Southern Netherlands was transferred to the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg. This event started the era of the Austrian Netherlands. Brussels was captured by France in 1746, during the War of the Austrian Succession, but was handed back to Austria three years later. It remained with Austria until 1795, when the Southern Netherlands were captured and annexed by France, and the city became the capital of the department of the Dyle. The French rule ended in 1815, with the defeat of Napoleon on the battlefield of Waterloo, located south of today's Brussels-Capital Region. With the Congress of Vienna, the Southern Netherlands joined the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, under King William I of Orange. The former Dyle department became the province of South Brabant, with Brussels as its capital.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "In 1830, the Belgian Revolution began in Brussels, after a performance of Auber's opera La Muette de Portici at the Royal Theatre of La Monnaie. The city became the capital and seat of government of the new nation. South Brabant was renamed simply Brabant, with Brussels as its administrative centre. On 21 July 1831, Leopold I, the first King of the Belgians, ascended the throne, undertaking the destruction of the city walls and the construction of many buildings.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Following independence, Brussels underwent many more changes. It became a financial centre, thanks to the dozens of companies launched by the Société Générale de Belgique. The Industrial Revolution and the opening of the Brussels–Charleroi Canal in 1832 brought prosperity to the city through commerce and manufacturing. The Free University of Brussels was established in 1834 and Saint-Louis University in 1858. In 1835, the first passenger railway built outside England linked the municipality of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean with Mechelen.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "During the 19th century, the population of Brussels grew considerably; from about 80,000 to more than 625,000 people for the city and its surroundings. The Senne had become a serious health hazard, and from 1867 to 1871, under the tenure of the city's then-mayor, Jules Anspach, its entire course through the urban area was completely covered over. This allowed urban renewal and the construction of modern buildings of Haussmann-esque style along grand central boulevards, characteristic of downtown Brussels today. Buildings such as the Brussels Stock Exchange (1873), the Palace of Justice (1883) and Saint Mary's Royal Church (1885) date from this period. This development continued throughout the reign of King Leopold II. The International Exposition of 1897 contributed to the promotion of the infrastructure. Among other things, the Palace of the Colonies, present-day Royal Museum for Central Africa, in the suburb of Tervuren, was connected to the capital by the construction of an 11 km-long (6.8 mi) grand alley.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Brussels became one of the major European cities for the development of the Art Nouveau style in the 1890s and early 1900s. The architects Victor Horta, Paul Hankar, and Henry van de Velde were known for their designs, many of which survive today.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "During the 20th century, the city hosted various fairs and conferences, including the Solvay Conference on Physics and on Chemistry, and three world's fairs: the Brussels International Exposition of 1910, the Brussels International Exposition of 1935 and the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (Expo 58). During World War I, Brussels was an occupied city, but German troops did not cause much damage. During World War II, it was again occupied by German forces, and spared major damage, before it was liberated by the British Guards Armoured Division on 3 September 1944. Brussels Airport, in the suburb of Zaventem, dates from the occupation.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "After World War II, Brussels underwent extensive modernisation. The construction of the North–South connection, linking the main railway stations in the city, was completed in 1952, while the first premetro (underground tram) service was launched in 1969, and the first Metro line was opened in 1976. Starting from the early 1960s, Brussels became the de facto capital of what would become the European Union (EU), and many modern offices were built. Development was allowed to proceed with little regard to the aesthetics of newer buildings, and numerous architectural landmarks were demolished to make way for newer buildings that often clashed with their surroundings, giving name to the process of Brusselisation.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The Brussels-Capital Region was formed on 18 June 1989, after a constitutional reform in 1988. It is one of the three federal regions of Belgium, along with Flanders and Wallonia, and has bilingual status. The yellow iris is the emblem of the region (referring to the presence of these flowers on the city's original site) and a stylised version is featured on its official flag.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "In recent years, Brussels has become an important venue for international events. In 2000, it was named European Capital of Culture alongside eight other European cities. In 2013, the city was the site of the Brussels Agreement. In 2014, it hosted the 40th G7 summit, and in 2017, 2018 and 2021 respectively the 28th, 29th and 31st NATO Summits.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "On 22 March 2016, three coordinated nail bombings were detonated by ISIL in Brussels—two at Brussels Airport in Zaventem and one at Maalbeek/Maelbeek metro station—resulting in 32 victims and three suicide bombers killed, and 330 people were injured. It was the deadliest act of terrorism in Belgium.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Brussels lies in the north-central part of Belgium, about 110 km (68 mi) from the Belgian coast and about 180 km (110 mi) from Belgium's southern tip. It is located in the heartland of the Brabantian Plateau, about 45 km (28 mi) south of Antwerp (Flanders), and 50 km (31 mi) north of Charleroi (Wallonia). Its average elevation is 57 m (187 ft) above sea level, varying from a low point in the valley of the almost completely covered Senne, which cuts the Brussels-Capital Region from east to west, up to high points in the Sonian Forest, on its southeastern side. In addition to the Senne, tributary streams such as the Maalbeek and the Woluwe, to the east of the region, account for significant elevation differences. Brussels' central boulevards are 15 m (49 ft) above sea level. Contrary to popular belief, the highest point (at 127.5 m (418 ft)) is not near the Place de l'Altitude Cent/Hoogte Honderdplein in Forest, but at the Drève des Deux Montages/Tweebergendreef in the Sonian Forest.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Brussels experiences an oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb) with warm summers and cool winters. Proximity to coastal areas influences the area's climate by sending marine air masses from the Atlantic Ocean. Nearby wetlands also ensure a maritime temperate climate. On average (based on measurements in the period 1981–2010), there are approximately 135 days of rain per year in the Brussels-Capital Region. Snowfall is infrequent, averaging 24 days per year. The city also often experiences violent thunderstorms in summer months.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Despite its name, the Brussels-Capital Region is not the capital of Belgium. Article 194 of the Belgian Constitution establishes that the capital of Belgium is the City of Brussels, the municipality in the region that is the city's core.", "title": "Brussels as a capital" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "The City of Brussels is the location of many national institutions. The Royal Palace of Brussels, where the King of the Belgians exercises his prerogatives as head of state, is situated alongside Brussels Park (not to be confused with the Royal Palace of Laeken, the official home of the Belgian royal family). The Palace of the Nation is located on the opposite side of this park, and is the seat of the Belgian Federal Parliament. The office of the Prime Minister of Belgium, colloquially called Law Street 16 (French: 16, rue de la Loi, Dutch: Wetstraat 16), is located adjacent to this building. It is also where the Council of Ministers holds its meetings. The Court of Cassation, Belgium's main court, has its seat in the Palace of Justice. Other important institutions in the City of Brussels are the Constitutional Court, the Council of State, the Court of Audit, the Royal Belgian Mint and the National Bank of Belgium.", "title": "Brussels as a capital" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "The City of Brussels is also the capital of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community. The Flemish Parliament and Flemish Government have their seats in Brussels, and so do the Parliament of the French Community and the Government of the French Community.", "title": "Brussels as a capital" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The 19 municipalities (French: communes, Dutch: gemeenten) of the Brussels-Capital Region are political subdivisions with individual responsibilities for the handling of local level duties, such as law enforcement and the upkeep of schools and roads within its borders. Municipal administration is also conducted by a mayor, a council, and an executive.", "title": "Municipalities" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "In 1831, Belgium was divided into 2,739 municipalities, including the 19 in the Brussels-Capital Region. Unlike most of the municipalities in Belgium, the ones located in the Brussels-Capital Region were not merged with others during mergers occurring in 1964, 1970, and 1975. However, several municipalities outside the Brussels-Capital Region have been merged with the City of Brussels throughout its history, including Laeken, Haren and Neder-Over-Heembeek in 1921.", "title": "Municipalities" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "The largest municipality in area and population is the City of Brussels, covering 32.6 km (12.6 sq mi) and with 145,917 inhabitants; the least populous is Koekelberg with 18,541 inhabitants. The smallest in area is Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, which is only 1.1 km (0.4 sq mi), but still has the highest population density in the region, with 20,822/km (53,930/sq mi). Watermael-Boitsfort has the lowest population density in the region, with 1,928/km (4,990/sq mi).", "title": "Municipalities" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "There is much controversy on the division of 19 municipalities for a highly urbanised region, which is considered as (half of) one city by most people. Some politicians mock the \"19 baronies\" and want to merge the municipalities under one city council and one mayor. That would lower the number of politicians needed to govern Brussels, and centralise the power over the city to make decisions easier, thus reduce the overall running costs. The current municipalities could be transformed into districts with limited responsibilities, similar to the current structure of Antwerp or to structures of other capitals like the boroughs in London or arrondissements in Paris, to keep politics close enough to the citizen.", "title": "Municipalities" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "In early 2016, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean held a reputation as a safe haven for jihadists in relation to the support shown by some residents towards the bombers who carried out the Paris and Brussels attacks.", "title": "Municipalities" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "The Brussels-Capital Region is one of the three federated regions of Belgium, alongside the Walloon Region and the Flemish Region. Geographically and linguistically, it is a bilingual enclave in the monolingual Flemish Region. Regions are one component of Belgium's institutions; the three communities being the other component. Brussels' inhabitants deal with either the French Community or the Flemish Community for matters such as culture and education, as well as a Common Community for competencies which do not belong exclusively to either Community, such as healthcare and social welfare.", "title": "Brussels-Capital Region" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "Since the split of Brabant in 1995, the Brussels Region does not belong to any of the provinces of Belgium, nor is it subdivided into provinces itself. Within the Region, 99% of the areas of provincial jurisdiction are assumed by the Brussels regional institutions and community commissions. Remaining is only the governor of Brussels-Capital and some aides, analogously to provinces. Its status is roughly akin to that of a federal district.", "title": "Brussels-Capital Region" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "The Brussels-Capital Region is governed by a parliament of 89 members (72 French-speaking, 17 Dutch-speaking—parties are organised on a linguistic basis) and an eight-member regional cabinet consisting of a minister-president, four ministers and three state secretaries. By law, the cabinet must comprise two French-speaking and two Dutch-speaking ministers, one Dutch-speaking secretary of state and two French-speaking secretaries of state. The minister-president does not count against the language quota, but in practice every minister-president has been a bilingual francophone. The regional parliament can enact ordinances (French: ordonnances, Dutch: ordonnanties), which have equal status as a national legislative act.", "title": "Brussels-Capital Region" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "Nineteen of the 72 French-speaking members of the Brussels Parliament are also members of the Parliament of the French Community of Belgium, and, until 2004, this was also the case for six Dutch-speaking members, who were at the same time members of the Flemish Parliament. Now, people voting for a Flemish party have to vote separately for 6 directly elected members of the Flemish Parliament.", "title": "Brussels-Capital Region" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "Before the creation of the Brussels-Capital Region, regional competences in the 19 municipalities were performed by the Brussels Agglomeration. The Brussels Agglomeration was an administrative division established in 1971. This decentralised administrative public body also assumed jurisdiction over areas which, elsewhere in Belgium, were exercised by municipalities or provinces.", "title": "Brussels-Capital Region" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "The Brussels Agglomeration had a separate legislative council, but the by-laws enacted by it did not have the status of a legislative act. The only election of the council took place on 21 November 1971. The working of the council was subject to many difficulties caused by the linguistic and socio-economic tensions between the two communities.", "title": "Brussels-Capital Region" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "After the creation of the Brussels-Capital Region, the Brussels Agglomeration was never formally abolished, although it no longer has a purpose.", "title": "Brussels-Capital Region" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "The French Community and the Flemish Community exercise their powers in Brussels through two community-specific public authorities: the French Community Commission (French: Commission communautaire française or COCOF) and the Flemish Community Commission (Dutch: Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie or VGC). These two bodies each have an assembly composed of the members of each linguistic group of the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region. They also have a board composed of the ministers and secretaries of state of each linguistic group in the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region.", "title": "French and Flemish communities" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "The French Community Commission has also another capacity: some legislative powers of the French Community have been devolved to the Walloon Region (for the French language area of Belgium) and to the French Community Commission (for the bilingual language area). The Flemish Community, however, did the opposite; it merged the Flemish Region into the Flemish Community. This is related to different conceptions in the two communities, one focusing more on the Communities and the other more on the Regions, causing an asymmetrical federalism. Because of this devolution, the French Community Commission can enact decrees, which are legislative acts.", "title": "French and Flemish communities" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "A bi-communitarian public authority, the Common Community Commission (French: Commission communautaire commune, COCOM, Dutch: Gemeenschappelijke Gemeenschapscommissie, GGC) also exists. Its assembly is composed of the members of the regional parliament, and its board are the ministers—not the secretaries of state—of the region, with the minister-president not having the right to vote. This commission has two capacities: it is a decentralised administrative public body, responsible for implementing cultural policies of common interest. It can give subsidies and enact by-laws. In another capacity, it can also enact ordinances, which have equal status as a national legislative act, in the field of the welfare powers of the communities: in the Brussels-Capital Region, both the French Community and the Flemish Community can exercise powers in the field of welfare, but only in regard to institutions that are unilingual (for example, a private French-speaking retirement home or the Dutch-speaking hospital of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel). The Common Community Commission is responsible for policies aiming directly at private persons or at bilingual institutions (for example, the centres for social welfare of the 19 municipalities). Its ordinances have to be enacted with a majority in both linguistic groups. Failing such a majority, a new vote can be held, where a majority of at least one third in each linguistic group is sufficient.", "title": "French and Flemish communities" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "Brussels serves as de facto capital of the European Union (EU), hosting the major political institutions of the Union. The EU has not declared a capital formally, though the Treaty of Amsterdam formally gives Brussels the seat of the European Commission (the executive branch of government) and the Council of the European Union (a legislative institution made up from executives of member states). It locates the formal seat of European Parliament in Strasbourg, where votes take place, with the council, on the proposals made by the commission. However, meetings of political groups and committee groups are formally given to Brussels, along with a set number of plenary sessions. Three quarters of Parliament sessions now take place at its Brussels hemicycle. Between 2002 and 2004, the European Council also fixed its seat in the city. In 2014, the Union hosted a G7 summit in the city.", "title": "Brussels and the European Union" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "Brussels, along with Luxembourg and Strasbourg, began to host European institutions in 1957, soon becoming the centre of activities, as the Commission and Council based their activities in what has become the European Quarter, in the east of the city. Early building in Brussels was sporadic and uncontrolled, with little planning. The current major buildings are the Berlaymont building of the commission, symbolic of the quarter as a whole, the Europa building of the Council and the Espace Léopold of the Parliament. Today, the presence has increased considerably, with the Commission alone occupying 865,000 m (9,310,000 sq ft) within the European Quarter (a quarter of the total office space in Brussels). The concentration and density has caused concern that the presence of the institutions has created a ghetto effect in that part of the city. However, the European presence has contributed significantly to the importance of Brussels as an international centre.", "title": "Brussels and the European Union" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Brussels has, since World War II, become the administrative centre of many international organisations. The city is the political and administrative centre of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). NATO's Brussels headquarters houses 29 embassies and brings together over 4,500 staff from allied nations, their militaries, and civil service personnel. Many other international organisations such as the World Customs Organization and Eurocontrol, as well as international corporations, have their main institutions in the city. In addition, the main international trade union confederations have their headquarters there: the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the World Confederation of Labour (WCL).", "title": "International institutions" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "Brussels is third in the number of international conferences it hosts, also becoming one of the largest convention centres in the world. The presence of the EU and the other international bodies has, for example, led to there being more ambassadors and journalists in Brussels than in Washington, D.C. The city hosts 120 international institutions, 181 embassies (intra muros) and more than 2,500 diplomats, making it the second centre of diplomatic relations in the world (after New York City). International schools have also been established to serve this presence. The \"international community\" in Brussels numbers at least 70,000 people. In 2009, there were an estimated 286 lobbying consultancies known to work in Brussels. Finally, Brussels has more than 1,400 NGOs.", "title": "International institutions" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "The Treaty of Brussels, which was signed on 17 March 1948 between Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, was a prelude to the establishment of the intergovernmental military alliance which later became the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Today, the alliance consists of 29 independent member countries across North America and Europe. Several countries also have diplomatic missions to NATO through embassies in Belgium. Since 1949, a number of NATO Summits have been held in Brussels, the most recent taking place in June 2021. The organisation's political and administrative headquarters are located on the Boulevard Léopold III/Leopold III-laan in Haren, on the north-eastern perimeter of the City of Brussels. A new €750 million headquarters building begun in 2010 and was completed in 2017.", "title": "International institutions" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "The European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, commonly known as Eurocontrol, is an international organisation which coordinates and plans air traffic control across European airspace. The corporation was founded in 1960 and has 41 member states. Its headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels.", "title": "International institutions" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "Brussels is located in one of the most urbanised regions of Europe, between Paris, London, the Rhine-Ruhr (Germany), and the Randstad (Netherlands). The Brussels-Capital Region has a population of around 1.2 million and has witnessed, in recent years, a remarkable increase in its population. In general, the population of Brussels is younger than the national average, and the gap between rich and poor is wider.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "Brussels is the core of a built-up area that extends well beyond the region's limits. Sometimes referred to as the urban area of Brussels (French: aire urbaine de Bruxelles, Dutch: stedelijk gebied van Brussel) or Greater Brussels (French: Grand-Bruxelles, Dutch: Groot-Brussel), this area extends over a large part of the two Brabant provinces, including much of the surrounding arrondissement of Halle-Vilvoorde and some small parts of the arrondissement of Leuven in Flemish Brabant, as well as the northern part of Walloon Brabant.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "The metropolitan area of Brussels is divided into three levels. Firstly, the central agglomeration (within the regional borders), with a population of 1,218,255 inhabitants. Adding the closest suburbs (French: banlieues, Dutch: buitenwijken) gives a total population of 1,831,496. Including the outer commuter zone (Brussels Regional Express Network (RER/GEN) area), the population is 2,676,701. Brussels is also part of a wider diamond-shaped conurbation, with Ghent, Antwerp and Leuven, which has about 4.4 million inhabitants (a little more than 40% of the Belgium's total population).", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "There have been numerous migrations towards Brussels since the end of the 18th century, when the city acted as a common destination for political refugees from neighbouring or more distant countries, particularly France. From 1871, many of the Paris Communards fled to Brussels, where they received political asylum. Other notable international exiles living in Brussels at the time included Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Georges Boulanger, and Léon Daudet, to name a few. Attracted by the industrial opportunities, many workers moved in, first from the other Belgian provinces (mainly rural residents from Flanders) and France, then from Southern European, and more recently from Eastern European and African countries.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "Nowadays, Brussels is home to a large number of immigrants and émigré communities, as well as labour migrants, former foreign students or expatriates, and many Belgian families in Brussels can claim at least one foreign grandparent. At the last Belgian census in 1991, 63.7% of inhabitants in Brussels-Capital Region answered that they were Belgian citizens, born as such in Belgium, indicating that more than a third of residents had not been born in the country. According to Statbel (the Belgian Statistical Office), in 2020, taking into account the nationality of birth of the parents, 74.3% of the population of the Brussels-Capital Region was of foreign origin and 41.8% was of non-European origin (including 28.7% of African origin). Among those aged under 18, 88% were of foreign origin and 57% of non-European origin (including 42.4% of African origin).", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "This large concentration of immigrants and their descendants includes many of Moroccan (mainly Riffian and other Berbers) and Turkish ancestry, together with French-speaking black Africans from former Belgian colonies, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Many immigrants were naturalised following the great 1991 reform of the naturalisation process. In 2012, about 32% of city residents were of non-Belgian European origin (mainly expatriates from France, Romania, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Portugal) and 36% were of another background, mostly from Morocco, Turkey and Sub-Saharan Africa. Among all major migrant groups from outside the EU, a majority of the permanent residents have acquired Belgian nationality.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "Brussels was historically Dutch-speaking, using the Brabantian dialect, but over the two past centuries French has become the predominant language of the city. The main cause of this transition was the rapid assimilation of the local Flemish population, amplified by immigration from France and Wallonia. The rise of French in public life gradually began by the end of the 18th century, quickly accelerating after Belgian independence. Dutch — of which standardisation in Belgium was still very weak — could not compete with French, which was the exclusive language of the judiciary, the administration, the army, education, cultural life and the media, and thus necessary for social mobility. The value and prestige of the French language was universally acknowledged to such an extent that after 1880, and more particularly after the turn of the 20th century, proficiency in French among Dutch-speakers in Brussels increased spectacularly.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "Although a majority of the population remained bilingual until the second half of the 20th century, family transmission of the historic Brabantian dialect declined, leading to an increase of monolingual French-speakers from 1910 onwards. From the mid-20th century, the number of monolingual French-speakers surpassed the number of mostly bilingual Flemish inhabitants. This process of assimilation weakened after the 1960s, as the language border was fixed, the status of Dutch as an official language of Belgium was reinforced, and the economic centre of gravity shifted northward to Flanders. However, with the continuing arrival of immigrants and the post-war emergence of Brussels as a centre of international politics, the relative position of Dutch continued to decline. Furthermore, as Brussels' urban area expanded, a further number of Dutch-speaking municipalities in the Brussels periphery also became predominantly French-speaking. This phenomenon of expanding Francisation — dubbed \"oil slick\" by its opponents — is, together with the future of Brussels, one of the most controversial topics in Belgian politics.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "Today, the Brussels-Capital Region is legally bilingual, with both French and Dutch having official status, as is the administration of the 19 municipalities. The creation of this bilingual, full-fledged region, with its own competencies and jurisdiction, had long been hampered by different visions of Belgian federalism. Nevertheless, some communitarian issues remain. Flemish political parties demanded, for decades, that the Flemish part of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV) arrondissement be separated from the Brussels Region (which made Halle-Vilvoorde a monolingual Flemish electoral and judicial district). BHV was divided mid-2012. The French-speaking population regards the language border as artificial and demands the extension of the bilingual region to at least all six municipalities with language facilities in the surroundings of Brussels. Flemish politicians have strongly rejected these proposals.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "Owing to migration and to its international role, Brussels is home to a large number of native speakers of languages other than French or Dutch. Currently, about half of the population speaks a home language other than these two. In 2013, academic research showed that approximately 17% of families spoke none of the official languages in the home, while in a further 23% a foreign language was used alongside French. The share of unilingual French-speaking families had fallen to 38% and that of Dutch-speaking families to 5%, while the percentage of bilingual Dutch-French families reached 17%. At the same time, French remains widely spoken: in 2013, French was spoken \"well to perfectly\" by 88% of the population, while for Dutch this percentage was only 23% (down from 33% in 2000); the other most commonly known languages were English (30%), Arabic (18%), Spanish (9%), German (7%) and Italian and Turkish (5% each). Despite the rise of English as a second language in Brussels, including as an unofficial compromise language between French and Dutch, as well as the working language for some of its international businesses and institutions, French remains the lingua franca and all public services are conducted exclusively in French or Dutch.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "The original dialect of Brussels (known as Brusselian, and also sometimes referred to as Marols or Marollien), a form of Brabantic (the variant of Dutch spoken in the ancient Duchy of Brabant) with a significant number of loanwords from French, still survives among a small minority of inhabitants called Brusseleers (or Brusseleirs), many of them quite bi- and multilingual, or educated in French and not writing in Dutch. The ethnic and national self-identification of Brussels' inhabitants is nonetheless sometimes quite distinct from the French and Dutch-speaking communities. For the French-speakers, it can vary from Francophone Belgian, Bruxellois (French demonym for an inhabitant of Brussels), Walloon (for people who migrated from the Walloon Region at an adult age); for Flemings living in Brussels, it is mainly either Dutch-speaking Belgian, Flemish or Brusselaar (Dutch demonym for an inhabitant), and often both. For the Brusseleers, many simply consider themselves as belonging to Brussels.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "Historically, Brussels has been predominantly Roman Catholic, especially since the expulsion of Protestants in the 16th century. This is clear from the large number of historical churches in the region, particularly in the City of Brussels. The pre-eminent Catholic cathedral in Brussels is the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, serving as the co-cathedral of the Archdiocese of Mechelen–Brussels. On the north-western side of the region, the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart is a Minor Basilica and parish church, as well as one of the largest churches by area in the world. The Church of Our Lady of Laeken holds the tombs of many members of the Belgian royal family, including all the former Belgian monarchs, within the Royal Crypt.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "Religions in the Brussels-Capital Region (2016)", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "In reflection of its multicultural makeup, Brussels hosts a variety of religious communities, as well as large numbers of atheists and agnostics. Minority faiths include Islam, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Buddhism. According to a 2016 survey, approximately 40% of residents of Brussels declared themselves Catholics (12% were practising Catholics and 28% were non-practising Catholics), 30% were non-religious, 23% were Muslim (19% practising, 4% non-practising), 3% were Protestants and 4% were of another religion.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "As guaranteed by Belgian law, recognised religions and non-religious philosophical organisations (French: organisations laïques, Dutch: vrijzinnige levensbeschouwelijke organisaties) enjoy public funding and school courses. It was once the case that every pupil in an official school from 6 to 18 years old had to choose two hours per week of compulsory religious—or non-religious-inspired morals—courses. However, in 2015, the Belgian Constitutional Court ruled religious studies could no longer be required in the primary and secondary educational systems.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "Brussels has a large concentration of Muslims, mostly of Moroccan, Turkish, Syrian and Guinean ancestry. The Great Mosque of Brussels, located in the Parc du Cinquantenaire/Jubelpark, is the oldest mosque in Brussels. Belgium does not collect statistics by ethnic background or religious beliefs, so exact figures are unknown. It was estimated that, in 2005, people of Muslim background living in the Brussels Region numbered 256,220 and accounted for 25.5% of the city's population, a much higher concentration than those of the other regions of Belgium.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "The architecture in Brussels is diverse, and spans from the clashing combination of Gothic, Baroque, and Louis XIV styles on the Grand-Place to the postmodern buildings of the EU institutions.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "Very little medieval architecture is preserved in Brussels. Buildings from that period are mostly found in the historical centre (called Îlot Sacré), Saint Géry/Sint-Goriks and Sainte-Catherine/Sint Katelijne neighbourhoods. The Brabantine Gothic Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula remains a prominent feature in the skyline of downtown Brussels. Isolated portions of the first city walls were saved from destruction and can be seen to this day. One of the only remains of the second walls is the Halle Gate. The Grand-Place is the main attraction in the city centre and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998. The square is dominated by the 15th century Flamboyant Town Hall, the neo-Gothic Breadhouse and the Baroque guildhalls of the former Guilds of Brussels. Manneken Pis, a fountain containing a small bronze sculpture of a urinating youth, is a tourist attraction and symbol of the city.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "The neoclassical style of the 18th and 19th centuries is represented in the Royal Quarter/Coudenberg area, around Brussels Park and the Place Royale/Koningsplein. Examples include the Royal Palace, the Church of St. James on Coudenberg, the Palace of the Nation (Parliament building), the Academy Palace, the Palace of Charles of Lorraine, the Palace of the Count of Flanders and the Egmont Palace. Other uniform neoclassical ensembles can be found around the Place des Martyrs/Martelaarsplein and the Place de Barricades/Barricadenplein. Some additional landmarks in the centre are the Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries (1847), one of the oldest covered shopping arcades in Europe, the Congress Column (1859), the former Brussels Stock Exchange building (1873) and the Palace of Justice (1883). The latter, designed by Joseph Poelaert, in eclectic style, is reputed to be the largest building constructed in the 19th century.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "Located outside the historical centre, in a greener environment bordering the European Quarter, are the Parc du Cinquantenaire/Jubelpark with its memorial arcade and nearby museums, and in Laeken, the Royal Palace of Laeken and the Royal Domain with its large greenhouses, as well as the Museums of the Far East.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "Also particularly striking are the buildings in the Art Nouveau style, most famously by the Belgian architects Victor Horta, Paul Hankar and Henry Van de Velde. Some of Brussels' municipalities, such as Schaerbeek, Etterbeek, Ixelles, and Saint-Gilles, were developed during the heyday of Art Nouveau and have many buildings in that style. The Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta—Hôtel Tassel (1893), Hôtel Solvay (1894), Hôtel van Eetvelde (1895) and the Horta Museum (1901)—have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. Another example of Brussels' Art Nouveau is the Stoclet Palace (1911), by the Viennese architect Josef Hoffmann, designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in June 2009.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "Art Deco structures in Brussels include the Résidence Palace (1927) (now part of the Europa building), the Centre for Fine Arts (1928), the Villa Empain (1934), the Town Hall of Forest (1938), and the Flagey Building (formerly known as the Maison de la Radio) on the Place Eugène Flagey/Eugène Flageyplein (1938) in Ixelles. Some religious buildings from the interwar era were also constructed in that style, such as the Church of St. John the Baptist (1932) in Molenbeek and the Church of St. Augustine (1935) in Forest. Completed only in 1969, and combining Art Deco with neo-Byzantine elements, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Koekelberg is one of the largest churches by area in the world, and its cupola provides a panoramic view of Brussels and its outskirts. Another example are the exhibition halls of the Centenary Palace, built for the 1935 World's Fair on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau in northern Brussels, home to the Brussels Exhibition Centre (Brussels Expo).", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "The Atomium is a symbolic 103 m-tall (338 ft) modernist structure, located on the Heysel Plateau, which was originally built for the 1958 World's Fair (Expo 58). It consists of nine steel spheres connected by tubes, and forms a model of an iron crystal (specifically, a unit cell), magnified 165 billion times. The architect André Waterkeyn devoted the building to science. It is now considered a landmark of Brussels. Next to the Atomium, is Mini-Europe miniature park, with 1:25 scale maquettes of famous buildings from across Europe.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "Since the second half of the 20th century, modern office towers have been built in Brussels (Madou Tower, Rogier Tower, Proximus Towers, Finance Tower, the World Trade Center, among others). There are some thirty towers, mostly concentrated in the city's main business district: the Northern Quarter (also called Little Manhattan), near Brussels-North railway station. The South Tower, standing adjacent to Brussels-South railway station, is the tallest building in Belgium, at 148 m (486 ft). Along the North–South connection, is the State Administrative City, an administrative complex in the International Style. The postmodern buildings of the Espace Léopold complete the picture.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "The city's embrace of modern architecture translated into an ambivalent approach towards historic preservation, leading to the destruction of notable architectural landmarks, most famously the Maison du Peuple/Volkshuis by Victor Horta, a process known as Brusselisation.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "Brussels contains over 80 museums. The Royal Museums of Fine Arts has an extensive collection of various painters, such as Flemish old masters like Bruegel, Rogier van der Weyden, Robert Campin, Anthony van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, and Peter Paul Rubens. The Magritte Museum houses the world's largest collection of the works of the surrealist René Magritte. Museums dedicated to the national history of Belgium include the BELvue Museum, the Royal Museums of Art and History, and the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History. The Musical Instruments Museum (MIM), housed in the Old England building, is part of the Royal Museums of Art and History, and is internationally renowned for its collection of over 8,000 instruments.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 79, "text": "The Brussels Museums Council is an independent body for all the museums in the Brussels-Capital Region, covering around 100 federal, private, municipal, and community museums. It promotes member museums through the Brussels Card (giving access to public transport and 30 of the 100 museums), the Brussels Museums Nocturnes (every Thursday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. from mid-September to mid-December) and the Museum Night Fever (an event for and by young people on a Saturday night in late February or early March).", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 80, "text": "Brussels has had a distinguished artist scene for many years. The famous Belgian surrealists René Magritte and Paul Delvaux, for instance, studied and lived there, as did the avant-garde dramatist Michel de Ghelderode. The city was also home of the impressionist painter Anna Boch from the artists' group Les XX, and includes other famous Belgian painters such as Léon Spilliaert. Brussels is also a capital of the comic strip; some treasured Belgian characters are Tintin, Lucky Luke, The Smurfs, Spirou, Gaston, Marsupilami, Blake and Mortimer, Boule et Bill and Cubitus (see Belgian comics). Throughout the city, walls are painted with large motifs of comic book characters; these murals taken together are known as Brussels' Comic Book Route. Also, the interiors of some Metro stations are designed by artists. The Belgian Comic Strip Center combines two artistic leitmotifs of Brussels, being a museum devoted to Belgian comic strips, housed in the former Magasins Waucquez textile department store, designed by Victor Horta in the Art Nouveau style. In addition, street art is changing the landscape of this multicultural city.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 81, "text": "Brussels is well known for its performing arts scene, with the Royal Theatre of La Monnaie, the Royal Park Theatre, the Théâtre Royal des Galeries and the Kaaitheater among the most notable institutions. The Kunstenfestivaldesarts, an international performing arts festival, is organised every year in May in about twenty different cultural houses and theatres throughout the city. The King Baudouin Stadium is a concert and competition facility with a 50,000 seat capacity, the largest in Belgium. The site was formerly occupied by the Heysel Stadium. The Center for Fine Arts (often referred to as BOZAR in French or PSK in Dutch), a multi-purpose centre for theatre, cinema, music, literature and art exhibitions, is home to the National Orchestra of Belgium and to the annual Queen Elisabeth Competition for classical singers and instrumentalists, one of the most challenging and prestigious competitions of the kind. Studio 4 in Le Flagey cultural centre hosts the Brussels Philharmonic. Other concert venues include Forest National/Vorst Nationaal, the Ancienne Belgique, the Cirque Royal/Koninklijk Circus, the Botanique and Palais 12/Paleis 12. Furthermore, the Jazz Station in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode is a museum and archive on jazz, and a venue for jazz concerts.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 82, "text": "Brussels' identity owes much to its rich folklore and traditions, among the liveliest in the country.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 83, "text": "Many events are organised or hosted in Brussels throughout the year. In addition, many festivals animate the Brussels scene.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 84, "text": "The Iris Festival is the official festival of the Brussels-Capital Region and is held annually in spring. The International Fantastic Film Festival of Brussels (BIFFF) is organised during the Easter holidays and the Magritte Awards in February. The Festival of Europe, an open day and activities in and around the institutions of the European Union, is held on 9 May. On Belgian National Day, on 21 July, a military parade and celebrations take place on the Place des Palais/Paleizenplein and in Brussels Park, ending with a display of fireworks in the evening.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 85, "text": "Some summer festivities include Couleur Café Festival, a festival of world and urban music, around the end of June or early July, the Brussels Summer Festival (BSF), a music festival in August, the Brussels Fair, the most important yearly fair in Brussels, lasting more than a month, in July and August, and Brussels Beach, when the banks of the canal are turned into a temporary urban beach. Other biennial events are the Zinneke Parade, a colourful, multicultural parade through the city, which has been held since 2000 in May, as well as the popular Flower Carpet at the Grand-Place in August. Heritage Days are organised on the third weekend of September (sometimes coinciding with the car-free day) and are a good opportunity to discover the wealth of buildings, institutions and real estate in Brussels. The \"Winter Wonders\" animate the heart of Brussels in December; these winter activities were launched in Brussels in 2001.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 86, "text": "Brussels is well known for its local waffle, its chocolate, its French fries and its numerous types of beers. The Brussels sprout, which has long been popular in Brussels, and may have originated there, is also named after the city.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 87, "text": "The gastronomic offer includes approximately 1,800 restaurants (including three 2-starred and ten 1-starred Michelin restaurants), and a number of bars. In addition to the traditional restaurants, there are many cafés, bistros and the usual range of international fast food chains. The cafés are similar to bars, and offer beer and light dishes; coffee houses are called salons de thé (literally \"tea salons\"). Also widespread are brasseries, which usually offer a variety of beers and typical national dishes.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 88, "text": "Belgian cuisine is known among connoisseurs as one of the best in Europe. It is characterised by the combination of French cuisine with the more hearty Flemish fare. Notable specialities include Brussels waffles (gaufres) and mussels (usually as moules-frites, served with fries). The city is a stronghold of chocolate and praline manufacturers with renowned companies like Côte d'Or, Neuhaus, Leonidas and Godiva. Pralines were first introduced in 1912 by Jean Neuhaus II, a Belgian chocolatier of Swiss origin, in the Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries. Numerous friteries are spread throughout the city, and in tourist areas, fresh hot waffles are also sold on the street.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 89, "text": "As well as other Belgian beers, the spontaneously fermented lambic style, brewed in and around Brussels, is widely available there and in the nearby Senne valley where the wild yeasts that ferment it have their origin. Kriek, a cherry lambic, is available in almost every bar or restaurant in Brussels.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 90, "text": "Brussels is known as the birthplace of the Belgian endive. The technique for growing blanched endives was accidentally discovered in the 1850s at the Botanical Garden of Brussels in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 91, "text": "Famous shopping areas in Brussels include the pedestrian-only Rue Neuve/Nieuwstraat, the second busiest shopping street in Belgium (after the Meir, in Antwerp) with a weekly average of 230,000 visitors, home to popular international chains (H&M, C&A, Zara, Primark), as well as the City 2 and Anspach galleries. The Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries hold a variety of luxury shops and some six million people stroll through them each year. The neighbourhood around the Rue Antoine Dansaert/Antoine Dansaertstraat has become, in recent years, a focal point for fashion and design; this main street and its side streets also feature Belgium's young and most happening artistic talent.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 92, "text": "In Ixelles, the Avenue de la Toison d'Or/Gulden-Vlieslaan and the Namur Gate area offer a blend of luxury shops, fast food restaurants and entertainment venues, and the Chaussée d'Ixelles/Elsenesteenweg, in the mainly-Congolese Matongé district, offers a great taste of African fashion and lifestyle. The nearby Avenue Louise/Louizalaan is lined with high-end fashion stores and boutiques, making it one of the most expensive streets in Belgium.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 93, "text": "There are shopping centres outside the inner ring: Basilix, Woluwe Shopping Center, Westland Shopping Center, and Docks Bruxsel, which opened in October 2017. In addition, Brussels ranks as one of Europe's best capital cities for flea market shopping. The Old Market, on the Place du Jeu de Balle/Vossenplein, in the Marolles/Marollen neighbourhood, is particularly renowned. The nearby Sablon/Zavel area is home to many of Brussels' antique dealers. The Midi Market around Brussels-South station and the Boulevard du Midi/Zuidlaan is reputed to be one of the largest markets in Europe.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 94, "text": "Sport in Brussels is under the responsibility of the Communities. The Administration de l'Éducation Physique et du Sport (ADEPS) is responsible for recognising the various French-speaking sports federations and also runs three sports centres in the Brussels-Capital Region. Its Dutch-speaking counterpart is Sport Vlaanderen (formerly called BLOSO).", "title": "Sports" }, { "paragraph_id": 95, "text": "The King Baudouin Stadium (formerly the Heysel Stadium) is the largest in the country and home to the national teams in football and rugby union. It hosted the final of the 1972 UEFA European Football Championship, and the opening game of the 2000 edition. Several European club finals have been held at the ground, including the 1985 European Cup Final which saw 39 deaths due to hooliganism and structural collapse. The King Baudouin Stadium is also home of the annual Memorial Van Damme athletics event, Belgium's foremost track and field competition, which is part of the Diamond League. Other important athletics events are the Brussels Marathon and the 20 km of Brussels, an annual run with 30,000 participants.", "title": "Sports" }, { "paragraph_id": 96, "text": "Brussels is home to notable cycling races. The city is the arrival location of the Brussels Cycling Classic, formerly known as Paris–Brussels, which is one of the oldest semi classic bicycle races on the international calendar. From World War I until the early 1970s, the Six Days of Brussels was organised regularly. In the last decades of the 20th century, the Grand Prix Eddy Merckx was also held in Brussels.", "title": "Sports" }, { "paragraph_id": 97, "text": "R.S.C. Anderlecht, based in the Constant Vanden Stock Stadium in Anderlecht, is the most successful Belgian football club in the Belgian Pro League, with 34 titles. It has also won the most major European tournaments for a Belgian side, with 6 European titles. Brussels is also home to Union Saint-Gilloise, the most successful Belgian club before World War II, with 11 titles. The club was founded in Saint-Gilles but is based in nearby Forest, and plays in the Belgian Pro League. Racing White Daring Molenbeek, based in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, and often referred to as RWDM, is a very popular football club that, since 2023, is back playing in the Belgian Pro League.", "title": "Sports" }, { "paragraph_id": 98, "text": "Other Brussels clubs that played in the national series over the years were Royal White Star Bruxelles, Ixelles SC, Crossing Club de Schaerbeek (born from a merger between RCS de Schaerbeek and Crossing Club Molenbeek), Scup Jette, RUS de Laeken, Racing Jet de Bruxelles, AS Auderghem, KV Wosjot Woluwe and FC Ganshoren.", "title": "Sports" }, { "paragraph_id": 99, "text": "Serving as the centre of administration for Belgium and Europe, Brussels' economy is largely service-oriented. It is dominated by regional and world headquarters of multinationals, by European institutions, by various local and federal administrations, and by related services companies, though it does have a number of notable craft industries, such as the Cantillon Brewery, a lambic brewery founded in 1900.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 100, "text": "Brussels has a robust economy. The region contributes to one fifth of Belgium's GDP, and its 550,000 jobs account for 17.7% of Belgium's employment. Its GDP per capita is nearly double that of Belgium as a whole, and it has the highest GDP per capita of any NUTS 1 region in the EU, at ~$80,000 in 2016. That being said, the GDP is boosted by a massive inflow of commuters from neighbouring regions; over half of those who work in Brussels live in Flanders or Wallonia, with 230,000 and 130,000 commuters per day respectively. Conversely, only 16.0% of people from Brussels work outside Brussels (68,827 (68.5%) of them in Flanders and 21,035 (31.5%) in Wallonia). Not all of the wealth generated in Brussels remains in Brussels itself, and as of December 2013, the unemployment among residents of Brussels is 20.4%.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 101, "text": "There are approximately 50,000 businesses in Brussels, of which around 2,200 are foreign. This number is constantly increasing and can well explain the role of Brussels in Europe. The city's infrastructure is very favourable in terms of starting up a new business. House prices have also increased in recent years, especially with the increase of young professionals settling down in Brussels, making it the most expensive city to live in Belgium. In addition, Brussels holds more than 1,000 business conferences annually, making it the ninth most popular conference city in Europe.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 102, "text": "Brussels is rated as the 34th most important financial centre in the world as of 2020, according to the Global Financial Centres Index. The Brussels Stock Exchange, abbreviated to BSE, now called Euronext Brussels, is part of the European stock exchange Euronext, along with Paris Bourse, Lisbon Stock Exchange and Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Its benchmark stock market index is the BEL20.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 103, "text": "Brussels is a centre of both media and communications in Belgium, with many Belgian television stations, radio stations, newspapers and telephone companies having their headquarters in the region. The French-language public broadcaster RTBF, the Dutch-language public broadcaster VRT, the two regional channels BX1 (formerly Télé Bruxelles) and Bruzz (formerly TV Brussel), the encrypted BeTV channel and private channels RTL-TVI and VTM are headquartered in Brussels. Some national newspapers such as Le Soir, La Libre, De Morgen and the news agency Belga are based in or around Brussels. The Belgian postal company bpost, as well as the telecommunication companies and mobile operators Proximus, Orange Belgium and Telenet are all located there.", "title": "Media" }, { "paragraph_id": 104, "text": "As English is spoken widely, several English media organisations operate in Brussels. The most popular of these are the English-language daily news media platform and bi-monthly magazine The Brussels Times and the quarterly magazine and website The Bulletin. The multilingual pan-European news channel Euronews also maintains an office in Brussels.", "title": "Media" }, { "paragraph_id": 105, "text": "There are several universities in Brussels. Except for the Royal Military Academy, a federal military college established in 1834, all universities in Brussels are private and autonomous. The Royal Military Academy also the only Belgian university organised on the boarding school model.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 106, "text": "The Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), a French-speaking university, with about 20,000 students, has three campuses in the city, and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), its Dutch-speaking sister university, has about 10,000 students. Both universities originate from a single ancestor university, founded in 1834, namely the Free University of Brussels, which was split in 1970, at about the same time the Flemish and French Communities gained legislative power over the organisation of higher education.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 107, "text": "Saint-Louis University, Brussels (also known as UCLouvain Saint-Louis – Bruxelles) was founded in 1858 and is specialised in social and human sciences, with 4,000 students, and located on two campuses in the City of Brussels and Ixelles. From September 2018 on, the university uses the name UCLouvain, together with the Catholic University of Louvain, in the context of a merger between both universities.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 108, "text": "Still other universities have campuses in Brussels, such as the French-speaking Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain), which has 10,000 students in the city with its medical faculties at UCLouvain Bruxelles Woluwe since 1973, in addition to its Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering and Urban Planning and UCLouvain's Dutch-speaking sister Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) (offering bachelor's and master's degrees in economics & business, law, arts, and architecture; 4,400 students). In addition, the University of Kent's Brussels School of International Studies is a specialised postgraduate school offering advanced international studies.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 109, "text": "Also a dozen of university colleges are located in Brussels, including two drama schools, founded in 1832: the French-speaking Conservatoire Royal and its Dutch-speaking equivalent, the Koninklijk Conservatorium.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 110, "text": "Most of Brussels pupils between the ages of 3 and 18 go to schools organised by the French-speaking Community or the Flemish Community, with close to 80% going to French-speaking schools, and roughly 20% to Dutch-speaking schools. Due to the post-war international presence in the city, there are also a number of international schools, including the International School of Brussels, with 1,450 pupils, between the ages of 2+1⁄2 and 18, the British School of Brussels, and the four European Schools, which provide free education for the children of those working in the EU institutions. The combined student population of the four European Schools in Brussels is around 10,000.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 111, "text": "Brussels has a number of public or private-owned libraries on its territory. Most public libraries in Brussels fall under the competence of the Communities and are usually separated between French-speaking and Dutch-speaking institutions, although some are mixed.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 112, "text": "The Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) is the national library of Belgium and one of the most prestigious libraries in the world. It owns several collections of historical importance, like the famous Fétis archives, and is the depository for all books ever published in Belgium or abroad by Belgian authors. It is located on the Mont des Arts/Kunstberg in central Brussels, near the Central Station.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 113, "text": "There are several academic libraries and archives in Brussels. The libraries of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) constitute the largest ensemble of university libraries in the city. In addition to the Solbosch location, there are branches in La Plaine and Erasme/Erasmus. Other academic libraries include those of Saint-Louis University, Brussels and the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain).", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 114, "text": "Science and technology in Brussels is well developed with the presence of several universities and research institutes. The Brussels-Capital Region is home to several national science and technology institutes including the National Fund for Scientific Research (NFSR), the Institute for the Encouragement of Scientific Research and Innovation of Brussels (ISRIB), the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium (RASAB) and the Belgian Academy Council of Applied Sciences (BACAS). Several science parks associated with the universities are also spread over the region.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 115, "text": "The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, located in Leopold Park, houses the world's largest hall completely dedicated to dinosaurs, with its collection of 30 fossilised Iguanodon skeletons. In addition, the Planetarium of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (part of the institutions of the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office), on the Heysel Plateau in Laeken, is one of the largest in Europe.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 116, "text": "Brussels is home to a thriving pharmaceutical and health care industry which includes pioneering biotechnology research. The health sector employs 70,000 employees in 30,000 companies. There are 3,000 life sciences researchers in the city and two large science parks: Da Vinci Research Park and Erasmus Research Park. There are five university hospitals, a military hospital and more than 40 general hospitals and specialist clinics.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 117, "text": "Due to its bilingual nature, hospitals in the Brussels-Capital Region can be either monolingual French, monolingual Dutch, or bilingual, depending on their nature. University hospitals belong to one of the two linguistic communities and are thus monolingual French or Dutch by law. Other hospitals managed by a public authority must be legally bilingual. Private hospitals are legally not bound to either language, but most cater to both. However, all hospital emergency services in the Capital Region (whether part of a public or private hospital) are required to be bilingual, since patients transported by emergency ambulance cannot choose the hospital they will be brought to.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 118, "text": "Brussels has an extensive network of both private or public transportation means. Public transportation includes Brussels buses, trams, and metro (all three operated by the Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company (STIB/MIVB)), as well as a set of railway lines (operated by Infrabel) and railway stations served by public trains (operated by the National Railway Company of Belgium (NMBS/SNCB)). Air transport is available via one of the city's two airports (Brussels Airport and Brussels South Charleroi Airport), and boat transport is available via the Port of Brussels. Bicycle-sharing and car-sharing public systems are also available.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 119, "text": "The complexity of the Belgian political landscape makes some transportation issues difficult to solve. The Brussels-Capital Region is surrounded by the Flemish and Walloon regions, which means that the airports, as well as many roads serving Brussels (most notably the Brussels Ring) are located in the other two Belgian regions. The city is relatively car-dependent by northern European standards and is considered to be the most congested city in the world according to the INRIX traffic survey.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 120, "text": "The Brussels-Capital Region is served by two airports, both located outside of the administrative territory of the region. The most notable is Brussels Airport, located in the nearby Flemish municipality of Zaventem, 12 km (10 mi) east of the capital, which can be accessed by highway (A201), train and bus. The secondary airport is Brussels South Charleroi Airport, located in Gosselies, a part of the city of Charleroi (Wallonia), some 50 km (30 mi) south-west of Brussels, which can be accessed by highway (E19 then E420) or a private bus. There is also Melsbroek Air Base, located in Steenokkerzeel, a military airport which shares its infrastructure with Brussels Airport. The aforementioned airports are also the main airports of Belgium.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 121, "text": "Since the 16th century, Brussels has had its own harbour, the Port of Brussels. It has been enlarged throughout the centuries to become the second Belgian inland port. Historically situated near the Place Sainte-Catherine/Sint-Katelijneplein, it lies today to the north-west of the region, on the Brussels–Scheldt Maritime Canal (commonly called Willebroek Canal), which connects Brussels to Antwerp via the Scheldt. Ships and large barges up to 4,500 t (9,900,000 lb) can penetrate deep into the country, avoiding break-ups and load transfers between Antwerp and the centre of Brussels, hence reducing the cost for companies using the canal, and thus offering a competitive advantage.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 122, "text": "Moreover, the connection of the Willebroek Canal with the Brussels–Charleroi Canal, in the very heart of the capital, creates a north–south link, by means of waterways, between the Netherlands, Flanders and the industrial zone of Hainaut (Wallonia). There, navigation can access the network of French canals, thanks to the important inclined plane of Ronquières and the lifts of Strépy-Bracquegnies.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 123, "text": "The importance of river traffic in Brussels makes it possible to avoid the road equivalent of 740,000 trucks per year—almost 2,000 per day—which, in addition to easing traffic problems, represents an estimated carbon dioxide saving of 51,545 t (113,637,000 lb) per year.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 124, "text": "The Brussels-Capital Region has three main train stations: Brussels-South, Brussels-Central and Brussels-North, which are also the busiest of the country. Brussels-South is also served by direct high-speed rail links: to London by Eurostar trains via the Channel Tunnel (1hr 51min); to Amsterdam by Thalys and InterCity connections; to Amsterdam, Paris (1hr 50min and 1hr 25min respectively as of 6 April 2015), and Cologne by Thalys; and to Cologne (1hr 50min) and Frankfurt (2hr 57min) by the German ICE.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 125, "text": "The train rails in Brussels go underground, near the centre, through the North–South connection, with Brussels Central Station also being largely underground. The tunnel itself is only six tracks wide at its narrowest point, which often causes congestion and delays due to heavy use of the route.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 126, "text": "The City of Brussels has minor railway stations at Bockstael, Brussels-Chapel, Brussels-Congres, Brussels-Luxembourg, Brussels-Schuman, Brussels-West, Haren, Haren-South and Simonis. In the Brussels Region, there are also railways stations at Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, Boitsfort, Boondael, Bordet (Evere), Etterbeek, Evere, Forest-East, Forest-South, Jette, Meiser (Schaerbeek), Moensberg (Uccle), Saint-Job (Uccle), Schaarbeek, Uccle-Calevoet, Uccle-Stalle, Vivier d'Oie-Diesdelle (Uccle), Merode and Watermael.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 127, "text": "The Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company (STIB/MIVB) is the local public transport operator in Brussels. It covers the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region and some surface routes extend to the near suburbs in the other two regions, linking with the De Lijn network in Flanders and the TEC network in Wallonia.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 128, "text": "The Brussels Metro dates back to 1976, but underground lines known as the premetro have been serviced by tramways since 1968. It is the only rapid transit system in Belgium (Antwerp and Charleroi both having light rail systems). The network consists of four conventional metro lines and three premetro lines. The metro-grade lines are M1, M2, M5, and M6, with some shared sections, covering a total of 40 km (25 mi). As of 2017, the Metro network within the region has a total of 69 metro and premetro stations. The Metro is an important means of transport, connecting with six railway stations of the National Railway Company of Belgium (NMBS/SNCB), and many tram and bus stops operated by STIB/MIVB, and with Flemish De Lijn and Walloon TEC bus stops.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 129, "text": "A comprehensive bus and tram network covers the region. As of 2017, the Brussels tram system consists of 17 tram lines (three of which – lines T3, T4 and T7 – qualify as premetro lines that partly travel over underground sections that were intended to be eventually converted into metro lines). The total route length is 139 km (86 mi), making it one of the largest tram networks in Europe. The Brussels bus network is complementary to the rail network. It consists of 50 bus routes and 11 night routes, spanning 445 km (277 mi).", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 130, "text": "Since April 2007, STIB/MIVB has also been operating a night bus network called Noctis on Friday and Saturday nights from midnight until 3 a.m. The service consists of 11 routes (N04, N05, N06, N08, N09, N10, N11, N12, N13, N16 and N18). The fare on these night buses is the same as during the day. All the lines leave from the Place de la Bourse/Beursplein in the city centre at 30 minutes intervals and cover all the main streets in the capital, as they radiate outwards to the suburbs. Noctis services returned from 2 July 2021 after over a year of disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 131, "text": "MoBIB is the STIB/MIVB electronic smart card, introduced in 2007, replacing the discontinued paper tickets. The hourly travel fare includes all means of transport (metro, tram and bus) operated by STIB/MIVB. Each trip has a different cost depending on the type of support purchased. Passengers can purchase monthly passes, yearly passes, 1 and 10-trip tickets and daily and 3-day passes. These can be bought over the Internet, but require customers to have a smart card reader. GO vending machines accept coins, local and international chip and PIN credit and debit cards.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 132, "text": "Moreover, a complimentary interticketing system means that a combined STIB/MIVB ticket holder can, depending on the option, also use the train network operated by NMBS/SNCB and/or long-distance buses and commuter services operated by De Lijn or TEC. With this ticket, a single journey can include multiple stages across the different modes of transport and networks.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 133, "text": "Since 2003, Brussels has had a car-sharing service operated by the Bremen company Cambio, in partnership with STIB/MIVB and the local ridesharing company Taxi Stop. In 2006, a public bicycle-sharing programme was introduced. The scheme was subsequently taken over by Villo!. Since 2008, this night-time public transport service has been supplemented by Collecto, a shared taxi system, which operates on weekdays between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. In 2012, the Zen Car electric car-sharing scheme was launched in the university and European areas.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 134, "text": "In medieval times, Brussels stood at the intersection of routes running north–south (the modern Rue Haute/Hoogstraat) and east–west (Chaussée de Gand/Gentsesteenweg–Rue du Marché aux Herbes/Grasmarkt–Rue de Namur/Naamsestraat). The ancient pattern of streets, radiating from the Grand-Place, in large part remains, but has been overlaid by boulevards built over the river Senne, over the city walls and over the railway connection between the North and South Stations. Today, Brussels has the most congested traffic in North America and Europe, according to US traffic information platform INRIX.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 135, "text": "Brussels is the hub of a range of national roads, the main ones being clockwise: the N1 (N to Breda), N2 (E to Maastricht), N3 (E to Aachen), N4 (SE to Luxembourg), N5 (S to Rheims), N6 (S to Maubeuge), N7 (SW to Lille), N8 (W to Koksijde) and N9 (NW to Ostend). Usually named chaussées/steenwegen, these highways normally run in a straight line, but sometimes lose themselves in a maze of narrow shopping streets. The region is skirted by the European route E19 (N-S) and the E40 (E-W), while the E411 leads away to the SE. Brussels has an orbital motorway, numbered R0 (R-zero) and commonly referred to as the Ring. It is pear-shaped, as the southern side was never built as originally conceived, owing to residents' objections.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 136, "text": "The city centre, sometimes known as the Pentagon, is surrounded by an inner ring road, the Small Ring (French: Petite Ceinture, Dutch: Kleine Ring), a sequence of boulevards formally numbered R20 or N0. These were built upon the site of the second set of city walls following their demolition. The Metro line 2 runs under much of these. Since June 2015, a number of central boulevards inside the Pentagon have become car-free, limiting transit traffic through the old city.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 137, "text": "On the eastern side of the region, the R21 or Greater Ring (French: Grande Ceinture, Dutch: Grote Ring) is formed by a string of boulevards that curves round from Laeken to Uccle. Some premetro stations (see Brussels Metro) were built on that route. A little further out, a stretch numbered R22 leads from Zaventem to Saint-Job.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 138, "text": "The Brussels local police, supported by the federal police, is responsible for law enforcement in Brussels. The 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region are divided into six police zones, all bilingual (French and Dutch):", "title": "Security and emergency services" }, { "paragraph_id": 139, "text": "The Brussels Fire and Emergency Medical Care Service, commonly known by its acronym SIAMU (DBDMH), operates in the 19 municipalities of Brussels. It is a class X fire department and the largest fire service in Belgium in terms of annual operations, equipment, and personnel. It has 9 fire stations, spread over the entire Brussels-Capital Region, and employs about 1,000 professional firefighters. As well as preventing and fighting fires, SIAMU also provides emergency medical care services in Brussels via its centralised 100 number (and the single 112 emergency number for the 27 countries of the European Union). It is bilingual (French–Dutch).", "title": "Security and emergency services" }, { "paragraph_id": 140, "text": "Brussels is one of the greenest capitals in Europe, with over 8,000 hectares of green spaces. Vegetation cover and natural areas are higher in the outskirts, where they have limited the peri-urbanisation of the capital, but they decrease sharply towards the centre of Brussels; 10% in the central Pentagon, 30% of the municipalities in the first ring, and 71% of the municipalities in the second ring are occupied by green spaces.", "title": "Parks and green spaces" }, { "paragraph_id": 141, "text": "Many parks and gardens, both public and privately owned, are scattered throughout the city. In addition to this, the Sonian Forest is located in its southern part and stretches out over the three Belgian regions. As of 2017, it has been inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the only Belgian component to the multinational inscription 'Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe'.", "title": "Parks and green spaces" }, { "paragraph_id": 142, "text": "Brussels is twinned with the following cities:", "title": "Twin towns – sister cities" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Special:Log/uploadBE or be may refer to:Special:EmailUser", "title": "" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "A bell is a percussion instrument, usually cup-shaped.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Bell may also refer to:", "title": "" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by Finnish company Nokia. It is headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and operates a global network of laboratories.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Researchers working at Bell Laboratories are credited with the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the Unix operating system, and the programming languages B, C, C++, S, SNOBOL, AWK, AMPL, and others. Ten Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Bell Labs had its origin in the complex corporate organization of the Bell System telephone conglomerate. The laboratory began in the late 19th century as the Western Electric Engineering Department, located at 463 West Street in New York City. After years of conducting research and development under Western Electric, a Bell subsidiary, the Engineering Department was reformed into Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1925 and placed under the shared ownership of Western Electric and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). In the 1960s, laboratory and company headquarters were moved to New Jersey. Nokia acquired Bell Labs in 2016.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In 1880, when the French government awarded Alexander Graham Bell the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs for the invention of the telephone (equivalent to about US$10,000 at the time, or about $310,000 now), he used the award to fund the Volta Laboratory (also known as the \"Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory\") in Washington, D.C. in collaboration with Sumner Tainter and Bell's cousin Chichester Bell. The laboratory was variously known as the Volta Bureau, the Bell Carriage House, the Bell Laboratory and the Volta Laboratory.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "It focused on the analysis, recording, and transmission of sound. Bell used his considerable profits from the laboratory for further research and education advancing the diffusion of knowledge relating to the deaf. This resulted in the founding of the Volta Bureau (c. 1887) at the Washington, D.C. home of his father, linguist Alexander Melville Bell. The carriage house there, at 1527 35th Street N.W., became their headquarters in 1889.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "In 1893, Bell constructed a new building close by at 1537 35th Street N.W., specifically to house the lab. This building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "After the invention of the telephone, Bell maintained a relatively distant role with the Bell System as a whole, but continued to pursue his own personal research interests.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The Bell Patent Association was formed by Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Sanders, and Gardiner Hubbard when filing the first patents for the telephone in 1876.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Bell Telephone Company, the first telephone company, was formed a year later. It later became a part of the American Bell Telephone Company.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "In 1884, the American Bell Telephone Company created the Mechanical Department from the Electrical and Patent Department formed a year earlier.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) and its own subsidiary company, took control of American Bell and the Bell System by 1889.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "American Bell held a controlling interest in Western Electric (which was the manufacturing arm of the business) whereas AT&T was doing research into the service providers.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "In 1896, Western Electric bought property at 463 West Street to centralize the manufacturers and engineers which had been supplying AT&T with such technology as telephones, telephone exchange switches and transmission equipment.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "During the early 20th century, there were laboratories built at various locations with historical significance. In 1915, a shack at Montauk, Long Island achieved the first radio transmissions. Also the same year, a house in Arlington, Virginia, performed tests on the first transoceanic radio telephone. A radio reception laboratory was established in 1919 in the Cliffwood section of Aberdeen Township, New Jersey. Additionally for 1919, a transmission studies site was established in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania that built, in 1929, the coaxial conductor line for first tests of long distance transmission in various frequencies..", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "On January 1, 1925, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. was organized to consolidate the development and research activities in the communication field and allied sciences for the Bell System. Ownership was evenly shared between Western Electric and AT&T. The new company had 3600 engineers, scientists, and support staff. Its 400,000-square-foot (37,000 m) space was expanded with a new building occupying about one quarter of a city block.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The first chairman of the board of directors was John J. Carty, the vice-president of AT&T, and the first president was Frank B. Jewett, also a board member, who stayed there until 1940. The operations were directed by E. B. Craft, executive vice-president, and formerly chief engineer at Western Electric.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The early 1920s established a few outdoor facilities and radio communications developments facilities. In 1925, the test plot studies were established at Gulfport, Mississippi, where there were numerous telephone pole samples established for wood preservation. At the Deal, New Jersey, location, work was done on ship-to-shore radio telephony. In 1926, land in the Whippany section of Hanover Township, New Jersey, land was acquired and established for the development of a 50-kilowatt broadcast transmitter, In 1931, Whippany increased with 75 acres (30 ha) added from a nearby property. In 1928, a 15-acre (6.1 ha) site in Chester Township, New Jersey, was leased for outdoor tests, though the facility became inadequate for such purposes. In 1930, the Chester location required the purchase of an additional 85 acres (34 ha) of land to be used for a new outdoor plant development laboratory. Prior to Chester being established, a test plot was installed in Limon, Colorado in 1929, similar to the one in Gulfport. The three test plots at Gulfport, Limon, and Chester were outdoor facilities for preservatives and prolonging the use of telephone poles. Additionally, in 1929, a land expansion was done at the Deal Labs to 208 acres (84 ha). This added land increased the facility for radio transmission studies.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The beginning of 1930s, established three facilities with radio communications experiments and chemical aspects testing. By 1939, the Summit, New Jersey, chemical laboratory was nearly 10 years established in a three story building conducted experiments in corrosion, using various fungicides tests on cables, metallic components, or wood. For 1929, land was purchased in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, for a radio reception laboratory to replace the Cliffwood location that had been in operation since 1919. In 1930, the Cliffwood location was ending its operations as Holmdel was established. Whereas, in 1930, a location in Mendham Township, New Jersey, was established to continue radio receiver developments farther from the Whippany location and eliminate transmitter interference at that facility with developments. The Mendham location worked on communication equipment and broadcast receivers. These devices were used for marine, aircraft, and police services as well as the location performed precision frequency-measuring apparatus, field strength measurements, and conducted radio interference.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "By the early 1940s, Bell Labs engineers and scientists had begun to move to other locations away from the congestion and environmental distractions of New York City, and in 1967 Bell Laboratories headquarters was officially relocated to Murray Hill, New Jersey.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Among the later Bell Laboratories locations in New Jersey were Holmdel Township, Crawford Hill, the Deal Test Site, Freehold, Lincroft, Long Branch, Middletown, Neptune Township, Princeton, Piscataway, Red Bank, Chester Township, and Whippany. Of these, Murray Hill and Crawford Hill remain in existence (the Piscataway and Red Bank locations were transferred to and are now operated by Telcordia Technologies and the Whippany site was purchased by Bayer).", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The largest grouping of people in the company was in Illinois, at Naperville-Lisle, in the Chicago area, which had the largest concentration of employees (about 11,000) prior to 2001. There also were groups of employees in Indianapolis, Indiana; Columbus, Ohio; North Andover, Massachusetts; Allentown, Pennsylvania; Reading, Pennsylvania; and Breinigsville, Pennsylvania; Burlington, North Carolina (1950s–1970s, moved to Greensboro 1980s) and Westminster, Colorado. Since 2001, many of the former locations have been scaled down or closed.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Bell's Holmdel research and development lab, a 1,900,000-square-foot (180,000 m) structure set on 473 acres (191 ha), was closed in 2007. The mirrored-glass building was designed by Eero Saarinen. In August 2013, Somerset Development bought the building, intending to redevelop it into a mixed commercial and residential project. A 2012 article expressed doubt on the success of the newly named Bell Works site, but several large tenants had announced plans to move in through 2016 and 2017.", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Bell Lab's 1974 corporate directory listed 22 labs in the United States, located in:", "title": "Origin and historical locations" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Bell Laboratories was, and is, regarded by many as the premier research facility of its type, developing a wide range of revolutionary technologies, including radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, information theory, the operating system Unix, the programming languages C and C++, solar cells, the charge-coupled device (CCD), and many other optical, wireless, and wired communications technologies and systems.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "In 1924, Bell Labs physicist Walter A. Shewhart proposed the control chart as a method to determine when a process was in a state of statistical control. Shewhart's methods were the basis for statistical process control (SPC): the use of statistically based tools and techniques to manage and improve processes. This was the origin of the modern quality control movement, including Six Sigma.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "In 1926, the laboratories invented an early synchronous-sound motion picture system, in competition with Fox Movietone and DeForest Phonofilm.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "In 1927, a Bell team headed by Herbert E. Ives successfully transmitted long-distance 128-line television images of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover from Washington to New York. In 1928 the thermal noise in a resistor was first measured by John B. Johnson, for which Harry Nyquist provided the theoretical analysis; this is now termed Johnson noise. During the 1920s, the one-time pad cipher was invented by Gilbert Vernam and Joseph Mauborgne at the laboratories. Bell Labs' Claude Shannon later proved that it is unbreakable.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "In 1928, Harold Black invented the negative feedback system commonly used in amplifiers. Later, Harry Nyquist analyzed Black's design rule for negative feedback. This work was published in 1932 and became known as the Nyquist criterion.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "In 1931, a foundation for radio astronomy was laid by Karl Jansky during his work investigating the origins of static on long-distance shortwave communications. He discovered that radio waves were being emitted from the center of the galaxy.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "In 1931 and 1932, the labs made experimental high fidelity, long playing, and even stereophonic recordings of the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "In 1933, stereo signals were transmitted live from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "In 1937, the vocoder, an electronic speech compression device, or codec, and the Voder, the first electronic speech synthesizer, were developed and demonstrated by Homer Dudley, the Voder being demonstrated at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Bell researcher Clinton Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with George Paget Thomson for the discovery of electron diffraction, which helped lay the foundation for solid-state electronics.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "In the early 1940s, the photovoltaic cell was developed by Russell Ohl. In 1943, Bell developed SIGSALY, the first digital scrambled speech transmission system, used by the Allies in World War II. The British wartime codebreaker Alan Turing visited the labs at this time, working on speech encryption and meeting Claude Shannon.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Bell Labs Quality Assurance Department gave the world and the United States such statisticians as Walter A. Shewhart, W. Edwards Deming, Harold F. Dodge, George D. Edwards, Harry Romig, R. L. Jones, Paul Olmstead, E.G.D. Paterson, and Mary N. Torrey. During World War II, Emergency Technical Committee – Quality Control, drawn mainly from Bell Labs' statisticians, was instrumental in advancing Army and Navy ammunition acceptance and material sampling procedures.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "In 1947, the transistor, arguably the most important invention developed by Bell Laboratories, was invented by John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and William Bradford Shockley (and who subsequently shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956). In 1947, Richard Hamming invented Hamming codes for error detection and correction. For patent reasons, the result was not published until 1950.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "In 1948, \"A Mathematical Theory of Communication\", one of the founding works in information theory, was published by Claude Shannon in the Bell System Technical Journal. It built in part on earlier work in the field by Bell researchers Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, but it greatly extended these. Bell Labs also introduced a series of increasingly complex calculators through the decade. Shannon was also the founder of modern cryptography with his 1949 paper Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "The 1950s also saw developments based upon information theory. The central development was binary code systems. Efforts concentrated on the prime mission of supporting the Bell System with engineering advances, including the N-carrier system, TD microwave radio relay, direct distance dialing, E-repeater, wire spring relay, and the Number Five Crossbar Switching System.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "In 1952, William Gardner Pfann revealed the method of zone melting, which enabled semiconductor purification and level doping.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "In 1953, Maurice Karnaugh developed the Karnaugh map, used for managing of Boolean algebraic expressions.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "On January 1954, Bell Labs built the first completely transistorized computer machine, TRADIC or Flyable TRADIC, for the United States Air Force with 10,358 germanium point-contact diodes and 684 Bell Labs Type 1734 Type A cartridge transistors. The design team was led by electrical engineer Jean Howard Felker with James R. Harris and Louis C. Brown (\"Charlie Brown\") as the lead engineers on the project, which started in 1951. The device took only 3 cubic-feet and consumed 100 watt power for its' small and low powered design in comparison of the vacuum tube designs of the times. The device could be installed in a B-52 Stratofortress Bomber and had a performance up to one million logical operations a second. The flyable program used a Mylar sheet with punched holes, instead of the removable plugboard.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "In 1954, the first modern solar cell was invented at Bell Laboratories.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "In 1956 TAT-1, the first transatlantic communications cable to carry telephone conversations, was laid between Scotland and Newfoundland in a joint effort by AT&T, Bell Laboratories, and British and Canadian telephone companies.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "In 1957, Max Mathews created MUSIC, one of the first computer programs to play electronic music. Robert C. Prim and Joseph Kruskal developed new greedy algorithms that revolutionized computer network design.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "In 1958, a technical paper by Arthur Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes first described the laser.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "In 1959, Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng invented the metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). The MOSFET has achieved electronic hegemony and sustains the large-scale integration (LSI) of circuits underlying today's information society.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "On October 1, 1960, the Kwajalein Field Station was announced as a location for the NIKE-ZEUS test program. Mr. R. W. Benfer was the first director to arrive shortly on October 5 for the program. Bell Labs designed many of the major system elements and conducted fundamental investigations of phase-controlled scanning antenna arrays.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "In December 1960, Ali Javan, PhD physicist from the University of Tehran, Iran with help by Rolf Seebach and his associates William Bennett and Donald Heriot, successfully operated the first gas laser, the first continuous-light laser, operating at an unprecedented accuracy and color purity.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "In 1962, the electret microphone was invented by Gerhard M. Sessler and James E. West. Also in 1962, John R. Pierce's vision of communications satellites was realized by the launch of Telstar.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "On July 10, 1962, the Telstar spacecraft was launched into orbit by NASA and it was designed and built by Bell Laboratories. The first worldwide television broadcast was July 23, 1962 with a press conference by President Kennedy.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "In Spring 1964, the building of an electronic switching systems center was planned at Bell Laboratories near Naperville, Illinois. The building in 1966 would be called Indian Hill, and development work from former electronic switching organization at Holmdel and Systems Equipment Engineering organization would occupy the laboratory with engineers from Western Electric Hawthorne Works. Scheduled for work were about 1,200 people when completed in 1966, and peaked at 11,000 before October 2001 Lucent Technologies downsizing occurred.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "In 1964, the carbon dioxide laser was invented by Kumar Patel and the discovery/operation of the Nd:YAG laser was demonstrated by J.E. Geusic et al. Experiments by Myriam Sarachik provided the first data that confirmed the Kondo effect. The research of Philip W. Anderson into electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems led to improved understanding of metals and insulators for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1977. In 1965, Penzias and Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "Frank W. Sinden, Edward E. Zajac, Ken Knowlton, and A. Michael Noll made computer-animated movies during the early to mid-1960s. Ken Knowlton invented the computer animation language BEFLIX. The first digital computer art was created in 1962 by Noll.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "In 1966, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a key technology in wireless services, was developed and patented by R. W. Chang.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "In December 1966, the New York City site was sold and became the Westbeth Artists Community complex.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "In 1968, molecular beam epitaxy was developed by J.R. Arthur and A.Y. Cho; molecular beam epitaxy allows semiconductor chips and laser matrices to be manufactured one atomic layer at a time.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "In 1969, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson created the computer operating system UNIX for the support of telecommunication switching systems as well as general-purpose computing. Also, in 1969, the charge-coupled device (CCD) was invented by Willard Boyle and George E. Smith, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "From 1969 to 1971, Aaron Marcus, the first graphic designer involved with computer graphics, researched, designed, and programmed a prototype interactive page-layout system for the Picturephone.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "The 1970s and 1980s saw more and more computer-related inventions at the Bell Laboratories as part of the personal computing revolution.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "In the 1970s, major central office technology evolved from crossbar electromechanical relay-based technology and discrete transistor logic to Bell Labs-developed thick film hybrid and transistor–transistor logic (TTL), stored program-controlled switching systems; 1A/#4 TOLL Electronic Switching Systems (ESS) and 2A Local Central Offices produced at the Bell Labs Naperville and Western Electric Lisle, Illinois facilities. This technology evolution dramatically reduced floor space needs. The new ESS also came with its own diagnostic software that needed only a switchman and several frame technicians to maintain.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "About 1970, the coax-22 cable was developed by Bell Labs. This coax cable with 22 strands allowed a total capacity of 132,000 telephone calls. Previously, a 12-strand coax cable was used for L-carrier systems. Both of these types of cables were manufactured at Western Electrics' Baltimore Works facility on machines designed by a Western Electric Senior development engineer.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "In 1970, A. Michael Noll invented a tactile, force-feedback system, coupled with interactive stereoscopic computer display.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "In 1971, an improved task priority system for computerized telephone exchange switching systems for telephone traffic was invented by Erna Schneider Hoover, who received one of the first software patents for it.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "In 1972, Dennis Ritchie developed the compiled programming language C as a replacement for the interpreted language B, which was then used in a worse is better rewrite of UNIX. Also, the language AWK was designed and implemented by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan of Bell Laboratories. Also in 1972, Marc Rochkind invented the Source Code Control System.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "In 1976, optical fiber systems were first tested in Georgia.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "Production of their first internally-designed microprocessor, the BELLMAC-8, began in 1977. In 1980 they demonstrated the first single-chip 32-bit microprocessor, the Bellmac 32A, which went into production in 1982.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "In 1978, the proprietary operating system Oryx/Pecos was developed from scratch by Bell Labs in order to run AT&T's large-scale PBX switching equipment. It was first used with AT&T's flagship System 75, and until very recently, was used in all variations up through and including Definity G3 (Generic 3) switches, now manufactured by AT&T/Lucent Technologies spin off Avaya.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "During the 1980s, the operating system Plan 9 from Bell Labs was developed extending the UNIX model. Also, the Radiodrum, an electronic music instrument played in three space dimensions, was invented.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "In 1980, the TDMA digital cellular telephone technology was patented.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "In late 1981, the Bell Labs Research organization internal use of a terminal called Jerq, lead to the Blit (computer terminal) being renamed by designers, Rob Pike and Bart Locanthi, Jr for the UNIX operating system. It was a programmable bitmap graphics terminal using multi-layers of opened windows operated by a keyboard and a distinguished red colored three-button digitized mouse. It was later known as the AT&T 5620 DMD terminal for commercial sales. The Blit used the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, whereas, the Teletype/AT&T 5620 Dot Mapped Display terminal used the Western Electric WE32000 microprocessor.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "The launching of the Bell Labs Fellows Award started in 1982 to recognize and honor scientists and engineers who have made outstanding and sustained R&D contributions at AT&T with a level of distinction. As of the 2021 inductees, only 336 people have received the honor.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were also Bell Labs Fellows for 1982. Ritchie started in 1967 at Bell Labs in the Bell Labs Computer Systems Research department. Thompson started in 1966. Both co-inventors of the UNIX operating system and C language were also awarded decades later the 2011 Japan Prize for Information and Communications.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "In 1982, fractional quantum Hall effect was discovered by Horst Störmer and former Bell Laboratories researchers Robert B. Laughlin and Daniel C. Tsui; they consequently won a Nobel Prize in 1998 for the discovery.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "In 1984, the first photoconductive antennas for picosecond electromagnetic radiation were demonstrated by Auston and others. This type of antenna became an important component in terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. In 1984, Karmarkar's algorithm for linear programming was developed by mathematician Narendra Karmarkar. Also in 1984, a divestiture agreement signed in 1982 with the American Federal government forced the breakup of AT&T, and Bellcore (now iconectiv) was split off from Bell Laboratories to provide the same R&D functions for the newly created local exchange carriers. AT&T also was limited to using the Bell trademark only in association with Bell Laboratories. Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. became a wholly owned company of the new AT&T Technologies unit, the former Western Electric. The 5ESS Switch was developed during this transition.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "The National Medal of Technology was awarded to Bell Labs, the first corporation to achieve this honor in February 1985.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "In 1985, laser cooling was used to slow and manipulate atoms by Steven Chu and team. In 1985, the modeling language A Mathematical Programming Language, AMPL, was developed by Robert Fourer, David M. Gay and Brian Kernighan at Bell Laboratories. Also in 1985, Bell Laboratories was awarded the National Medal of Technology \"For contribution over decades to modern communication systems\".", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "In 1985, the programming language C++ had its first commercial release. Bjarne Stroustrup started developing C++ at Bell Laboratories in 1979 as an extension to the original C language.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "Arthur Ashkin invented optical tweezers that grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells with their laser beam fingers. A major breakthrough came in 1987, when Ashkin used the tweezers to capture living bacteria without harming them. He immediately began studying biological systems using the optical tweezers, which are now widely used to investigate the machinery of life. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (2018) for his work involving optical tweezers and their application to biological systems.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "In the mid-1980s, the transmission departments of Bell Labs developed highly reliable long-haul fiber-optic communications systems based on SONET, and network operations techniques, that enabled very high volume, near-instantaneous communications across the North American continent. Fail-safe and disaster-related traffic management operations systems enhanced the usefulness of the fiber optics. There was a synergy in the land-based and seas-based fiber optic systems, although they were developed by different divisions within the company. These systems are still in use throughout the U.S. today.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 79, "text": "Charles A. Burrus became a Bell Labs Fellow in 1988 for his work done as a Technical Staff member. Prior to this accomplishment, was awarded in 1982 the AT&T Bell Laboratories Distinguished Technical Staff Award. Charles started in 1955 at the Holmdel Bell Labs location and retired in 1996 with consultations to Lucent Technologies up to 2002.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 80, "text": "In 1988, TAT-8 became the first transatlantic fiber-optic cable. Bell Labs in Freehold, NJ developed the 1.3-micron fiber, cable, splicing, laser detector, and 280 Mbit/s repeater for 40,000 telephone-call capacity.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 81, "text": "In the late 1980s, realizing that voiceband modems were approaching the Shannon limit on bit rate, Richard D. Gitlin, Jean-Jacques Werner, and their colleagues pioneered a major breakthrough by inventing DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and creating the technology that enabled megabit transmission on installed copper telephone lines, thus facilitating the broadband era.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 82, "text": "Bell Labs' John Mayo received the National Medal of Technology in 1990.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 83, "text": "In May 1990, Ronald Snare was named AT&T Bell Laboratories Fellow, for \"Singular contributions to the development of the common-channel signaling network and the signal transfer points globally.\" This system began service in the United States in 1978.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 84, "text": "In the early 1990s, approaches to increase modem speeds to 56K were explored at Bell Labs, and early patents were filed in 1992 by Ender Ayanoglu, Nuri R. Dagdeviren and their colleagues.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 85, "text": "The scientist, W. Lincoln Hawkins in 1992 received the National Medal of Technology for work done at Bell Labs.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 86, "text": "In 1992, Jack Salz, Jack Winters and Richard D. Gitlin provided the foundational technology to demonstrate that adaptive antenna arrays at the transmitter and receiver can substantially increase both the reliability (via diversity) and capacity (via spatial multiplexing) of wireless systems without expanding the bandwidth. Subsequently, the BLAST system proposed by Gerard Foschini and colleagues dramatically expanded the capacity of wireless systems. This technology, known today as MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output), was a significant factor in the standardization, commercialization, performance improvement, and growth of cellular and wireless LAN systems.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 87, "text": "Amos Joel in 1993 received the National Medal of Technology.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 88, "text": "Two AT&T Bell Labs scientists, Joel Engel and Richard Frenkiel, were honored with the National Medal of Technology, in 1994.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 89, "text": "In 1994, the quantum cascade laser was invented by Federico Capasso, Alfred Cho, Jerome Faist and their collaborators. Also in 1994, Peter Shor devised his quantum factorization algorithm.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 90, "text": "In 1996, SCALPEL electron lithography, which prints features atoms wide on microchips, was invented by Lloyd Harriott and his team. The operating system Inferno, an update of Plan 9, was created by Dennis Ritchie with others, using the then-new concurrent programming language Limbo. A high performance database engine (Dali) was developed which became DataBlitz in its product form.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 91, "text": "In 1996, AT&T spun off Bell Laboratories, along with most of its equipment manufacturing business, into a new company named Lucent Technologies. AT&T retained a small number of researchers who made up the staff of the newly created AT&T Labs.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 92, "text": "Lucy Sanders was the third woman to receive the Bell Labs Fellow award in 1996, for her work in creating a RISC chip that allowed more phone calls using software and hardware on a single server. She started in 1977 and was one of the few woman engineers at Bell Labs.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 93, "text": "In 1997, the smallest then-practical transistor (60 nanometers, 182 atoms wide) was built. In 1998, the first optical router was invented.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 94, "text": "Rudolph Kazarinov and Federico Capasso received the optoelectronics Rank Prize on December 8, 1998.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 95, "text": "In December 1998, Ritchie and Thompson also were honorees of the National Medal of Technology for their work done for pre-Lucent Technologies Bell Labs. The award was presented by U.S. President William Clinton in 1999 in a White House ceremony.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 96, "text": "2000 was an active year for the Laboratories, in which DNA machine prototypes were developed; progressive geometry compression algorithm made widespread 3-D communication practical; the first electrically powered organic laser was invented; a large-scale map of cosmic dark matter was compiled; and the F-15 (material), an organic material that makes plastic transistors possible, was invented.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 97, "text": "In 2002, physicist Jan Hendrik Schön was fired after his work was found to contain fraudulent data. It was the first known case of fraud at Bell Labs.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 98, "text": "In 2003, the New Jersey Institute of Technology Biomedical Engineering Laboratory was created at Murray Hill, New Jersey.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 99, "text": "In 2004, Lucent Technologies awarded two women the prestigious Bell Labs Fellow Award. Magaly Spector, a director in INS/Network Systems Group, was awarded for \"sustained and exceptional scientific and technological contributions in solid-state physics, III-V material for semiconductor lasers, Gallium Arsenide integrated circuits, and the quality and reliability of products used in high speed optical transport systems for next generation high bandwidth communication.\" Eve Varma, a technical manager in MNS/Network Systems Group, was awarded for her citation in \"sustained contributions to digital and optical networking, including architecture, synchronization, restoration, standards, operations and control.\"", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 100, "text": "In 2005, Jeong H. Kim, former President of Lucent's Optical Network Group, returned from academia to become the President of Bell Laboratories.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 101, "text": "In April 2006, Bell Laboratories' parent company, Lucent Technologies, signed a merger agreement with Alcatel. On December 1, 2006, the merged company, Alcatel-Lucent, began operations. This deal raised concerns in the United States, where Bell Laboratories works on defense contracts. A separate company, LGS Innovations, with an American board was set up to manage Bell Laboratories' and Lucent's sensitive U.S. government contracts. In March 2019, LGS Innovations was purchased by CACI.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 102, "text": "In December 2007, it was announced that the former Lucent Bell Laboratories and the former Alcatel Research and Innovation would be merged into one organization under the name of Bell Laboratories. This is the first period of growth following many years during which Bell Laboratories progressively lost manpower due to layoffs and spin-offs making the company shut down briefly.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 103, "text": "In February 2008, Alcatel-Lucent continued the Bell Laboratories tradition of awarding the prestigious award for outstanding technical contributors. Martin J. Glapa, a former chief Technical Officer of Lucent's Cable Communications Business Unit and Director of Advanced Technologies, was presented by Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs President Jeong H. Kim with the 2006 Bell Labs Fellow Award in Network Architecture, Network Planning, and Professional Services with particular focus in Cable TV Systems and Broadband Services having \"significant resulting Alcatel-Lucent commercial successes.\" Glapa is a patent holder and has co-written the 2004 technical paper called \"Optimal Availability & Security For Voice Over Cable Networks\" and co-authored the 2008 \"Impact of bandwidth demand growth on HFC networks\" published by IEEE.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 104, "text": "As of July 2008, however, only four scientists remained in physics research, according to a report by the scientific journal Nature.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 105, "text": "On August 28, 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced it was pulling out of basic science, material physics, and semiconductor research, and it will instead focus on more immediately marketable areas, including networking, high-speed electronics, wireless networks, nanotechnology and software.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 106, "text": "In 2009, Willard Boyle and George Smith were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention and development of the charge-coupled device (CCD).", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 107, "text": "Rob Soni was an Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs Fellow in 2009 as cited for work in winning North American customers wireless business and for helping to define 4G wireless networks with transformative system architectures.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 108, "text": "Gee Rittenhouse, former Head of Research, returned from his position as chief operating officer of Alcatel-Lucent's Software, Services, and Solutions business in February 2013, to become the 12th President of Bell Labs.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 109, "text": "On November 4, 2013, Alcatel-Lucent announced the appointment of Marcus Weldon as President of Bell Labs. His stated charter was to return Bell Labs to the forefront of innovation in Information and communications technology by focusing on solving the key industry challenges, as was the case in the great Bell Labs innovation eras in the past.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 110, "text": "On May 20, 2014, Michel Combes, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, announced the opening of a Bell Labs location in Tel Aviv, Israel by summer time. The Bell Labs research team would be directed by an Israeli computer scientist and alum of Bell Labs, Danny Raz. The Bell Labs research would be in 'cloud networking' technologies for communications. The location would have approximately twenty academic scientific background employees.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 111, "text": "In July 2014, Bell Labs announced it had broken \"the broadband Internet speed record\" with a new technology dubbed XG-FAST that promises 10 gigabits per second transmission speeds.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 112, "text": "In 2014, Eric Betzig shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in super-resolved fluorescence microscopy which he began pursuing while at Bell Labs in the Semiconductor Physics Research Department.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 113, "text": "On April 15, 2015, Nokia agreed to acquire Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs' parent company, in a share exchange worth $16.6 billion. Their first day of combined operations was January 14, 2016.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 114, "text": "In September 2016, Nokia Bell Labs, along with Technische Universität Berlin, Deutsche Telekom T-Labs and the Technical University of Munich achieved a data rate of one terabit per second by improving transmission capacity and spectral efficiency in an optical communications field trial with a new modulation technique.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 115, "text": "Antero Taivalsaari became a Bell Labs Fellow in 2016 for his specific work.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 116, "text": "In 2017, Dragan Samardzija was awarded the Bell Labs Fellow.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 117, "text": "In 2018, Arthur Ashkin shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on \"the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems\" which was developed at Bell Labs in the 1980s.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 118, "text": "In 2020, Alfred Aho and Jeffrey Ullman shared the Turing Award for their work on compilers, starting with their tenure at Bell Labs during 1967–69.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 119, "text": "On, November 16, 2021, Nokia presented the 2021 Bell Labs Fellows Award Ceremony, six new members (Igor Curcio, Matthew Andrews, Bjorn Jelonnek, Ed Harstead, Gino Dion, Esa Tiirola) held at Nokia Batvik Mansion, Finland.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 120, "text": "In December 2021, Nokia's Chief Strategy and Technology Officer decided to reorganize Bell Labs in two separate functional organizations: Bell Labs Core Research and Bell Labs Solutions research. Bell Labs Core Research is in charge of creating disruptive technologies with 10-year horizon. Bell Labs Solutions Research, looks for shorter term solutions that can provide growth opportunities for Nokia.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 121, "text": "The Nokia 2022 Bell Labs Fellows were recognized on November 29, 2022, in a New Jersey ceremony. Five researchers were inducted to the total of 341 recipients since its inception by AT&T Bell Labs in 1982. One member was from New Jersey, two were from Cambridge, UK, and two were from Finland representing Espoo and Tampere locations.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 122, "text": "On December 11, 2023, Nokia announced a state of the art research facility in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The planned relocation of the 80 year old, Murray Hill New Jersey Bell Labs facility would take place before 2028. The new building would be LEED Gold certified. The Murray Hill location has had iconic research of various historical innovations for AT&T Corp., Lucent Technologies, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nokia.", "title": "Discoveries and developments" }, { "paragraph_id": 123, "text": "Ten Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.", "title": "Nobel Prize, Turing Award, IEEE Medal of Honor" }, { "paragraph_id": 124, "text": "The Turing Award has been won five times by Bell Labs researchers.", "title": "Nobel Prize, Turing Award, IEEE Medal of Honor" }, { "paragraph_id": 125, "text": "First awarded in 1917, the IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest form of recognition by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The IEEE Medal of Honor has been won 22 times by Bell Labs researchers.", "title": "Nobel Prize, Turing Award, IEEE Medal of Honor" }, { "paragraph_id": 126, "text": "The Emmy Award has been won five times by Bell Labs: one under Lucent Technologies, one under Alcatel-Lucent, and three under Nokia.", "title": "Emmy Awards, Grammy Award, and Academy Award" }, { "paragraph_id": 127, "text": "The inventions of fiber-optics and research done in digital television and media File Format were under former AT&T Bell Labs ownership.", "title": "Emmy Awards, Grammy Award, and Academy Award" }, { "paragraph_id": 128, "text": "The Grammy Award has been won once by Bell Labs under Alcatel-Lucent.", "title": "Emmy Awards, Grammy Award, and Academy Award" }, { "paragraph_id": 129, "text": "The Academy Award has been won once by E. C. Wente and Bell Labs.", "title": "Emmy Awards, Grammy Award, and Academy Award" }, { "paragraph_id": 130, "text": "The American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Western Electric, and other Bell System companies issued numerous publications, such as local house organs, for corporate distribution, for the scientific and industry communities, and for the general public, including telephone subscribers.", "title": "Publications" }, { "paragraph_id": 131, "text": "The Bell Laboratories Record was a principal house organ, featuring general interest content such as corporate news, support staff profiles and events, reports of facilities upgrades, but also articles of research and development results written for technical or non-technical audiences. The publication commenced in 1925 with the founding of the laboratories.", "title": "Publications" }, { "paragraph_id": 132, "text": "A prominent journal for the focussed dissemination of original or reprinted scientific research by Bell Labs engineers and scientists was the Bell System Technical Journal, started in 1922 by the AT&T Information Department. Bell researchers also published widely in industry journals.", "title": "Publications" }, { "paragraph_id": 133, "text": "Some of these articles were reprinted by the Bell System as Monographs, consecutively issued starting in 1920. These reprints, numbering over 5000, comprise a catalog of Bell research over the decades. Research in the Monographs is aided by access to associated indexes, for monographs 1–1199, 1200–2850 (1958), 2851–4050 (1962), and 4051–4650 (1964).", "title": "Publications" }, { "paragraph_id": 134, "text": "Essentially all of the landmark work done by Bell Labs is memorialized in one or more corresponding monographs. Examples include:", "title": "Publications" }, { "paragraph_id": 135, "text": "On May 20, 2014, Bell Labs announced the Bell Labs Prize, a competition for innovators to offer proposals in information and communication technologies, with cash awards of up to $100,000 for the grand prize.", "title": "Programs" }, { "paragraph_id": 136, "text": "The Murray Hill campus features a 3,000-square-foot (280 m) exhibit, the Bell Labs Technology Showcase, showcasing the technological discoveries and developments at Bell Labs. The exhibit is located just off the main lobby and is open to the public.", "title": "Bell Labs Technology Showcase" }, { "paragraph_id": 137, "text": "40°41′0″N 74°24′1″W / 40.68333°N 74.40028°W / 40.68333; -74.40028", "title": "External links" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bjarne Stroustrup (/ˈbjɑːrnə ˈstrɒvstrʊp/; Danish: [ˈpjɑːnə ˈstʁʌwˀstʁɔp]; born 30 December 1950) is a Danish computer scientist, most notable for the invention and development of the C++ programming language. Stroustrup served as a visiting professor of computer science at Columbia University in the City of New York beginning in 2014, where he has been a full professor since 2022.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Stroustrup was born in Aarhus, Denmark. His family was working class, and he attended local schools.", "title": "Early life and education" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "He attended Aarhus University from 1969 to 1975 and graduated with a Candidatus Scientiarum in mathematics with computer science. His interests focused on microprogramming and machine architecture. He learned the fundamentals of object-oriented programming from its inventor, Kristen Nygaard, who frequently visited Aarhus.", "title": "Early life and education" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In 1979, he received his PhD in computer science from the University of Cambridge, where his research on distributed computing was supervised by David Wheeler.", "title": "Early life and education" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "In 1979, Stroustrup began his career as a member of technical staff in the Computer Science Research Center of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA. There, he began his work on C++ and programming techniques. Stroustrup was the head of AT&T Bell Labs' Large-scale Programming Research department, from its creation until late 2002. In 1993, he was made a Bell Labs fellow and in 1996, an AT&T Fellow.", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "From 2002 to 2014, Stroustrup was the College of Engineering Chair Professor in Computer Science at Texas A&M University. From 2011, he was made a University Distinguished Professor.", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "From January 2014 to April 2022, Stroustrup was a technical fellow and managing director in the technology division of Morgan Stanley in New York City and a visiting professor in computer science at Columbia University.", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "As of July 2022, Stroustrup is a full professor of Computer Science at Columbia University.", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Stroustrup is best known for his work on C++. In 1979, he began developing C++ (initially called \"C with Classes\"). In his own words, he \"invented C++, wrote its early definitions, and produced its first implementation [...] chose and formulated the design criteria for C++, designed all its major facilities, and was responsible for the processing of extension proposals in the C++ standards committee.\" C++ was made generally available in 1985. For non-commercial use, the source code of the compiler and the foundation libraries was the cost of shipping (US$75); this was before Internet access was common. Stroustrup also published a textbook for the language in 1985, The C++ Programming Language.", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The key language-technical areas of contribution of C++ are:", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Stroustrup documented his principles guiding the design of C++ and the evolution of the language in his 1994 book, The Design and Evolution of C++, and three papers for ACM's History of Programming Languages conferences.", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Stroustrup was a founding member of the C++ standards committee (from 1989, it was an ANSI committee and from 1991 an ISO committee) and has remained an active member ever since. For 24 years he chaired the subgroup chartered to handle proposals for language extensions (Evolution Working Group).", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Selected honors", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Fellowships", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Honorary doctorates and professorships", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Stroustrup has written or co-written a number of publications, including the books:", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "In all, these books have been translated into 21 languages.", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "More than 100 academic articles, including:", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "More than a hundred technical reports for the C++ standards committee (WG21)", "title": "Career and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Media related to Bjarne Stroustrup at Wikimedia Commons", "title": "References" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The brain (or encephalon) is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. The brain is the largest cluster of neurons in the body and is typically located in the head, usually near organs for special senses such as vision, hearing and olfaction. It is the most specialized and energy-consuming organ in the body, responsible for complex sensory perception, motor control, endocrine regulation and the development of intelligence.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "While invertebrate brains arise from paired segmental ganglia (each of which is only responsible for the respective body segment) of the ventral nerve cord, vertebrate brains develop axially from the midline dorsal nerve cord as a vesicular enlargement at the rostral end of the neural tube, with centralized control over all body segments. All vertebrate brains can be embryonically divided into three parts: the forebrain (prosencephalon, subdivided into telencephalon and diencephalon), midbrain (mesencephalon) and hindbrain (rhombencephalon, subdivided into metencephalon and myelencephalon). The spinal cord, which directly interacts with somatic functions below the head, can be considered a caudal extension of the myelencephalon enclosed inside the vertebral column. Together, the brain and spinal cord constitute the central nervous system in all vertebrates.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "In humans, the cerebral cortex contains approximately 14–16 billion neurons, and the estimated number of neurons in the cerebellum is 55–70 billion. Each neuron is connected by synapses to several thousand other neurons, typically communicating with one another via root-like protrusions called dendrites and long fiber-like extensions called axons, which are usually myelinated and carry trains of rapid micro-electric signal pulses called action potentials to target specific recipient cells in other areas of the brain or distant parts of the body. The prefrontal cortex, which controls executive functions, is particularly well developed in humans.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Physiologically, brains exert centralized control over a body's other organs. They act on the rest of the body both by generating patterns of muscle activity and by driving the secretion of chemicals called hormones. This centralized control allows rapid and coordinated responses to changes in the environment. Some basic types of responsiveness such as reflexes can be mediated by the spinal cord or peripheral ganglia, but sophisticated purposeful control of behavior based on complex sensory input requires the information integrating capabilities of a centralized brain.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The operations of individual brain cells are now understood in considerable detail but the way they cooperate in ensembles of millions is yet to be solved. Recent models in modern neuroscience treat the brain as a biological computer, very different in mechanism from a digital computer, but similar in the sense that it acquires information from the surrounding world, stores it, and processes it in a variety of ways.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "This article compares the properties of brains across the entire range of animal species, with the greatest attention to vertebrates. It deals with the human brain insofar as it shares the properties of other brains. The ways in which the human brain differs from other brains are covered in the human brain article. Several topics that might be covered here are instead covered there because much more can be said about them in a human context. The most important that are covered in the human brain article are brain disease and the effects of brain damage.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The shape and size of the brain varies greatly between species, and identifying common features is often difficult. Nevertheless, there are a number of principles of brain architecture that apply across a wide range of species. Some aspects of brain structure are common to almost the entire range of animal species; others distinguish \"advanced\" brains from more primitive ones, or distinguish vertebrates from invertebrates.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The simplest way to gain information about brain anatomy is by visual inspection, but many more sophisticated techniques have been developed. Brain tissue in its natural state is too soft to work with, but it can be hardened by immersion in alcohol or other fixatives, and then sliced apart for examination of the interior. Visually, the interior of the brain consists of areas of so-called grey matter, with a dark color, separated by areas of white matter, with a lighter color. Further information can be gained by staining slices of brain tissue with a variety of chemicals that bring out areas where specific types of molecules are present in high concentrations. It is also possible to examine the microstructure of brain tissue using a microscope, and to trace the pattern of connections from one brain area to another.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The brains of all species are composed primarily of two broad classes of cells: neurons and glial cells. Glial cells (also known as glia or neuroglia) come in several types, and perform a number of critical functions, including structural support, metabolic support, insulation, and guidance of development. Neurons, however, are usually considered the most important cells in the brain. The property that makes neurons unique is their ability to send signals to specific target cells over long distances. They send these signals by means of an axon, which is a thin protoplasmic fiber that extends from the cell body and projects, usually with numerous branches, to other areas, sometimes nearby, sometimes in distant parts of the brain or body. The length of an axon can be extraordinary: for example, if a pyramidal cell (an excitatory neuron) of the cerebral cortex were magnified so that its cell body became the size of a human body, its axon, equally magnified, would become a cable a few centimeters in diameter, extending more than a kilometer. These axons transmit signals in the form of electrochemical pulses called action potentials, which last less than a thousandth of a second and travel along the axon at speeds of 1–100 meters per second. Some neurons emit action potentials constantly, at rates of 10–100 per second, usually in irregular patterns; other neurons are quiet most of the time, but occasionally emit a burst of action potentials.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Axons transmit signals to other neurons by means of specialized junctions called synapses. A single axon may make as many as several thousand synaptic connections with other cells. When an action potential, traveling along an axon, arrives at a synapse, it causes a chemical called a neurotransmitter to be released. The neurotransmitter binds to receptor molecules in the membrane of the target cell.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Synapses are the key functional elements of the brain. The essential function of the brain is cell-to-cell communication, and synapses are the points at which communication occurs. The human brain has been estimated to contain approximately 100 trillion synapses; even the brain of a fruit fly contains several million. The functions of these synapses are very diverse: some are excitatory (exciting the target cell); others are inhibitory; others work by activating second messenger systems that change the internal chemistry of their target cells in complex ways. A large number of synapses are dynamically modifiable; that is, they are capable of changing strength in a way that is controlled by the patterns of signals that pass through them. It is widely believed that activity-dependent modification of synapses is the brain's primary mechanism for learning and memory.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Most of the space in the brain is taken up by axons, which are often bundled together in what are called nerve fiber tracts. A myelinated axon is wrapped in a fatty insulating sheath of myelin, which serves to greatly increase the speed of signal propagation. (There are also unmyelinated axons). Myelin is white, making parts of the brain filled exclusively with nerve fibers appear as light-colored white matter, in contrast to the darker-colored grey matter that marks areas with high densities of neuron cell bodies.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Except for a few primitive organisms such as sponges (which have no nervous system) and cnidarians (which have a diffuse nervous system consisting of a nerve net), all living multicellular animals are bilaterians, meaning animals with a bilaterally symmetric body plan (that is, left and right sides that are approximate mirror images of each other). All bilaterians are thought to have descended from a common ancestor that appeared late in the Cryogenian period, 700–650 million years ago, and it has been hypothesized that this common ancestor had the shape of a simple tubeworm with a segmented body. At a schematic level, that basic worm-shape continues to be reflected in the body and nervous system architecture of all modern bilaterians, including vertebrates. The fundamental bilateral body form is a tube with a hollow gut cavity running from the mouth to the anus, and a nerve cord with an enlargement (a ganglion) for each body segment, with an especially large ganglion at the front, called the brain. The brain is small and simple in some species, such as nematode worms; in other species, including vertebrates, it is the most complex organ in the body. Some types of worms, such as leeches, also have an enlarged ganglion at the back end of the nerve cord, known as a \"tail brain\".", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "There are a few types of existing bilaterians that lack a recognizable brain, including echinoderms and tunicates. It has not been definitively established whether the existence of these brainless species indicates that the earliest bilaterians lacked a brain, or whether their ancestors evolved in a way that led to the disappearance of a previously existing brain structure.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "This category includes tardigrades, arthropods, molluscs, and numerous types of worms. The diversity of invertebrate body plans is matched by an equal diversity in brain structures.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Two groups of invertebrates have notably complex brains: arthropods (insects, crustaceans, arachnids, and others), and cephalopods (octopuses, squids, and similar molluscs). The brains of arthropods and cephalopods arise from twin parallel nerve cords that extend through the body of the animal. Arthropods have a central brain, the supraesophageal ganglion, with three divisions and large optical lobes behind each eye for visual processing. Cephalopods such as the octopus and squid have the largest brains of any invertebrates.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "There are several invertebrate species whose brains have been studied intensively because they have properties that make them convenient for experimental work:", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The first vertebrates appeared over 500 million years ago (Mya), during the Cambrian period, and may have resembled the modern hagfish in form. Jawed fish appeared by 445 Mya, amphibians by 350 Mya, reptiles by 310 Mya and mammals by 200 Mya (approximately). Each species has an equally long evolutionary history, but the brains of modern hagfishes, lampreys, sharks, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals show a gradient of size and complexity that roughly follows the evolutionary sequence. All of these brains contain the same set of basic anatomical components, but many are rudimentary in the hagfish, whereas in mammals the foremost part (the telencephalon) is greatly elaborated and expanded.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Brains are most commonly compared in terms of their size. The relationship between brain size, body size and other variables has been studied across a wide range of vertebrate species. As a rule, brain size increases with body size, but not in a simple linear proportion. In general, smaller animals tend to have larger brains, measured as a fraction of body size. For mammals, the relationship between brain volume and body mass essentially follows a power law with an exponent of about 0.75. This formula describes the central tendency, but every family of mammals departs from it to some degree, in a way that reflects in part the complexity of their behavior. For example, primates have brains 5 to 10 times larger than the formula predicts. Predators tend to have larger brains than their prey, relative to body size.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "All vertebrate brains share a common underlying form, which appears most clearly during early stages of embryonic development. In its earliest form, the brain appears as three swellings at the front end of the neural tube; these swellings eventually become the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain (the prosencephalon, mesencephalon, and rhombencephalon, respectively). At the earliest stages of brain development, the three areas are roughly equal in size. In many classes of vertebrates, such as fish and amphibians, the three parts remain similar in size in the adult, but in mammals the forebrain becomes much larger than the other parts, and the midbrain becomes very small.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The brains of vertebrates are made of very soft tissue. Living brain tissue is pinkish on the outside and mostly white on the inside, with subtle variations in color. Vertebrate brains are surrounded by a system of connective tissue membranes called meninges that separate the skull from the brain. Blood vessels enter the central nervous system through holes in the meningeal layers. The cells in the blood vessel walls are joined tightly to one another, forming the blood–brain barrier, which blocks the passage of many toxins and pathogens (though at the same time blocking antibodies and some drugs, thereby presenting special challenges in treatment of diseases of the brain).", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Neuroanatomists usually divide the vertebrate brain into six main regions: the telencephalon (cerebral hemispheres), diencephalon (thalamus and hypothalamus), mesencephalon (midbrain), cerebellum, pons, and medulla oblongata. Each of these areas has a complex internal structure. Some parts, such as the cerebral cortex and the cerebellar cortex, consist of layers that are folded or convoluted to fit within the available space. Other parts, such as the thalamus and hypothalamus, consist of clusters of many small nuclei. Thousands of distinguishable areas can be identified within the vertebrate brain based on fine distinctions of neural structure, chemistry, and connectivity.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Although the same basic components are present in all vertebrate brains, some branches of vertebrate evolution have led to substantial distortions of brain geometry, especially in the forebrain area. The brain of a shark shows the basic components in a straightforward way, but in teleost fishes (the great majority of existing fish species), the forebrain has become \"everted\", like a sock turned inside out. In birds, there are also major changes in forebrain structure. These distortions can make it difficult to match brain components from one species with those of another species.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Here is a list of some of the most important vertebrate brain components, along with a brief description of their functions as currently understood:", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The avian brain is the central organ of the nervous system in birds. Birds possess large, complex brains, which process, integrate, and coordinate information received from the environment and make decisions on how to respond with the rest of the body. Like in all chordates, the avian brain is contained within the skull bones of the head.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "The bird brain is divided into a number of sections, each with a different function. The cerebrum or telencephalon is divided into two hemispheres, and controls higher functions. The telencephalon is dominated by a large pallium, which corresponds to the mammalian cerebral cortex and is responsible for the cognitive functions of birds. The pallium is made up of several major structures: the hyperpallium, a dorsal bulge of the pallium found only in birds, as well as the nidopallium, mesopallium, and archipallium. The bird telencephalon nuclear structure, wherein neurons are distributed in three-dimensionally arranged clusters, with no large-scale separation of white matter and grey matter, though there exist layer-like and column-like connections. Structures in the pallium are associated with perception, learning, and cognition. Beneath the pallium are the two components of the subpallium, the striatum and pallidum. The subpallium connects different parts of the telencephalon and plays major roles in a number of critical behaviours. To the rear of the telencephalon are the thalamus, midbrain, and cerebellum. The hindbrain connects the rest of the brain to the spinal cord.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "The most obvious difference between the brains of mammals and other vertebrates is in terms of size. On average, a mammal has a brain roughly twice as large as that of a bird of the same body size, and ten times as large as that of a reptile of the same body size.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Size, however, is not the only difference: there are also substantial differences in shape. The hindbrain and midbrain of mammals are generally similar to those of other vertebrates, but dramatic differences appear in the forebrain, which is greatly enlarged and also altered in structure. The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that most strongly distinguishes mammals. In non-mammalian vertebrates, the surface of the cerebrum is lined with a comparatively simple three-layered structure called the pallium. In mammals, the pallium evolves into a complex six-layered structure called neocortex or isocortex. Several areas at the edge of the neocortex, including the hippocampus and amygdala, are also much more extensively developed in mammals than in other vertebrates.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "The elaboration of the cerebral cortex carries with it changes to other brain areas. The superior colliculus, which plays a major role in visual control of behavior in most vertebrates, shrinks to a small size in mammals, and many of its functions are taken over by visual areas of the cerebral cortex. The cerebellum of mammals contains a large portion (the neocerebellum) dedicated to supporting the cerebral cortex, which has no counterpart in other vertebrates.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "The brains of humans and other primates contain the same structures as the brains of other mammals, but are generally larger in proportion to body size. The encephalization quotient (EQ) is used to compare brain sizes across species. It takes into account the nonlinearity of the brain-to-body relationship. Humans have an average EQ in the 7-to-8 range, while most other primates have an EQ in the 2-to-3 range. Dolphins have values higher than those of primates other than humans, but nearly all other mammals have EQ values that are substantially lower.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Most of the enlargement of the primate brain comes from a massive expansion of the cerebral cortex, especially the prefrontal cortex and the parts of the cortex involved in vision. The visual processing network of primates includes at least 30 distinguishable brain areas, with a complex web of interconnections. It has been estimated that visual processing areas occupy more than half of the total surface of the primate neocortex. The prefrontal cortex carries out functions that include planning, working memory, motivation, attention, and executive control. It takes up a much larger proportion of the brain for primates than for other species, and an especially large fraction of the human brain.", "title": "Anatomy" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "The brain develops in an intricately orchestrated sequence of stages. It changes in shape from a simple swelling at the front of the nerve cord in the earliest embryonic stages, to a complex array of areas and connections. Neurons are created in special zones that contain stem cells, and then migrate through the tissue to reach their ultimate locations. Once neurons have positioned themselves, their axons sprout and navigate through the brain, branching and extending as they go, until the tips reach their targets and form synaptic connections. In a number of parts of the nervous system, neurons and synapses are produced in excessive numbers during the early stages, and then the unneeded ones are pruned away.", "title": "Development" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "For vertebrates, the early stages of neural development are similar across all species. As the embryo transforms from a round blob of cells into a wormlike structure, a narrow strip of ectoderm running along the midline of the back is induced to become the neural plate, the precursor of the nervous system. The neural plate folds inward to form the neural groove, and then the lips that line the groove merge to enclose the neural tube, a hollow cord of cells with a fluid-filled ventricle at the center. At the front end, the ventricles and cord swell to form three vesicles that are the precursors of the prosencephalon (forebrain), mesencephalon (midbrain), and rhombencephalon (hindbrain). At the next stage, the forebrain splits into two vesicles called the telencephalon (which will contain the cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, and related structures) and the diencephalon (which will contain the thalamus and hypothalamus). At about the same time, the hindbrain splits into the metencephalon (which will contain the cerebellum and pons) and the myelencephalon (which will contain the medulla oblongata). Each of these areas contains proliferative zones where neurons and glial cells are generated; the resulting cells then migrate, sometimes for long distances, to their final positions.", "title": "Development" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Once a neuron is in place, it extends dendrites and an axon into the area around it. Axons, because they commonly extend a great distance from the cell body and need to reach specific targets, grow in a particularly complex way. The tip of a growing axon consists of a blob of protoplasm called a growth cone, studded with chemical receptors. These receptors sense the local environment, causing the growth cone to be attracted or repelled by various cellular elements, and thus to be pulled in a particular direction at each point along its path. The result of this pathfinding process is that the growth cone navigates through the brain until it reaches its destination area, where other chemical cues cause it to begin generating synapses. Considering the entire brain, thousands of genes create products that influence axonal pathfinding.", "title": "Development" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "The synaptic network that finally emerges is only partly determined by genes, though. In many parts of the brain, axons initially \"overgrow\", and then are \"pruned\" by mechanisms that depend on neural activity. In the projection from the eye to the midbrain, for example, the structure in the adult contains a very precise mapping, connecting each point on the surface of the retina to a corresponding point in a midbrain layer. In the first stages of development, each axon from the retina is guided to the right general vicinity in the midbrain by chemical cues, but then branches very profusely and makes initial contact with a wide swath of midbrain neurons. The retina, before birth, contains special mechanisms that cause it to generate waves of activity that originate spontaneously at a random point and then propagate slowly across the retinal layer. These waves are useful because they cause neighboring neurons to be active at the same time; that is, they produce a neural activity pattern that contains information about the spatial arrangement of the neurons. This information is exploited in the midbrain by a mechanism that causes synapses to weaken, and eventually vanish, if activity in an axon is not followed by activity of the target cell. The result of this sophisticated process is a gradual tuning and tightening of the map, leaving it finally in its precise adult form.", "title": "Development" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Similar things happen in other brain areas: an initial synaptic matrix is generated as a result of genetically determined chemical guidance, but then gradually refined by activity-dependent mechanisms, partly driven by internal dynamics, partly by external sensory inputs. In some cases, as with the retina-midbrain system, activity patterns depend on mechanisms that operate only in the developing brain, and apparently exist solely to guide development.", "title": "Development" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "In humans and many other mammals, new neurons are created mainly before birth, and the infant brain contains substantially more neurons than the adult brain. There are, however, a few areas where new neurons continue to be generated throughout life. The two areas for which adult neurogenesis is well established are the olfactory bulb, which is involved in the sense of smell, and the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, where there is evidence that the new neurons play a role in storing newly acquired memories. With these exceptions, however, the set of neurons that is present in early childhood is the set that is present for life. Glial cells are different: as with most types of cells in the body, they are generated throughout the lifespan.", "title": "Development" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "There has long been debate about whether the qualities of mind, personality, and intelligence can be attributed to heredity or to upbringing—this is the nature and nurture controversy. Although many details remain to be settled, neuroscience research has clearly shown that both factors are important. Genes determine the general form of the brain, and genes determine how the brain reacts to experience. Experience, however, is required to refine the matrix of synaptic connections, which in its developed form contains far more information than the genome does. In some respects, all that matters is the presence or absence of experience during critical periods of development. In other respects, the quantity and quality of experience are important; for example, there is substantial evidence that animals raised in enriched environments have thicker cerebral cortices, indicating a higher density of synaptic connections, than animals whose levels of stimulation are restricted.", "title": "Development" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "The functions of the brain depend on the ability of neurons to transmit electrochemical signals to other cells, and their ability to respond appropriately to electrochemical signals received from other cells. The electrical properties of neurons are controlled by a wide variety of biochemical and metabolic processes, most notably the interactions between neurotransmitters and receptors that take place at synapses.", "title": "Physiology" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "Neurotransmitters are chemicals that are released at synapses when the local membrane is depolarised and Ca enters into the cell, typically when an action potential arrives at the synapse – neurotransmitters attach themselves to receptor molecules on the membrane of the synapse's target cell (or cells), and thereby alter the electrical or chemical properties of the receptor molecules. With few exceptions, each neuron in the brain releases the same chemical neurotransmitter, or combination of neurotransmitters, at all the synaptic connections it makes with other neurons; this rule is known as Dale's principle. Thus, a neuron can be characterized by the neurotransmitters that it releases. The great majority of psychoactive drugs exert their effects by altering specific neurotransmitter systems. This applies to drugs such as cannabinoids, nicotine, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, fluoxetine, chlorpromazine, and many others.", "title": "Physiology" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "The two neurotransmitters that are most widely found in the vertebrate brain are glutamate, which almost always exerts excitatory effects on target neurons, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which is almost always inhibitory. Neurons using these transmitters can be found in nearly every part of the brain. Because of their ubiquity, drugs that act on glutamate or GABA tend to have broad and powerful effects. Some general anesthetics act by reducing the effects of glutamate; most tranquilizers exert their sedative effects by enhancing the effects of GABA.", "title": "Physiology" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "There are dozens of other chemical neurotransmitters that are used in more limited areas of the brain, often areas dedicated to a particular function. Serotonin, for example—the primary target of many antidepressant drugs and many dietary aids—comes exclusively from a small brainstem area called the raphe nuclei. Norepinephrine, which is involved in arousal, comes exclusively from a nearby small area called the locus coeruleus. Other neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine and dopamine have multiple sources in the brain but are not as ubiquitously distributed as glutamate and GABA.", "title": "Physiology" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "As a side effect of the electrochemical processes used by neurons for signaling, brain tissue generates electric fields when it is active. When large numbers of neurons show synchronized activity, the electric fields that they generate can be large enough to detect outside the skull, using electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG). EEG recordings, along with recordings made from electrodes implanted inside the brains of animals such as rats, show that the brain of a living animal is constantly active, even during sleep. Each part of the brain shows a mixture of rhythmic and nonrhythmic activity, which may vary according to behavioral state. In mammals, the cerebral cortex tends to show large slow delta waves during sleep, faster alpha waves when the animal is awake but inattentive, and chaotic-looking irregular activity when the animal is actively engaged in a task, called beta and gamma waves. During an epileptic seizure, the brain's inhibitory control mechanisms fail to function and electrical activity rises to pathological levels, producing EEG traces that show large wave and spike patterns not seen in a healthy brain. Relating these population-level patterns to the computational functions of individual neurons is a major focus of current research in neurophysiology.", "title": "Physiology" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "All vertebrates have a blood–brain barrier that allows metabolism inside the brain to operate differently from metabolism in other parts of the body. The neurovascular unit regulates cerebral blood flow so that activated neurons can be supplied with energy. Glial cells play a major role in brain metabolism by controlling the chemical composition of the fluid that surrounds neurons, including levels of ions and nutrients.", "title": "Physiology" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "Brain tissue consumes a large amount of energy in proportion to its volume, so large brains place severe metabolic demands on animals. The need to limit body weight in order, for example, to fly, has apparently led to selection for a reduction of brain size in some species, such as bats. Most of the brain's energy consumption goes into sustaining the electric charge (membrane potential) of neurons. Most vertebrate species devote between 2% and 8% of basal metabolism to the brain. In primates, however, the percentage is much higher—in humans it rises to 20–25%. The energy consumption of the brain does not vary greatly over time, but active regions of the cerebral cortex consume somewhat more energy than inactive regions; this forms the basis for the functional brain imaging methods of PET, fMRI, and NIRS. The brain typically gets most of its energy from oxygen-dependent metabolism of glucose (i.e., blood sugar), but ketones provide a major alternative source, together with contributions from medium chain fatty acids (caprylic and heptanoic acids), lactate, acetate, and possibly amino acids.", "title": "Physiology" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Information from the sense organs is collected in the brain. There it is used to determine what actions the organism is to take. The brain processes the raw data to extract information about the structure of the environment. Next it combines the processed information with information about the current needs of the animal and with memory of past circumstances. Finally, on the basis of the results, it generates motor response patterns. These signal-processing tasks require intricate interplay between a variety of functional subsystems.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "The function of the brain is to provide coherent control over the actions of an animal. A centralized brain allows groups of muscles to be co-activated in complex patterns; it also allows stimuli impinging on one part of the body to evoke responses in other parts, and it can prevent different parts of the body from acting at cross-purposes to each other.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "The human brain is provided with information about light, sound, the chemical composition of the atmosphere, temperature, the position of the body in space (proprioception), the chemical composition of the bloodstream, and more. In other animals additional senses are present, such as the infrared heat-sense of snakes, the magnetic field sense of some birds, or the electric field sense mainly seen in aquatic animals.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "Each sensory system begins with specialized receptor cells, such as photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye, or vibration-sensitive hair cells in the cochlea of the ear. The axons of sensory receptor cells travel into the spinal cord or brain, where they transmit their signals to a first-order sensory nucleus dedicated to one specific sensory modality. This primary sensory nucleus sends information to higher-order sensory areas that are dedicated to the same modality. Eventually, via a way-station in the thalamus, the signals are sent to the cerebral cortex, where they are processed to extract the relevant features, and integrated with signals coming from other sensory systems.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Motor systems are areas of the brain that are involved in initiating body movements, that is, in activating muscles. Except for the muscles that control the eye, which are driven by nuclei in the midbrain, all the voluntary muscles in the body are directly innervated by motor neurons in the spinal cord and hindbrain. Spinal motor neurons are controlled both by neural circuits intrinsic to the spinal cord, and by inputs that descend from the brain. The intrinsic spinal circuits implement many reflex responses, and contain pattern generators for rhythmic movements such as walking or swimming. The descending connections from the brain allow for more sophisticated control.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "The brain contains several motor areas that project directly to the spinal cord. At the lowest level are motor areas in the medulla and pons, which control stereotyped movements such as walking, breathing, or swallowing. At a higher level are areas in the midbrain, such as the red nucleus, which is responsible for coordinating movements of the arms and legs. At a higher level yet is the primary motor cortex, a strip of tissue located at the posterior edge of the frontal lobe. The primary motor cortex sends projections to the subcortical motor areas, but also sends a massive projection directly to the spinal cord, through the pyramidal tract. This direct corticospinal projection allows for precise voluntary control of the fine details of movements. Other motor-related brain areas exert secondary effects by projecting to the primary motor areas. Among the most important secondary areas are the premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. In addition to all of the above, the brain and spinal cord contain extensive circuitry to control the autonomic nervous system which controls the movement of the smooth muscle of the body.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "Many animals alternate between sleeping and waking in a daily cycle. Arousal and alertness are also modulated on a finer time scale by a network of brain areas. A key component of the sleep system is the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), a tiny part of the hypothalamus located directly above the point at which the optic nerves from the two eyes cross. The SCN contains the body's central biological clock. Neurons there show activity levels that rise and fall with a period of about 24 hours, circadian rhythms: these activity fluctuations are driven by rhythmic changes in expression of a set of \"clock genes\". The SCN continues to keep time even if it is excised from the brain and placed in a dish of warm nutrient solution, but it ordinarily receives input from the optic nerves, through the retinohypothalamic tract (RHT), that allows daily light-dark cycles to calibrate the clock.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "The SCN projects to a set of areas in the hypothalamus, brainstem, and midbrain that are involved in implementing sleep-wake cycles. An important component of the system is the reticular formation, a group of neuron-clusters scattered diffusely through the core of the lower brain. Reticular neurons send signals to the thalamus, which in turn sends activity-level-controlling signals to every part of the cortex. Damage to the reticular formation can produce a permanent state of coma.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "Sleep involves great changes in brain activity. Until the 1950s it was generally believed that the brain essentially shuts off during sleep, but this is now known to be far from true; activity continues, but patterns become very different. There are two types of sleep: REM sleep (with dreaming) and NREM (non-REM, usually without dreaming) sleep, which repeat in slightly varying patterns throughout a sleep episode. Three broad types of distinct brain activity patterns can be measured: REM, light NREM and deep NREM. During deep NREM sleep, also called slow wave sleep, activity in the cortex takes the form of large synchronized waves, whereas in the waking state it is noisy and desynchronized. Levels of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and serotonin drop during slow wave sleep, and fall almost to zero during REM sleep; levels of acetylcholine show the reverse pattern.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "For any animal, survival requires maintaining a variety of parameters of bodily state within a limited range of variation: these include temperature, water content, salt concentration in the bloodstream, blood glucose levels, blood oxygen level, and others. The ability of an animal to regulate the internal environment of its body—the milieu intérieur, as the pioneering physiologist Claude Bernard called it—is known as homeostasis (Greek for \"standing still\"). Maintaining homeostasis is a crucial function of the brain. The basic principle that underlies homeostasis is negative feedback: any time a parameter diverges from its set-point, sensors generate an error signal that evokes a response that causes the parameter to shift back toward its optimum value. (This principle is widely used in engineering, for example in the control of temperature using a thermostat.)", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "In vertebrates, the part of the brain that plays the greatest role is the hypothalamus, a small region at the base of the forebrain whose size does not reflect its complexity or the importance of its function. The hypothalamus is a collection of small nuclei, most of which are involved in basic biological functions. Some of these functions relate to arousal or to social interactions such as sexuality, aggression, or maternal behaviors; but many of them relate to homeostasis. Several hypothalamic nuclei receive input from sensors located in the lining of blood vessels, conveying information about temperature, sodium level, glucose level, blood oxygen level, and other parameters. These hypothalamic nuclei send output signals to motor areas that can generate actions to rectify deficiencies. Some of the outputs also go to the pituitary gland, a tiny gland attached to the brain directly underneath the hypothalamus. The pituitary gland secretes hormones into the bloodstream, where they circulate throughout the body and induce changes in cellular activity.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "The individual animals need to express survival-promoting behaviors, such as seeking food, water, shelter, and a mate. The motivational system in the brain monitors the current state of satisfaction of these goals, and activates behaviors to meet any needs that arise. The motivational system works largely by a reward–punishment mechanism. When a particular behavior is followed by favorable consequences, the reward mechanism in the brain is activated, which induces structural changes inside the brain that cause the same behavior to be repeated later, whenever a similar situation arises. Conversely, when a behavior is followed by unfavorable consequences, the brain's punishment mechanism is activated, inducing structural changes that cause the behavior to be suppressed when similar situations arise in the future.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "Most organisms studied to date use a reward–punishment mechanism: for instance, worms and insects can alter their behavior to seek food sources or to avoid dangers. In vertebrates, the reward-punishment system is implemented by a specific set of brain structures, at the heart of which lie the basal ganglia, a set of interconnected areas at the base of the forebrain. The basal ganglia are the central site at which decisions are made: the basal ganglia exert a sustained inhibitory control over most of the motor systems in the brain; when this inhibition is released, a motor system is permitted to execute the action it is programmed to carry out. Rewards and punishments function by altering the relationship between the inputs that the basal ganglia receive and the decision-signals that are emitted. The reward mechanism is better understood than the punishment mechanism, because its role in drug abuse has caused it to be studied very intensively. Research has shown that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a central role: addictive drugs such as cocaine, amphetamine, and nicotine either cause dopamine levels to rise or cause the effects of dopamine inside the brain to be enhanced.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "Almost all animals are capable of modifying their behavior as a result of experience—even the most primitive types of worms. Because behavior is driven by brain activity, changes in behavior must somehow correspond to changes inside the brain. Already in the late 19th century theorists like Santiago Ramón y Cajal argued that the most plausible explanation is that learning and memory are expressed as changes in the synaptic connections between neurons. Until 1970, however, experimental evidence to support the synaptic plasticity hypothesis was lacking. In 1971 Tim Bliss and Terje Lømo published a paper on a phenomenon now called long-term potentiation: the paper showed clear evidence of activity-induced synaptic changes that lasted for at least several days. Since then technical advances have made these sorts of experiments much easier to carry out, and thousands of studies have been made that have clarified the mechanism of synaptic change, and uncovered other types of activity-driven synaptic change in a variety of brain areas, including the cerebral cortex, hippocampus, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and physical activity appear to play a beneficial role in the process.", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "Neuroscientists currently distinguish several types of learning and memory that are implemented by the brain in distinct ways:", "title": "Function" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "The field of neuroscience encompasses all approaches that seek to understand the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Psychology seeks to understand mind and behavior, and neurology is the medical discipline that diagnoses and treats diseases of the nervous system. The brain is also the most important organ studied in psychiatry, the branch of medicine that works to study, prevent, and treat mental disorders. Cognitive science seeks to unify neuroscience and psychology with other fields that concern themselves with the brain, such as computer science (artificial intelligence and similar fields) and philosophy.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "The oldest method of studying the brain is anatomical, and until the middle of the 20th century, much of the progress in neuroscience came from the development of better cell stains and better microscopes. Neuroanatomists study the large-scale structure of the brain as well as the microscopic structure of neurons and their components, especially synapses. Among other tools, they employ a plethora of stains that reveal neural structure, chemistry, and connectivity. In recent years, the development of immunostaining techniques has allowed investigation of neurons that express specific sets of genes. Also, functional neuroanatomy uses medical imaging techniques to correlate variations in human brain structure with differences in cognition or behavior.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "Neurophysiologists study the chemical, pharmacological, and electrical properties of the brain: their primary tools are drugs and recording devices. Thousands of experimentally developed drugs affect the nervous system, some in highly specific ways. Recordings of brain activity can be made using electrodes, either glued to the scalp as in EEG studies, or implanted inside the brains of animals for extracellular recordings, which can detect action potentials generated by individual neurons. Because the brain does not contain pain receptors, it is possible using these techniques to record brain activity from animals that are awake and behaving without causing distress. The same techniques have occasionally been used to study brain activity in human patients with intractable epilepsy, in cases where there was a medical necessity to implant electrodes to localize the brain area responsible for epileptic seizures. Functional imaging techniques such as fMRI are also used to study brain activity; these techniques have mainly been used with human subjects, because they require a conscious subject to remain motionless for long periods of time, but they have the great advantage of being noninvasive.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "Another approach to brain function is to examine the consequences of damage to specific brain areas. Even though it is protected by the skull and meninges, surrounded by cerebrospinal fluid, and isolated from the bloodstream by the blood–brain barrier, the delicate nature of the brain makes it vulnerable to numerous diseases and several types of damage. In humans, the effects of strokes and other types of brain damage have been a key source of information about brain function. Because there is no ability to experimentally control the nature of the damage, however, this information is often difficult to interpret. In animal studies, most commonly involving rats, it is possible to use electrodes or locally injected chemicals to produce precise patterns of damage and then examine the consequences for behavior.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "Computational neuroscience encompasses two approaches: first, the use of computers to study the brain; second, the study of how brains perform computation. On one hand, it is possible to write a computer program to simulate the operation of a group of neurons by making use of systems of equations that describe their electrochemical activity; such simulations are known as biologically realistic neural networks. On the other hand, it is possible to study algorithms for neural computation by simulating, or mathematically analyzing, the operations of simplified \"units\" that have some of the properties of neurons but abstract out much of their biological complexity. The computational functions of the brain are studied both by computer scientists and neuroscientists.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "Computational neurogenetic modeling is concerned with the study and development of dynamic neuronal models for modeling brain functions with respect to genes and dynamic interactions between genes.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "Recent years have seen increasing applications of genetic and genomic techniques to the study of the brain and a focus on the roles of neurotrophic factors and physical activity in neuroplasticity. The most common subjects are mice, because of the availability of technical tools. It is now possible with relative ease to \"knock out\" or mutate a wide variety of genes, and then examine the effects on brain function. More sophisticated approaches are also being used: for example, using Cre-Lox recombination it is possible to activate or deactivate genes in specific parts of the brain, at specific times.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "The oldest brain to have been discovered was in Armenia in the Areni-1 cave complex. The brain, estimated to be over 5,000 years old, was found in the skull of a 12 to 14-year-old girl. Although the brains were shriveled, they were well preserved due to the climate found inside the cave.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "Early philosophers were divided as to whether the seat of the soul lies in the brain or heart. Aristotle favored the heart, and thought that the function of the brain was merely to cool the blood. Democritus, the inventor of the atomic theory of matter, argued for a three-part soul, with intellect in the head, emotion in the heart, and lust near the liver. The unknown author of On the Sacred Disease, a medical treatise in the Hippocratic Corpus, came down unequivocally in favor of the brain, writing:", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. ... And by the same organ we become mad and delirious, and fears and terrors assail us, some by night, and some by day, and dreams and untimely wanderings, and cares that are not suitable, and ignorance of present circumstances, desuetude, and unskillfulness. All these things we endure from the brain, when it is not healthy...", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "The Roman physician Galen also argued for the importance of the brain, and theorized in some depth about how it might work. Galen traced out the anatomical relationships among brain, nerves, and muscles, demonstrating that all muscles in the body are connected to the brain through a branching network of nerves. He postulated that nerves activate muscles mechanically by carrying a mysterious substance he called pneumata psychikon, usually translated as \"animal spirits\". Galen's ideas were widely known during the Middle Ages, but not much further progress came until the Renaissance, when detailed anatomical study resumed, combined with the theoretical speculations of René Descartes and those who followed him. Descartes, like Galen, thought of the nervous system in hydraulic terms. He believed that the highest cognitive functions are carried out by a non-physical res cogitans, but that the majority of behaviors of humans, and all behaviors of animals, could be explained mechanistically.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "The first real progress toward a modern understanding of nervous function, though, came from the investigations of Luigi Galvani (1737–1798), who discovered that a shock of static electricity applied to an exposed nerve of a dead frog could cause its leg to contract. Since that time, each major advance in understanding has followed more or less directly from the development of a new technique of investigation. Until the early years of the 20th century, the most important advances were derived from new methods for staining cells. Particularly critical was the invention of the Golgi stain, which (when correctly used) stains only a small fraction of neurons, but stains them in their entirety, including cell body, dendrites, and axon. Without such a stain, brain tissue under a microscope appears as an impenetrable tangle of protoplasmic fibers, in which it is impossible to determine any structure. In the hands of Camillo Golgi, and especially of the Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the new stain revealed hundreds of distinct types of neurons, each with its own unique dendritic structure and pattern of connectivity.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "In the first half of the 20th century, advances in electronics enabled investigation of the electrical properties of nerve cells, culminating in work by Alan Hodgkin, Andrew Huxley, and others on the biophysics of the action potential, and the work of Bernard Katz and others on the electrochemistry of the synapse. These studies complemented the anatomical picture with a conception of the brain as a dynamic entity. Reflecting the new understanding, in 1942 Charles Sherrington visualized the workings of the brain waking from sleep:", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "The great topmost sheet of the mass, that where hardly a light had twinkled or moved, becomes now a sparkling field of rhythmic flashing points with trains of traveling sparks hurrying hither and thither. The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning. It is as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance. Swiftly the head mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "The invention of electronic computers in the 1940s, along with the development of mathematical information theory, led to a realization that brains can potentially be understood as information processing systems. This concept formed the basis of the field of cybernetics, and eventually gave rise to the field now known as computational neuroscience. The earliest attempts at cybernetics were somewhat crude in that they treated the brain as essentially a digital computer in disguise, as for example in John von Neumann's 1958 book, The Computer and the Brain. Over the years, though, accumulating information about the electrical responses of brain cells recorded from behaving animals has steadily moved theoretical concepts in the direction of increasing realism.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "One of the most influential early contributions was a 1959 paper titled What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain: the paper examined the visual responses of neurons in the retina and optic tectum of frogs, and came to the conclusion that some neurons in the tectum of the frog are wired to combine elementary responses in a way that makes them function as \"bug perceivers\". A few years later David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel discovered cells in the primary visual cortex of monkeys that become active when sharp edges move across specific points in the field of view—a discovery for which they won a Nobel Prize. Follow-up studies in higher-order visual areas found cells that detect binocular disparity, color, movement, and aspects of shape, with areas located at increasing distances from the primary visual cortex showing increasingly complex responses. Other investigations of brain areas unrelated to vision have revealed cells with a wide variety of response correlates, some related to memory, some to abstract types of cognition such as space.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "Theorists have worked to understand these response patterns by constructing mathematical models of neurons and neural networks, which can be simulated using computers. Some useful models are abstract, focusing on the conceptual structure of neural algorithms rather than the details of how they are implemented in the brain; other models attempt to incorporate data about the biophysical properties of real neurons. No model on any level is yet considered to be a fully valid description of brain function, though. The essential difficulty is that sophisticated computation by neural networks requires distributed processing in which hundreds or thousands of neurons work cooperatively—current methods of brain activity recording are only capable of isolating action potentials from a few dozen neurons at a time.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "Furthermore, even single neurons appear to be complex and capable of performing computations. So, brain models that do not reflect this are too abstract to be representative of brain operation; models that do try to capture this are very computationally expensive and arguably intractable with present computational resources. However, the Human Brain Project is trying to build a realistic, detailed computational model of the entire human brain. The wisdom of this approach has been publicly contested, with high-profile scientists on both sides of the argument.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "In the second half of the 20th century, developments in chemistry, electron microscopy, genetics, computer science, functional brain imaging, and other fields progressively opened new windows into brain structure and function. In the United States, the 1990s were officially designated as the \"Decade of the Brain\" to commemorate advances made in brain research, and to promote funding for such research.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 79, "text": "In the 21st century, these trends have continued, and several new approaches have come into prominence, including multielectrode recording, which allows the activity of many brain cells to be recorded all at the same time; genetic engineering, which allows molecular components of the brain to be altered experimentally; genomics, which allows variations in brain structure to be correlated with variations in DNA properties and neuroimaging.", "title": "Research" }, { "paragraph_id": 80, "text": "Animal brains are used as food in numerous cuisines.", "title": "Society and culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 81, "text": "Some archaeological evidence suggests that the mourning rituals of European Neanderthals also involved the consumption of the brain.", "title": "Society and culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 82, "text": "The Fore people of Papua New Guinea are known to eat human brains. In funerary rituals, those close to the dead would eat the brain of the deceased to create a sense of immortality. A prion disease called kuru has been traced to this.", "title": "Society and culture" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Byzantium (/bɪˈzæntiəm, -ʃəm/) or Byzantion (Ancient Greek: Βυζάντιον) was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul today. The Greek name Byzantion and its Latinization Byzantium continued to be used as a name of Constantinople sporadically and to varying degrees during the thousand year existence of the Byzantine Empire. Byzantium was colonized by Greeks from Megara in the 7th century BC and remained primarily Greek-speaking until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in AD 1453.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The etymology of Byzantium is unknown. It has been suggested that the name is of Thracian origin. It may be derived from the Thracian personal name Byzas which means \"he-goat\". Ancient Greek legend refers to the Greek king Byzas, the leader of the Megarian colonists and founder of the city. The name Lygos for the city, which likely corresponds to an earlier Thracian settlement, is mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Byzántios, plural Byzántioi (Ancient Greek: Βυζάντιος, Βυζάντιοι, Latin: Byzantius; adjective the same) referred to Byzantion's inhabitants, also used as an ethnonym for the people of the city and as a family name. In the Middle Ages, Byzántion was also a synecdoche for the eastern Roman Empire. (An ellipsis of Medieval Greek: Βυζάντιον κράτος, romanized: Byzántion krátos). Byzantinós (Medieval Greek: Βυζαντινός, Latin: Byzantinus) denoted an inhabitant of the empire. The Anglicization of Latin Byzantinus yielded \"Byzantine\", with 15th and 16th century forms including Byzantin, Bizantin(e), Bezantin(e), and Bysantin as well as Byzantian and Bizantian.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The name Byzantius and Byzantinus were applied from the 9th century to gold Byzantine coinage, reflected in the French besant (d'or), Italian bisante, and English besant, byzant, or bezant. The English usage, derived from Old French besan (pl. besanz), and relating to the coin, dates from the 12th century.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Later, the name Byzantium became common in the West to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire, whose capital was Constantinople. As a term for the east Roman state as a whole, Byzantium was introduced by the historian Hieronymus Wolf only in 1555, a century after the last remnants of the empire, whose inhabitants continued to refer to their polity as the Roman Empire (Medieval Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, romanized: Basileía tōn Rhōmaíōn, lit. 'empire of the Romans'), had ceased to exist.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Other places were historically known as Byzántion (Βυζάντιον) – a city in Libya mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium and another on the western coast of India referred to by the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea; in both cases the names were probably adaptations of names in local languages. Faustus of Byzantium was from a city of that name in Cilicia.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The origins of Byzantium are shrouded in legend. Tradition says that Byzas of Megara (a city-state near Athens) founded the city when he sailed northeast across the Aegean Sea. The date is usually given as 667 BC on the authority of Herodotus, who states the city was founded 17 years after Chalcedon. Eusebius, who wrote almost 800 years later, dates the founding of Chalcedon to 685/4 BC, but he also dates the founding of Byzantium to 656 BC (or a few years earlier depending on the edition). Herodotus' dating was later favored by Constantine the Great, who celebrated Byzantium's 1000th anniversary between the years 333 and 334.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Byzantium was mainly a trading city due to its location at the Black Sea's only entrance. Byzantium later conquered Chalcedon, across the Bosphorus on the Asiatic side.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The city was taken by the Persian Empire at the time of the Scythian campaign (513 BC) of King Darius I (r. 522–486 BC), and was added to the administrative province of Skudra. Though Achaemenid control of the city was never as stable as compared to other cities in Thrace, it was considered, alongside Sestos, to be one of the foremost Achaemenid ports on the European coast of the Bosphorus and the Hellespont.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Byzantium was besieged by Greek forces during the Peloponnesian War. As part of Sparta's strategy for cutting off grain supplies to Athens during their siege of Athens, Sparta took control of the city in 411 BC, to bring the Athenians into submission. The Athenian military later retook the city in 408 BC, when the Spartans had withdrawn following their settlement.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "After siding with Pescennius Niger against the victorious Septimius Severus, the city was besieged by Roman forces and suffered extensive damage in AD 196. Byzantium was rebuilt by Septimius Severus, now emperor, and quickly regained its previous prosperity. It was bound to Perinthus during the period of Septimius Severus. The strategic and highly defensible (due to being surrounded by water on almost all sides) location of Byzantium attracted Roman Emperor Constantine I who, in AD 330, refounded it as an imperial residence inspired by Rome itself, known as Nova Roma. Later the city was called Constantinople (Greek Κωνσταντινούπολις, Konstantinoupolis, \"city of Constantine\").", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "This combination of imperialism and location would affect Constantinople's role as the nexus between the continents of Europe and Asia. It was a commercial, cultural, and diplomatic centre and for centuries formed the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which decorated the city with numerous monuments, some still standing today. With its strategic position, Constantinople controlled the major trade routes between Asia and Europe, as well as the passage from the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea. On May 29, 1453, the city was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, and again became the capital of a powerful state, the Ottoman Empire. The Turks called the city \"Istanbul\" (although it was not officially renamed until 1930); the name derives from the Greek phrase \"στην πόλη\", which means \"to the city\". To this day it remains the largest and most populous city in Turkey, although Ankara is now the national capital.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "By the late Hellenistic or early Roman period (1st century BC), the star and crescent motif was associated to some degree with Byzantium; even though it became more widely used as the royal emblem of Mithradates VI Eupator (who for a time incorporated the city into his empire).", "title": "Emblem" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Some Byzantine coins of the 1st century BC and later show the head of Artemis with bow and quiver, and feature a crescent with what appears to be an eight-rayed star on the reverse. According to accounts which vary in some of the details, in 340 BC the Byzantines and their allies the Athenians were under siege by the troops of Philip of Macedon. On a particularly dark and wet night Philip attempted a surprise attack but was thwarted by the appearance of a bright light in the sky. This light is occasionally described by subsequent interpreters as a meteor, sometimes as the moon, and some accounts also mention the barking of dogs. However, the original accounts mention only a bright light in the sky, without specifying the moon. To commemorate the event the Byzantines erected a statue of Hecate lampadephoros (light-bearer or bringer). This story survived in the works of Hesychius of Miletus, who in all probability lived in the time of Justinian I. His works survive only in fragments preserved in Photius and the tenth century lexicographer Suidas. The tale is also related by Stephanus of Byzantium, and Eustathius.", "title": "Emblem" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Devotion to Hecate was especially favored by the Byzantines for her aid in having protected them from the incursions of Philip of Macedon. Her symbols were the crescent and star, and the walls of her city were her provenance. This contradicts claims that only the symbol of the crescent was meant to symbolize Hecate, whereas the star was only added later in order to symbolize the Virgin Mary, as Constantine I is said to have rededicated the city to her in the year 330.", "title": "Emblem" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "It is unclear precisely how the symbol Hecate/Artemis, one of many goddesses would have been transferred to the city itself, but it seems likely to have been an effect of being credited with the intervention against Philip and the subsequent honors. This was a common process in ancient Greece, as in Athens where the city was named after Athena in honor of such an intervention in time of war.", "title": "Emblem" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Cities in the Roman Empire often continued to issue their own coinage. \"Of the many themes that were used on local coinage, celestial and astral symbols often appeared, mostly stars or crescent moons.\" The wide variety of these issues, and the varying explanations for the significance of the star and crescent on Roman coinage precludes their discussion here. It is, however, apparent that by the time of the Romans, coins featuring a star or crescent in some combination were not at all rare.", "title": "Emblem" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Biotics describe living or once living components of a community; for example organisms, such as animals and plants.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Biotic may refer to:", "title": "" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer, pronounced [bɛʁˌliːnɐ ˈmaʊɐ] ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; West Germany) from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government of the GDR on 13 August 1961. It included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the \"death strip\") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails and other defenses. The primary intention for the Wall's construction was to prevent East German citizens from fleeing to the West.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The Soviet Bloc propaganda portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from \"fascist elements conspiring to prevent the will of the people\" from building a communist state in the GDR. The authorities officially referred to the Berlin Wall as the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall, pronounced [antifaˌʃɪstɪʃɐ ˈʃʊtsval] ). The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the \"Wall of Shame\", a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt in reference to the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer inner German border, which demarcated the border between East and West Germany, it came to symbolize physically the Iron Curtain that separated the Western Bloc and Soviet satellite states of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin; from there they could then travel to West Germany and to other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989, the Wall prevented almost all such emigration. During this period, over 100,000 people attempted to escape, and over 5,000 people succeeded in escaping over the Wall, with an estimated death toll of those murdered by East German authorities ranging from 136 to more than 200 in and around Berlin.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In 1989, a series of revolutions in nearby Eastern Bloc countries—in Poland and Hungary in particular—caused a chain reaction in East Germany. In particular, the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989 set in motion a peaceful development during which the Iron Curtain largely broke, the rulers in the East came under pressure to cease their repressive policies, the Berlin Wall fell and finally the Eastern Bloc collapsed. After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit the FRG and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the Wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the Wall. The Brandenburg Gate, a few meters from the Berlin Wall, was opened on 22 December 1989. The demolition of the Wall officially began on 13 June 1990 and was completed in 1994. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which formally took place on 3 October 1990.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "After the end of World War II in Europe, what remained of pre-war Germany west of the Oder-Neisse line was divided into four occupation zones (as per the Potsdam Agreement), each one controlled by one of the four occupying Allied powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union. The capital of Berlin, as the seat of the Allied Control Council, was similarly subdivided into four sectors despite the city's location, which was fully within the Soviet zone.", "title": "Background" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Within two years, political divisions increased between the Soviets and the other occupying powers. These included the Soviets' refusal to agree to reconstruction plans making post-war Germany self-sufficient, and to a detailed accounting of industrial plants, goods and infrastructure—some of which had already been removed by the Soviets. France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Benelux countries later met to combine the non-Soviet zones of Germany into one zone for reconstruction, and to approve the extension of the Marshall Plan.", "title": "Background" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, the Soviet Union engineered the installation of communist regimes in most of the countries occupied by Soviet military forces at the end of the War, including Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the GDR, which together with Albania formed the Comecon in 1949 and later a military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. The beginning of the Cold War saw the Eastern Bloc of the Soviet Union confront the Western Bloc of the United States, with the latter grouping becoming largely united in 1949 under NATO and the former grouping becoming largely united in 1955 under the Warsaw Pact. As the Soviet Union already had an armed presence and political domination all over its eastern satellite states by 1955, the pact has been long considered \"superfluous\", and because of the rushed way in which it was conceived, NATO officials labeled it a \"cardboard castle\". There was no direct military confrontation between the two organizations; instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis and through proxy wars. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and their integration into the respective blocs. The Warsaw Pact's largest military engagement was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, its own member state, in August 1968.", "title": "Background" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Since the end of the War, the USSR installed a Soviet-style regime in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany and later founded the GDR, with the country's political system based on a centrally planned socialist economic model with nationalized means of production, and with repressive secret police institutions, under party dictatorship of the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands; Socialist Unity Party of Germany) similar to the party dictatorship of the Soviet Communist Party in the USSR.", "title": "Background" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "At the same time, a parallel country was established under the control of the Western powers in the zones of post-war Germany occupied by them, culminating in the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, which initially claimed to be the sole legitimate power in all of Germany, East and West. The material standard of living in the Western zones of Berlin began to improve quickly, and residents of the Soviet zone soon began leaving for the West in large numbers, fleeing hunger, poverty and repression in the Soviet Zone for a better life in the West. Soon residents of other parts of the Soviet zone began to escape to the West through Berlin, and this migration, called in Germany \"Republikflucht\", deprived the Soviet zone not only of working forces desperately needed for post-war reconstruction but disproportionately highly educated people, which came to be known as the \"Brain Drain\".", "title": "Background" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "In 1948, in response to moves by the Western powers to establish a separate, federal system of government in the Western zones, and to extend the US Marshall Plan of economic assistance to Germany, the Soviets instituted the Berlin Blockade, preventing people, food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin by land routes through the Soviet zone. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began a massive \"airlift\", supplying West Berlin with food and other supplies. The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the Western policy change. Communists attempted to disrupt the elections of 1948, preceding large losses therein, while 300,000 Berliners demonstrated for the international airlift to continue. In May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade, permitting the resumption of Western shipments to Berlin.", "title": "Background" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The German Democratic Republic (the \"GDR\"; East Germany) was declared on 7 October 1949. On that day, the USSR ended the Soviet military government which had governed the Soviet Occupation Zone (Sowetische Besatzungszone) since the end of the War and handed over legal power to the Provisorische Volkskammer under the new Constitution of the GDR which came into force that day. However, until 1955, the Soviets maintained considerable legal control over the GDR state, including the regional governments, through the Sowetische Kontrollkommission and maintained a presence in various East German administrative, military, and secret police structures. Even after legal sovereignty of the GDR was restored in 1955, the Soviet Union continued to maintain considerable influence over administration and lawmaking in the GDR through the Soviet embassy and through the implicit threat of force which could be exercised through the continuing large Soviet military presence in the GDR, which was used to repress protests in East Germany bloodily in June 1953.", "title": "Background" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "East Germany differed from West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany), which developed into a Western capitalist country with a social market economy and a democratic parliamentary government. Continual economic growth starting in the 1950s fueled a 20-year \"economic miracle\" (\"Wirtschaftswunder\"). As West Germany's economy grew, and its standard of living steadily improved, many East Germans wanted to move to West Germany.", "title": "Background" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "After the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, the majority of those living in the newly acquired areas of the Eastern Bloc aspired to independence and wanted the Soviets to leave. Taking advantage of the zonal border between occupied zones in Germany, the number of GDR citizens moving to West Germany totaled 187,000 in 1950; 165,000 in 1951; 182,000 in 1952; and 331,000 in 1953. One reason for the sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential further Sovietization, given the increasingly paranoid actions of Joseph Stalin in late 1952 and early 1953. In the first six months of 1953, 226,000 had fled.", "title": "Background" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to controlling national movement, restricting emigration, was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc, including East Germany. The restrictions presented a quandary for some Eastern Bloc states, which had been more economically advanced and open than the Soviet Union, such that crossing borders seemed more natural—especially where no prior border existed between East and West Germany.", "title": "Erection of the inner German border" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Up until 1952, the demarcation lines between East Germany and the western occupied zones could be easily crossed in most places. On 1 April 1952, East German leaders met the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Moscow; during the discussions, Stalin's foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov proposed that the East Germans should \"introduce a system of passes for visits of West Berlin residents to the territory of East Berlin [so as to stop] free movement of Western agents\" in the GDR. Stalin agreed, calling the situation \"intolerable\". He advised the East Germans to build up their border defenses, telling them that \"The demarcation line between East and West Germany should be considered a border—and not just any border, but a dangerous one ... The Germans will guard the line of defence with their lives.\"", "title": "Erection of the inner German border" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Consequently, the inner German border between the two German states was closed, and a barbed-wire fence erected. The border between the Western and Eastern sectors of Berlin, however, remained open, although traffic between the Soviet and the Western sectors was somewhat restricted. This resulted in Berlin becoming a magnet for East Germans desperate to escape life in the GDR, and also a flashpoint for tension between the United States and the Soviet Union.", "title": "Erection of the inner German border" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "In 1955, the Soviets gave East Germany authority over civilian movement in Berlin, passing control to a regime not recognized in the West. Initially, East Germany granted \"visits\" to allow its residents access to West Germany. However, following the defection of large numbers of East Germans (known as Republikflucht) under this regime, the new East German state legally restricted virtually all travel to the West in 1956. Soviet East German ambassador Mikhail Pervukhin observed that \"the presence in Berlin of an open and essentially uncontrolled border between the socialist and capitalist worlds unwittingly prompts the population to make a comparison between both parts of the city, which unfortunately does not always turn out in favour of Democratic [East] Berlin.\"", "title": "Erection of the inner German border" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "With the closing of the inner German border officially in 1952, the border in Berlin remained considerably more accessible because it was administered by all four occupying powers. Accordingly, Berlin became the main route by which East Germans left for the West. On 11 December 1957, East Germany introduced a new passport law that reduced the overall number of refugees leaving Eastern Germany.", "title": "Erection of the inner German border" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "It had the unintended result of drastically increasing the percentage of those leaving through West Berlin from 60% to well over 90% by the end of 1958. Those caught trying to leave East Berlin were subjected to heavy penalties, but with no physical barrier and subway train access still available to West Berlin, such measures were ineffective. The Berlin sector border was essentially a \"loophole\" through which Eastern Bloc citizens could still escape. The 3.5 million East Germans who had left by 1961 totalled approximately 20% of the entire East German population.", "title": "Erection of the inner German border" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "An important reason that passage between East Germany and West Berlin was not stopped earlier was that doing so would cut off much of the railway traffic in East Germany. Construction of a new railway bypassing West Berlin, the Berlin outer ring, commenced in 1951. Following the completion of the railway in 1961, closing the border became a more practical proposition.", "title": "Erection of the inner German border" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The emigrants tended to be young and well-educated, leading to the \"brain drain\" feared by officials in East Germany. Yuri Andropov, then the CPSU Director on Relations with Communist and Workers' Parties of Socialist Countries, wrote an urgent letter on 28 August 1958 to the Central Committee about the significant 50% increase in the number of East German intelligentsia among the refugees. Andropov reported that, while the East German leadership stated that they were leaving for economic reasons, testimony from refugees indicated that the reasons were more political than material. He stated \"the flight of the intelligentsia has reached a particularly critical phase.\"", "title": "Erection of the inner German border" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "By 1960, the combination of World War II and the massive emigration westward left East Germany with only 61% of its population of working age, compared to 70.5% before the war. The loss was disproportionately heavy among professionals: engineers, technicians, physicians, teachers, lawyers, and skilled workers. The direct cost of manpower losses to East Germany (and corresponding gain to the West) has been estimated at $7 billion to $9 billion, with East German party leader Walter Ulbricht later claiming that West Germany owed him $17 billion in compensation, including reparations as well as manpower losses. In addition, the drain of East Germany's young population potentially cost it over 22.5 billion marks in lost educational investment. The brain drain of professionals had become so damaging to the political credibility and economic viability of East Germany that the re-securing of the German communist frontier was imperative.", "title": "Erection of the inner German border" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "The exodus of emigrants from East Germany presented two minor potential benefits: an easy way to smuggle East German secret agents to West Germany, and a reduction in the number of citizens hostile to the communist regime. Neither of these advantages, however, proved particularly useful.", "title": "Erection of the inner German border" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "", "title": "Erection of the inner German border" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "On 15 June 1961, First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party and GDR State Council chairman Walter Ulbricht stated in an international press conference, \"Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!\" (No one has the intention of erecting a wall!). It was the first time the colloquial term Mauer (wall) had been used in this context.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "The transcript of a telephone call between Nikita Khrushchev and Ulbricht, on 1 August in the same year, suggests that the initiative for the construction of the Wall came from Khrushchev. However, other sources suggest that Khrushchev had initially been wary about building a wall, fearing negative Western reaction. Nevertheless, Ulbricht had pushed for a border closure for some time, arguing that East Germany's existence was at stake.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Khrushchev had become emboldened upon seeing US president John F. Kennedy's youth and inexperience, which he considered a weakness. In the 1961 Vienna summit, Kennedy made the error of admitting that the US wouldn't actively oppose the building of a barrier. A feeling of miscalculation and failure immediately afterwards was admitted by Kennedy in a candid interview with New York Times columnist James \"Scotty\" Reston. On Saturday, 12 August 1961, the leaders of the GDR attended a garden party at a government guesthouse in Döllnsee, in a wooded area to the north of East Berlin. There, Ulbricht signed the order to close the border and erect a wall.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "At midnight, the police and units of the East German army began to close the border and, by Sunday morning, 13 August, the border with West Berlin was closed. East German troops and workers had begun to tear up streets running alongside the border to make them impassable to most vehicles and to install barbed wire entanglements and fences along the 156 km (97 mi) around the three western sectors, and the 43 km (27 mi) that divided West and East Berlin. The date of 13 August became commonly referred to as Barbed Wire Sunday in Germany.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "The barrier was built inside East Berlin on East German territory to ensure that it did not encroach on West Berlin at any point. Generally, the Wall was only slightly inside East Berlin, but in a few places it was some distance from the legal border, most notably at Potsdamer Bahnhof and the Lenné Triangle that is now much of the Potsdamer Platz development.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Later, the initial barrier was built up into the Wall proper, the first concrete elements and large blocks being put in place on 17 August. During the construction of the Wall, National People's Army (NVA) and Combat Groups of the Working Class (KdA) soldiers stood in front of it with orders to shoot anyone who attempted to defect. Additionally, chain fences, walls, minefields and other obstacles were installed along the length of East Germany's western border with West Germany proper. A wide no man's land was cleared as well to provide a better overview and a clear line of fire at fleeing refugees.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "With the closing of the east–west sector boundary in Berlin, the vast majority of East Germans could no longer travel or emigrate to West Germany. Berlin soon went from being the easiest place to make an unauthorized crossing between East and West Germany to being the most difficult. Many families were split, while East Berliners employed in the West were cut off from their jobs. West Berlin became an isolated exclave in a hostile land. West Berliners demonstrated against the Wall, led by their Mayor (Oberbürgermeister) Willy Brandt, who criticized the United States for failing to respond and went so far as to suggest to Washington what to do next. Kennedy was furious. Allied intelligence agencies had hypothesized about a wall to stop the flood of refugees, but the main candidate for its location was around the perimeter of the city. In 1961, Secretary of State Dean Rusk proclaimed, \"The Wall certainly ought not to be a permanent feature of the European landscape. I see no reason why the Soviet Union should think it is—it is to their advantage in any way to leave there that monument to communist failure.\"", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "United States and UK sources had expected the Soviet sector to be sealed off from West Berlin but were surprised by how long the East Germans took for such a move. They considered the Wall as an end to concerns about a GDR/Soviet retaking or capture of the whole of Berlin; the Wall would presumably have been an unnecessary project if such plans were afloat. Thus, they concluded that the possibility of a Soviet military conflict over Berlin had decreased.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The East German government claimed that the Wall was an \"anti-fascist protective rampart\" (German: \"antifaschistischer Schutzwall\") intended to dissuade aggression from the West. Another official justification was the activities of Western agents in Eastern Europe. The Eastern German government also claimed that West Berliners were buying out state-subsidized goods in East Berlin. East Germans and others greeted such statements with skepticism, as most of the time, the border was only closed for citizens of East Germany traveling to the West, but not for residents of West Berlin travelling to the East. The construction of the Wall had caused considerable hardship to families divided by it. Most people believed that the Wall was mainly a means of preventing the citizens of East Germany from entering or fleeing to West Berlin.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The National Security Agency was the only American intelligence agency that was aware that East Germany was to take action to deal with the brain drain problem. On 9 August 1961, the NSA intercepted an advance warning information of the Socialist Unity Party's plan to close the intra-Berlin border between East and West Berlin completely for foot traffic. The interagency intelligence Berlin Watch Committee assessed that this intercept \"might be the first step in a plan to close the border.\" This warning did not reach John F. Kennedy until noon on 13 August 1961, while he was vacationing in his yacht off the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. While Kennedy was angry that he had no advance warning, he was relieved that the East Germans and the Soviets had only divided Berlin without taking any action against West Berlin's access to the West. However, he denounced the Berlin Wall, whose erection worsened the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "In response to the erection of the Berlin Wall, a retired general, Lucius D. Clay, was appointed by Kennedy as his special advisor with ambassadorial rank. Clay had been the Military Governor of the US Zone of Occupation in Germany during the period of the Berlin Blockade and had ordered the first measures in what became the Berlin Airlift. He was immensely popular with the residents of West Berlin, and his appointment was an unambiguous sign that Kennedy would not compromise on the status of West Berlin. As a symbolic gesture, Kennedy sent Clay and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to West Berlin. They landed at Tempelhof Airport on the afternoon of Saturday, 19 August 1961 and were greeted enthusiastically by the local population.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "They arrived in a city defended by three Allied brigades—one each from the UK (Berlin Infantry Brigade), the US (Berlin Brigade), and France (Forces Françaises à Berlin). On 16 August, Kennedy had given the order for them to be reinforced. Early on 19 August, the 1st Battle Group, 18th Infantry Regiment (commanded by Colonel Glover S. Johns Jr.) was alerted.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "On Sunday morning, U.S. troops marched from West Germany through East Germany, bound for West Berlin. Lead elements—arranged in a column of 491 vehicles and trailers carrying 1,500 men, divided into five march units—left the Helmstedt-Marienborn checkpoint at 06:34. At Marienborn, the Soviet checkpoint next to Helmstedt on the West German-East German border, US personnel were counted by guards. The column was 160 km (99 mi) long, and covered 177 km (110 mi) from Marienborn to Berlin in full battle gear. East German police watched from beside trees next to the autobahn all the way along.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "The front of the convoy arrived at the outskirts of Berlin just before noon, to be met by Clay and Johnson, before parading through the streets of Berlin in front of a large crowd. At 04:00 on 21 August, Lyndon Johnson left West Berlin in the hands of General Frederick O. Hartel and his brigade of 4,224 officers and men. \"For the next three and a half years, American battalions would rotate into West Berlin, by autobahn, at three-month intervals to demonstrate Allied rights to the city\".", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "The creation of the Wall had important implications for both German states. By stemming the exodus of people from East Germany, the East German government was able to reassert its control over the country: in spite of discontent with the Wall, economic problems caused by dual currency and the black market were largely eliminated. The economy in the GDR began to grow. However, the Wall proved a public relations disaster for the communist bloc as a whole. Western powers portrayed it as a symbol of communist tyranny, particularly after East German border guards shot and killed would-be defectors. Such fatalities were later treated as acts of murder by the reunified Germany.", "title": "Start of the construction (1961)" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "The Berlin Wall was more than 140 kilometres (87 mi) long. In June 1962, a second, parallel fence, also known as a \"hinterland\" wall (inner wall), was built some 100 m (110 yd) farther into East German territory. The houses contained between the wall and fences were razed and the inhabitants relocated, thus establishing what later became known as the death strip. The death strip was covered with raked sand or gravel, rendering footprints easy to notice, easing the detection of trespassers and also enabling officers to see which guards had neglected their task; it offered no cover; and, most importantly, it offered clear fields of fire for the Wall guards.", "title": "Structure and adjacent areas" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "Through the years, the Berlin Wall evolved through four versions:", "title": "Structure and adjacent areas" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "The \"fourth-generation Wall\", known officially as \"Stützwandelement UL 12.11\" (retaining wall element UL 12.11), was the final and most sophisticated version of the Wall. Begun in 1975 and completed about 1980, it was constructed from 45,000 separate sections of reinforced concrete, each 3.6 metres (12 ft) high and 1.2 m (3.9 ft) wide, and cost DDM16,155,000 or about US$3,638,000. The concrete provisions added to this version of the Wall were done to prevent escapees from driving their cars through the barricades. At strategic points, the Wall was constructed to a somewhat weaker standard, so that East German and Soviet armored vehicles could easily break through in the event of war.", "title": "Structure and adjacent areas" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "The top of the wall was lined with a smooth pipe, intended to make it more difficult to scale. The Wall was reinforced by mesh fencing, signal fencing, anti-vehicle trenches, barbed wire, dogs on long lines, \"beds of nails\" (also known as \"Stalin's Carpet\") under balconies hanging over the \"death strip\", over 116 watchtowers, and 20 bunkers with hundreds of guards. This version of the Wall is the one most commonly seen in photographs, and surviving fragments of the Wall in Berlin and elsewhere around the world are generally pieces of the fourth-generation Wall. The layout came to resemble the inner German border in most technical aspects, except that the Berlin Wall had no landmines nor spring-guns. Maintenance was performed on the outside of the wall by personnel who accessed the area outside it either via ladders or via hidden doors within the wall. These doors could not be opened by a single person, needing two separate keys in two separate keyholes to unlock.", "title": "Structure and adjacent areas" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "As was the case with the inner German border, an unfortified strip of Eastern territory was left outside the wall. This outer strip was used by workers to paint over graffiti and perform other maintenance on the outside of the wall Unlike the inner German border, however, the outer strip was usually no more than four meters wide, and, in photos from the era, the exact location of the actual border in many places appears not even to have been marked. Also in contrast with the inner German border, little interest was shown by East German law enforcement in keeping outsiders off the outer strip; sidewalks of West Berlin streets even ran inside it.", "title": "Structure and adjacent areas" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "Despite the East German government's general policy of benign neglect, vandals were known to have been pursued in the outer strip, and even arrested. In 1986, defector and political activist Wolfram Hasch and four other defectors were standing inside the outer strip defacing the wall when East German personnel emerged from one of the hidden doors to apprehend them. All but Hasch escaped back into the western sector. Hasch himself was arrested, dragged through the door into the death strip, and later convicted of illegally crossing the de jure border outside the wall. Graffiti artist Thierry Noir has reported having often been pursued there by East German soldiers. While some graffiti artists were chased off the outer strip, others, such as Keith Haring, were seemingly tolerated.", "title": "Structure and adjacent areas" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Besides the sector-sector boundary within Berlin itself, the Wall also separated West Berlin from the present-day state of Brandenburg. The following present-day municipalities, listed in counter-clockwise direction, share a border with the former West Berlin:", "title": "Structure and adjacent areas" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "There were nine border crossings between East and West Berlin. These allowed visits by West Berliners, other West Germans, Western foreigners and Allied personnel into East Berlin, as well as visits by GDR citizens and citizens of other socialist countries into West Berlin, provided that they held the necessary permits. These crossings were restricted according to which nationality was allowed to use it (East Germans, West Germans, West Berliners, other countries). The best known was the vehicle and pedestrian checkpoint at the corner of Friedrichstraße and Zimmerstraße (Checkpoint Charlie), which was restricted to Allied personnel and foreigners.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "Several other border crossings existed between West Berlin and surrounding East Germany. These could be used for transit between West Germany and West Berlin, for visits by West Berliners into East Germany, for transit into countries neighbouring East Germany (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark), and for visits by East Germans into West Berlin carrying a permit. After the 1972 agreements, new crossings were opened to allow West Berlin waste to be transported into East German dumps, as well as some crossings for access to West Berlin's exclaves (see Steinstücken).", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "Four autobahns connected West Berlin to West Germany, including Berlin-Helmstedt autobahn, which entered East German territory between the towns of Helmstedt and Marienborn (Checkpoint Alpha), and which entered West Berlin at Dreilinden (Checkpoint Bravo for the Allied forces) in southwestern Berlin. Access to West Berlin was also possible by railway (four routes) and by boat for commercial shipping via canals and rivers.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Non-German Westerners could cross the border at Friedrichstraße station in East Berlin and at Checkpoint Charlie. When the Wall was erected, Berlin's complex public transit networks, the S-Bahn and U-Bahn, were divided with it. Some lines were cut in half; many stations were shut down. Three western lines traveled through brief sections of East Berlin territory, passing through eastern stations (called Geisterbahnhöfe, or ghost stations) without stopping. Both the eastern and western networks converged at Friedrichstraße, which became a major crossing point for those (mostly Westerners) with permission to cross.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "West Germans and citizens of other Western countries could generally visit East Germany, often after applying for a visa at an East German embassy several weeks in advance. Visas for day trips restricted to East Berlin were issued without previous application in a simplified procedure at the border crossing. However, East German authorities could refuse entry permits without stating a reason. In the 1980s, visitors from the western part of the city who wanted to visit the eastern part had to exchange at least DM 25 into East German currency at the poor exchange rate of 1:1. It was forbidden to export East German currency from the East, but money not spent could be left at the border for possible future visits. Tourists crossing from the west had to also pay for a visa, which cost DM 5; West Berliners did not have to pay this fee.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "West Berliners initially could not visit East Berlin or East Germany at all—all crossing points were closed to them between 26 August 1961 and 17 December 1963. In 1963, negotiations between East and West resulted in a limited possibility for visits during the Christmas season that year (Passierscheinregelung). Similar, very limited arrangements were made in 1964, 1965 and 1966.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "In 1971, with the Four Power Agreement on Berlin, agreements were reached that allowed West Berliners to apply for visas to enter East Berlin and East Germany regularly, comparable to the regulations already in force for West Germans. However, East German authorities could still refuse entry permits.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "East Berliners and East Germans could not, at first, travel to West Berlin or West Germany at all. This regulation remained in force essentially until the fall of the Wall, but over the years several exceptions to these rules were introduced, the most significant being:", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "For each of these exceptions, GDR citizens had to apply for individual approval, which was never guaranteed. In addition, even if travel was approved, GDR travellers could exchange only a very small amount of East German Marks into Deutsche Marks (DM), thus limiting the financial resources available for them to travel to the West. This led to the West German practice of granting a small amount of DM annually (Begrüßungsgeld, or welcome money) to GDR citizens visiting West Germany and West Berlin to help alleviate this situation.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "Citizens of other East European countries were in general subject to the same prohibition of visiting Western countries as East Germans, though the applicable exception (if any) varied from country to country.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "Allied military personnel and civilian officials of the Allied forces could enter and exit East Berlin without submitting to East German passport controls, purchasing a visa or being required to exchange money. Likewise, Soviet military patrols could enter and exit West Berlin. This was a requirement of the post-war Four Powers Agreements. A particular area of concern for the Western Allies involved official dealings with East German authorities when crossing the border, since Allied policy did not recognize the authority of the GDR to regulate Allied military traffic to and from West Berlin, as well as the Allied presence within Greater Berlin, including entry into, exit from, and presence within East Berlin.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "The Allies held that only the Soviet Union, and not the GDR, had the authority to regulate Allied personnel in such cases. For this reason, elaborate procedures were established to prevent inadvertent recognition of East German authority when engaged in travel through the GDR and when in East Berlin. Special rules applied to travel by Western Allied military personnel assigned to the military liaison missions accredited to the commander of Soviet forces in East Germany, located in Potsdam.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "Allied personnel were restricted by policy when travelling by land to the following routes:", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "As with military personnel, special procedures applied to travel by diplomatic personnel of the Western Allies accredited to their respective embassies in the GDR. This was intended to prevent inadvertent recognition of East German authority when crossing between East and West Berlin, which could jeopardize the overall Allied position governing the freedom of movement by Allied forces personnel within all Berlin.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "Ordinary citizens of the Western Allied powers, not formally affiliated with the Allied forces, were authorized to use all designated transit routes through East Germany to and from West Berlin. Regarding travel to East Berlin, such persons could also use the Friedrichstraße train station to enter and exit the city, in addition to Checkpoint Charlie. In these instances, such travelers, unlike Allied personnel, had to submit to East German border controls.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "During the years of the Wall, around 5,000 people successfully defected to West Berlin. The number of people who died trying to cross the Wall, or as a result of the Wall's existence, has been disputed. The most vocal claims by Alexandra Hildebrandt, director of the Checkpoint Charlie Museum and widow of the museum's founder, estimated the death toll to be well above 200. A historic research group at the Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF) in Potsdam has confirmed at least 140 deaths. Prior official figures listed 98 as being killed.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "The East German government issued shooting orders (Schießbefehl) to border guards dealing with defectors, though such orders are not the same as \"shoot to kill\" orders. GDR officials denied issuing the latter. In an October 1973 order later discovered by researchers, guards were instructed that people attempting to cross the Wall were criminals and needed to be shot:", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "Do not hesitate to use your firearm, not even when the border is breached in the company of women and children, which is a tactic the traitors have often used.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "Early successful escapes involved people jumping the initial barbed wire or leaping out of apartment windows along the line, but these ended as the Wall was fortified. East German authorities no longer permitted apartments near the Wall to be occupied, and any building near the Wall had its windows boarded and later bricked up. On 15 August 1961, Conrad Schumann was the first East German border guard to escape by jumping the barbed wire to West Berlin.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "On 22 August 1961, Ida Siekmann was the first casualty at the Berlin Wall: she died after she jumped out of her third floor apartment at 48 Bernauer Strasse. The first person to be shot and killed while trying to cross to West Berlin was Günter Litfin, a twenty-four-year-old tailor. He attempted to swim across the Spree to West Berlin on 24 August 1961, the same day that East German police had received shoot-to-kill orders to prevent anyone from escaping.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "Another dramatic escape was carried out in April 1963 by Wolfgang Engels, a 19-year-old civilian employee of the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA). Engels stole a Soviet armored personnel carrier from a base where he was deployed and drove it right into the Wall. He was fired at and seriously wounded by border guards. But a West German policeman intervened, firing his weapon at the East German border guards. The policeman removed Engels from the vehicle, which had become entangled in the barbed wire.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "East Germans successfully defected by a variety of methods: digging long tunnels under the Wall, waiting for favorable winds and taking a hot air balloon, sliding along aerial wires, flying ultralights and, in one instance, simply driving a sports car at full speed through the basic, initial fortifications. When a metal beam was placed at checkpoints to prevent this kind of defection, up to four people (two in the front seats and possibly two in the boot) drove under the bar in a sports car that had been modified to allow the roof and windscreen to come away when it made contact with the beam. They lay flat and kept driving forward. The East Germans then built zig-zagging roads at checkpoints. The sewer system predated the Wall, and some people escaped through the sewers, in a number of cases with assistance from the Unternehmen Reisebüro. In September 1962, 29 people escaped through a tunnel to the west. At least 70 tunnels were dug under the wall; only 19 were successful in allowing fugitives—about 400 persons—to escape. The East Germany authorities eventually used seismographic and acoustic equipment to detect the practice. In 1962, they planned an attempt to use explosives to destroy one tunnel, but this was not carried out as it was apparently sabotaged by a member of the Stasi.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "An airborne escape was made by Thomas Krüger, who landed a Zlin Z 42M light aircraft of the Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik, an East German youth military training organization, at RAF Gatow. His aircraft, registration DDR-WOH, was dismantled and returned to the East Germans by road, complete with humorous slogans painted on it by airmen of the Royal Air Force, such as \"Wish you were here\" and \"Come back soon\".", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "If an escapee was wounded in a crossing attempt and lay on the death strip, no matter how close they were to the Western wall, Westerners could not intervene for fear of triggering engaging fire from the 'Grepos', the East Berlin border guards. The guards often let fugitives bleed to death in the middle of this ground, as in the most notorious failed attempt, that of Peter Fechter (aged 18) at a point near Zimmerstrasse in East Berlin. He was shot and bled to death, in full view of the Western media, on 17 August 1962. Fechter's death created negative publicity worldwide that led the leaders of East Berlin to place more restrictions on shooting in public places and provide medical care for possible \"would-be escapers\". The last person to be shot and killed while trying to cross the border was Chris Gueffroy on 6 February 1989, while the final person to die in an escape attempt was Winfried Freudenberg who was killed when his homemade natural gas-filled balloon crashed on 8 March 1989.", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "The Wall gave rise to a widespread sense of desperation and oppression in East Berlin, as expressed in the private thoughts of one resident, who confided to her diary \"Our lives have lost their spirit… we can do nothing to stop them.\"", "title": "Official crossings and usage" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "On 6 June 1987, David Bowie, who earlier for several years lived and recorded in West Berlin, played a concert close to the Wall. This was attended by thousands of Eastern concertgoers across the Wall, followed by violent rioting in East Berlin. According to Tobias Ruther, these protests in East Berlin were the first in the sequence of riots that led to those of November 1989. Although other factors were probably more influential in the fall of the Wall, upon his death in 2016, the German Foreign Office tweeted \"Good-bye, David Bowie. You are now among #Heroes. Thank you for helping to bring down the #wall.\"", "title": "Concerts by Western artists and growing anti-Wall sentiment" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "On 19 July 1988, 16 months before the Wall came down, Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, played Rocking the Wall, a live concert in East Berlin, which was attended by 300,000 in person and broadcast on television. Springsteen spoke to the crowd in German, saying: \"I'm not here for or against any government. I've come to play rock 'n' roll for you in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down\". East Germany and its FDJ youth organization were worried they were losing an entire generation. They hoped that by letting Springsteen in, they could improve their sentiment among East Germans. However, this strategy of \"one step backwards, two steps forwards\" backfired, and the concert only made East Germans hungrier for more of the freedoms that Springsteen epitomized. While John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan delivered their famous speeches from the safety of West Berlin, Springsteen's speaking out against the Wall in the middle of East Berlin added to the euphoria.", "title": "Concerts by Western artists and growing anti-Wall sentiment" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "On 31 December 1989, American TV actor and pop music singer David Hasselhoff was the headlining performer for the Freedom Tour Live concert, which was attended by over 500,000 people on both sides of the Wall. The live concert footage was directed by music video director Thomas Mignone and aired on broadcast television station Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen ZDF throughout Europe. During shooting, film crew personnel pulled people up from both sides to stand and celebrate on top of the wall. Hasselhoff sang his number one hit song \"Looking For Freedom\" on a platform at the end of a twenty-meter steel crane that swung above and over the Wall adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate. A small museum was created in 2008 to celebrate Hasselhoff in the basement of the Circus Hostel.", "title": "Concerts by Western artists and growing anti-Wall sentiment" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "On 26 June 1963, 22 months after the erection of the Berlin Wall, U.S. President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin. Speaking from a platform erected on the steps of Rathaus Schöneberg for an audience of 450,000 and straying from the prepared script, he declared in his Ich bin ein Berliner speech the support of the United States for West Germany and the people of West Berlin in particular:", "title": "Comments by politicians" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was civis romanus sum [\"I am a Roman citizen\"]. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is \"Ich bin ein Berliner!\"... All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words \"Ich bin ein Berliner!\"", "title": "Comments by politicians" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "The message was aimed as much at the Soviets as it was at Berliners and was a clear statement of U.S. policy in the wake of the construction of the Berlin Wall. The speech is considered one of Kennedy's best, both a significant moment in the Cold War and a high point of the New Frontier. It was a great morale boost for West Berliners, who lived in an exclave deep inside East Germany and feared a possible East German occupation.", "title": "Comments by politicians" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher commented in 1982:", "title": "Comments by politicians" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "Every stone bears witness to the moral bankruptcy of the society it encloses", "title": "Comments by politicians" }, { "paragraph_id": 79, "text": "In a speech at the Brandenburg Gate commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin on 12 June 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev, then the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to tear down the Wall as a symbol of increasing freedom in the Eastern Bloc:", "title": "Comments by politicians" }, { "paragraph_id": 80, "text": "We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!", "title": "Comments by politicians" }, { "paragraph_id": 81, "text": "In January 1989 GDR leader Erich Honecker predicted that the Wall would stand for 50 or 100 more years if the conditions that had caused its construction did not change.", "title": "Comments by politicians" }, { "paragraph_id": 82, "text": "Due to the increasing economic problems in the Eastern Bloc and the failure of the USSR to intervene in relation to the individual communist states, the brackets of the Eastern Bloc slowly began to loosen from the end of the 1980s. One example is the fall of the communist government in neighboring Poland's 1989 Polish legislative election. Also in June 1989, the Hungarian government began dismantling the electrified fence along its border with Austria (with Western TV crews present) although the border was still very closely guarded and escape was almost impossible.", "title": "Fall" }, { "paragraph_id": 83, "text": "The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989, which was based on an idea by Otto von Habsburg to test the reaction of Mikhail Gorbachev, then triggered a peaceful chain reaction, at the end of which there was no longer the GDR and the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated. Because with the non-reaction of the USSR and the GDR to the mass exodus, the media-informed Eastern Europeans could feel the increasing loss of power of their governments and more and more East Germans were now trying to flee via Hungary. Erich Honecker explained to the Daily Mirror regarding the Paneuropean picnic and thus showed his people his own inaction: \"Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West.\" Then, in September, more than 13,000 East German tourists escaped through Hungary to Austria. This set up a chain of events. The Hungarians prevented many more East Germans from crossing the border and returned them to Budapest. These East Germans flooded the West German embassy and refused to return to East Germany.", "title": "Fall" }, { "paragraph_id": 84, "text": "The East German government responded by disallowing any further travel to Hungary but allowed those already there to return to East Germany. This triggered similar events in neighboring Czechoslovakia. This time, however, the East German authorities allowed people to leave, provided that they did so by train through East Germany. This was followed by mass demonstrations within East Germany itself. Protest demonstrations spread throughout East Germany in September 1989. Initially, protesters were mostly people wanting to leave to the West, chanting \"Wir wollen raus!\" (\"We want out!\"). Then protestors began to chant \"Wir bleiben hier!\" (\"We are staying here!\"). This was the start of what East Germans generally call the \"Peaceful Revolution\" of late 1989. The protest demonstrations grew considerably by early November. The movement neared its height on 4 November, when half a million people gathered to demand political change, at the Alexanderplatz demonstration, East Berlin's large public square and transportation hub. On 9 October 1989, the police and army units were given permission to use force against those assembled, but this did not deter the church service and march from taking place, which gathered 70,000 people.", "title": "Fall" }, { "paragraph_id": 85, "text": "The longtime leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker, resigned on 18 October 1989 and was replaced by Egon Krenz that day.", "title": "Fall" }, { "paragraph_id": 86, "text": "The wave of refugees leaving East Germany for the West kept increasing. By early November refugees were finding their way to Hungary via Czechoslovakia, or via the West German Embassy in Prague. This was tolerated by the new Krenz government, because of long-standing agreements with the communist Czechoslovak government, allowing free travel across their common border. However, this movement of people grew so large it caused difficulties for both countries. To ease the difficulties, the politburo led by Krenz decided on 9 November to allow refugees to exit directly through crossing points between East Germany and West Germany, including between East and West Berlin. Later the same day, the ministerial administration modified the proposal to include private, round-trip, and travel. The new regulations were to take effect the next day.", "title": "Fall" }, { "paragraph_id": 87, "text": "Günter Schabowski, the party boss in East Berlin and the spokesman for the SED Politburo, had the task of announcing the new regulations. However, he had not been involved in the discussions about the new regulations and had not been fully updated. Shortly before a press conference on 9 November, he was handed a note announcing the changes, but given no further instructions on how to handle the information. These regulations had only been completed a few hours earlier and were to take effect the following day, so as to allow time to inform the border guards. But this starting time delay was not communicated to Schabowski. At the end of the press conference, Schabowski read out loud the note he had been given. A reporter, ANSA's Riccardo Ehrman, asked when the regulations would take effect. After a few seconds' hesitation, Schabowski replied, \"As far as I know, it takes effect immediately, without delay\". After further questions from journalists, he confirmed that the regulations included the border crossings through the Wall into West Berlin, which he had not mentioned until then. He repeated that it was immediate in an interview with American journalist Tom Brokaw.", "title": "Fall" }, { "paragraph_id": 88, "text": "Excerpts from Schabowski's press conference were the lead story on West Germany's two main news programs that night—at 7:17 p.m. on ZDF's heute and at 8 p.m. on ARD's Tagesschau. As ARD and ZDF had broadcast to nearly all of East Germany since the late 1950s and had become accepted by the East German authorities, the news was broadcast there as well simultaneously. Later that night, on ARD's Tagesthemen, anchorman Hanns Joachim Friedrichs proclaimed, \"This 9 November is a historic day. The GDR has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone. The gates in the Wall stand open wide.\"", "title": "Fall" }, { "paragraph_id": 89, "text": "After hearing the broadcast, East Germans began gathering at the Wall, at the six checkpoints between East and West Berlin, demanding that border guards immediately open the gates. The surprised and overwhelmed guards made many hectic telephone calls to their superiors about the problem. At first, they were ordered to find the \"more aggressive\" people gathered at the gates and stamp their passports with a special stamp that barred them from returning to East Germany—in effect, revoking their citizenship. However, this still left thousands of people demanding to be let through \"as Schabowski said we can\". It soon became clear that no one among the East German authorities would take personal responsibility for issuing orders to use lethal force, so the vastly outnumbered soldiers had no way to hold back the huge crowd of East German citizens. Finally, at 10:45 p.m. on 9 November, Harald Jäger, the commander of the Bornholmer Straße border crossing yielded, allowing for the guards to open the checkpoints and allowing people through with little or no identity checking. As the Ossis swarmed through, they were greeted by Wessis waiting with flowers and champagne amid wild rejoicing. Soon afterward, a crowd of West Berliners jumped on top of the Wall, and were soon joined by East German youngsters. The evening of 9 November 1989 is known as the night the Wall came down.", "title": "Fall" }, { "paragraph_id": 90, "text": "Another border crossing to the south may have been opened earlier. An account by Heinz Schäfer indicates that he also acted independently and ordered the opening of the gate at Waltersdorf-Rudow a couple of hours earlier. This may explain reports of East Berliners appearing in West Berlin earlier than the opening of the Bornholmer Straße border crossing.", "title": "Fall" }, { "paragraph_id": 91, "text": "Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Guardian collected short stories from 9 November 1989 by five German writers who reflect on the day. In this, Kathrin Schmidt remembers comically: 'I downed almost an entire bottle of schnapps'.", "title": "Fall" }, { "paragraph_id": 92, "text": "Little is left of the Wall at its original site, which was destroyed almost in its entirety. Three long sections are still standing: an 80-metre-long (260 ft) piece of the first (westernmost) wall at the Topography of Terror, site of the former Gestapo headquarters, halfway between Checkpoint Charlie and Potsdamer Platz; a longer section of the second (easternmost) wall along the Spree River near the Oberbaumbrücke, nicknamed East Side Gallery; and a third section that is partly reconstructed, in the north at Bernauer Straße, which was turned into a memorial in 1998. Other isolated fragments, lampposts, other elements, and a few watchtowers also remain in various parts of the city.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 93, "text": "Nothing still accurately represents the Wall's original appearance better than a very short stretch at Bernauer Straße associated with the Berlin Wall Documentation Center. Other remnants are badly damaged by souvenir seekers. Fragments of the Wall were taken and some were sold around the world. Appearing both with and without certificates of authenticity, these fragments are now a staple on the online auction service eBay as well as German souvenir shops. Today, the eastern side is covered in graffiti that did not exist while the Wall was guarded by the armed soldiers of East Germany. Previously, graffiti appeared only on the western side. Along some tourist areas of the city centre, the city government has marked the location of the former Wall by a row of cobblestones in the street. In most places only the \"first\" wall is marked, except near Potsdamer Platz where the stretch of both walls is marked, giving visitors an impression of the dimension of the barrier system.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 94, "text": "After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were initiatives that they want to preserve the death strip walkways and redevelop them into a hiking and cycling area, known as Berliner Mauerweg. It is part of the initiative by the Berlin Senate since 11 October 2001.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 95, "text": "For many years after reunification, people in Germany talked about cultural differences between East and West Germans (colloquially Ossis and Wessis), sometimes described as Mauer im Kopf (The wall in the head). A September 2004 poll found that 25 percent of West Germans and 12 percent of East Germans wished that East and West should be separated again by a \"Wall\". A poll taken in October 2009 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall indicated, however, that only about a tenth of the population was still unhappy with the unification (8 percent in the East; 12 percent in the West). Although differences are still perceived between East and West, Germans make similar distinctions between North and South.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 96, "text": "A 2009 poll conducted by Russia's VTsIOM, found that more than half of all Russians do not know who built the Berlin Wall. Ten percent of people surveyed thought Berlin residents built it themselves. Six percent said Western powers built it and four percent thought it was a \"bilateral initiative\" of the Soviet Union and the West. Fifty-eight percent said they did not know who built it, with just 24 percent correctly naming the Soviet Union and its then-communist ally East Germany.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 97, "text": "Not all segments of the Wall were ground up as the Wall was being torn down. Many segments have been given to various institutions in the world. They can be found, for instance, in presidential and historical museums, lobbies of hotels and corporations, at universities and government buildings, and in public spaces in different countries of the world.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 98, "text": "On 13 August 2011, Germany marked the 50th anniversary of East Germany beginning the erection of the Berlin Wall. Chancellor Angela Merkel joined with President Christian Wulff and Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit at the Bernauer Straße memorial park to remember lives and liberty. Speeches extolled freedom and a minute of silence at noon honored those who died trying to flee to the West. \"It is our shared responsibility to keep the memory alive and to pass it on to the coming generations as a reminder to stand up for freedom and democracy to ensure that such injustice may never happen again.\" entreated Mayor Wowereit. \"It has been shown once again: Freedom is invincible at the end. No wall can permanently withstand the desire for freedom\", proclaimed President Wulff.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 99, "text": "Documentary films specifically about the Berlin Wall include:", "title": "Related media" }, { "paragraph_id": 100, "text": "Fictional films featuring the Berlin Wall have included:", "title": "Related media" }, { "paragraph_id": 101, "text": "Some novels specifically about the Berlin Wall include:", "title": "Related media" }, { "paragraph_id": 102, "text": "Music related to the Berlin Wall includes:", "title": "Related media" }, { "paragraph_id": 103, "text": "Artworks related to the Berlin Wall include:", "title": "Related media" }, { "paragraph_id": 104, "text": "Video games related to the Berlin Wall include:", "title": "Related media" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bass (/beɪs/ BAYSS) (also called bottom end) describes tones of low (also called \"deep\") frequency, pitch and range from 16 to 250 Hz (C0 to middle C4) and bass instruments that produce tones in the low-pitched range C2-C4. They belong to different families of instruments and can cover a wide range of musical roles. Since producing low pitches usually requires a long air column or string, and for stringed instruments, a large hollow body, the string and wind bass instruments are usually the largest instruments in their families or instrument classes.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "When bass notes are played in a musical ensemble such an orchestra, they are frequently used to provide a counterpoint or counter-melody, in a harmonic context either to outline or juxtapose the progression of the chords, or with percussion to underline the rhythm.", "title": "Musical role" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "In popular music, the bass part, which is called the \"bassline\", typically provides harmonic and rhythmic support to the band. The bass player is a member of the rhythm section in a band, along with the drummer, rhythm guitarist, and, in some cases, a keyboard instrument player (e.g., piano or Hammond organ). The bass player emphasizes the root or fifth of the chord in their basslines (and to a lesser degree, the third of the chord) and accents the strong beats.", "title": "Musical role" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In classical music, different forms of bass are: basso concertante, or basso recitante; the bass voice of the chorus; the bass which accompanies the softer passages of a composition, as well as those passages which employ the whole power of the ensemble, generally played by the violoncellos in orchestral music; contrabass (“under bass”), is described as that part which is performed by the double basses; violoncellos often play the same line an octave higher, or a different melodic or rhythmic part which is not a bassline when double basses are used; basso ripieno; that bass which joins in the full passages of a composition, and, by its depth of tone and energy of stroke, affords a powerful contrast to the lighter and softer passages or movements.", "title": "Kinds of bass harmony" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Basso continuo was an approach to writing music during the Baroque music era (1600-1750). With basso continuo, a written-out bassline served to set out the chord progression for an entire piece (symphony, concerto, Mass, or other work), with the bassline being played by pipe organ or harpsichord and the chords being improvised by players of chordal instruments (theorbo, lute, harpsichord, etc.).", "title": "Kinds of bass harmony" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "\"The bass differs from other voices because of the particular role it plays in supporting and defining harmonic motion. It does so at levels ranging from immediate, chord-by-chord events to the larger harmonic organization of an entire work.\"", "title": "Kinds of bass harmony" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "As seen in the musical instrument classification article, categorizing instruments can be difficult. For example, some instruments fall into more than one category. The cello is considered a tenor instrument in some orchestral settings, but in a string quartet it is the bass instrument. Also, the Bass Flute is actually the tenor member of the flute family even though it is called the \"Bass\" Flute.", "title": "Instruments" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Examples grouped by general form and playing technique include:", "title": "Instruments" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "A musician playing one of these instruments is often known as a bassist. Other more specific terms such as 'bass guitarist', 'double bassist', 'bass player', etc. may also be used.", "title": "Instruments" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "With recorded music playback, for owners of 33 rpm LPs and 45 singles, the availability of loud and deep bass was limited by the ability of the phonograph record stylus to track the groove. While some hi-fi aficionados had solved the problem by using other playback sources, such as reel-to-reel tape players which were capable of delivering accurate, naturally deep bass from acoustic sources, or synthetic bass not found in nature, with the popular introduction of the compact cassette in the late 1960s it became possible to add more low-frequency content to recordings. By the mid-1970s, 12\" vinyl singles, which allowed for \"more bass volume\", were used to record disco, reggae, dub and hip-hop tracks; dance club DJs played these records in clubs with subwoofers to achieve \"physical and emotional\" reactions from dancers.", "title": "Music shows and dances" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In the early 1970s, early disco DJs sought out deeper bass sounds for their dance events. David Mancuso hired sound engineer Alex Rosner to design additional subwoofers for his disco dance events, along with \"tweeter arrays\" to \"boost the treble and bass at opportune moments\" at his private, underground parties at The Loft. The demand for sub-bass sound reinforcement in the 1970s was driven by the important role of \"powerful bass drum\" in disco, as compared with rock and pop; to provide this deeper range, a third crossover point from 40 Hz to 120 Hz (centering on 80 Hz) was added. The Paradise Garage discotheque in New York City, which operated from 1977 to 1987, had \"custom designed 'sub-bass' speakers\" developed by Alex Rosner's disciple, sound engineer Richard (\"Dick\") Long that were called \"Levan Horns\" (in honor of resident DJ Larry Levan).", "title": "Music shows and dances" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "By the end of the 1970s, subwoofers were used in dance venue sound systems to enable the playing of \"[b]ass-heavy dance music\" that we \"do not 'hear' with our ears but with our entire body\". At the club, Long used four Levan bass horns, one in each corner of the dancefloor, to create a \"haptic and tactile quality\" in the sub-bass that you could feel in your body. To overcome the lack of sub-bass frequencies on 1970s disco records (sub-bass frequencies below 60 Hz were removed during mastering), Long added a DBX 100 \"Boom Box\" subharmonic pitch generator into his system to synthesize 25 Hz to 50 Hz sub-bass from the 50 to 100 Hz bass on the records. In the early 1980s, Long designed a sound system for the Warehouse dance club, with \"huge stacks of subwoofers\" which created \"deep and intense\" bass frequencies that \"pound[ed] through your system\" and \"entire body\", enabling clubgoers to \"viscerally experience\" the DJs' house music mixes.", "title": "Music shows and dances" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Deep, heavy bass is central to Jamaican musical styles such as dub and reggae. In Jamaica in the 1970s and 1980s, sound engineers for reggae sound systems began creating \"heavily customized\" subwoofer enclosures by adding foam and tuning the cabinets to achieve \"rich and articulate speaker output below 100 Hz\". The sound engineers who developed the \"bass-heavy signature sound\" of sound reinforcement systems have been called \"deserving as much credit for the sound of Jamaican music as their better-known music producer cousins\". The sound engineers for Stone Love Movement (a sound system crew), for example, modified folded horn subwoofers they imported from the US to get more of a bass reflex sound that suited local tone preferences for dancehall audiences, as the unmodified folded horn was found to be \"too aggressive\" sounding and \"not deep enough for Jamaican listeners\".", "title": "Music shows and dances" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "In Jamaican sound system culture, there are both \"low and high bass bins\" in \"towering piles\" that are \"delivered in large trucks\" and set up by a crew of \"box boys\", and then positioned and adjusted by the sound engineer in a process known as \"stringing up\", all to create the \"sound of reggae music you can literally feel as it comes off these big speakers\". Sound system crews hold 'sound clash' competitions, where each sound system is set up and then the two crews try to outdo each other.", "title": "Music shows and dances" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The use of subwoofers to provide deep bass in film presentations received a great deal of publicity in 1974 with the movie Earthquake which was released in Sensurround. Initially installed in 17 U.S. theaters, the Cerwin Vega \"Sensurround\" system used large subwoofers which were driven by racks of 500 watt amplifiers which were triggered by control tones printed on one of the audio tracks on the film. Four of the subwoofers were positioned in front of the audience under (or behind) the film screen and two more were placed together at the rear of the audience on a platform. Powerful noise energy and loud rumbling in the range of 17 Hz to 120 Hz was generated at the level of 110–120 decibels of sound pressure level, abbreviated dB(SPL). The new low frequency entertainment method helped the film become a box office success. More Sensurround systems were assembled and installed. By 1976 there were almost 300 Sensurround systems leapfrogging through select theaters. Other films to use the effect include Midway in 1976 and Rollercoaster in 1977.", "title": "Movies" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "UK bass, also called bass music, is club music that emerged in the United Kingdom during the mid-2000s under the influence of diverse genres such as house, grime, dubstep, UK garage, R&B, and UK funky. The term \"UK bass\" came into use as artists began ambiguously blending the sounds of these defined genres while maintaining an emphasis on percussive, bass-led rhythm.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "UK bass is sometimes conflated with bassline or post-dubstep. It is not to be confused with the hip hop and electro-based genre Miami bass, which is sometimes called \"bass music\" as well.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The breadth of styles that have come to be associated with the term preclude it from being a specific musical genre. Pitchfork writer Martin Clark has suggested that \"well-meaning attempts to loosely define the ground we're covering here are somewhat futile and almost certainly flawed. This is not one genre. However, given the links, interaction, and free-flowing ideas ... you can't dismiss all these acts as unrelated.\" Dubstep producer Skream is quoted in an interview with The Independent in September 2011 as saying:", "title": "Origins" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The word dubstep is being used by a lot of people and there were a lot of people being tagged with the dubstep brush. They don't want to be tagged with it and shouldn't be tagged with it – that's not what they're pushing... When I say 'UK bass', it's what everyone UK is associated with so it would be a lot easier if it was called that.\"", "title": "Origins" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "In the United Kingdom, bass music has had major mainstream success since the late 2000s and early 2010s, with artists such as James Blake, Benga, Burial, SBTRKT, Sophie, Rustie, Zomby, and Skream. The term \"post-dubstep\" has been used synonymously to refer to artists, such as Blake and Mount Kimbie whose work draws on UK garage, 2-step, and other forms of underground dance music, as well as ambient music and early R&B. Outside of nightclubs, UK bass has mainly been promoted and played on Internet radio stations such as Sub.FM and Rinse FM.", "title": "Origins" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "A burning glass or burning lens is a large convex lens that can concentrate the sun's rays onto a small area, heating up the area and thus resulting in ignition of the exposed surface. Burning mirrors achieve a similar effect by using reflecting surfaces to focus the light. They were used in 18th-century chemical studies for burning materials in closed glass vessels where the products of combustion could be trapped for analysis. The burning glass was a useful contrivance in the days before electrical ignition was easily achieved.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Burning glass technology has been known since antiquity, as described by Greek and Roman writers who recorded the use of lenses to start fires for various purposes. Pliny the Elder noted the use of glass vases filled with water to concentrate sunlight heat intensely enough to ignite clothing, as well as convex lenses that were used to cauterize wounds. Plutarch refers to a burning mirror made of joined triangular metal mirrors installed at the temple of the Vestal Virgins. Aristophanes mentions the burning lens in his play The Clouds (424 BC).", "title": "Historical development: from legend to science" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Strepsiades. Have you ever seen a beautiful, transparent stone at the druggists', with which you may kindle fire?", "title": "Historical development: from legend to science" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The Hellenistic Greek mathematician Archimedes was said to have used a burning glass as a weapon in 212 BC, when Syracuse was besieged by Marcus Claudius Marcellus of the Roman Republic. The Roman fleet was supposedly incinerated, though eventually the city was taken and Archimedes was slain.", "title": "Historical development: from legend to science" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The legend of Archimedes gave rise to a considerable amount of research on burning glasses and lenses until the late 17th century. Various researchers from medieval Christendom to the Islamic world worked with burning glasses, including Anthemius of Tralles (6th century AD), Proclus (6th century; who by this means purportedly destroyed the fleet of Vitalian besieging Constantinople), Ibn Sahl in his On Burning Mirrors and Lenses (10th century), Alhazen in his Book of Optics (1021), Roger Bacon (13th century), Giambattista della Porta and his friends (16th century), Athanasius Kircher and Gaspar Schott (17th century), and the Comte de Buffon in 1740 in Paris.", "title": "Historical development: from legend to science" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "While the effects of camera obscura were mentioned by Greek philosopher Aristotle in the 4th century BC, contemporary Chinese Mohists of China's Warring States Period who compiled the Mozi described their experiments with burning mirrors and the pinhole camera. A few decades after Alhazen described camera obscura in Iraq, the Song dynasty Chinese statesman Shen Kuo was nevertheless the first to clearly describe the relationship of the focal point of a concave mirror, the burning point and the pinhole camera as separate radiation phenomena in his Dream Pool Essays (1088). By the late 15th century Leonardo da Vinci would be the first in Europe to make similar observations about the focal point and pinhole.", "title": "Historical development: from legend to science" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Burning lenses were used in the 18th century by both Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier in their experiments to obtain oxides contained in closed vessels under high temperatures. These included carbon dioxide by burning diamond, and mercuric oxide by heating mercury. This type of experiment contributed to the discovery of \"dephlogisticated air\" by Priestley, which became better known as oxygen, following Lavoisier's investigations.", "title": "Historical development: from legend to science" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Chapter 17 of William Bates' 1920 book Perfect Sight Without Glasses, in which the author argues that observation of the sun is beneficial to those with poor vision, includes a figure of somebody \"Focussing the Rays of the Sun Upon the Eye of a Patient by Means of a Burning Glass.\"", "title": "Historical development: from legend to science" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The burning lens of the Grand Duke of Tuscany was used by Sir Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday to burn a diamond in oxygen on the 27th March 1814.", "title": "Historical development: from legend to science" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The first story akin to that of burning glass is by Archimedes, for the purpose of war, in 212 BC. When Syracuse was besieged by Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the Roman fleet was supposedly incinerated by the use of not glass per se, but a concave mirror made of brass focusing sunlight. Whether or not that actually happened, eventually the city was taken and Archimedes was slain.", "title": "Use" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In 1796, during the French Revolution and three years after the declaration of war between France and Great Britain, physicist Étienne-Gaspard Robert met with the French government and proposed the use of mirrors to burn the invading ships of the British Royal Navy. They decided not to take up his proposal.", "title": "Use" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Burning glasses (often called fire lenses) are still used to light fires in outdoor and primitive settings. Large burning lenses sometimes take the form of Fresnel lenses, similar to lighthouse lenses, including those for use in solar furnaces. Solar furnaces are used in industry to produce extremely high temperatures without the need for fuel or large supplies of electricity. They sometimes employ a large parabolic array of mirrors (some facilities are several stories high) to focus light to a high intensity.", "title": "Use" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "In various religions settings, a burning glass is used to set off some sort of sacred fire.", "title": "Use" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "From the 7th to the 16th centuries, a burning glass was used by Christians to set off the Easter Fire during the Easter vigil. Thus, Saint Boniface explained to Pope Zachary that he produced the new fire of Holy Saturday by means of a crystal lens concentrating the rays of the sun. This process was also mentioned in liturgical books until the Roman Pontifical of 1561.", "title": "Use" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "In Cambodia, a burning glass has also been used since ancient times for the cremation of kings and most recently for the funeral of King Sihanouk. The crematorium of the king is traditionally prepared by the Bakus brahmin from the Royal Palace on the last day of the week-long funeral. Small pieces of fragrant agarwood are placed beneath the magnifying glass until it ignites. The incandescent wood is used to light candles and pass on the fire to the attendees, who usually take their lit candles home.", "title": "Use" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The Olympic torch that is carried around the host country of the Olympic Games is lit by a burning glass, at the site of ancient Olympia in Greece.", "title": "Use" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "There have been several real-world tests to evaluate the validity of the legend of Archimedes described above (see § War: since the legend of Archimedes) over the centuries, including a test by Comte de Buffon (circa 1747), documented in the paper titled \"Invention De Miroirs Ardens, Pour Brusler a Une Grande Distance\", and an experiment by John Scott, which was documented in an 1867 paper. In 1973, Greek scientist Dr. Ioannis Sakkas, curious about whether Archimedes could really have used a \"burning glass\" to destroy the Roman fleet in 212 BC, lined up nearly 60 Greek sailors, each holding an oblong mirror tipped to catch the sun’s rays and direct them at a wooden ship 160 feet away. The ship caught fire at once. Sakkas said after the experiment there was no doubt in his mind the great inventor could have used bronze mirrors to scuttle the Romans.", "title": "Use" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "However, accounting for battle conditions makes such a weapon impractical, with modern tests refuting such claims. An experiment was carried out by a group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005. It concluded that although the theory was sound for stationary objects, the mirrors would not likely have been able to concentrate sufficient solar energy to set a ship on fire under battle conditions. Similar experiments were conducted on the popular science-based TV show MythBusters in 2004, 2006, and 2010, arriving at similar results based on the premise of the controversial myth.", "title": "Use" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "However, an episode of Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections relating to the Keck Observatory (whose reflector glass is based on the Archimedes' Mirror) did successfully use a much smaller curved mirror to burn a wooden model, although the scaled-down model was not made of the same quality of materials as in the MythBusters effort.", "title": "Use" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Battle of Adrianople (378 CE), in which Gothic rebels defeated the Eastern Roman Empire, was the main battle of the Gothic War (376–382).", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Battle of Adrianople may also refer to:", "title": "" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "A beacon is an intentionally conspicuous device designed to attract attention to a specific location. A common example is the lighthouse, which draws attention to a fixed point that can be used to navigate around obstacles or into port. More modern examples include a variety of radio beacons that can be read on radio direction finders in all weather, and radar transponders that appear on radar displays.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Beacons can also be combined with semaphoric or other indicators to provide important information, such as the status of an airport, by the colour and rotational pattern of its airport beacon, or of pending weather as indicated on a weather beacon mounted at the top of a tall building or similar site. When used in such fashion, beacons can be considered a form of optical telegraphy.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Beacons help guide navigators to their destinations. Types of navigational beacons include radar reflectors, radio beacons, sonic and visual signals. Visual beacons range from small, single-pile structures to large lighthouses or light stations and can be located on land or on water. Lighted beacons are called lights; unlighted beacons are called daybeacons. Aerodrome beacons are used to indicate locations of airports and helipads.", "title": "For navigation" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Handheld beacons are also employed in aircraft marshalling, and are used by the marshal to deliver instructions to the crew of aircraft as they move around an active airport, heliport or aircraft carrier.", "title": "For navigation" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Historically, beacons were fires lit at well-known locations on hills or high places, used either as lighthouses for navigation at sea, or for signalling over land that enemy troops were approaching, in order to alert defenses. As signals, beacons are an ancient form of optical telegraph and were part of a relay league.", "title": "For defensive communications (historical)" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Systems of this kind have existed for centuries over much of the world. The ancient Greeks called them phryctoriae, while beacons figure on several occasions on the column of Trajan.", "title": "For defensive communications (historical)" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "In imperial China, sentinels on and near the Great Wall of China used a sophisticated system of daytime smoke and nighttime flame to send signals along long chains of beacon towers.", "title": "For defensive communications (historical)" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Legend has it that King You of Zhou played a trick multiple times in order to amuse his often melancholy concubine, ordering beacon towers lit to fool his vassals and soldiers. But when enemies, led by the Marquess of Shen really arrived at the wall, although the towers were lit, no defenders came, leading to King Yōu's death and the collapse of the Western Zhou dynasty. China's system of beacon towers was not extant prior to the Han dynasty.", "title": "For defensive communications (historical)" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Thucydides wrote that during the Peloponnesian War, the Peloponnesians who were in Corcyra were informed by night-time beacon signals of the approach of sixty Athenian vessels from Lefkada.", "title": "For defensive communications (historical)" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "In the 10th century, during the Arab–Byzantine wars, the Byzantine Empire used a beacon system to transmit messages from the border with the Abbasid Caliphate, across Anatolia to the imperial palace in the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. It was devised by Leo the Mathematician for Emperor Theophilos, but either abolished or radically curtailed by Theophilos' son and successor, Michael III. Beacons were later used in Greece as well, while the surviving parts of the beacon system in Anatolia seem to have been reactivated in the 12th century by Emperor Manuel I Komnenos.", "title": "For defensive communications (historical)" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In Scandinavia many hill forts were part of beacon networks to warn against invading pillagers. In Finland, these beacons were called vainovalkeat, \"persecution fires\", or vartiotulet, \"guard fires\", and were used to warn Finn settlements of imminent raids by the Vikings.", "title": "For defensive communications (historical)" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "In Wales, the Brecon Beacons were named for beacons used to warn of approaching English raiders. In England, the most famous examples are the beacons used in Elizabethan England to warn of the approaching Spanish Armada. Many hills in England were named Beacon Hill after such beacons. In England the authority to erect beacons originally lay with the King and later was delegated to the Lord High Admiral. The money due for the maintenance of beacons was called Beaconagium and was levied by the sheriff of each county. In the Scottish borders country, a system of beacon fires was at one time established to warn of incursions by the English. Hume and Eggerstone castles and Soltra Edge were part of this network.", "title": "For defensive communications (historical)" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "In Spain, the border of Granada in the territory of the Crown of Castile had a complex beacon network to warn against Moorish raiders and military campaigns. Due to the progressive advance of the borders throughout the process of the Reconquista, the entire Spanish geography is full of defensive lines of castles, towers and fortifications, visually connected to each other, which served as fortified beacons. Some examples are the Route of the Vinalopó castles or the distribution of the castles in Jaén.", "title": "For defensive communications (historical)" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Infrared strobes and other infrared beacons have increasingly been used in modern combat when operating at night as they can only be seen through night vision goggles. As a result, they are often used to mark friendly positions as a form of IFF to prevent friendly fire and improve coordination. Soldiers will typically affix them to their helmets or other gear so they are easily visible to others using night vision including other infantry, ground vehicles, and aerial platforms (drones, helicopters, planes, etc).", "title": "Military use (20th–21st century)" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Passive markers include IR patches, which reflect infrared light, and chemlights. The earliest such beacons were often IR chemlights taped to helmets.", "title": "Military use (20th–21st century)" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "As time went on, more sophisticated options began to emerge with electronically powered infrared strobes with specific mounting solutions for attaching to helmets or load bearing equipment. These strobes may have settings which allow constant on or strobes of IR light, hence the name.", "title": "Military use (20th–21st century)" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Advancements in near-peer technology, however, present risk since if friendly units can see the strobe with night vision so could enemies with night vision capabilities. As a result, some in the American military have stressed that efforts should be made to improve training regarding light discipline (IR and visible) and other means of reducing a unit's visible signature.", "title": "Military use (20th–21st century)" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Vehicular beacons are rotating or flashing lights affixed to the top of a vehicle to attract the attention of surrounding vehicles and pedestrians. Emergency vehicles such as fire engines, ambulances, police cars, tow trucks, construction vehicles, and snow-removal vehicles carry beacon lights.", "title": "On vehicles" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "The color of the lamps varies by jurisdiction; typical colors are blue and/or red for police, fire, and medical-emergency vehicles; amber for hazards (slow-moving vehicles, wide loads, tow trucks, security personnel, construction vehicles, etc.); green for volunteer firefighters or for medical personnel, and violet for funerary vehicles. Beacons may be constructed with halogen bulbs similar to those used in vehicle headlamps, xenon flashtubes, or LEDs. Incandescent and xenon light sources require the vehicle's engine to continue running to ensure that the battery is not depleted when the lights are used for a prolonged period. The low power consumption of LEDs allows the vehicle's engine to remain turned off while the lights operate.", "title": "On vehicles" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Beacons and bonfires are also used to mark occasions and celebrate events.", "title": "Other uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Beacons have also allegedly been abused by shipwreckers. An illicit fire at a wrong position would be used to direct a ship against shoals or beaches, so that its cargo could be looted after the ship sank or ran aground. There are, however, no historically substantiated occurrences of such intentional shipwrecking.", "title": "Other uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "In wireless networks, a beacon is a type of frame which is sent by the access point (or WiFi router) to indicate that it is on.", "title": "Other uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Bluetooth based beacons periodically send out a data packet and this could be used by software to identify the beacon location. This is typically used by indoor navigation and positioning applications.", "title": "Other uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Beaconing is the process that allows a network to self-repair network problems. The stations on the network notify the other stations on the ring when they are not receiving the transmissions. Beaconing is used in Token ring and FDDI networks.", "title": "Other uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "In Aeschylus' tragedy Agamemnon, a chain of eight beacons staffed by so-called lampadóphoroi inform Clytemnestra in Argos, within a single night's time, that Troy has just fallen under her husband king Agamemnon's control, after a famous ten years siege.", "title": "Other uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "In J. R. R. Tolkien's high fantasy novel, The Lord of the Rings, a series of beacons alerts the entire realm of Gondor when the kingdom is under attack. These beacon posts were staffed by messengers who would carry word of their lighting to either Rohan or Belfalas. In Peter Jackson's film adaptation of the novel, the beacons serve as a connection between the two realms of Rohan and Gondor, alerting one another directly when they require military aid, as opposed to relying on messengers as in the novel.", "title": "Other uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "The Beacon was an influential Caribbean magazine published in Trinidad in the 1930s. New Beacon Books was the first Caribbean publishing house in England, founded in London in 1966, was named after the Beacon journal.", "title": "Other uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Beacons are sometimes used in retail to send digital coupons or invitations to customers passing by.", "title": "Other uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "\"Beacon\" is the name of a data sharing protocol in biomedical genomics. The Genomic Beacon API is a standard of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH).", "title": "Other uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "An infrared beacon (IR beacon) transmits a modulated light beam in the infrared spectrum, which can be identified easily and positively. A line of sight clear of obstacles between the transmitter and the receiver is essential. IR beacons have a number of applications in robotics and in Combat Identification (CID).", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Infrared beacons are the key infrastructure for the Universal Traffic Management System (UTMS) in Japan. They perform two-way communication with travelling vehicles based on highly directional infrared communication technology and have a vehicle detecting capability to provide more accurate traffic information.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "A sonar beacon is an underwater device which transmits sonic or ultrasonic signals for the purpose of providing bearing information. The most common type is that of a rugged watertight sonar transmitter attached to a submarine and capable of operating independently of the electrical system of the boat. It can be used in cases of emergencies to guide salvage vessels to the location of a disabled submarine.", "title": "Types" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bhangra (Punjabi pronunciation: [ˈpə̀ŋɡ(ə)ɽaː] ) is a type of non-traditional music of Punjab originating in Britain, specifically Southall. It is a type of upbeat popular music associated with the Punjabi diaspora in Britain. The style has its origins in the folk music of Punjab as well as western pop music of the 1970s and 1980s. Prior to this musical fusion, Bhangra existed only as a dance form in the native Punjab. This Punjabi music was unique in that it was not traditional nor did it seek any authenticity. While the traditional folk music of Punjab has a set of melodies that are used by various singers, Bhangra was a form of strict \"band culture\" in that new melodies were composed for each song. Therefore, the musicians were as important as the singers.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The roots of modern bhangra music date back to the Sikh Punjabi community in Punjab during the 1960s. An early pop music and modern recording group of this type of music in the United Kingdom was Bhujhangy Group, founded by Tarlochan Singh Bilga, Balbir Singh Khanpur, Gurpal, Rajinder Dhona and Dalvir Kahanpuri in Birmingham in 1971. Bhujhangy Group's first major hit was \"Bhabiye Akh Larr Gayee\". It was written by Tarlochan Singh Bilga in the early 1975s and was released on Birmingham's Oriental Star Agencies label. This was the first bhangra song to combine traditional Asian music with modern Western instruments.", "title": "Origins" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Although bhangra music used many of the elements of Punjabi folk music (e.g., \"Bakkrey Bulaaney\" – the goat herding vocalizations), it was also radically different in its embrace of modernity. The song structure of a typical bhangra song featured four verses, a chorus, along with two alternating instrumental bridge sections. (e.g., CVB1CVB2CVB1CVB2C.) Hence it featured more musicianship than its folk predecessor.", "title": "Origins" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "A modern and commercial form of bhangra music was said to rise in Britain in the 1970s by Punjabi immigrants who took their native folk music and began experimenting by altering it using instruments from their host country. The new genre quickly became popular in Britain replacing Punjabi folk singers due to it being heavily influenced in Britain by the infusion of rock music and a need to move away from the simple and repetitive Punjabi folk music. It indicated the development of a self-conscious and distinctively rebellious British Asian youth culture centred on an experiential sense of self, e.g., language, gesture, bodily signification, desires, etc., in a situation in which tensions with British culture and racist elements in British society had resulted in alienation in many minority ethnic groups, fostered a sense of need for an affirmation of a positive identity and culture, and provided a platform for British Punjabi males to assert their masculinity.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "In the 1980s, distributed by record labels such as Multitone Records, bhangra artists were selling over 30,000 cassettes a week in the UK, but no artists reached the Top 40 UK chart despite these artists outselling popular British ones; most of the bhangra cassette sales were not through the large UK record stores, whose sales were those recorded by the Official UK Charts Company for creating their rankings.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The group Alaap was formed in 1977, co-founded by Channi Singh and Harjeet Gandhi who both hailed from Southall, a Punjabi area in London. Their album Teri Chunni De Sitaray was released in 1982 by Multitone. Alaap was considered the first and original superstar bhangra band formed in the United Kingdom. Channi Singh has been awarded the OBE by the Queen for his services to Bhangra music and services/charity for the British Asian community. Co-founder Harjeet Gandhi died in 2003.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The 1980s is commonly known as the golden age, or the age of bhangra music, which lasted roughly from 1985 to 1993. The primary emphasis during these times was on the melody/riff, played out usually on a synthesizer, harmonium, accordion or guitar. Folk instruments were rarely used.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "One of the biggest bhangra stars of the last several decades is Malkit Singh and his band Golden Star. Singh was born in June 1963 in the village of Hussainpur in Punjab. He attended the Lyallpur Khalsa College, Jalandhar, in Punjab in 1980 to study for a bachelor of arts degree. There he met his mentor, Professor Inderjit Singh, who taught him Punjabi folk singing and bhangra dancing. Due to Singh's tutelage, Malkit entered and won song contests during this time. In 1983, he won a gold medal at the Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, Punjab, for performing his song \"Gurh Nalon Ishq Mitha\", which later featured on his first album, Nach Gidhe Wich. The lyrics were by Tarlochan Singh Bilga and it was released in 1985. This album was created with Manager, Tarlochan Singh Bilga(TSB). The band has toured 27 countries. Malkit has been awarded the MBE by the Queen for his services to Bhangra music.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Bhangra boy band, the Sahotas, were composed of five brothers from Wolverhampton. Their music is a fusion of bhangra, rock and dance.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Heera, formed by Bhupinder Bhindi and fronted by Kumar and Dhami, was one of the most popular bands of the 1980s.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Bands like Alaap and Heera incorporated rock-influenced beats into bhangra, because it enabled \"Asian youth to affirm their identities positively\" within the broader environment of alternative rock as an alternative way of expression. However, some believe that the progression of bhangra music created an \"intermezzo culture\" post-India's partition, within the unitary definitions of Southeast Asians within the diaspora, thus \"establishing a brand new community in their home away from home\".", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Several other influential groups appeared around the same time, including The Saathies, Premi Group, Bhujungy Group, and Apna Sangeet. Apna Sangeet, best known for their hit \"Mera Yaar Vajavey Dhol\", re-formed for charity in May 2009 after a break-up.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "When Bhangra and General Indian sounds and lyrics were combined, British-Asian artists began incorporating them in their music. Some Asian artists such as Bally Sagoo and Talvin Singh are creating their own form of British hip-hop.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "This era also brought about bhangra art, which like the bhangra music it represented was rebellious. Unlike folk music art, which consisted of a picture of the folk singer, bhangra recordings had details such as distinctive artwork, logos, clever album names and band/musician listings (who played what).", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Unlike bhangra, folk music depends on a set number of traditional melodies that may be hundreds of years old. Each new singer simply writes new lyrics using one of those melodies.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "In the mid-1990s, many artists, attracted to the economics of a bandless singer only act that technology such as karaoke machines now enabled, returned to the original, traditional folk beats away from bhangra music, often incorporating more dhol drum beats and tumbi. This time also saw the rise of several young Punjabi folk singers as a backlash to bhangra music. They were aided by DJs who mixed hip-hop samples with folk singing.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Beginning around 1994, there was a trend towards the use of samples (often sampled from mainstream hip hop) mixed with traditional folk rhythm instruments, such as the tumbi and dhol. Using folk instruments and hip-hop samples, along with relatively inexpensive folk vocals imported from Punjab, Punjabi folk music was able to cause the decline of bhangra music.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Pioneering DJs instrumental in the decline of bhangra were Bally Sagoo and Panjabi MC. As DJs who were initially hired by bhangra labels to remix the original recordings on the label's roster (OSA and Nachural respectively), they along with the record labels quickly found that remixing folk singers from India was much cheaper than working with outsourced bhangra bands.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "A pioneering folk singer that was instrumental in bhangra's demise was Jazzy B, who debuted in 1992. Having sold over 55,000 copies of his third album, Folk and Funky, he is now one of the best-selling Punjabi folk artists in the world, with a vocal style likened to that of Kuldip Manak.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Other influential folk artists include Surinder Shinda – famous for his \"Putt Jattan De\" – Harbhajan Mann, Manmohan Waris, Sarbjit Cheema, Hans Raj Hans, Sardool Sikander, B21, Paaras and Bombay Talkie.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "By the end of the 1990s, bhangra music had largely declined and been replaced with Punjabi folk singers. The same folk singers which bhangra bands had replaced a decade earlier were being utilized by DJs to make relatively inexpensive live music on laptops. This \"folkhop\" genre was short lived as records could not be officially released due to nonclearance copyrights on samples used to create the \"beat\". This continued until the end of the century. Folk-hop record labels such as Hi-Tech were investigated by BPI (British Phonographic Industry) for copyright infringement by way of uncleared samples on releases by folk DJs such as DJ Sanj.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Toward the end of the decade, bhangra continued to decline, with folk-hop artists such as Bally Sagoo and Apache Indian signing with international recording labels Sony and Island. Moreover, Multitone Records, one of the major recording labels associated with bhangra in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, was bought by BMG. A recent Pepsi commercial launched in Britain featured South Asian actors and Punjabi folk music.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Punjabi folk remixed with hip-hop, known as folkhop, is most often produced when folk vocals are purchased online to be remixed in a studio. Folk vocals are usually sung to traditional melodies, that are often repeated with new lyrics.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Some South Asian DJs, especially in America, have mixed Punjabi folk music with house, reggae, and hip-hop to add a different flavor to Punjabi folk. These remixes continued to gain popularity as the 1990s came to an end.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "A notable remix artist is Bally Sagoo, a Punjabi-Sikh, Anglo-Indian raised in Birmingham, England. Sagoo described his music as \"a bit of tablas, a bit of the Indian sound. But bring on the bass lines, bring on the funky-drummer beat, bring on the James Brown samples\", to Time magazine in 1997. He was recently signed by Sony. Daler Mehndi, a Punjabi singer from India has a type of music known as \"folk pop\". Mehndi has released tracks such as \"Bolo Ta Ra Ra\" and \"Ho Jayegee Balle Balle\". His song \"Tunak Tunak Tun\" was released in 1998.", "title": "United Kingdom" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Punjabi immigrants have encouraged the growth of Punjabi folk music in the Western hemisphere rather than bhangra music. The bhangra industry has grown in North America much less than in the United Kingdom.", "title": "Canada and the United States" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "North American (non bhangra) folk artists such as Manmohan Waris, Jazzy Bains, Kamal Heer, Harbhajan Mann, Sarabjit Cheema, and Debi Makhsoospuri have emerged and the remix market has grown.", "title": "Canada and the United States" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "In 2001, Punjabi folk, and its hip-hop form, folkhop, began to exert an influence over US R&B music, when Missy Elliott released the folkhop-influenced song \"Get Ur Freak On\". In 2003, a version of Panjabi MC's \"Mundian To Bach Ke\" (\"Beware of the Boys\") featured U.S. rapper Jay-Z. Additionally, American rapper Pras of The Fugees recorded tracks with British alternative bhangra band Swami. American singer and actress Selena Gomez released her bhangra-influenced single \"Come & Get It\" from her first solo album Stars Dance in 2013.", "title": "Canada and the United States" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Bhangra lyrics, which generally cover social issues or love, are sung in Punjabi. Bhangra lyrics were generally kept deliberately simple by the creators of the genre because the youth did not understand complex lyrics. Traditional Punjabi folk lyrics are generally more complex and often tell the tales of Punjabi history. There are many bhangra songs devoted to Punjabi pride themes and Punjabi heroes. The lyrics are tributes to the cultural traditions of Punjab. In particular, many bhangra tracks have been written about Udham Singh and Bhagat Singh. Less serious topics include beautiful women with their colourful duppattas. Lyrics can also be about crops and the coming of a new season. Bhangra is sung fiercely with strong lyrics often yelling: \"balle balle\" or \"chakde phate\", which refer to celebration and/or pride.", "title": "Lyrics" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Notable bhangra or Punjabi lyricists include Harbans Jandu who wrote \"Giddhian Di Rani\".", "title": "Lyrics" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Punjabi instruments contribute to bhangra. Originally this was primarily the dhol. The 20th century has brought changes to the instruments that define bhangra, to include the tumbi, sarangi, dholak (smaller than the dhol), flute, zither, fiddle, harmonium, tabla, guitar, mandolin, saxophone, synthesizer, drum set, and other Western instruments. Perhaps the most famous Bhangra instrument is the dhol. It is a double-sided barrel drum that creates the beat to which Bhangra is danced. The person who plays the instrument, the dholi, plays various beats to create the different Bhangra segments, such as Dhamaal, Jhummar, One side of the dhol has thicker skin, which creates a deeper sound, and the other side has a thinner skin, resulting in a higher-pitched sound. Two sticks are used to play the dhol instrument. The thicker stick, called the dagga, is used to play the bass side. The thinner tilli is used to play the treble side. Both sticks are usually made of wood or bamboo.", "title": "Instruments" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "The string instruments include the guitar (both electrical), bass, sitar, tumbi, veena, violin and sarangi. The snare, toms, dhadd, dafli, dholki, and damru are the other drums. The tumbi, originally played by folk artists such as Lalchand Yamla Jatt and Kuldip Manak in true folk recordings and then notably used by Chamkila, a Punjabi folk (not bhangra) singer, is a high-tone, single-string instrument and Chimta by (Late) Alam Lohar.", "title": "Instruments" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The third and fourth generation are generally unable to speak Punjabi if their parents could hardly speak it. There is a move towards Punjabi folk music which is the purest form of Punjabi music. Much of the youth struggle to understand the lyrics, although, there are some children and young adults who have maintained their folk roots. Another reason why some fans express an anti-folk sentiment is that many folk songs were written for the dominant Jatts clan whereas Sikhs do not believe in castes, so they disapproved of Punjabi folk music. However, today with artists like Jazzy B, PMC, Sukhshinder Shinda and Diljit Dosanjh, Punjabi folk has increased in popularity although it is fused in some cases. iTunes has catalogs of many Punjabi folk singers available.", "title": "Cultural impact and resurgence of Punjabi folk music in the West" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Another cause of the resurgence of Punjabi folk music is due to the increased popularity of bhangra in areas like the UK, Canada and U.S. Bhangra has become more accessible through social media platforms such as YouTube and Instagram, for the younger generation. In addition, multiple universities, across the UK, US and Canada have teams as well as academies being set up by senior dancers separate from universities. This resurgence has led to a desire for more traditional folk songs and beats, but also a learning opportunity for children of their cultures.", "title": "Cultural impact and resurgence of Punjabi folk music in the West" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Bhangragga or bhangramuffin is a term for the style of music incorporating elements of Bhangra and dancehall (or ragga, short for the word Raggamuffin) created by British Asian producers Simon and Diamond on the debut album by Apache Indian No Reservations (1993). The sound is very percussion-heavy – a distinct holdover from Bhangra – with a propulsive beat clearly designed for dancing. The dancehall influence can be felt through the use of pre-programmed music, similar to Dancehall \"riddims\". Lyrically, the style features a combination of Sub-Continental-accented (usually Indian) vocals delivered in the clipped style associated with dancehall – and sometimes including the Patois of the latter style. This style is almost exclusively a British phenomenon, as the two cultures involved in its genesis mix reasonably freely there. The most successful exponent, however, is Apache Indian, who had a worldwide hit with \"Boom Shack-A-Lak\", which was included on the soundtrack to the film Dumb and Dumber, among others.", "title": "Derivatives" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Beastie Boys were an American hip hop/rap rock group from New York City, formed in 1981. The group was composed of Adam \"Ad-Rock\" Horovitz (vocals, guitar), Adam \"MCA\" Yauch (vocals, bass), and Michael \"Mike D\" Diamond (vocals, drums, programming). Beastie Boys were formed out of members of experimental hardcore punk band The Young Aborigines, which was formed in 1979, with Diamond on drums, Jeremy Shatan on bass guitar, John Berry on guitar, and Kate Schellenbach later joining on percussion. When Shatan left New York City in the summer of 1981, Yauch replaced him on bass and the resulting band was named Beastie Boys. Berry left shortly thereafter and was replaced by Horovitz.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "After achieving local success with the 1983 comedy hip hop single \"Cooky Puss\", Beastie Boys made a full transition to hip hop, and Schellenbach left. They toured with Madonna in 1985 and a year later released their debut album, Licensed to Ill (1986), the first rap album to top the Billboard 200 chart. Their second album, Paul's Boutique (1989), composed almost entirely of samples, was a commercial failure that later received critical acclaim. Check Your Head (1992) and Ill Communication (1994) found mainstream success, followed by Hello Nasty (1998), To the 5 Boroughs (2004), The Mix-Up (2007), and Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (2011).", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Beastie Boys have sold 20 million records in the United States and had seven platinum-selling albums from 1986 to 2004. They are the biggest-selling rap group since Billboard began recording sales in 1991. In 2012, they became the third rap group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the same year, Yauch died of cancer and Beastie Boys disbanded. The remaining members have released several retrospective works, including a book, a documentary, and a career-spanning compilation album.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Prior to forming Beastie Boys, Michael Diamond was part of a number of bands such as the Walden Jazz Band, BAN, and the Young Aborigines. Beastie Boys formed in July 1981 when the Young Aborigines bassist Jeremy Shatan left New York City for the summer and the remaining members Diamond, John Berry and Kate Schellenbach formed a new hardcore punk band with Adam Yauch.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "In a 2007 interview with Charlie Rose, Yauch recalled that it was Berry who suggested the name Beastie Boys. Although the band stated that \"Beastie\" is an acronym standing for \"Boys Entering Anarchistic States Towards Inner Excellence\", in the Charlie Rose interview, both Yauch and Diamond acknowledged that the acronym was an \"afterthought\" conceived after the name was chosen. The band supported Bad Brains, the Dead Kennedys, the Misfits and Reagan Youth at venues such as CBGB, A7, Trude Heller's and Max's Kansas City, playing at the latter venue on its closing night. In November 1982, Beastie Boys recorded the 7-inch EP Polly Wog Stew at 171A studios, an early recorded example of New York hardcore.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "On November 13, 1982, Beastie Boys played Philip Pucci's birthday for the purposes of his short concert film, Beastie. Pucci held the concert in Bard College's Preston Drama Dance Department Theatre. This performance marked Beastie Boys' first on screen appearance in a published motion picture. Pucci's concept for Beastie was to distribute a mixture of both a half dozen 16 mm Bell & Howell Filmo cameras, and 16 mm Bolex cameras to audience members and ask that they capture Beastie Boys performance from the audience's own point of view while a master sync sound camera filmed from the balcony of the abandoned theater where the performance was held. The opening band for that performance was the Young and the Useless, which featured Adam Horovitz as the lead singer. A one-minute clip of Beastie was subsequently excerpted and licensed by Beastie Boys for use in the \"Egg Raid on Mojo\" segment of the \"Skills to Pay the Bills\" long-form home video released by Capitol Records. \"Skills to Pay the Bills\" later went on to be certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Berry left the group in 1982 (later forming Thwig, Big Fat Love and Bourbon Deluxe) and was replaced by Horovitz, who had become close friends with Beastie Boys.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The band also recorded and then performed its first hip hop track, \"Cooky Puss\", based on a prank call by the group to a Carvel Ice Cream franchise in 1983. It was a part of the new lineup's first EP, also called Cooky Puss, which was the first piece of work that showed their incorporation of the underground rap phenomenon and the use of samples. It quickly became a hit in New York underground dance clubs and night clubs. After \"Beastie Revolution\" was later sampled in a British Airways commercial, Beastie Boys threatened to sue them over the use of the song, and the airline immediately paid them $40,000 in royalties.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Following the success of \"Cooky Puss\", the band began to incorporate rap into their sets. They hired a DJ for their live shows, New York University student Rick Rubin, who began producing records soon thereafter. \"I met Mike first,\" Rubin recalled. \"I thought he was an arrogant asshole. Through spending time with the Beasties I grew to see that they had this great sense of humor. It wasn't that they were assholes, and even if it was, they were funny with it.\" Rubin formed Def Jam Recordings with fellow NYU student Russell Simmons, and approached the band about producing them for his new label. As the band was transitioning to hip hop, Schellenbach was fired in 1984, with Diamond taking over on drums. In their 2018 memoir, Ad-Rock expressed regret for firing Schellenbach, which he attributed to her not fitting with the \"new tough-rapper-guy identity\".", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The band's 12-inch single \"Rock Hard\" (1984) was the second Def Jam record crediting Rubin as producer (the first was \"It's Yours\" by T La Rock and Jazzy Jay). On July 22, 1986, Beastie Boys opened for John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols band Public Image Ltd., and supported Madonna on her North American The Virgin Tour. Then headlining with Fishbone and Murphy's Law with DJ Hurricane and later in the year, the group was on the Raising Hell tour with Run-DMC, Whodini, LL Cool J, and the Timex Social Club. Thanks to this exposure, \"Hold It Now, Hit It\" charted on Billboard's US R&B and dance charts. \"She's on It\" from the Krush Groove soundtrack continued in a rap/metal vein while a double A-side 12\", \"Paul Revere/The New Style\", was released at the end of the year.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The band recorded Licensed to Ill in 1986 and released it on November 15, 1986. The album was favorably reviewed by Rolling Stone magazine. Licensed to Ill became one of the best-selling rap albums of the 1980s and the first rap album to go number 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, where it stayed for five weeks. It also reached number 2 on the Top R&B album chart. It was Def Jam's fastest selling debut record to date and sold over nine million copies. The fourth single, \"(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)\", reached number 7 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Although the group has sold over 26 million records in the US, this is their only single to peak in the US top ten or top twenty. The accompanying video (directed by Ric Menello and Adam Dubin) became an MTV staple. Another song from the album, \"No Sleep till Brooklyn\", peaked at number 14 on the UK Singles Chart.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The band took the Licensed to Ill tour around the world the following year. The tour was troubled by lawsuits and arrests, with the band accused of provoking the crowd. This culminated in a notorious gig at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool, England, on May 30, 1987, that erupted into a riot approximately 10 minutes after the group hit the stage and the arrest of Adam Horovitz by Merseyside Police. He was charged with assault causing grievous bodily harm.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "In 1988, Beastie Boys appeared in Tougher Than Leather, a film directed by Rubin as a star vehicle for Run-D.M.C. and Def Jam Recordings. After Def Jam stopped paying them for work they'd already done and were owed money for, Beastie Boys left Def Jam and signed with Capitol Records.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "The second Beastie Boys album, Paul's Boutique, was released on July 25, 1989. Produced by the Dust Brothers, it blends eclectic samples and has been described as an early work of experimental hip hop. It failed to match the sales of Licensed to Ill, reaching number 14 on the US album charts, but later attracted acclaim; Rolling Stone ranked it number 156 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Check Your Head was recorded in the band's G-Son studio in Atwater Village, California, and released on its Grand Royal record label. The band was influenced to play instruments on this album by Dutch group Urban Dance Squad; with Mike D on drums, Yauch on bass, Horovitz on guitar and Mark Ramos Nishita (\"Keyboard Money Mark\") on keyboards. Mario Caldato, Jr., who had helped in the production of Paul's Boutique, engineered the record and became a longtime collaborator. Check Your Head was released in 1992 and was certified double Platinum in the US and peaked at number 10 on the Billboard 200. The single \"So What'cha Want\" reached number 93 on the Billboard Hot 100 and charted on both the Rap and Modern Rock Chart, while the album's first single, \"Pass the Mic\", peaked at number 38 on the Hot Dance Music chart. The album also introduced a more experimental direction, with funk and jazz inspired songs including \"Lighten Up\" and \"Something's Got to Give\". The band returned to their hardcore punk roots for the song \"Time for Livin'\", a cover of a 1974 Sly and the Family Stone song. The addition of instruments and the harder rock sound of the album could be considered a precursor to the nu metal genre of music to come out in the later half of the 1990s.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Beastie Boys signed an eclectic roster of artists to their Grand Royal label, including Luscious Jackson, Sean Lennon, and Australian artist Ben Lee. The group owned Grand Royal Records until 2001. Grand Royal's first independent release was Luscious Jackson's album In Search of Manny in 1993. Also in 1993, the band contributed the track \"It's the New Style\" (with DJ Hurricane) to the AIDS benefit album No Alternative, produced by the Red Hot Organization.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Beastie Boys also published Grand Royal Magazine, with the first edition in 1993 featuring a cover story on Bruce Lee, artwork by George Clinton, and interviews with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and A Tribe Called Quest's MC Q-Tip. The 1995 issue of the magazine contained a memorable piece on the mullet. The Oxford English Dictionary cites this as the first published use of the term, along with the lyrics from the band's 1994 song, \"Mullet Head\". That term was not heard in the 1980s, even though that decade has retroactively been hailed as the mullet's peak in popularity. The OED says that the term was \"apparently coined, and certainly popularized, by US hip-hop group Beastie Boys\". Grand Royal Magazine is also responsible for giving British band Sneaker Pimps their name.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Ill Communication, released in 1994, saw Beastie Boys' return to the top of the charts when the album debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 and peaked at number 2 on the R&B/hip hop album chart. The single \"Sabotage\" became a hit on the modern rock charts and the music video, directed by Spike Jonze, received extensive play on MTV. \"Get It Together\" reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Also in 1994, the band released Some Old Bullshit, featuring the band's early independent material, which made it to number 46 on the Billboard Independent Albums chart.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Beastie Boys headlined at Lollapalooza—an American travelling music festival—in 1994, together with The Smashing Pumpkins. In addition, the band performed three concerts (in Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, D.C.) to raise money for the Milarepa Fund and dedicated the royalties from \"Shambala\" and \"Bodhisattva Vow\" from the Ill Communication to the cause. The Milarepa Fund aims to raise awareness of Tibetan human rights issues and the exile of the Dalai Lama. In 1996, Yauch organized the largest rock benefit show since 1985's Live Aid – the Tibetan Freedom Concert, a two-day festival at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco that attracted over 100,000 attendees.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "In 1995, the popularity of Beastie Boys was underlined when tickets for an arena tour went on sale in the US and Madison Square Garden and Chicago's Rosemont Horizon sold out within 30 minutes. One dollar from each ticket sold went through Milarepa to local charities in each city on the tour. Beastie Boys toured South America and Southeast Asia for the first time. The band also released Aglio e Olio, a collection of eight songs lasting just 11 minutes harking back to their punk roots, in 1995. The In Sound from Way Out!, a collection of previously released jazz/funk instrumentals, was released on Grand Royal in 1996 with the title and artwork a homage to an album by electronic pop music pioneers Perrey and Kingsley.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "In 1992, Beastie Boys decided to sample portions of the sound recording of \"Choir\" by James Newton in various renditions of their song \"Pass the Mic\". The band did not obtain a license from Newton to use the composition. Pursuant to their license from ECM Records, Beastie Boys digitally sampled the opening six seconds of Newton's sound recording of \"Choir\", and repeated this six-second sample as a background element throughout their song. Newton brought suit, claiming that the band infringed his copyright in the underlying composition of \"Choir\". The district court granted Beastie Boys summary judgment. The district court said that no license was required because the three-note segment of \"Choir\" lacked the requisite originality and was therefore not copyrightable. The decision was affirmed on appeal.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Beastie Boys began work on the album Hello Nasty at the G-Son studios, Los Angeles in 1995, but continued to produce and record it in New York City after Yauch moved to Manhattan in 1996. The album displayed a substantial shift in musical feel, with the addition of Mix Master Mike. The album featured bombastic beats, rap samples, and experimental sounds. Released on July 14, 1998, Hello Nasty earned first week sales of 681,000 in the US and went straight to number 1 in the US, the UK, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden. The album achieved number 2 rank on the charts in Canada and Japan, and reached top-ten chart positions in Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Finland, France and Israel.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Beastie Boys won two Grammy Awards in 1999, receiving the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album for Hello Nasty as well as the Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for \"Intergalactic\". This was the first and, as of 2008, only time that a band had won awards in both rap and alternative categories.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Also at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards they won the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award for their contribution to music videos. The following year at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards they also won the award for Best Hip Hop Video for their hit song \"Intergalactic\". Beastie Boys used both appearances at the Video Music Awards to make politically charged speeches of considerable length to the sizable MTV audiences. At the 1998 ceremony, Yauch addressed the issue of Muslim people being stereotyped as terrorists and that most people of the Muslim faith are not terrorists. These comments were made in the wake of the US Embassy bombings that had occurred in both Kenya and Tanzania only a month earlier. At the 1999 ceremony in the wake of the horror stories that were coming out of Woodstock 99, Adam Horovitz addressed the fact that there had been many cases of sexual assaults and rapes at the festival, suggesting the need for bands and festivals to pay much more attention to the security details at their concerts.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Beastie Boys started an arena tour in 1998. Through Ian C. Rogers, the band made live downloads of their performances available for their fans, but were temporarily thwarted when Capitol Records removed them from its website. Beastie Boys was one of the first bands who made MP3 downloads available on their website. The group got a high level of response and public awareness as a result including a published article in The Wall Street Journal on the band's efforts.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "On September 28, 1999, Beastie Boys joined Elvis Costello to play \"Radio Radio\" on the 25th anniversary season of Saturday Night Live.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Beastie Boys released The Sounds of Science, a two-CD anthology of their works in 1999. This album reached number 19 on the Billboard 200, number 18 in Canada, and number 14 on the R&B/Hip Hop chart. The one new song, the single \"Alive\", reached number 11 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "In 2000, Beastie Boys had planned to co-headline the \"Rhyme and Reason Tour\" with Rage Against the Machine and Busta Rhymes, but the tour was canceled when drummer Mike D sustained a serious injury due to a bicycle accident. The official diagnosis was fifth-degree acromioclavicular joint dislocation; he needed surgery and extensive rehabilitation. By the time he recovered, Rage Against the Machine had disbanded, although they would reunite seven years later.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Under the name Country Mike, Mike D recorded an album, Country Mike's Greatest Hits, and gave it to friends and family for Christmas in 2000. Adam \"Ad-Rock\" Horovitz's side project BS 2000 released Simply Mortified in 2001.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "In October 2001, after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Beastie Boys organized and headlined the New Yorkers Against Violence Concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "In 2002, Adam Yauch started building a new studio facility, Oscilloscope Laboratories, in downtown Manhattan, New York and the band started work on a new album there. The band released a protest song, \"In a World Gone Mad\", against the 2003 Iraq war as a free download on several websites, including the Milarepa website, the MTV website, MoveOn.org, and Win Without War. The 19th and 20th Tibetan Freedom Concerts were held in Tokyo and Taipei, Beastie Boys' first Taiwan appearance. Beastie Boys also headlined the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Their single, \"Ch-Check It Out\", debuted on The O.C. in \"The Vegas\" episode from Season 1, which aired April 28, 2004.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "To the 5 Boroughs was released worldwide on June 15, 2004. It was the first album the band produced themselves and reached number 1 on the Billboard albums chart, number 2 in the UK and Australia, and number 3 in Germany. The first single from the album, \"Ch-Check It Out\", reached number 1 in Canada and on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The album was the cause of some controversy with allegations that it installed spyware when inserted into the CD drive of a computer. The band denied this allegation, defending that there is no copy protection software on the albums sold in the US and UK. While there is Macrovision CDS-200 copy protection software installed on European copies of the album, this is standard practice for all European releases on EMI/Capitol Records released in Europe, and it does not install spyware or any form of permanent software.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The band stated in mid-2006 that they were writing material for their next album and would be producing it themselves.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Speaking to British music weekly NME (April 26, 2007), Diamond revealed that a new album was to be called The Mix-Up. Despite initial confusion regarding whether the album would have lyrics as opposed to being purely instrumental, the Mic-To-Mic blog reported that Capitol Records had confirmed it would be strictly instrumental and erroneously reported a release date scheduled for July 10, 2007. (The album was eventually released June 26, as originally reported.) On May 1, 2007, this was further cemented by an e-mail sent to those on the band's mailing list – explicitly stating that the album would be all instrumental:", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "OK, here's our blurb about our new album—it spits hot fire!—hot shit! it's official... it's named The Mix-Up. g'wan. all instrumental record. \"see I knew they were gonna do that!\" that's a quote from you. check the track listing and cover below. you love us. don't you?", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "The band subsequently confirmed the new album and announced a short tour that focused on festivals as opposed to a traditional tour, including the likes of Sónar (Spain), Roskilde (Denmark), Hurricane/Southside (Germany), Bestival (Isle of Wight), Electric Picnic (Ireland) and Open'er Festival (Poland). Beastie Boys performed at the UK leg of Live Earth July 7, 2007 at Wembley Stadium, London with \"Sabotage\", \"So What'cha Want\", \"Intergalactic\", and \"Sure Shot\".", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "They worked with Reverb, a non-profit environmental organization, on their 2007 summer tour, and headlined the Langerado Music Festival in South Florida on Friday, March 7, 2008. The band won a Grammy for The Mix-Up in the \"Best Pop Instrumental Album\" category at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards in 2008.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "In February 2009, Yauch revealed their forthcoming new album had taken the band's sound in a \"bizarre\" new direction, saying \"It's a combination of playing and sampling stuff as we're playing, and also sampling pretty obscure records.\" The tentative title for the record was Tadlock's Glasses, of which Yauch explained the inspiration behind the title:", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "We had a bus driver years ago who used to drive Elvis' back up singers. His name was Tadlock and Elvis gave him a pair of glasses which he was very proud of. So for some reason that title—Tadlock's Glasses—has just been bouncing around.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "On May 25, 2009, it was announced during an interview on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon that the name of their new album would be Hot Sauce Committee and was set for release on September 15 (with the track listing of the album announced through their mailing list on June 23). The album included a collaboration with Santigold who co-wrote and sang with the band on the track \"Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win\".", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "In June, the group appeared at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival and performed the new single from the album titled \"Too Many Rappers\" alongside rapper Nas who appears on the track. It would be the last live performance by Beastie Boys as a trio. The group would have toured the UK later in the year in support of the new record.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "Speaking to Drowned in Sound, Beastie Boys revealed that Part 2 was done. Mike D also hinted it may be released via unusual means:", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "Pt. 2 is pretty much done. Basically we were making ...Pt 1, had too many songs, so we recorded some more songs. Which sounds bizarre but it actually worked out, because it made it clear to us which songs were going to be on ...Pt 1. Then we had this whole other album of songs: ...Pt 2. ...Pt 1's going to be your regular CD in the stores and to download, but ...Pt 2 is going to be released in...we're still figuring it out, but a different way. More of a 2009 style. You could get in the shower one day and, boom, all of a sudden you're showered with MP3s. Or we might send people a seven-inch every few weeks, so you have a whole box set.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "On July 20, Yauch announced on the band's official YouTube channel and through the fan mailing list, the cancellation of several tour dates and the postponement of the new album due to the discovery of a cancerous tumor in his parotid gland and a lymph node. The group also had to cancel their co-headlining gig at the Osheaga Festival in Montreal and also another headlining spot for the first night of the All Points West Festival in Jersey City, New Jersey.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "In late October 2010, Beastie Boys sent out two emails regarding the status of Hot Sauce Committee Pts. 1 and 2 to their online mailing list. An email dated October 18 read: \"Although we regret to inform you that Hot Sauce Committee Part 1 will continue to be delayed indefinitely, Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 will be released on time as originally planned in spring of 2011.\" One week later, a second email was sent out, reading as follows:", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "In what can only be described as a bizarre coincidence, following an exhaustive re-sequence marathon, Beastie Boys have verified that their new Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 will be composed of the same 16 tracks originally slated for inclusion on Hot Sauce Committee Part 1. The record (part 2 that is) will be released as planned in spring 2011 on Capitol. The tracks originally recorded for Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 (which now are actually back on Part 1) have now apparently been bumped to make room for the former Hot Sauce Committee Part 1 material. Wait, what? I know it's weird and confusing, but at least we can say unequivocally that Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 is coming out on time, which is more than I can say about Part 1, and really is all that matters in the end.\" says Adam \"MCA\" Yauch. \"We just kept working and working on various sequences for part 2, and after a year and half of spending days on end in the sequencing room trying out every possible combination, it finally became clear that this was the only way to make it work. Strange but true, the final sequence for Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 works best with all its songs replaced by the 16 tracks we originally had lined up in pretty much the same order we had them in for Hot Sauce Committee Part 1. So we've come full circle.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "The official release dates were April 27, 2011, for Japan; April 29 in the UK and Europe, and May 3, 2011, in the US. The third single for the album \"Make Some Noise\" was made available for download on April 11, 2011, as well as a limited edition 7-inch vinyl single for Record Store Day five days later with a Passion Pit remix of the track as a b-side. The track was leaked online on April 6 and subsequently made available via their blog.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "On April 22, Beastie Boys emailed out the cryptic message \"This Sat, 10:35 am EST – Just listen, listen, listen to the beat box\". A day later, they live streamed their album online via beatbox inside Madison Square Garden.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "The band was announced as an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in December 2011. They were inducted by Chuck D and LL Cool J on April 14, 2012. Yauch was too sick to attend the ceremony, having been admitted to NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital the same day, therefore the group didn't perform; instead Black Thought, Travie from Gym Class Heroes and Kid Rock performed a medley of their songs. Diamond and Horovitz accepted and read a letter that Yauch had written.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "On May 4, 2012, Yauch died from cancer at the age of 47. Mike D told Rolling Stone that Beastie Boys had recorded new music in late 2011, but did not say if these recordings would be released. He also said that Beastie Boys would likely disband due to the death of MCA, though he was open to making new music with Ad-Rock and that \"Yauch would genuinely want us to try whatever crazy thing we wanted but never got around to\". In June 2014, Mike D confirmed that he and Ad-Rock would not make music under the Beastie Boys name again.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "Founding Beastie Boys guitarist John Berry died on May 19, 2016, aged 52, as a result of frontotemporal dementia, following several years of ill health. He was credited with naming the band Beastie Boys and played guitar on the first EP. The first Beastie Boys show took place at Berry's loft.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "Yauch's will forbids the use of Beastie Boys music in advertisements. In June 2014, Beastie Boys won a lawsuit against Monster Energy for using their music in a commercial without permission. They were awarded $1.7 million in damages and $668,000 for legal fees.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "In October 2018, Mike D and Ad-Rock released a memoir, Beastie Boys Book, recounting events throughout the group's history. The book was adapted into a documentary in April 2020, titled Beastie Boys Story, directed by Spike Jonze and premiered on Apple TV+. The book and documentary were also complemented by the compilation album Beastie Boys Music, released in October 2020.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "In 1994, Yauch and activist Erin Potts organized the Tibetan Freedom Concert in order to raise awareness of humans rights abuses by the Chinese government on the Tibetan people. Yauch became aware of this after hiking in Nepal and speaking with Tibetan refugees. The events became annual, and shortly after went international with acts such as Live, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Rage Against the Machine, The Smashing Pumpkins, and U2.", "title": "Tibetan Freedom Concert" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "Originally a hardcore punk band, Beastie Boys had largely abandoned the genre in favor of hip hop and rap rock by the time work began on their debut studio album Licensed to Ill. The group mixed elements of hip hop, punk, funk, electro, jazz and Latin music into their music. They have also been described as alternative hip hop and punk rap.", "title": "Musical style, influences, and legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "Around the time of the release of their debut album, Licensed to Ill, Mike D started to appear on stage and in publicity photographs wearing a large Volkswagen emblem attached to a chain-link necklace. This started a rash of thefts of the emblem from vehicles around the world as fans tried to emulate him. A controversial concert in Columbus, Georgia in 1987 led to the passage of a lewdness ordinance in that city.", "title": "Musical style, influences, and legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "Beastie Boys are considered very influential in both the hip hop and rock music scenes, with artists such as Eminem, Rage Against the Machine, Hed PE, Limp Bizkit, Sublime, and Blur citing them as an influence. Beastie Boys have had four albums reach the top of the Billboard album charts (Licensed to Ill, Ill Communication, Hello Nasty and To the 5 Boroughs) since 1986. In the November 2004 issue, Rolling Stone named \"Sabotage\" the 475th song on their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. In their April 2005 issue, Rolling Stone ranked them number 77 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. VH1 ranked them number 89 on their list of their 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. On September 27, 2007, it was announced that Beastie Boys were one of the nine nominees for the 2008 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions. In December 2011, they were announced to be official 2012 inductees.", "title": "Musical style, influences, and legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "Beastie Boys have many high-profile longtime fans, including Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president Dana White, who has a hand-signed bass guitar signed by all three members in his office and a copy of the Beastie Boys book. Speaking on the death of Adam Yauch, White said, \"I seriously haven't been impacted by a death in a long time like I was with the Beastie Boys\". Actor Seth Rogen, who appeared in the video for \"Make Some Noise\", also said, \"I'm a huge Beastie Boys fan and they just called and asked if I wanted to be a part of it, and I said yes without hesitation. I didn't need to hear anything. I didn't need to see anything, any concepts. I was just like, 'I will literally do anything you ask me to do\". Ben Stiller was seen in the crowd for the DVD release Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! and featured Horovitz in his movie While We're Young, where he said, \"I'm a huge Beastie Boys fan, so doing that, for me, was beyond anything\". Eminem was highly influenced by the Beastie Boys and cited them alongside LL Cool J as being the reason he got into rap. During an interview with MTV after the death of Yauch, he said, \"Adam Yauch brought a lot of positivity into the world and I think it's obvious to anyone how big of an influence the Beastie Boys were on me and so many others. They are trailblazers and pioneers and Adam will be sorely missed. My thoughts and prayers are with his family, Mike D., and Ad-Rock.\" His album cover for Kamikaze paid homage to Licensed to Ill and he also paid homage in his \"Berzerk\" video. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge acknowledged he was a fan of the band, citing his favorite song as \"Fight for Your Right\", as the Beastie Boys appeared on Beavis and Butt-Head on numerous occasions. Kid Rock wrote an in-depth tribute to Yauch after being influenced by the band, which said, \"I thought I was the 4th member of Beastie Boys in 7th grade. You couldn't tell me I wasn't. The first time I ever saw them on stage was a very early show of theirs before Licensed to Ill came out, opening for Run DMC at Joe Louis Arena. My jaw dropped to the floor!\"", "title": "Musical style, influences, and legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "In 2020, Spin Magazine ranked Beastie Boys as the 12th most influential artist of the previous 35 years.", "title": "Musical style, influences, and legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "In 2022, the New York City Council voted to rename the intersection of Ludlow and Rivington streets in Manhattan’s Lower East Side - the location of the Paul’s Boutique album cover - “Beastie Boys Square”. The vote was result of a grassroots campaign started in 2013 by historian LeRoy McCarthy. The proposed renaming was voted down when first proposed in 2014, but was accepted on July 14, 2022. The square was renamed on September 9, 2023, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of hip hop.", "title": "Musical style, influences, and legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "In 2003, Beastie Boys were involved in the landmark sampling decision Newton v. Diamond. In that case, a federal judge ruled that the band was not liable for sampling James Newton's \"Choir\" in their track \"Pass the Mic\". The sample used is the six-second flute stab. In short, Beastie Boys cleared the sample but obtained only the rights to use the sound recording and not the composition rights to the song \"Choir\". In the decision, the judge found that:", "title": "Sampling lawsuit" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "when viewed in relation to Newton's composition as a whole, the portion is neither quantitatively nor qualitatively significant... Because Beastie Boys' use of the sound recording was authorized, the sole basis of Newton's infringement action is his remaining copyright interest in the 'Choir' composition. We hold today that Beastie Boys' use of a brief segment of that composition, consisting of three notes separated by a half-step over a background C note, is not sufficient to sustain a claim for copyright infringement.", "title": "Sampling lawsuit" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "Studio albums", "title": "Discography" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland), and over six thousand smaller islands. They have a total area of 315,159 km (121,684 sq mi) and a combined population of almost 72 million, and include two sovereign states, the Republic of Ireland (which covers roughly five-sixths of Ireland), and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Channel Islands, off the north coast of France, are normally taken to be part of the British Isles, even though they do not form part of the archipelago. Under the UK Interpretation Act 1978, the Channel Islands are clarified as forming part of the British Islands, not to be confused with the British Isles.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The oldest rocks are 2.7 billion years old and are found in Ireland, Wales and the northwest of Scotland. During the Silurian period, the north-western regions collided with the south-east, which had been part of a separate continental landmass. The topography of the islands is modest in scale by global standards. Ben Nevis, the highest mountain, rises to only 1,345 metres (4,413 ft), and Lough Neagh, which is notably larger than other lakes in the island group, covers 390 square kilometres (151 sq mi). The climate is temperate marine, with cool winters and warm summers. The North Atlantic drift brings significant moisture and raises temperatures 11 °C (20 °F) above the global average for the latitude. This led to a landscape that was long dominated by temperate rainforest, although human activity has since cleared the vast majority of forest cover. The region was re-inhabited after the last glacial period of Quaternary glaciation, by 12,000 BC, when Great Britain was still part of a peninsula of the European continent. Ireland may have been connected to Great Britain by way of an ice bridge before 14,000 BC, and was not inhabited until after 8000 BC. Great Britain became an island by 7000 BC with the flooding of Doggerland.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The Hiberni (Ireland), Picts (northern Great Britain) and Britons (southern Great Britain), all speaking Insular Celtic languages, inhabited the islands at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Much of Brittonic-occupied Britain was conquered by the Roman Empire from AD 43. The first Anglo-Saxons arrived as Roman power waned in the 5th century, and eventually they dominated the bulk of what is now England. Viking invasions began in the 9th century, followed by more permanent settlements and political change, particularly in England. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 and the later Angevin partial conquest of Ireland from 1169 led to the imposition of a new Norman ruling elite across much of Britain and parts of Ireland. By the Late Middle Ages, Great Britain was separated into the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland, while control in Ireland fluxed between Gaelic kingdoms, Hiberno-Norman lords and the English-dominated Lordship of Ireland, soon restricted only to The Pale. The 1603 Union of the Crowns, Acts of Union 1707 and Acts of Union 1800 aimed to consolidate Great Britain and Ireland into a single political unit, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands remaining as Crown Dependencies. The expansion of the British Empire and migrations following the Irish Famine and Highland Clearances resulted in the dispersal of some of the islands' population and culture throughout the world, and rapid depopulation of Ireland in the second half of the 19th century. Most of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom after the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Anglo-Irish Treaty (1919–1922), with six counties remaining in the UK as Northern Ireland.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "As a term, \"British Isles\" is a geographical name and not a political unit. In Ireland, the term is controversial, and there are objections to its usage. The Government of Ireland does not officially recognise the term, and its embassy in London discourages its use. \"Britain and Ireland\" is used as an alternative description, and \"Atlantic Archipelago\" has also seen limited use in academia. In official documents created jointly by Ireland and the United Kingdom, such as the Good Friday Agreement, the term \"these islands\" is used.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The earliest known references to the islands as a group appeared in the writings of seafarers from the ancient Greek colony of Massalia. The original records have been lost; however, later writings, e.g. Avienius's Ora maritima, that quoted from the Massaliote Periplus (6th century BC) and from Pytheas's On the Ocean (around 325–320 BC) have survived. In the 1st century BC, Diodorus Siculus has Prettanikē nēsos, \"the British Island\", and Prettanoi, \"the Britons\". Strabo used Βρεττανική (Brettanike), and Marcian of Heraclea, in his Periplus maris exteri, used αἱ Πρεττανικαί νῆσοι (the Prettanic Isles) to refer to the islands. Historians today, though not in absolute agreement, largely agree that these Greek and Latin names were probably drawn from native Celtic-language names for the archipelago. Along these lines, the inhabitants of the islands were called the Πρεττανοί (Priteni or Pretani). The shift from the \"P\" of Pretannia to the \"B\" of Britannia by the Romans occurred during the time of Julius Caesar.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Greco-Egyptian Claudius Ptolemy referred to the larger island as great Britain (μεγάλη Βρεττανία megale Brettania) and to Ireland as little Britain (μικρὰ Βρεττανία mikra Brettania) in his work Almagest (147–148 AD). In his later work, Geography (c. 150 AD), he gave these islands the names Alwion, Iwernia, and Mona (the Isle of Man), suggesting these may have been names of the individual islands not known to him at the time of writing Almagest. The name Albion appears to have fallen out of use sometime after the Roman conquest of Great Britain, after which Britain became the more commonplace name for the island called Great Britain in the English language. However, the cognate 'alba' has given its name to Scotland in most Celtic languages : Alba in Scottish Gaelic, Albey in Manx, Albain in Irish and Alban in Cornish and Welsh.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The earliest known use of the phrase Brytish Iles in the English language is dated 1577 in a work by John Dee. Today, this name is seen by some as carrying imperialist overtones although it is still commonly used. Other names used to describe the islands include the Anglo-Celtic Isles, Atlantic archipelago (a term coined by the historian J. G. A. Pocock in 1975), British-Irish Isles,Britain and Ireland, UK and Ireland, and British Isles and Ireland. Owing to political and national associations with the word British, the Government of Ireland does not use the term British Isles and in documents drawn up jointly between the British and Irish governments, the archipelago is referred to simply as \"these islands\". British Isles is still the most widely accepted term for the archipelago.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The British Isles lie at the juncture of several regions with past episodes of tectonic mountain building. These orogenic belts form a complex geology that records a huge and varied span of Earth's history. Of particular note was the Caledonian orogeny during the Ordovician and early Silurian periods, when the craton Baltica collided with the terrane Avalonia to form the mountains and hills in northern Britain and Ireland. Baltica formed roughly the northwestern half of Ireland and Scotland. Further collisions caused the Variscan orogeny in the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, forming the hills of Munster, southwest England, and southern Wales. Over the last 500 million years the land that forms the islands has drifted northwest from around 30°S, crossing the equator around 370 million years ago to reach its present northern latitude.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The islands have been shaped by numerous glaciations during the Quaternary Period, the most recent being the Devensian. As this ended, the central Irish Sea was deglaciated and the English Channel flooded, with sea levels rising to current levels some 8,000 years ago, leaving the British Isles in their current form.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "There are about 136 permanently inhabited islands in the group, the largest two being Great Britain and Ireland. Great Britain is to the east and covers 83,700 sq mi (217,000 km). Ireland is to the west and covers 32,590 sq mi (84,400 km). The largest of the other islands are to be found in the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland to the north, Anglesey and the Isle of Man between Great Britain and Ireland, and the Channel Islands near the coast of France. The most densely populated island is Portsea Island, which has an area of 9.5 sq mi (25 km) but has the third highest population behind Great Britain and Ireland.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The islands are at relatively low altitudes, with central Ireland and southern Great Britain particularly low-lying: the lowest point in the islands is the North Slob in County Wexford, Ireland, with an elevation of −3.0 metres (−9.8 ft). The Scottish Highlands in the northern part of Great Britain are mountainous, with Ben Nevis being the highest point on the islands at 1,345 m (4,413 ft). Other mountainous areas include Wales and parts of Ireland, although only seven peaks in these areas reach above 1,000 m (3,281 ft). Lakes on the islands are generally not large, although Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland is an exception, covering 150 square miles (390 km). The largest freshwater body in Great Britain (by area) is Loch Lomond at 27.5 square miles (71 km), and Loch Ness (by volume) whilst Loch Morar is the deepest freshwater body in the British Isles, with a maximum depth of 310 m (1,017 ft). There are a number of major rivers within the British Isles. The longest is the Shannon in Ireland at 224 mi (360 km). The river Severn at 220 mi (354 km) is the longest in Great Britain.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "The climate of the British Isles is mild, moist and changeable with abundant rainfall and a lack of temperature extremes. It is defined as a temperate oceanic climate, or Cfb on the Köppen climate classification system, a classification it shares with most of northwest Europe. The North Atlantic Drift (\"Gulf Stream\"), which flows from the Gulf of Mexico, brings with it significant moisture and raises temperatures 11 °C (20 °F) above the global average for the islands' latitudes. Most Atlantic depressions pass to the north of the islands; combined with the general westerly circulation and interactions with the landmass, this imposes a general east–west variation in climate. There are four distinct climate patterns: south-east, with cold winters, warm and dry summers; south-west, having mild and very wet winters, warm and wet summers; north-west, generally wet with mild winters and cool summers; and north-east with cold winters, cool summers.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "The islands enjoy a mild climate and varied soils, giving rise to a diverse pattern of vegetation. Animal and plant life is similar to that of the northwestern European mainland. There are however, fewer numbers of species, with Ireland having even less. All native flora and fauna in Ireland is made up of species that migrated primarily from Great Britain. The only window when this could have occurred was prior to the melting of the ice bridge between the two islands 14,000 years ago approaching the end of the last ice age.", "title": "Flora and fauna" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "As with most of Europe, prehistoric Britain and Ireland were covered with forest and swamp. Clearing began around 6000 BC and accelerated in medieval times. Despite this, Britain retained its primeval forests longer than most of Europe due to a small population and later development of trade and industry, and wood shortages were not a problem until the 17th century. By the 18th century, most of Britain's forests were consumed for shipbuilding or manufacturing charcoal and the nation was forced to import lumber from Scandinavia, North America, and the Baltic. Most forest land in Ireland is maintained by state forestation programmes. Almost all land outside urban areas is farmland. However, relatively large areas of forest remain in east and north Scotland and in southeast England. Oak, elm, ash and beech are amongst the most common trees in England. In Scotland, pine and birch are most common. Natural forests in Ireland are mainly oak, ash, wych elm, birch and pine. Beech and lime, though not native to Ireland, are also common there. Farmland hosts a variety of semi-natural vegetation of grasses and flowering plants. Woods, hedgerows, mountain slopes and marshes host heather, wild grasses, gorse and bracken.", "title": "Flora and fauna" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Many larger animals, such as wolves, bears and European elk are today extinct. However, some species such as red deer are protected. Other small mammals, such as rabbits, foxes, badgers, hares, hedgehogs, and stoats, are very common and the European beaver has been reintroduced in parts of Scotland. Wild boar have also been reintroduced to parts of southern England, following escapes from boar farms and illegal releases. Many rivers contain otters and grey and common seals are numerous on coasts. There are about 250 bird species regularly recorded in Great Britain, and another 350 that occur with varying degrees of rarity. The most numerous species are wren, robin, house sparrow, woodpigeon, chaffinch and blackbird. Farmland birds are declining in number, except for those kept for game such as pheasant, red-legged partridge, and red grouse. Fish are abundant in the rivers and lakes, in particular salmon, trout, perch and pike. Sea fish include dogfish, cod, sole, pollock and bass, as well as mussels, crab and oysters along the coast. There are more than 21,000 species of insects.", "title": "Flora and fauna" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Few species of reptiles or amphibians are found in Great Britain or Ireland. Only three snakes are native to Great Britain: the adder, the barred grass snake and the smooth snake; none are native to Ireland. In general, Great Britain has slightly more variation and native wildlife, with weasels, polecats, wildcats, most shrews, moles, water voles, roe deer and common toads also being absent from Ireland. This pattern is also true for birds and insects. Notable exceptions include the Kerry slug and certain species of woodlouse native to Ireland but not Great Britain.", "title": "Flora and fauna" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Domestic animals include the Connemara pony, Shetland pony, English Mastiff, Irish wolfhound and many varieties of cattle and sheep.", "title": "Flora and fauna" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "England has a generally high population density, with almost 80% of the total population of the islands. Elsewhere in Great Britain and Ireland, high density of population is limited to areas around a few large cities. The largest urban area by far is the Greater London Built-up Area with 9 million inhabitants. Other major population centres include the Greater Manchester Built-up Area (2.4 million), West Midlands conurbation (2.4 million) and West Yorkshire Urban Area (1.6 million) in England, Greater Glasgow (1.2 million) in Scotland and Greater Dublin Area (1.9 million) in Ireland.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "The population of England rose rapidly during the 19th and 20th centuries, whereas the populations of Scotland and Wales showed little increase during the 20th century; the population of Scotland has remained unchanged since 1951. Ireland for most of its history had much the same population density as Great Britain (about one-third of the total population). However, since the Great Irish Famine, the population of Ireland has fallen to less than one-tenth of the population of the British Isles. The famine caused a century-long population decline, drastically reduced the Irish population and permanently altered the demographic make-up of the British Isles. On a global scale, this disaster led to the creation of an Irish diaspora that numbers fifteen times the current population of the island.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "The linguistic heritage of the British Isles is rich, with twelve languages from six groups across four branches of the Indo-European family. The Insular Celtic languages of the Goidelic sub-group (Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic) and the Brittonic sub-group (Cornish, Welsh and Breton, spoken in north-western France) are the only remaining Celtic languages—the last of their continental relations were extinct before the 7th century. The Norman languages of Guernésiais, Jèrriais and Sercquiais spoken in the Channel Islands are similar to French, a language also spoken there. A cant, called Shelta, is spoken by Irish Travellers, often to conceal meaning from those outside the group. However, English, including Scots, is the dominant language, with few monoglots remaining in the other languages of the region. The Norn language of Orkney and Shetland became extinct around 1880.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "2.5 million years ago the British Isles were repeatedly submerged beneath an ice sheet which extended into the middle of the North Sea, with a larger ice sheet that covered a significant proportion of Scandinavia on the opposite side. Around 1.9 million years ago these two ice sheets frequently merged, essentially creating a land bridge between Scandinavia and northern Great Britain. Further south, there was a direct land bridge, now known as Doggerland, which was gradually submerged as sea levels rose. However, the Irish Sea was formed before Doggerland was completely covered in water, with Ireland becoming an island roughly 6,000 years before Great Britain did.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "The first evidence of human activity on the islands dates from 840,000 or 950,000 years ago, based in flint tools found near Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast of Great Britain. In contrast, the earliest evidence of human activity on the island of Ireland dates from 12,500 years ago.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "At the time of the Roman Empire, about two thousand years ago, various tribes, which spoke Celtic dialects of the Insular Celtic group, were inhabiting the islands. The Romans expanded their civilisation to control southern Great Britain but were impeded in advancing any further, building Hadrian's Wall to mark the northern frontier of their empire in 122 AD. At that time, Ireland was populated by a people known as Hiberni, the northern third or so of Great Britain by a people known as Picts and the southern two thirds by Britons.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Anglo-Saxons arrived as Roman power waned in the 5th century AD. Initially, their arrival seems to have been at the invitation of the Britons as mercenaries to repulse incursions by the Hiberni and Picts. In time, Anglo-Saxon demands on the British became so great that they came to culturally dominate the bulk of southern Great Britain, though recent genetic evidence suggests Britons still formed the bulk of the population. This dominance created what is now England and left culturally British enclaves only in the north of what is now England, in Cornwall and what is now known as Wales. Ireland had been unaffected by the Romans except, significantly, for being Christianised—traditionally by the Romano-Briton, Saint Patrick. As Europe, including Britain, descended into turmoil following the collapse of Roman civilisation, an era known as the Dark Ages, Ireland entered a golden age and responded with missions (first to Great Britain and then to the continent), the founding of monasteries and universities. These were later joined by Anglo-Saxon missions of a similar nature.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Viking invasions began in the 9th century, followed by more permanent settlements, particularly along the east coast of Ireland, the west coast of modern-day Scotland and the Isle of Man. Though the Vikings were eventually neutralised in Ireland, their influence remained in the cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Wexford. England, however, was slowly conquered around the turn of the first millennium AD, and eventually became a feudal possession of Denmark. The relations between the descendants of Vikings in England and counterparts in Normandy, in northern France, lay at the heart of a series of events that led to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The remnants of the Duchy of Normandy, which conquered England, remain associated to the English Crown as the Channel Islands to this day. A century later, the marriage of the future Henry II of England to Eleanor of Aquitaine created the Angevin Empire, partially under the French Crown. At the invitation of Diarmait Mac Murchada, a provincial king, and under the authority of Pope Adrian IV (the only Englishman to be elected pope), the Angevins invaded Ireland in 1169. Though initially intended to be kept as an independent kingdom, the failure of the Irish High King to ensure the terms of the Treaty of Windsor led Henry II, as King of England, to rule as effective monarch under the title of Lord of Ireland. This title was granted to his younger son, but when Henry's heir unexpectedly died, the title of King of England and Lord of Ireland became entwined in one person.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "By the Late Middle Ages, Great Britain was separated into the Kingdoms of England and Scotland. Power in Ireland fluxed between Gaelic kingdoms, Hiberno-Norman lords and the English-dominated Lordship of Ireland. A similar situation existed in the Principality of Wales, which was slowly being annexed into the Kingdom of England by a series of laws. During the course of the 15th century, the Crown of England would assert a claim to the Crown of France, thereby also releasing the King of England from being vassal of the King of France. In 1534, King Henry VIII, at first having been a strong defender of Roman Catholicism in the face of the Reformation, separated from the Roman Church after failing to secure a divorce from the Pope. His response was to place the King of England as \"the only Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England\", thereby removing the authority of the Pope from the affairs of the English Church. Ireland, which had been held by the King of England as Lord of Ireland, but which strictly speaking had been a feudal possession of the Pope since the Norman invasion was declared a separate kingdom in personal union with England.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Scotland meanwhile had remained an independent Kingdom. In 1603, that changed when the King of Scotland inherited the Crown of England, and consequently the Crown of Ireland also. The subsequent 17th century was one of political upheaval, religious division and war. English colonialism in Ireland of the 16th century was extended by large-scale Scottish and English colonies in Ulster. Religious division heightened, and the king of England came into conflict with parliament over his tolerance towards Catholicism. The resulting English Civil War or War of the Three Kingdoms led to a revolutionary republic in England. Ireland, largely Catholic, was mainly loyal to the king, but by military conquest was subsumed into the new republic. Following defeat to the parliament's army, large scale land distributions from loyalist Irish nobility to English commoners in the service of the parliamentary army created a new Ascendancy class which obliterated the remnants of Old English (Hiberno-Norman) and Gaelic Irish nobility in Ireland. The new ruling class was Protestant and English, whilst the populace was largely Catholic and Irish. This theme would influence Irish politics for centuries to come. When the monarchy was restored in England, the king found it politically impossible to restore the lands of former landowners in Ireland. The \"Glorious Revolution\" of 1688 repeated similar themes: a Catholic king pushing for religious tolerance in opposition to a Protestant parliament in England. The king's army was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne and at the militarily crucial Battle of Aughrim in Ireland. Resistance held out, eventually forcing the guarantee of religious tolerance in the Treaty of Limerick. However, the terms were never honoured and a new monarchy was installed.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "The Kingdoms of England and Scotland were unified in 1707 creating the Kingdom of Great Britain. Following an attempted republican revolution in Ireland in 1798, the Kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain were unified in 1801, creating the United Kingdom. The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands remaining outside of the United Kingdom, but with their ultimate good governance being the responsibility of the British Crown (effectively the British government). Although the colonies of North America that would become the United States of America were lost by the start of the 19th century, the British Empire expanded rapidly elsewhere. A century later, it would cover one-third of the globe. Poverty in the United Kingdom remained desperate, however, and industrialisation in England led to terrible conditions for the working classes. Mass migrations following the Irish Famine and Highland Clearances resulted in the distribution of the islands' population and culture throughout the world and a rapid de-population of Ireland in the second half of the 19th century. Most of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom after the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Anglo-Irish Treaty (1919–1922), with the six counties that formed Northern Ireland remaining as an autonomous region of the UK.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "There are two sovereign states in the British Isles: Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Ireland, sometimes called the Republic of Ireland, governs five-sixths of the island of Ireland, with the remainder of the island forming Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, usually shortened to simply \"the United Kingdom\", which governs the remainder of the archipelago with the exception of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The Isle of Man and the two Bailiwicks of the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, are known as the Crown Dependencies. They exercise constitutional rights of self-government and judicial independence; responsibility for international representation rests largely with the UK (in consultation with the respective governments); and responsibility for defence is reserved by the UK. The United Kingdom is made up of four constituent parts: England, Scotland and Wales, forming Great Britain, and Northern Ireland in the northeast of the island of Ireland. Of these, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved governments, meaning that each has its own parliament or assembly and is self-governing with respect to certain matters set down by law. For judicial purposes, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales (the latter being one entity) form separate legal jurisdictions, with there being no single law for the UK as a whole.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Ireland, the United Kingdom and the three Crown dependencies are all parliamentary democracies, with their own separate parliaments. All parts of the United Kingdom return Members of Parliament (MPs) to parliament in London. In addition to this, voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland return members to a devolved parliament in Edinburgh and in Cardiff and an assembly in Belfast. Governance in the norm is by majority rule; however, Northern Ireland uses a system of power sharing whereby unionists and nationalists share executive posts proportionately and where the assent of both groups is required for the Northern Ireland Assembly to make certain decisions. (In the context of Northern Ireland, unionists are those who want Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom and nationalists are those who want Northern Ireland to join with the rest of Ireland.) The British monarch is the head of state of the United Kingdom, while in the Republic of Ireland the head of state is the President of Ireland.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Ireland is the only part of the isles that is a member state of the European Union (EU). The UK was a member between 1 January 1973 and 31 January 2020, but the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands were not. Since the partition of Ireland, an informal free-travel area has existed across the island of Ireland. This area required formal recognition in 1997 during the course of negotiations for the Amsterdam Treaty of the European Union, and (together with the Crown dependencies) is now known as the Common Travel Area. As such, Ireland is not part of the Schengen Area, which allows passport-free travel between most EU member states, and is the only member state with an opt-out from the obligation to join the Schengen Zone.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Reciprocal arrangements allow British and Irish citizens specific voting rights in the two states. In Ireland, British citizens can vote in General and local elections, but not in European Parliament elections, constitutional referendums or presidential elections (for which there is no comparable franchise in the United Kingdom). In the United Kingdom, Irish and Commonwealth citizens can vote in every election for which British citizens are eligible. In the Crown dependencies, any resident can vote in general elections, but in Jersey and the Isle of Man only British citizens can run for office. These pre-date European Union law, and in both jurisdictions go further than what was required by European Union law (EU citizens may only vote in local elections in both states and European elections in Ireland). In 2008, a UK Ministry of Justice report investigating how to strengthen the British sense of citizenship proposed to end this arrangement, arguing that \"the right to vote is one of the hallmarks of the political status of citizens; it is not a means of expressing closeness between countries\".", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "In addition, some civil bodies are organised throughout the islands as a whole—for example, the Samaritans, which is deliberately organised without regard to national boundaries on the basis that a service which is not political or religious should not recognise sectarian or political divisions. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), a charity that operates a lifeboat service, is also organised throughout the islands as a whole, covering the waters of the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The Northern Ireland peace process has led to a number of unusual arrangements between the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom. For example, citizens of Northern Ireland are entitled to the choice of Irish or British citizenship or both, and the Governments of Ireland and the United Kingdom consult on matters not devolved to the Northern Ireland Executive. The Northern Ireland Executive and the Government of Ireland also meet as the North/South Ministerial Council to develop policies common across the island of Ireland. These arrangements were made following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Another body established under the Good Friday Agreement, the British–Irish Council, is made up of all of the states and territories of the British Isles. The British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly (Irish: Tionól Pharlaiminteach na Breataine agus na hÉireann) predates the British–Irish Council and was established in 1990. Originally it comprised 25 members of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament, and 25 members of the parliament of the United Kingdom, with the purpose of building mutual understanding between members of both legislatures. Since then the role and scope of the body has been expanded to include representatives from the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd (Welsh Parliament), the Northern Ireland Assembly, the States of Jersey, the States of Guernsey and the High Court of Tynwald (Isle of Man).", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "The Council does not have executive powers but meets biannually to discuss issues of mutual importance. Similarly, the Parliamentary Assembly has no legislative powers but investigates and collects witness evidence from the public on matters of mutual concern to its members. Reports on its findings are presented to the Governments of Ireland and the United Kingdom. During the February 2008 meeting of the British–Irish Council, it was agreed to set up a standing secretariat that would serve as a permanent 'civil service' for the Council. Leading on from developments in the British–Irish Council, the chair of the British–Irish Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, Niall Blaney, has suggested that the body should shadow the British–Irish Council's work.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "The United Kingdom and Ireland have separate media, although British television, newspapers and magazines are widely available in Ireland, giving people in Ireland a high level of familiarity with the culture of the United Kingdom. Irish newspapers are also available in the UK, and Irish state and private television are widely available in Northern Ireland. Certain reality TV shows have embraced the whole of the islands, for example The X Factor, seasons 3, 4 and 7 of which featured auditions in Dublin and were open to Irish voters, whilst the show previously known as Britain's Next Top Model became Britain and Ireland's Next Top Model in 2011. A few cultural events are organised for the island group as a whole. For example, the Costa Book Awards are awarded to authors resident in the UK or Ireland. The Mercury Music Prize is handed out every year to the best album from a British or Irish musician or group.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Many globally popular sports had their modern rules codified in the British Isles, including golf, association football, cricket, rugby, snooker and darts, as well as many minor sports such as croquet, bowls, pitch and putt, water polo and handball. A number of sports are popular throughout the British Isles, the most prominent of which is association football. While this is organised separately in different national associations, leagues and national teams, even within the UK, it is a common passion in all parts of the islands. Rugby union is also widely enjoyed across the islands with four national teams from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The British and Irish Lions is a team chosen from each national team and undertakes tours of the Southern Hemisphere rugby-playing nations every four years. Ireland plays as a united team, represented by players from both Northern Ireland and the Republic. These national rugby teams play each other each year for the Triple Crown as part of the Six Nations Championship. Also, since 2001, the professional club teams of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy and South Africa compete against each other in the United Rugby Championship.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "The Ryder Cup in golf was originally played between a United States team and a team representing Great Britain and Ireland. From 1979 onwards, this was expanded to include the whole of Europe.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "London Heathrow Airport is Europe's busiest airport in terms of passenger traffic, and the Dublin-London route is the busiest air route in Europe collectively, the busiest route out of Heathrow and the second-busiest international air route in the world. The English Channel and the southern North Sea are the busiest seaways in the world. The Channel Tunnel, opened in 1994, links Great Britain to France and is the second-longest rail tunnel in the world.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "The idea of building a tunnel under the Irish Sea has been raised since 1895, when it was first investigated. Several potential Irish Sea tunnel projects have been proposed, most recently the Tusker Tunnel between the ports of Rosslare and Fishguard proposed by The Institute of Engineers of Ireland in 2004. A rail tunnel was proposed in 1997 on a different route, between Dublin and Holyhead, by British engineering firm Symonds. Either tunnel, at 50 mi (80 km), would be by far the longest in the world, and would cost an estimated £15 billion or €20 billion. A proposal in 2007, estimated the cost of building a bridge from County Antrim in Northern Ireland to Galloway in Scotland at £3.5bn (€5bn).", "title": "Transport" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Basque (/ˈbæsk, ˈbɑːsk/; euskara [eus̺ˈkaɾa]) is the last surviving Paleo-European language spoken indigenously in Europe, predating the Indo-European languages of the Bronze Age invasion of Europe from the Eurasian steppe by pastoralists whose descendant languages dominate the continent today. Basque is spoken by the Basques and other residents of the Basque Country, a region that straddles the westernmost Pyrenees in adjacent parts of northern Spain and southwestern France. Linguistically, Basque is classified as a language isolate, as a relationship to any of the other known extinct pre-Indo-European languages of Europe has not been established, nor is it related to the later arriving Indo-European languages. The Basques are indigenous to, and primarily inhabit, the Basque Country. The Basque language is spoken by 28.4% (751,500) of Basques in all territories. Of these, 93.2% (700,300) are in the Spanish area of the Basque Country and the remaining 6.8% (51,200) are in the French portion.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Native speakers live in a contiguous area that includes parts of four Spanish provinces and the three \"ancient provinces\" in France. Gipuzkoa, most of Biscay, a few municipalities on the northern border of Álava and the northern area of Navarre formed the core of the remaining Basque-speaking area before measures were introduced in the 1980s to strengthen Basque fluency. By contrast, most of Álava, the westernmost part of Biscay, and central and southern Navarre are predominantly populated by native speakers of Spanish, either because Basque was replaced by Spanish over the centuries (as in most of Álava and central Navarre), or because it may never have been spoken there (as in parts of Enkarterri and south-eastern Navarre).", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "In Francoist Spain, Basque language use was discouraged by the government's repressive policies. In the Basque Country, \"Francoist repression was not only political, but also linguistic and cultural.\" Franco's regime suppressed Basque from official discourse, education, and publishing, making it illegal to register newborn babies under Basque names, and even requiring tombstone engravings in Basque to be removed. In some provinces the public use of Basque was suppressed, with people fined for speaking it. Public use of Basque was frowned upon by supporters of the regime, often regarded as a sign of anti-Francoism or separatism. Overall, in the 1960s and later, the trend reversed and education and publishing in Basque began to flourish. As a part of this process, a standardised form of the Basque language, called Euskara Batua, was developed by the Euskaltzaindia in the late 1960s.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Besides its standardised version, the five historic Basque dialects are Biscayan, Gipuzkoan, and Upper Navarrese in Spain and Navarrese–Lapurdian and Souletin in France. They take their names from the historic Basque provinces, but the dialect boundaries are not congruent with province boundaries. Euskara Batua was created so that the Basque language could be used—and easily understood by all Basque speakers—in formal situations (education, mass media, literature), and this is its main use today. In both Spain and France, the use of Basque for education varies from region to region and from school to school.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Basque is the only surviving language isolate in Europe. The current mainstream scientific view on the origin of the Basques and of their language is that early forms of Basque developed before the arrival of Indo-European languages in the area, i.e. before the arrival of Celtic and Romance languages in particular, as the latter today geographically surround the Basque-speaking region. Typologically, with its agglutinative morphology and ergative–absolutive alignment, Basque grammar remains markedly different from that of Standard Average European languages. Nevertheless, Basque has borrowed up to 40 percent of its vocabulary from Romance languages, and the Latin script is used for the Basque alphabet.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "In Basque, the name of the language is officially euskara (alongside various dialect forms).", "title": "Names of the language" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "In French, the language is normally called basque, though euskara has become common in recent times. Spanish has a greater variety of names for the language. Today, it is most commonly referred to as vasco, lengua vasca, or euskera. Both terms, vasco and basque, are inherited from the Latin ethnonym Vascones, which in turn goes back to the Greek term Οὐάσκωνες (ouaskōnes), an ethnonym used by Strabo in his Geographica (23 CE, Book III).", "title": "Names of the language" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The Spanish term Vascuence, derived from Latin vasconĭce, has acquired negative connotations over the centuries and is not well-liked amongst Basque speakers generally. Its use is documented at least as far back as the 14th century when a law passed in Huesca in 1349 stated that Item nuyl corridor nonsia usado que faga mercadería ninguna que compre nin venda entre ningunas personas, faulando en algaravia nin en abraych nin en basquenç: et qui lo fara pague por coto XXX sol—essentially penalising the use of Arabic, Hebrew, or Basque in marketplaces with a fine of 30 sols (the equivalent of 30 sheep).", "title": "Names of the language" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Basque is geographically surrounded by Romance languages but is a language isolate unrelated to them, and indeed, to any other language in the world. It is the last remaining descendant of one of the pre-Indo-European languages of Prehistoric Europe. Consequently, the prehistory of the Basque language may not be reconstructible by means of the traditional comparative method except by applying it to differences between dialects within the language. Little is known of its origins, but it is likely that an early form of the Basque language was present in and around the area of modern Basque Country before the arrival of the Indo-European languages in western Europe.", "title": "History and classification" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Authors such as Miguel de Unamuno and Louis Lucien Bonaparte have noted that the words for \"knife\" (aizto), \"axe\" (aizkora), and \"hoe\" (aitzur) appear to derive from the word for \"stone\" (haitz), and have therefore concluded that the language dates to prehistoric Europe when those tools were made of stone. Others find this unlikely: see the aizkora controversy.", "title": "History and classification" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Latin inscriptions in Gallia Aquitania preserve a number of words with cognates in the reconstructed proto-Basque language, for instance, the personal names Nescato and Cison (neskato and gizon mean 'young girl' and 'man', respectively in modern Basque). This language is generally referred to as Aquitanian and is assumed to have been spoken in the area before the Roman Republic's conquests in the western Pyrenees. Some authors even argue for late Basquisation, that the language moved westward during Late Antiquity after the fall of the Western Roman Empire into the northern part of Hispania into what is now Basque Country.", "title": "History and classification" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Roman neglect of this area allowed Aquitanian to survive while the Iberian and Tartessian languages became extinct. Through the long contact with Romance languages, Basque adopted a sizeable number of Romance words. Initially the source was Latin, later Gascon (a branch of Occitan) in the north-east, Navarro-Aragonese in the south-east and Spanish in the south-west.", "title": "History and classification" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Since 1968, Basque has been immersed in a revitalisation process, facing formidable obstacles. However, significant progress has been made in numerous areas. Six main factors have been identified to explain its relative success:", "title": "History and classification" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "While those six factors influenced the revitalisation process, the extensive development and use of language technologies is also considered a significant additional factor.", "title": "History and classification" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "While accepted by a majority of linguists as a non-Indo-European language, many attempts have been made to link the Basque language with more geographically distant languages. Apart from pseudoscientific comparisons, the appearance of long-range linguistics gave rise to several attempts to connect Basque with geographically very distant language families. Historical work on Basque is challenging since written material and documentation only is available for some few hundred years. Almost all hypotheses concerning the origin of Basque are controversial, and the suggested evidence is not generally accepted by mainstream linguists. Some of these hypothetical connections are:", "title": "History and classification" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The region where Basque is spoken has become smaller over centuries, especially at the northern, southern, and eastern borders. Nothing is known about the limits of this region in ancient times, but on the basis of toponyms and epigraphs, it seems that in the beginning of the Common Era it stretched to the river Garonne in the north (including the south-western part of present-day France); at least to the Val d'Aran in the east (now a Gascon-speaking part of Catalonia), including lands on both sides of the Pyrenees; the southern and western boundaries are not clear at all.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The Reconquista temporarily counteracted this contracting tendency when the Christian lords called on northern Iberian peoples — Basques, Asturians, and \"Franks\" — to colonise the new conquests. The Basque language became the main everyday language, while other languages like Spanish, Gascon, French, or Latin were preferred for the administration and high education.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "By the 16th century, the Basque-speaking area was reduced basically to the present-day seven provinces of the Basque Country, excluding the southern part of Navarre, the south-western part of Álava, and the western part of Biscay, and including some parts of Béarn.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "In 1807, Basque was still spoken in the northern half of Álava—including its capital city Vitoria-Gasteiz—and a vast area in central Navarre, but in these two provinces, Basque experienced a rapid decline that pushed its border northwards. In the French Basque Country, Basque was still spoken in all the territory except in Bayonne and some villages around, and including some bordering towns in Béarn.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "In the 20th century, however, the rise of Basque nationalism spurred increased interest in the language as a sign of ethnic identity, and with the establishment of autonomous governments in the Southern Basque Country, it has recently made a modest comeback. In the Spanish part, Basque-language schools for children and Basque-teaching centres for adults have brought the language to areas such as western Enkarterri and the Ribera del Ebro in southern Navarre, where it is not known to ever have been widely spoken; and in the French Basque Country, these schools and centres have almost stopped the decline of the language.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Historically, Latin or Romance languages have been the official languages in this region. However, Basque was explicitly recognised in some areas. For instance, the fuero or charter of the Basque-colonised Ojacastro (now in La Rioja) allowed the inhabitants to use Basque in legal processes in the 13th and 14th centuries. Basque was allowed in telegraph messages in Spain thanks to the royal decree of 1904.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "The Spanish Constitution of 1978 states in Article 3 that the Spanish language is the official language of the nation, but allows autonomous communities to provide a co-official language status for the other languages of Spain. Consequently, the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Autonomous Community establishes Basque as the co-official language of the autonomous community. The Statute of Navarre establishes Spanish as the official language of Navarre, but grants co-official status to the Basque language in the Basque-speaking areas of northern Navarre. Basque has no official status in the French Basque Country and French citizens are barred from officially using Basque in a French court of law. However, the use of Basque by Spanish nationals in French courts is permitted (with translation), as Basque is officially recognised on the other side of the border.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "The positions of the various existing governments differ with regard to the promotion of Basque in areas where Basque is commonly spoken. The language has official status in those territories that are within the Basque Autonomous Community, where it is spoken and promoted heavily, but only partially in Navarre. The Ley del Vascuence (\"Law of Basque\"), seen as contentious by many Basques, but considered fitting Navarra's linguistic and cultural diversity by some of the main political parties of Navarre, divides Navarre into three language areas: Basque-speaking, non-Basque-speaking, and mixed. Support for the language and the linguistic rights of citizens vary, depending on the area. Others consider it unfair, since the rights of Basque speakers differ greatly depending on the place they live.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "The 2016 sociolinguistic survey of all Basque-speaking territories showed that in 2016, of all people aged 16 and above:", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Taken together, in 2016, of a total population of 3,131,464 (2,191,688 in the Autonomous Community; 297,847 in the Northern provinces; and 640,647 in Navarre), 751,527 spoke Basque (aged 16 and above). This amounts to 28.4% Basque bilinguals overall, 16.4% passive speakers, and 55.2% non-speakers. Compared to the 1991 figures, this represents an overall increase of 223,000, from 528,500 (from a population of 2,371,100) 25 years previously. This number tends to increase, since 55.4% of the population between 16 and 24 years old spoke Basque in 2016, compared to only 22.5% in 1991.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "While there is a general increase in the number of Basque-speaking during this period, this is mainly because of bilingualism. Basque transmission as a sole mother tongue has decreased from 19% in 1991 to 15.1% in 2016, while Basque and another language being used as mother language increased from 3% to 5.4% in the same time period. General public attitude towards efforts to promote the Basque language have also been more positive, with the share of people against these efforts falling from 20.9% in 1991 to 16% in 2016.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Basque is used as a language of commerce both in the Basque Country and in locations around the world where Basques immigrated throughout history.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "The modern Basque dialects show a high degree of dialectal divergence, sometimes making cross-dialect communication difficult. This is especially true in the case of Biscayan and Souletin, which are regarded as the most divergent Basque dialects.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Modern Basque dialectology distinguishes five dialects:", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "These dialects are divided in 11 subdialects, and 24 minor varieties among them. According to Koldo Zuazo, the Biscayan dialect or \"Western\" is the most widespread dialect, with around 300,000 speakers out of a total of around 660,000 speakers. This dialect is divided in two minor subdialects: the Western Biscayan and Eastern Biscayan, plus transitional dialects.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Although the influence of the neighbouring Romance languages on the Basque language (especially the lexicon, but also to some degree Basque phonology and grammar) has been much more extensive, it is usually assumed that there has been some feedback from Basque into these languages as well. In particular Gascon and Aragonese, and to a lesser degree Spanish are thought to have received this influence in the past. In the case of Aragonese and Gascon, this would have been through substrate interference following language shift from Aquitanian or Basque to a Romance language, affecting all levels of the language, including place names around the Pyrenees.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "Although a number of words of alleged Basque origin in the Spanish language are circulated (e.g. anchoa 'anchovies', bizarro 'dashing, gallant, spirited', cachorro 'puppy', etc.), most of these have more easily explicable Romance etymologies or not particularly convincing derivations from Basque. Ignoring cultural terms, there is one strong loanword candidate, ezker, long considered the source of the Pyrenean and Iberian Romance words for \"left (side)\" (izquierdo, esquerdo, esquerre). The lack of initial /r/ in Gascon could arguably be due to a Basque influence but this issue is under-researched.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The other most commonly claimed substrate influences:", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "The first two features are common, widespread developments in many Romance (and non-Romance) languages. The change of /f/ to /h/ occurred historically only in a limited area (Gascony and Old Castile) that corresponds almost exactly to areas where heavy Basque bilingualism is assumed, and as a result has been widely postulated (and equally strongly disputed). Substrate theories are often difficult to prove (especially in the case of phonetically plausible changes like /f/ to /h/). As a result, although many arguments have been made on both sides, the debate largely comes down to the a priori tendency on the part of particular linguists to accept or reject substrate arguments.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Examples of arguments against the substrate theory, and possible responses:", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Beyond these arguments, a number of nomadic groups of Castile are also said to use or have used Basque words in their jargon, such as the gacería in Segovia, the mingaña, the Galician fala dos arxinas and the Asturian Xíriga.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Part of the Romani community in the Basque Country speaks Erromintxela, which is a rare mixed language, with a Kalderash Romani vocabulary and Basque grammar.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "A number of Basque-based or Basque-influenced pidgins have existed. In the 16th century, Basque sailors used a Basque–Icelandic pidgin in their contacts with Iceland. The Algonquian–Basque pidgin arose from contact between Basque whalers and the Algonquian peoples in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and Strait of Belle Isle.", "title": "Geographic distribution" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "The Basque language features five vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/ (the same that are found in Spanish, Asturian and Aragonese). In the Zuberoan dialect, extra phonemes are featured:", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "There is no distinctive vowel length in Basque, although vowels can be lengthened for emphasis. The mid vowels /e/ and /o/ are raised before nasal consonants.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "Basque has an a-Elision Rule, according to which the vowel /a/ is elided before any following vowel. This does not prevent the existence of diphthongs with /a/ present.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "There are six diphthongs in Basque, all falling and with /i̯/ or /u̯/ as the second element.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "In syllable-final position, all plosives are devoiced and are spelled accordingly in Standard Basque. When between vowels, and often when after /r/ or /l/, the voiced plosives /b/, /d/, and /g/, are pronounced as the corresponding fricatives [β], [ð], and [ɣ].", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "Basque has a distinction between laminal and apical articulation for the alveolar fricatives and affricates. With the laminal alveolar fricative [s̻], the friction occurs across the blade of the tongue, the tongue tip pointing toward the lower teeth. This is the usual /s/ in most European languages. It is written with an orthographic ⟨z⟩. By contrast, the voiceless apicoalveolar fricative [s̺] is written ⟨s⟩; the tip of the tongue points toward the upper teeth and friction occurs at the tip (apex). For example, zu \"you\" (singular, respectful) is distinguished from su \"fire\". The affricate counterparts are written ⟨tz⟩ and ⟨ts⟩. So, etzi \"the day after tomorrow\" is distinguished from etsi \"to give up\"; atzo \"yesterday\" is distinguished from atso \"old woman\".", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "In the westernmost parts of the Basque country, only the apical ⟨s⟩ and the alveolar affricate ⟨tz⟩ are used.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "Basque also features postalveolar sibilants (/ʃ/, written ⟨x⟩, and /tʃ/, written ⟨tx⟩), sounding like English sh and ch.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "The letter ⟨j⟩ has a variety of realisations according to the regional dialect: [j, dʒ, x, ʃ, ɟ, ʝ], as pronounced from west to east in south Bizkaia and coastal Lapurdi, central Bizkaia, east Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, south Navarre, inland Lapurdi and Low Navarre, and Zuberoa, respectively.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "The letter ⟨h⟩ is pronounced in the northern dialects, but not pronounced in the southern ones. Unified Basque spells it except when it is predictable, in a position following a consonant.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Unless they are recent loanwords (e.g. Ruanda \"Rwanda\", radar, robot ... ), words may not have initial ⟨r⟩. In older loans, initial r- took a prosthetic vowel, resulting in err- (Erroma \"Rome\", Errusia \"Russia\"), more rarely irr- (for example irratia \"radio\", irrisa \"rice\") and arr- (for example arrazional \"rational\").", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "Basque does not have /m/ in syllable final position, and syllable-final /n/ assimilates to the place of articulation of following plosives. As a result, /nb/ is pronounced like [mb], and /ng/ is realized as [ŋg].", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "Basque has two types of palatalization, automatic palatalization and expressive palatalization. Automatic palatalization occurs in western Labourd, much of Navarre, all of Gipuzkoa, and nearly all of Biscay. As a result of automatic palatalization, /n/ and /l/ become the palatal nasal [ɲ] and the palatal lateral [ʎ] respectively after the vowel /i/ and before another vowel. An exception is the loanword lili 'lily'. The same palatalization occurs after the semivowel [j] of the diphthongs ai, ei, oi, ui. This palatalization occurs in a wider area, including Soule, all of Gipuzkoa and Biscay, and almost all of Navarre. In a few regions, /n/ and /l/ can be palatalized even in the absence of a following vowel. After palatalization, the semivowel [j] is usually absorbed by the palatal consonant. This can be seen in older spellings, such as malla instead of modern maila 'degree'. That said, the modern orthography for Standard Basque ignores automatic palatalization.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "In certain regions of Gipuzkoa and Biscay, intervocalic /t/ is often palatalized after /i/ and especially [j]. It may become indistinguishable from the affricate /tʃ/, spelled ⟨tx⟩, so aita 'father' may sound like it were spelled atxa or atta. This type of palatalization is far from general, and is often viewed as substandard.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "In Goizueta Basque, there are a few examples of /nt/ being palatalized after /i/, and optional palatalization of /ld/. For example, mintegi 'seedbed' becomes [mincei], and bildots 'lamb' can be /biʎots̺/.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "Basque nouns, adjectives, and adverbs can be expressively palatalized. These express 'smallness', rarely literal and often showing affection, in nouns, and mitigation in adjectives and adverbs. This is often used in the formation of pet names and nicknames. In words containing one or more sibilant, these sibilants are palatalized in order to form the palatalized form. That is, s and z become x, and ts and tz become tx. As a result, gizon 'man' becomes gixon 'little fellow', zoro 'crazy, insane' becomes xoro 'silly, foolish', and bildots 'lamb' becomes bildotx 'lambkin, young lamb'. In words without sibilants, /t/, /d/, /n/, and /l/ can become palatalized. This palatalization is indicated in writing with a double consonant, except in the case of palatalized /n/ which is written ⟨ñ⟩. Thus, tanta 'drop' becomes ttantta 'droplet', and nabar 'grey' becomes ñabar 'grey and pretty, greyish'.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "The pronunciation of tt and dd, and the existence of dd, differ by dialect. In the Gipuzkoan and Biscayan dialects tt is often pronounced the same as tx, that is, as [tʃ], and dd does not exist. Likewise, in Goizueta Basque, tt is a voiceless palatal stop [c] and the corresponding voiced palatal stop, [ɟ], is absent except as an allophone of /j/. In Goizueta Basque, /j/ is sometimes the result of an affectionate palatalization of /d/.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "Palatalization of the rhotics is rare and only occurs in the eastern dialects. When palatalized, the rhotics become the palatal lateral [ʎ]. Likewise, palatalization of velars, resulting in tt or tx, is quite rare.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "A few common words, such as txakur 'dog', pronounced /tʃakur/, use palatal sounds even though in current usage they have lost the diminutive sense, the corresponding non-palatal forms now acquiring an augmentative or pejorative sense: zakur 'big dog'.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "There are some rules which govern the behavior of consonants in contact with each other. These apply both within and between words. When two plosives meet, the first one is dropped, and the second must become voiceless. If a sibilant follows a plosive, the plosive is dropped, and the sibilant becomes the corresponding affricate. When a plosive follows an affricate, the affricate becomes a sibilant, and a voiced plosive is devoiced. When a voiced plosive follows a sibilant, it is devoiced except in very slow and careful speech. In the central dialects of Basque, a sibilant turns into an affricate when it follows a liquid or a nasal. When a plosive follows a nasal, there's a strong tendency for it to become voiced.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "Basque features great dialectal variation in accentuation, from a weak pitch accent in the western dialects to a marked stress in central and eastern dialects, with varying patterns of stress placement. Stress is in general not distinctive (and for historical comparisons not very useful); there are, however, a few instances where stress is phonemic, serving to distinguish between a few pairs of stress-marked words and between some grammatical forms (mainly plurals from other forms), e.g. basóà (\"the forest\", absolutive case) vs. básoà (\"the glass\", absolutive case; an adoption from Spanish vaso); basóàk (\"the forest\", ergative case) vs. básoàk (\"the glass\", ergative case) vs. básoak (\"the forests\" or \"the glasses\", absolutive case).", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "Given its great deal of variation among dialects, stress is not marked in the standard orthography and Euskaltzaindia (the Academy of the Basque Language) provides only general recommendations for a standard placement of stress, basically to place a high-pitched weak stress (weaker than that of Spanish, let alone that of English) on the second syllable of a syntagma, and a low-pitched even-weaker stress on its last syllable, except in plural forms where stress is moved to the first syllable.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "This scheme provides Basque with a distinct musicality that differentiates its sound from the prosodical patterns of Spanish (which tends to stress the second-to-last syllable). Some Euskaldun berriak (\"new Basque-speakers\", i.e. second-language Basque-speakers) with Spanish as their first language tend to carry the prosodical patterns of Spanish into their pronunciation of Basque, e.g. pronouncing nire ama (\"my mum\") as nire áma (– – ´ –), instead of as niré amà (– ´ – `).", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "The combining forms of nominals in final /-u/ vary across the regions of the Basque Country. The /u/ can stay unchanged, be lowered to an /a/, or it can be lost. Loss is most common in the east, while lowering is most common in the west. For instance, buru, \"head\", has the combining forms buru- and bur-, as in buruko, \"cap\", and burko, \"pillow\", whereas katu, \"cat\", has the combining form kata-, as in katakume, \"kitten\". Michelena suggests that the lowering to /a/ is generalised from cases of Romance borrowings in Basque that retained Romance stem alternations, such as kantu, \"song\" with combining form kanta-, borrowed from Romance canto, canta-.", "title": "Phonology" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "Basque is an ergative–absolutive language. The subject of an intransitive verb is in the absolutive case (which is unmarked), and the same case is used for the direct object of a transitive verb. The subject of the transitive verb is marked differently, with the ergative case (shown by the suffix -k). This also triggers main and auxiliary verbal agreement.", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "The auxiliary verb, which accompanies most main verbs, agrees not only with the subject, but with any direct object and the indirect object present. Among European languages, this polypersonal agreement is found only in Basque, some languages of the Caucasus (especially the Kartvelian languages), Mordvinic languages, Hungarian, and Maltese (all non-Indo-European). The ergative–absolutive alignment is also rare among European languages—occurring only in some languages of the Caucasus—but not infrequent worldwide.", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "Consider the phrase:", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "Martin-ek", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "Martin-ERG", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "egunkari-ak", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "newspaper-PL.ABS", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "erosten", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "buy-GER", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "di-zki-t", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "AUX.3.OBJ-PL.OBJ-me.IO[3SG_SBJ]", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "Martin-ek egunkari-ak erosten di-zki-t", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "Martin-ERG newspaper-PL.ABS buy-GER AUX.3.OBJ-PL.OBJ-me.IO[3SG_SBJ]", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "\"Martin buys the newspapers for me.\"", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "Martin-ek is the agent (transitive subject), so it is marked with the ergative case ending -k (with an epenthetic -e-). Egunkariak has an -ak ending, which marks plural object (plural absolutive, direct object case). The verb is erosten dizkit, in which erosten is a kind of gerund (\"buying\") and the auxiliary dizkit means \"he/she (does) them for me\". This dizkit can be split like this:", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "Zu-ek", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 79, "text": "you-ERG(PL)", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 80, "text": "egunkari-ak", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 81, "text": "newspaper-PL", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 82, "text": "erosten", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 83, "text": "buy-GER", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 84, "text": "di-zki-da-zue", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 85, "text": "AUX.3.OBJ-PL.OBJ-me.IO-you(PL).SBJ", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 86, "text": "Zu-ek egunkari-ak erosten di-zki-da-zue", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 87, "text": "you-ERG(PL) newspaper-PL buy-GER AUX.3.OBJ-PL.OBJ-me.IO-you(PL).SBJ", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 88, "text": "\"You (plural) buy the newspapers for me.\"", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 89, "text": "The auxiliary verb is composed as di-zki-da-zue and means 'you pl. (do) them for me'", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 90, "text": "The pronoun zuek 'you (plural)' has the same form both in the nominative or absolutive case (the subject of an intransitive sentence or direct object of a transitive sentence) and in the ergative case (the subject of a transitive sentence). In spoken Basque, the auxiliary verb is never dropped even if it is redundant, e.g. dizkidazue in zuek niri egunkariak erosten dizkidazue 'you (pl.) are buying the newspapers for me'. However, the pronouns are almost always dropped, e.g. zuek in egunkariak erosten dizkidazue 'you (pl.) are buying the newspapers for me'. The pronouns are used only to show emphasis: egunkariak zuek erosten dizkidazue 'it is you (pl.) who buys the newspapers for me', or egunkariak niri erosten dizkidazue 'it is me for whom you buy the newspapers'.", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 91, "text": "Modern Basque dialects allow for the conjugation of about fifteen verbs, called synthetic verbs, some only in literary contexts. These can be put in the present and past tenses in the indicative and subjunctive moods, in three tenses in the conditional and potential moods, and in one tense in the imperative. Each verb that can be taken intransitively has a nor (absolutive) paradigm and possibly a nor-nori (absolutive–dative) paradigm, as in the sentence Aititeri txapela erori zaio (\"The hat fell from grandfather['s head]\"). Each verb that can be taken transitively uses those two paradigms for antipassive-voice contexts in which no agent is mentioned (Basque lacks a passive voice, and displays instead an antipassive voice paradigm), and also has a nor-nork (absolutive–ergative) paradigm and possibly a nor-nori-nork (absolutive–dative–ergative) paradigm. This last is exemplified by dizkidazue above. In each paradigm, each constituent noun can take on any of eight persons, five singular and three plural, with the exception of nor-nori-nork in which the absolutive can only be third person singular or plural. The most ubiquitous auxiliary, izan, can be used in any of these paradigms, depending on the nature of the main verb.", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 92, "text": "There are more persons in the singular (5) than in the plural (3) for synthetic (or filamentous) verbs because of the two familiar persons—informal masculine and feminine second person singular. The pronoun hi is used for both of them, but where the masculine form of the verb uses a -k, the feminine uses an -n. This is a property rarely found in Indo-European languages. The entire paradigm of the verb is further augmented by inflecting for \"listener\" (the allocutive) even if the verb contains no second person constituent. If the situation calls for the familiar masculine, the form is augmented and modified accordingly. Likewise for the familiar feminine. (Gizon bat etorri da, \"a man has come\"; gizon bat etorri duk, \"a man has come [you are a male close friend]\", gizon bat etorri dun, \"a man has come [you are a female close friend]\", gizon bat etorri duzu, \"a man has come [I talk to you (Sir / Madam)]\") This multiplies the number of possible forms by nearly three. Still, the restriction on contexts in which these forms may be used is strong, since all participants in the conversation must be friends of the same sex, and not too far apart in age. Some dialects dispense with the familiar forms entirely. Note, however, that the formal second person singular conjugates in parallel to the other plural forms, perhaps indicating that it was originally the second person plural, later came to be used as a formal singular, and then later still the modern second person plural was formulated as an innovation.", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 93, "text": "All the other verbs in Basque are called periphrastic, behaving much like a participle would in English. These have only three forms in total, called aspects: perfect (various suffixes), habitual (suffix -t[z]en), and future/potential (suffix. -ko/-go). Verbs of Latinate origin in Basque, as well as many other verbs, have a suffix -tu in the perfect, adapted from the Latin perfect passive -tus suffix. The synthetic verbs also have periphrastic forms, for use in perfects and in simple tenses in which they are deponent.", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 94, "text": "Within a verb phrase, the periphrastic verb comes first, followed by the auxiliary.", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 95, "text": "A Basque noun-phrase is inflected in 17 different ways for case, multiplied by four ways for its definiteness and number (indefinite, definite singular, definite plural, and definite close plural: euskaldun [Basque speaker], euskalduna [the Basque speaker, a Basque speaker], euskaldunak [Basque speakers, the Basque speakers], and euskaldunok [we Basque speakers, those Basque speakers]). These first 68 forms are further modified based on other parts of the sentence, which in turn are inflected for the noun again. It has been estimated that, with two levels of recursion, a Basque noun may have 458,683 inflected forms.", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 96, "text": "The common noun \"liburu\" (book) is declined as follows:", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 97, "text": "The proper name \"Mikel\" (Michael) is declined as follows:", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 98, "text": "Within a noun phrase, modifying adjectives follow the noun. As an example of a Basque noun phrase, etxe zaharrean \"in the old house\" is morphologically analysed as follows by Agirre et al.", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 99, "text": "Basic syntactic construction is subject–object–verb (unlike Spanish, French or English where a subject–verb–object construction is more common). The order of the phrases within a sentence can be changed for thematic purposes, whereas the order of the words within a phrase is usually rigid. As a matter of fact, Basque phrase order is topic–focus, meaning that in neutral sentences (such as sentences to inform someone of a fact or event) the topic is stated first, then the focus. In such sentences, the verb phrase comes at the end. In brief, the focus directly precedes the verb phrase. This rule is also applied in questions, for instance, What is this? can be translated as Zer da hau? or Hau zer da?, but in both cases the question tag zer immediately precedes the verb da. This rule is so important in Basque that, even in grammatical descriptions of Basque in other languages, the Basque word galdegai (focus) is used.", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 100, "text": "In negative sentences, the order changes. Since the negative particle ez must always directly precede the auxiliary, the topic most often comes beforehand, and the rest of the sentence follows. This includes the periphrastic, if there is one: Aitak frantsesa irakasten du, \"Father teaches French\", in the negative becomes Aitak ez du frantsesa irakasten, in which irakasten (\"teaching\") is separated from its auxiliary and placed at the end.", "title": "Grammar" }, { "paragraph_id": 101, "text": "Through contact with neighbouring peoples, Basque has adopted many words from Latin, Spanish, French and Gascon, among other languages. There are a considerable number of Latin loans (sometimes obscured by being subject to Basque phonology and grammar for centuries), for example: lore (\"flower\", from florem), errota (\"mill\", from rotam, \"[mill] wheel\"), gela (\"room\", from cellam), gauza (\"thing\", from causa).", "title": "Vocabulary" }, { "paragraph_id": 102, "text": "Basque is written using the Latin script including ⟨ñ⟩ and sometimes ⟨ç⟩ and ⟨ü⟩. Basque does not use ⟨c, q, v, w, y⟩ for native words, but the Basque alphabet (established by Euskaltzaindia) does include them for loanwords:", "title": "Writing system" }, { "paragraph_id": 103, "text": "The phonetically meaningful digraphs ⟨dd, ll, rr, ts, tt, tx, tz⟩ are treated as pairs of letters.", "title": "Writing system" }, { "paragraph_id": 104, "text": "All letters and digraphs represent unique phonemes. The main exception is when ⟨i⟩ precedes ⟨l⟩ and ⟨n⟩, which in most dialects palatalises their sounds into /ʎ/ and /ɲ/, even if these are not written. Hence, Ikurriña can also be written Ikurrina without changing the sound, whereas the proper name Ainhoa requires the mute ⟨h⟩ to break the palatalisation of the ⟨n⟩.", "title": "Writing system" }, { "paragraph_id": 105, "text": "⟨h⟩ is mute in most regions, but it is pronounced in many places in the north-east, the main reason for its existence in the Basque alphabet. Its acceptance was a matter of contention during the standardisation process because the speakers of the most extended dialects had to learn where to place ⟨h⟩, silent for them.", "title": "Writing system" }, { "paragraph_id": 106, "text": "In Sabino Arana's (1865–1903) alphabet, digraphs ⟨ll⟩ and ⟨rr⟩ were replaced with ⟨ĺ⟩ and ⟨ŕ⟩, respectively.", "title": "Writing system" }, { "paragraph_id": 107, "text": "A typically Basque style of lettering is sometimes used for inscriptions. It derives from the work of stone and wood carvers and is characterised by thick serifs.", "title": "Writing system" }, { "paragraph_id": 108, "text": "Basque millers traditionally employed a separate number system of unknown origin. In this system the symbols are arranged either along a vertical line or horizontally. On the vertical line the single digits and fractions are usually off to one side, usually at the top. When used horizontally, the smallest units are usually on the right and the largest on the left.", "title": "Writing system" }, { "paragraph_id": 109, "text": "The system is, as is the Basque system of counting in general, vigesimal (base 20). Although the system is in theory capable of indicating numbers above 100, most recorded examples do not go above 100 in general. Fractions are relatively common, especially 1⁄2.", "title": "Writing system" }, { "paragraph_id": 110, "text": "The exact systems used vary from area to area but generally follow the same principle with 5 usually being a diagonal line or a curve off the vertical line (a V shape is used when writing a 5 horizontally). Units of ten are usually a horizontal line through the vertical. The twenties are based on a circle with intersecting lines. This system is no longer in general use but is occasionally employed for decorative purposes.", "title": "Writing system" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Björn Kristian Ulvæus (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈbjœːɳ ɵlˈvěːɵs] ; born 25 April 1945) is a Swedish musician, singer, songwriter, and producer best known as a member of the musical group ABBA. He is also the co-composer of the musicals Chess, Kristina från Duvemåla, and Mamma Mia! He co-produced the films Mamma Mia! and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again with fellow ABBA member and close friend Benny Andersson. He is the oldest member of the group.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Björn Kristian Ulvæus was born in Gothenburg on 25 April 1945. In 1951, he moved with his family to Västervik, Kalmar County. His parents were Aina Eliza Viktoria (née Bengtsson; 1909–2005) and Erik Gunnar Ulvaeus (1912–1999). Ulvaeus has one sister, Eva Margareta (born 1948). Ulvaeus studied business and law at Lund University after undertaking his military service, alongside comedian Magnus Holmström.", "title": "Early life" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Before gaining international recognition with ABBA, Ulvaeus was a member of the Swedish folk-schlager band Hootenanny Singers, known earlier as the \"West Bay Singers\", who had an enormous following in Scandinavia. While on the road in southern Sweden in 1966, they encountered the Hep Stars, and Ulvaeus quickly became friends with the group's keyboard player, Benny Andersson. The two musicians shared a passion for songwriting, and each found a composing partner in the other. On meeting again that summer, they composed their first song together: \"Isn't It Easy To Say\", a song soon to be recorded by Andersson's group. The two continued teaming up for music, helping out each other's bands in the recording studio, and adding guitar or keyboards respectively to the recordings. In 1968, they composed two songs together: \"A Flower in My Garden\", recorded by Hep Stars, and their first real hit \"Ljuva Sextiotal\", performed by popular Swedish artist Brita Borg, for which Stig Anderson wrote lyrics. The latter, a cabarét-style ironic song about the 1960s, was submitted for the 1969 Swedish heats for the Eurovision Song Contest, but was rejected; it was later recorded by diva Brita Borg. Another hit came in 1969 with \"Speleman\", also recorded by Hep Stars.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "While filming a nostalgic schlager special for television in May 1969, Björn met eighteen-year-old future wife and singer-songwriter Agnetha Fältskog.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Björn Ulvaeus continued recording and touring with Hootenanny Singers to great acclaim while working as in-house producer at Polar Record Company (headed by future manager Stig Anderson), with Benny as his new partner. The twosome produced records by other artists and continued writing songs together. Polar artist Arne Lamberts Swedish version of \"A Flower in My Garden\" (\"Fröken Blåklint\") was one of Björn & Benny's first in-house productions. In December 1969, they recorded the new song \"She's My Kind of Girl\", which became their first single as a duo. It was released in March 1970, giving them a minor hit in Sweden and a top-ten hit in Japan two years later.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The Hootenanny Singers entered Svensktoppen, the Swedish radio charts, in 1970 with \"Omkring Tiggarn Från Luossa\", a cover of an old folk-schlager song. It remained on the charts for 52 consecutive weeks, a record which endured until 1990; the song was produced by Björn and Benny, and had Ulvaeus's solo vocal and Benny's piano.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Björn Ulvaeus's girlfriend Agnetha Fältskog eventually joined Björn&Benny becoming Björn, Benny & Agnetha, Frida eventually shortening it to ABBA. Björn was the guitar player in the band, but he also sang lead vocals in the following songs: People Need Love, Merry Go Round, Santa Rosa, Another Town Another Train, I Saw It in the Mirror, Love Isn't Easy (But It Sure Is Hard Enough), He Is Your Brother, Rock'n Roll Band, She's My Kind of Girl, Honey Honey, Sitting in the Palmtree, King King Song, Watch Out, Man in the Middle, Rock Me, Crazy World, Why Did It Have To Be Me?, Summer Night City, Does Your Mother Know, Two for the Price Of One.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Björn got divorced with Agnetha Fältskog and the band broke up shortly after the divorce.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "After ABBA went on hiatus in 1982, Ulvaeus and Andersson created the musicals Chess, a collaboration with lyricist Tim Rice, Kristina från Duvemåla (based on The Emigrants novels by Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg), and Mamma Mia! (based on ABBA songs).", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Together with Andersson, Ulvaeus was nominated for the Drama Desk Award in the category \"Outstanding Music\" (for the musical Chess), and for a Tony Award in a category \"Best Orchestrations\" (for the musical Mamma Mia!). The original cast recordings for both musicals were nominated for a Grammy Award.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "For the 2004 semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Istanbul, thirty years after ABBA had won the 1974 contest in Brighton, UK, Ulvaeus appeared briefly in a special comedy video made for the interval act, entitled \"Our Last Video\". Each of the four members of the group appeared briefly in cameo roles, as did others such as Cher and Rik Mayall. The video was not included in the official DVD release of the Eurovision Contest, but was issued as a separate DVD release. It was billed as the first time the four had worked together since the group split. In fact, they each filmed their appearances separately.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Ulvaeus also shared with Andersson \"The Special International Ivor Novello Award\" from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, \"The Music Export Prize\" from the Swedish Ministry of Industry and Trade (2008), and \"Lifetime Achievement Award\" from the Swedish Music Publishers Association (SMFF).", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "On 15 April 2013, it was officially announced by the EBU and the SVT that Ulvaeus and Andersson, with the late Swedish DJ and record producer Avicii, had composed the anthem for the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest. The song was performed for the first time in the Final on 18 May.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Ulvaeus reunited with ABBA in 2018.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "In 2019, Ulvaeus worked with Swedish songwriter Andreas Carlsson to arrange an English dub of Tomas Ledin's jukebox musical film En del av mitt hjärta (English: A Piece of My Heart) directed by Edward af Sillén. Ulvaeus was asked to write English lyrics for Ledin's songs as they are long-term friends.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "In 2020, Björn Ulvaeus has been appointed President of CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "On 2 September 2021, via YouTube livestream, ABBA announced their virtual concert residency \"ABBA Voyage\", as well as the release of a studio album, recorded between 2017 and 2021. The new record, their first in 40 years, features ten tracks, including \"I Still Have Faith In You\" and \"Don't Shut Me Down\", which were first shown in the aforementioned livestream event and released as a double A-side single. On 5 November 2021, the Voyage album was released worldwide, and on 27 May 2022, ABBA Voyage opened in a purpose-built venue named the ABBA Arena at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Since November 2021, Ulvaeus and British actor Sir Ian McKellen have posted Instagram videos featuring the pair knitting Christmas jumpers and other festive attire. In 2023, it was revealed that Ulvaeus and McKellen would be knitting stagewear for Kylie Minogue as part of her More Than Just a Residency concert residency at Voltaire at The Venetian Las Vegas.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "In October 2023, it was confirmed that Ulvaeus would be the keynote speaker for The Business Day at Bridlington Spa in the United Kingdom on Friday 7 June 2024. Ulvaeus is expected to discuss the creation of ABBA Voyage, leadership, entrepreneurship, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Technology, Innovation, Meta Data and the complexity of business in the music industry.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "On 6 July 1971, Ulvaeus married Agnetha Fältskog. They had two children: Linda Elin Ulvaeus (born 23 February 1973), and Peter Christian Ulvaeus (born 4 December 1977). The couple separated in early 1979, and their divorce was finalised in July 1980.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Ulvaeus married music journalist Lena Källersjö on 6 January 1981. They have two daughters: Emma Eleonora (born 3 January 1982) and Anna Linnea (born 29 April 1986). Ulvaeus and Källersjö lived on a private island in Djursholm, an upscale area in Danderyd Municipality north of Stockholm. From 1984 to 1990 they lived in the United Kingdom, where Ulvaeus founded an IT business with his brother. In February 2022, Ulvaeus and Källersjö announced their separation.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Ulvaeus is one of the four owners (along with Per Gessle) of NoteHeads, a Swedish company which publishes the music notation program Igor Engraver.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Ulvaeus is a member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union's Swedish member organisation Humanisterna, and was awarded their annual prize, Hedenius-priset, in 2006. Ulvaeus describes himself as an atheist. He has appeared on several shows discussing his views about religion.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Ulvaeus suffered from severe long-term memory loss. However, in a 2009 interview, he stated that reports of his memory loss were \"hugely exaggerated\". In a TV interview with Fredrik Skavlan, Ulvaeus said the memory loss pertained to episodic memory. He said that, for instance, he was not nostalgic for his days with ABBA: \"It was good while it lasted.\"", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The Guardian called him Sweden's \"highest-profile cash-free campaigner\", explaining that \"after his son was robbed several years ago, Ulvaeus became an evangelist for the electronic payment movement, claiming that cash was the primary cause of crime and that 'all activity in the black economy requires cash'\". He has reportedly been living cash-free for more than a year, and ABBA The Museum has operated cash-free since it opened in May 2013.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "The Swedish Tax Agency accused Björn Ulvaeus of failing to pay 90 million kronor (US$12.8 million) in back taxes for eight years ending in 2005. The agency claimed that he \"laundered\" his music royalty income through institutions in several foreign countries. Ulvaeus paid the taxes as a precautionary measure during the 2½-year dispute. In October 2008, the county administrative court decided the case in Ulvaeus' favour, ruling that he never owed any of the 90 million kronor.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "", "title": "Discography" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Göran Bror Benny Andersson (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈbɛ̌nːʏ ˈânːdɛˌʂɔn] ; born 16 December 1946) is a Swedish musician, composer and producer best known as a member of the pop group ABBA and co-composer of the musicals Chess, Kristina från Duvemåla, and Mamma Mia! For the 2008 film version of Mamma Mia! and its 2018 sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, he worked also as an executive producer. Since 2001, he has been active with his own band Benny Anderssons orkester.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Göran Bror Benny Andersson was born 16 December 1946 in the Vasastan district of Stockholm to civil engineer Gösta Andersson (1912–1973) and his wife Laila (1920–1971). His sister Eva-Lis Andersson followed in 1948. Andersson's musical background comes from his father and grandfather (Efraim); they both enjoyed playing the accordion, and at six, Benny got his own. His father and grandfather taught him Swedish folk music, traditional music, and schlager. The first records Benny bought were \"Du Bist Musik\" by Italian schlager singer Caterina Valente and Elvis Presley's \"Jailhouse Rock\". He was especially impressed by the flip side, \"Treat Me Nice\", as this featured a piano. This variety of different kinds of music influenced him through the years.", "title": "Early life" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "At ten, Andersson got his own piano and taught himself to play. He was influenced by Brian Jones, left school at 15 and began to perform at youth clubs. This is when he met his first girlfriend Christina Grönvall, with whom he had two children: Peter (born 1963) and Heléne (born 1965). In early 1964, Benny and Christina joined \"Elverkets Spelmanslag\" (\"The Electricity Board Folk Music Group\"); the name was a punning reference to their electric instruments. Their repertoire consisted mainly of instrumentals, including \"Baby Elephant Walk\"; he also wrote his first songs.", "title": "Early life" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In October 1964 he joined the Hep Stars as keyboardist and they made a breakthrough in March 1965 with their hit \"Cadillac\", eventually becoming the most celebrated of the Swedish 1960s pop bands. Andersson secured his place as the band's keyboardist and musical driving force as well as a teen idol. The band performed mostly covers of international hits, but Andersson soon started writing his own material, and gave the band the classic hits \"No Response\", \"Sunny Girl\", \"Wedding\", \"Consolation\", \"It's Nice To Be Back\" and \"She Will Love You\", among others.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Andersson met Björn Ulvaeus in June 1966, and the two men started writing songs together, their first being \"Isn't It Easy To Say\", eventually recorded by the Hep Stars. He also had a fruitful songwriting collaboration with Lasse Berghagen, with whom he wrote several songs and submitted \"Hej, Clown\" for the 1969 Melodifestivalen – the Swedish Eurovision Song Festival finals. The song finished in second place. During this contest, he met vocalist Anni-Frid Lyngstad, and they soon became a couple. Around the same time, his songwriting companion Ulvaeus met vocalist Agnetha Fältskog.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The personal relationships and Andersson and Ulvaeus' songwriting collaboration led quite naturally to the very close cooperation which the four friends had during the following years. Benny and Björn scored their first hits as songwriters in the spring of 1969: \"Ljuva sextital\" (a hit with Brita Borg) and \"Speleman\" (a hit for the Hep Stars). As the two couples began supporting each other during recording sessions, the sound of the women's voices convinced the songwriters to model their 'group' on various MOR acts such as Blue Mink, Middle of the Road and Sweet. Thus, ABBA came to life.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The group's breakthrough came with winning the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden with \"Waterloo\" on 6 April 1974. During the next eight years, Andersson (together with Ulvaeus) wrote music for and produced eight studio albums with ABBA. The group achieved great success globally and scored a chain of No. 1 hits.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "With ABBA, Benny sang lead vocal on only one song – \"Suzy-Hang-Around\", from the Waterloo album.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "After ABBA, Andersson continued writing music with Ulvaeus. Their first project was the stage musical Chess, written with Tim Rice. The Chess concept album – with vocals by Elaine Paige, Barbara Dickson, Murray Head and Swedes Tommy Körberg and Björn Skifs – was released in October 1984, selling two million copies worldwide. The Paige/Dickson duet \"I Know Him So Well\" became a major UK No. 1 hit, and Murray Head's \"One Night in Bangkok\" gave Andersson/Ulvaeus a US No. 3 hit.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Chess was staged in London's West End Prince Edward Theatre in May 1986 and received mixed to positive reviews, running for about three years. A revised staging on Broadway in April 1988 received poor reviews, running for two months.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In 1985, Andersson produced and released an album with brother and sister Anders and Karin Glenmark, featuring new songs by Andersson/Ulvaeus. The duo named themselves Gemini, and a second album with more music by Björn and Benny was released in April 1987, containing the big hit \"Mio My Mio\"; also to be found on the soundtrack to the film Mio in the Land of Faraway, for which Andersson co-produced the music.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "In 1987, Andersson released his first solo album Klinga Mina Klockor (\"Chime, My Bells\"). All the music was written by and performed by himself on accordion, backed by the Orsa Spelmän (Orsa Folk Musicians) on fiddles. A second solo album followed: November 1989.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "In 1990, Andersson scored a Swedish No. 1 hit with \"Lassie\", sung by female cabaret group Ainbusk, for whom he also wrote the Svensktoppen hits \"Älska Mig\" and \"Drömmarnas Golv\". He decided to produce an album with Josefin Nilsson from this quartet, resulting in the 1993 English-language album Shapes, featuring ten new Andersson/Ulvaeus compositions.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "In 1992, he wrote the introduction melody for the European football championship, which was organised by Sweden that year.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "From the late 1980s, Andersson had worked on an idea for an epic Swedish language musical based on his affection for traditional folk music, and in October 1995, Kristina från Duvemåla premiered in Sweden. The musical was based on The Emigrants novels by Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg. The musical ran successfully for almost five years, before closing in June 1999. An English-language version, simply titled Kristina, was staged in concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City for two nights in September 2009, yielding a live recording, and at the Royal Albert Hall for one night in April 2010.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Andersson's next project was Mamma Mia!, a musical built around 24 of ABBA's songs, which has become a worldwide box-office blockbuster, with versions in several languages being played in many countries, including the UK (West End premiere in April 1999), Canada (Toronto premiere in 2000), the USA (Broadway premiere in 2001), and Sweden (Swedish language premiere in 2005).", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "For the 2004 semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest, staged in Istanbul thirty years after ABBA had won the contest in Brighton, Benny appeared briefly in a special comedy video made for the interval act, entitled \"Our Last Video\". Each of the four members of the group appeared briefly in cameo roles, as did others such as Cher and Rik Mayall. The video was not included in the official DVD release of the Eurovision Contest, but was issued as a separate DVD release. It was billed as the first time the four had worked together since the group split; however, Frida's appearance was filmed separately.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "A film version of Mamma Mia! premiered on 18 July 2008. In April/May 2007, Andersson worked on the film soundtrack, re-recording the ABBA songs with musicians from the original ABBA recording sessions. Mamma Mia! The Movie has become the most successful film musical of all time, and the biggest-selling DVD ever in the UK.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Andersson currently performs with his own band of 16 musicians, Benny Anderssons Orkester (\"Benny Andersson's orchestra\", BAO), with fellow Swedes Helen Sjöholm (of Kristina from Duvemåla) and Tommy Körberg (of Chess), with lyrics to new material sometimes written by Björn Ulvaeus. BAO has released five albums to huge success in Sweden, all containing hit singles.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "In 2009 BAO achieved a new record in Sweden on the Svensktoppen chart by staying there for 243 weeks with the song \"Du är min man\" (\"You Are My Man\"), sung by Sjöholm.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Andersson composes primarily for his band BAO, with vocalists Sjöholm and Körberg, but he keeps his older material alive by re-visiting it, as in Mamma Mia! and the Swedish version of Chess.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "For a compilation album of the Glenmark duo Gemini, Andersson had Björn Ulvaeus write new Swedish lyrics for the re-recording of two songs from 1984 and 1987.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Andersson and Ulvaeus have continuously been writing new material; most recently the two wrote seven songs for Andersson's BAO 2011 album O klang och jubeltid, performed as usual by vocalists Sjöholm, Körberg and Kalle Moraeus. In July 2009, BAO, now named \"The Benny Andersson Band\", released their first international record, the album The Story of a Heart. It was a compilation of 14 tracks from Andersson's five Swedish-language releases between 1987 and 2007, including five songs now recorded with lyrics by Ulvaeus in English, and the new title song premiered on BBC2's Ken Bruce Show. A Swedish-language version of the title track, \"Sommaren Du Fick\" (\"The Summer You Got\"), was released as a single in Sweden prior to the English version, with vocals by Helen Sjöholm.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "In the spring of 2009, Andersson also released a single recorded by the staff at his privately owned Stockholm hotel Hotel Rival, titled \"2nd Best to None\", accompanied by a video showing the staff at work. In 2008, Andersson and Ulvaeus wrote a song for Swedish singer Sissela Kyle, titled \"Jag vill bli gammal\" (\"I Wanna Grow Old\"), for her Stockholm stage show \"Your Days Are Numbered\", which was never recorded and released but did get a TV performance. Ulvaeus also contributed lyrics to ABBA's 1976 instrumental track \"Arrival\" for Sarah Brightman's cover version recorded for her 2008 album A Winter Symphony. New English lyrics have also been written for Andersson's 1999 song \"Innan Gryningen\" (then also named \"Millennium Hymn\"), with the new title \"The Silence of the Dawn\" for Barbara Dickson was performed live, but not yet recorded and released. In 2007, they wrote the new song \"Han som har vunnit allt\" (\"He Who's Won It All\") for actor and singer Anders Ekborg.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Ulvaeus wrote English lyrics for two older songs from Andersson's solo albums I Walk with You Mama (\"Stockholm by Night\", 1989) and After the Rain (\"Efter regnet\", 1987) for opera singer Anne Sofie Von Otter, for her Andersson tribute album I Let the Music Speak. Barbara Dickson recorded an Ulvaeus and Andersson song called \"The Day The Wall Came Tumbling Down\"; the song eventually was released by Australian Mamma Mia! musical star Anne Wood's album of ABBA covers, Divine Discontent. As of October 2012, Ulvaeus had mentioned writing new material with Andersson for a BAO Christmas release (also mentioned as a BAO box), and Andersson is busy writing music for a Swedish language obscure musical, Hjälp Sökes (\"Help is Wanted\") together with Kristina Lugn and Lars Rudolfsson, premiering 8 February 2013.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Andersson has also written music for a documentary film about Olof Palme, re-recording the track \"Sorgmarch\" from his last album as a theme throughout the film. The song \"Kärlekens Tid\", recorded 2004 by Helen Sjöholm with BAO, has also been performed in concert in English (lyrics by Ylva Eggehorn) by opera baritone Bryn Terfel. On 15 April 2013, it was officially announced by the EBU and the SVT that Andersson, along with Ulvaeus and the late Stockholm based DJ and record producer Avicii, had composed the anthem for the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest. The song was performed for the first time in the Final on 18 May.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "A new album of Andersson compositions presented in a choral style was released on 18 September 2015. \"Kärlekens Tid\" was produced in Andersson's Mono Music studio, under the direction of choirmaster Gustaf Sjökvist, who died before the album's release. Gustaf Sjökvists Choir, conducted by Cecilia Rydinger Alin, performed two concerts at Skeppsholmen on 20 September, featuring Benny Andersson on piano. The album includes songs in Swedish and English from a range of Andersson's projects, such as Chess, Kristina and BAO.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "In November 2018, Deutsche Grammophon released Piano, a collection of ABBA tunes, tunes from Chess and original compositions all played by Andersson on solo piano.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Andersson reunited with ABBA in 2018. On 2 September 2021, via YouTube livestream, ABBA announced their upcoming virtual concert residency \"ABBA Voyage\", as well as the imminent release of an eponymous album, recorded between 2017 and 2021. The new record, their first studio album in 40 years, features ten tracks, including \"I Still Have Faith In You\" and \"Don't Shut Me Down\", which also were first shown in the aforementioned livestream event and released as a double A-side single. On 5 November 2021, the Voyage album was released worldwide. On 27 May 2022, ABBA Voyage opened in a purpose-built venue named the ABBA Arena at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Andersson has written music to several films for screen and television; the first attempt in the early 1970s for the Swedish erotica movie The Seduction of Inga; the film was not a success, but the 'Björn & Benny' single \"She's My Kind of Girl\" surprised the composers by being released in Japan and becoming a Top 10 hit (the song renamed in Japan as \"The Little Girl of the Cold Wind\").", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "In 1987, Andersson wrote music and co-produced the soundtrack with Anders Eljas for the film Mio in the Land of Faraway, based on Swedish author Astrid Lindgrens Mio, My Son. The title song became a huge hit in Sweden for Gemini.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "In 2000, he wrote the music for fellow Swede (no relation) Roy Andersson's film Songs from the Second Floor (the music later re-recorded, featuring new lyrics, with BAO! with vocals by Helen Sjöholm). He also wrote the theme for Roy Andersson's next film, You, the Living, from 2007.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "Andersson worked on the film adaptation of Mamma Mia!. He also wrote the film score for the 2012 documentary Palme about Swedish prime minister Olof Palme. He later won a Guldbagge Award for Best Original Score, for that film at the 48th Guldbagge Awards.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Together with Ulvaeus, Andersson was nominated for a Drama Desk Award in a category \"Outstanding Music\" (for the musical Chess), and for a Tony Award in a category \"Best Orchestrations\" (for musical Mamma Mia!). Original cast recordings of both musicals were nominated for a Grammy Award. Andersson/Ulvaeus also won a Touring Broadway Award for the musical \"Mamma Mia\" (best score).", "title": "Awards" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "During his post-ABBA career Andersson won four Swedish Grammis awards, and together with Ulvaeus received the \"Special International\" Ivor Novello award from 'The British Academy of Composers and Songwriters', twice \"The Music Export Prize\" from the Swedish Ministry of Industry and Trade (2008), as well as the \"Lifetime Achievement\" award from the Swedish Music Publishers Association (SMFF). In 2002, Andersson was given an honorary professorship by the Swedish Government for his \"ability to create high-class music reaching people around the world\".", "title": "Awards" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "In 2007, he was elected a member of Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and in 2008 received an Honorary Doctorate from the Stockholm University Faculty of Humanities for contributing importantly both to the preservation and the growth of the Swedish folk music tradition.", "title": "Awards" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "On 15 March 2010, Andersson appeared on stage in New York with former wife Anni-Frid Lyngstad to accept ABBA's award of induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. During his acceptance speech he reflected on the important influence of traditional European music and the melancholy of the Swedish soul on ABBA's brand of pop music. \"If you live in a country like Sweden, with five, six months of snow, and the sun disappears totally for like two months, that would be reflected in the work of artists,\" he said. \"It's definitely in the Swedish folk music, you can hear it in the Russian folk songs, you can hear in the music from Jean Sibelius or Edvard Grieg from Norway, you can see it in the eyes of Greta Garbo and you can hear it in the voice of Jussi Björling. And you can hear in the sound of Frida and Agnetha on some of our songs too.\"", "title": "Awards" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "In 2012, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy from the Luleå Tekniska Universitet Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.", "title": "Awards" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "Andersson won the Swedish \"Guldbaggen\" award in 2012 as composer of the music for the film \"Palme\".", "title": "Awards" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "For his album Piano he received the Opus Klassik award in 2018.", "title": "Awards" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "Andersson was engaged to Christina Grönvall. In 1963, they had a son, Peter, and in 1965, a daughter, Heléne. Both children were given their mother's surname. The couple split in 1966 and Christina kept custody of the children as Andersson was then at the peak of his Hep Stars' success. In the 1990s, Peter formed One More Time, a group that enjoyed European success with the ABBA-like \"Highland\" and, later, as Sweden's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest 1996.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "Andersson was in a relationship with Anni-Frid Lyngstad of ABBA for about 11 years, from 1969 till 1980. They married on 6 October 1978, but separated on 26 November 1980 and divorced in 1981.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "He married Swedish TV presenter Mona Nörklit in 1981 and had a son, Ludvig (born January 1982), who has since followed in his father's footsteps in forming his own band. Ludvig is also one of the producers of the concert residency ABBA Voyage.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "Andersson was an alcoholic through much of his adult life. He has remained a teetotaler since 2001. Andersson did not disclose the extent of his substance abuse problems until a 2011 interview, at which point he had maintained nearly a decade of sobriety.", "title": "Personal life" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limited to 2.5 milliwatts, giving it a very short range of up to 10 metres (33 ft). It employs UHF radio waves in the ISM bands, from 2.402 GHz to 2.48 GHz. It is mainly used as an alternative to wire connections, to exchange files between nearby portable devices and connect cell phones and music players with wireless headphones.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Bluetooth is managed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), which has more than 35,000 member companies in the areas of telecommunication, computing, networking, and consumer electronics. The IEEE standardized Bluetooth as IEEE 802.15.1, but no longer maintains the standard. The Bluetooth SIG oversees development of the specification, manages the qualification program, and protects the trademarks. A manufacturer must meet Bluetooth SIG standards to market it as a Bluetooth device. A network of patents apply to the technology, which are licensed to individual qualifying devices. As of 2021, 4.7 billion Bluetooth integrated circuit chips are shipped annually.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The name \"Bluetooth\" was proposed in 1997 by Jim Kardach of Intel, one of the founders of the Bluetooth SIG. The name was inspired by a conversation with Sven Mattisson who related Scandinavian history through tales from Frans G. Bengtsson's The Long Ships, a historical novel about Vikings and the 10th-century Danish king Harald Bluetooth. Upon discovering a picture of the runestone of Harald Bluetooth in the book A History of the Vikings by Gwyn Jones, Kardach proposed Bluetooth as the codename for the short-range wireless program which is now called Bluetooth.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "According to Bluetooth's official website,", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Bluetooth was only intended as a placeholder until marketing could come up with something really cool.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Later, when it came time to select a serious name, Bluetooth was to be replaced with either RadioWire or PAN (Personal Area Networking). PAN was the front runner, but an exhaustive search discovered it already had tens of thousands of hits throughout the internet.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "A full trademark search on RadioWire couldn't be completed in time for launch, making Bluetooth the only choice. The name caught on fast and before it could be changed, it spread throughout the industry, becoming synonymous with short-range wireless technology.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Bluetooth is the Anglicised version of the Scandinavian Blåtand/Blåtann (or in Old Norse blátǫnn). It was the epithet of King Harald Bluetooth, who united the disparate Danish tribes into a single kingdom; Kardach chose the name to imply that Bluetooth similarly unites communication protocols.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The Bluetooth logo is a bind rune merging the Younger Futhark runes (ᚼ, Hagall) and (ᛒ, Bjarkan), Harald's initials.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The development of the \"short-link\" radio technology, later named Bluetooth, was initiated in 1989 by Nils Rydbeck, CTO at Ericsson Mobile in Lund, Sweden. The purpose was to develop wireless headsets, according to two inventions by Johan Ullman, SE 8902098-6, issued 1989-06-12 and SE 9202239, issued 1992-07-24 . Nils Rydbeck tasked Tord Wingren with specifying and Dutchman Jaap Haartsen and Sven Mattisson with developing. Both were working for Ericsson in Lund. Principal design and development began in 1994 and by 1997 the team had a workable solution. From 1997 Örjan Johansson became the project leader and propelled the technology and standardization.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In 1997, Adalio Sanchez, then head of IBM ThinkPad product R&D, approached Nils Rydbeck about collaborating on integrating a mobile phone into a ThinkPad notebook. The two assigned engineers from Ericsson and IBM studied the idea. The conclusion was that power consumption on cellphone technology at that time was too high to allow viable integration into a notebook and still achieve adequate battery life. Instead, the two companies agreed to integrate Ericsson's short-link technology on both a ThinkPad notebook and an Ericsson phone to accomplish the goal.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Since neither IBM ThinkPad notebooks nor Ericsson phones were the market share leaders in their respective markets at that time, Adalio Sanchez and Nils Rydbeck agreed to make the short-link technology an open industry standard to permit each player maximum market access. Ericsson contributed the short-link radio technology, and IBM contributed patents around the logical layer. Adalio Sanchez of IBM then recruited Stephen Nachtsheim of Intel to join and then Intel also recruited Toshiba and Nokia. In May 1998, the Bluetooth SIG was launched with IBM and Ericsson as the founding signatories and a total of five members: Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, Toshiba, and IBM.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "The first Bluetooth device was revealed in 1999. It was a hands-free mobile headset that earned the \"Best of show Technology Award\" at COMDEX. The first Bluetooth mobile phone was the Ericsson T36, but it was the revised Ericsson model T39 that actually made it to store shelves in 2001. In parallel, IBM introduced the IBM ThinkPad A30 in October 2001 which was the first notebook with integrated Bluetooth.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Bluetooth's early incorporation into consumer electronics products continued at Vosi Technologies in Costa Mesa, California, initially overseen by founding members Bejan Amini and Tom Davidson. Vosi Technologies had been created by real estate developer Ivano Stegmenga, with United States Patent 608507, for communication between a cellular phone and a vehicle's audio system. At the time, Sony/Ericsson had only a minor market share in the cellular phone market, which was dominated in the US by Nokia and Motorola. Due to ongoing negotiations for an intended licensing agreement with Motorola beginning in the late 1990s, Vosi could not publicly disclose the intention, integration, and initial development of other enabled devices which were to be the first \"Smart Home\" internet connected devices.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Vosi needed a means for the system to communicate without a wired connection from the vehicle to the other devices in the network. Bluetooth was chosen, since Wi-Fi was not yet readily available or supported in the public market. Vosi had begun to develop the Vosi Cello integrated vehicular system and some other internet connected devices, one of which was intended to be a table-top device named the Vosi Symphony, networked with Bluetooth. Through the negotiations with Motorola, Vosi introduced and disclosed its intent to integrate Bluetooth in its devices. In the early 2000s a legal battle ensued between Vosi and Motorola, which indefinitely suspended release of the devices. Later, Motorola implemented it in their devices which initiated the significant propagation of Bluetooth in the public market due to its large market share at the time.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "In 2012, Jaap Haartsen was nominated by the European Patent Office for the European Inventor Award.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Bluetooth operates at frequencies between 2.402 and 2.480 GHz, or 2.400 and 2.4835 GHz, including guard bands 2 MHz wide at the bottom end and 3.5 MHz wide at the top. This is in the globally unlicensed (but not unregulated) industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) 2.4 GHz short-range radio frequency band. Bluetooth uses a radio technology called frequency-hopping spread spectrum. Bluetooth divides transmitted data into packets, and transmits each packet on one of 79 designated Bluetooth channels. Each channel has a bandwidth of 1 MHz. It usually performs 1600 hops per second, with adaptive frequency-hopping (AFH) enabled. Bluetooth Low Energy uses 2 MHz spacing, which accommodates 40 channels.", "title": "Implementation" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Originally, Gaussian frequency-shift keying (GFSK) modulation was the only modulation scheme available. Since the introduction of Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, π/4-DQPSK (differential quadrature phase-shift keying) and 8-DPSK modulation may also be used between compatible devices. Devices functioning with GFSK are said to be operating in basic rate (BR) mode, where an instantaneous bit rate of 1 Mbit/s is possible. The term Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) is used to describe π/4-DPSK (EDR2) and 8-DPSK (EDR3) schemes, each giving 2 and 3 Mbit/s respectively. The combination of these (BR and EDR) modes in Bluetooth radio technology is classified as a BR/EDR radio.", "title": "Implementation" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "In 2019, Apple published an extension called HDR which supports data rates of 4 (HDR4) and 8 (HDR8) Mbit/s using π/4-DQPSK modulation on 4 MHz channels with forward error correction (FEC).", "title": "Implementation" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Bluetooth is a packet-based protocol with a master/slave architecture. One master may communicate with up to seven slaves in a piconet. All devices within a given piconet use the clock provided by the master as the base for packet exchange. The master clock ticks with a period of 312.5 μs, two clock ticks then make up a slot of 625 µs, and two slots make up a slot pair of 1250 µs. In the simple case of single-slot packets, the master transmits in even slots and receives in odd slots. The slave, conversely, receives in even slots and transmits in odd slots. Packets may be 1, 3, or 5 slots long, but in all cases, the master's transmission begins in even slots and the slave's in odd slots.", "title": "Implementation" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The above excludes Bluetooth Low Energy, introduced in the 4.0 specification, which uses the same spectrum but somewhat differently.", "title": "Implementation" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "A master BR/EDR Bluetooth device can communicate with a maximum of seven devices in a piconet (an ad hoc computer network using Bluetooth technology), though not all devices reach this maximum. The devices can switch roles, by agreement, and the slave can become the master (for example, a headset initiating a connection to a phone necessarily begins as master—as an initiator of the connection—but may subsequently operate as the slave).", "title": "Implementation" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "The Bluetooth Core Specification provides for the connection of two or more piconets to form a scatternet, in which certain devices simultaneously play the master/leader role in one piconet and the slave role in another.", "title": "Implementation" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "At any given time, data can be transferred between the master and one other device (except for the little-used broadcast mode). The master chooses which slave device to address; typically, it switches rapidly from one device to another in a round-robin fashion. Since it is the master that chooses which slave to address, whereas a slave is (in theory) supposed to listen in each receive slot, being a master is a lighter burden than being a slave. Being a master of seven slaves is possible; being a slave of more than one master is possible. The specification is vague as to required behavior in scatternets.", "title": "Implementation" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Bluetooth is a standard wire-replacement communications protocol primarily designed for low power consumption, with a short range based on low-cost transceiver microchips in each device. Because the devices use a radio (broadcast) communications system, they do not have to be in visual line of sight of each other; however, a quasi optical wireless path must be viable.", "title": "Uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Historically, the Bluetooth range was defined by the radio class, with a lower class (and higher output power) having larger range. The actual range achieved by a given link will depend on the qualities of the devices at both ends of the link, as well as the air and obstacles in between. The primary hardware attributes affecting range are the data rate, protocol (Bluetooth Classic or Bluetooth Low Energy), the transmitter power, the receiver sensitivity, and the gain of both antennas.", "title": "Uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "The effective range varies depending on propagation conditions, material coverage, production sample variations, antenna configurations and battery conditions. Most Bluetooth applications are for indoor conditions, where attenuation of walls and signal fading due to signal reflections make the range far lower than specified line-of-sight ranges of the Bluetooth products.", "title": "Uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Most Bluetooth applications are battery-powered Class 2 devices, with little difference in range whether the other end of the link is a Class 1 or Class 2 device as the lower-powered device tends to set the range limit. In some cases the effective range of the data link can be extended when a Class 2 device is connecting to a Class 1 transceiver with both higher sensitivity and transmission power than a typical Class 2 device. Mostly, however, the Class 1 devices have a similar sensitivity to Class 2 devices. Connecting two Class 1 devices with both high sensitivity and high power can allow ranges far in excess of the typical 100m, depending on the throughput required by the application. Some such devices allow open field ranges of up to 1 km and beyond between two similar devices without exceeding legal emission limits.", "title": "Uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "To use Bluetooth wireless technology, a device must be able to interpret certain Bluetooth profiles. For example,", "title": "Uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Profiles are definitions of possible applications and specify general behaviors that Bluetooth-enabled devices use to communicate with other Bluetooth devices. These profiles include settings to parameterize and to control the communication from the start. Adherence to profiles saves the time for transmitting the parameters anew before the bi-directional link becomes effective. There are a wide range of Bluetooth profiles that describe many different types of applications or use cases for devices.", "title": "Uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi is the brand name for products using IEEE 802.11 standards) have some similar applications: setting up networks, printing, or transferring files. Wi-Fi is intended as a replacement for high-speed cabling for general local area network access in work areas or home. This category of applications is sometimes called wireless local area networks (WLAN). Bluetooth was intended for portable equipment and its applications. The category of applications is outlined as the wireless personal area network (WPAN). Bluetooth is a replacement for cabling in various personally carried applications in any setting and also works for fixed location applications such as smart energy functionality in the home (thermostats, etc.).", "title": "Uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are to some extent complementary in their applications and usage. Wi-Fi is usually access point-centered, with an asymmetrical client-server connection with all traffic routed through the access point, while Bluetooth is usually symmetrical, between two Bluetooth devices. Bluetooth serves well in simple applications where two devices need to connect with a minimal configuration like a button press, as in headsets and speakers.", "title": "Uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "Bluetooth exists in numerous products such as telephones, speakers, tablets, media players, robotics systems, laptops, and game console equipment as well as some high definition headsets, modems, hearing aids and even watches. Given the variety of devices which use Bluetooth, coupled with the contemporary deprecation of headphone jacks by Apple, Google, and other companies, and the lack of regulation by the FCC, the technology is prone to interference. Nonetheless, Bluetooth is useful when transferring information between two or more devices that are near each other in low-bandwidth situations. Bluetooth is commonly used to transfer sound data with telephones (i.e., with a Bluetooth headset) or byte data with hand-held computers (transferring files).", "title": "Uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Bluetooth protocols simplify the discovery and setup of services between devices. Bluetooth devices can advertise all of the services they provide. This makes using services easier, because more of the security, network address and permission configuration can be automated than with many other network types.", "title": "Uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "A personal computer that does not have embedded Bluetooth can use a Bluetooth adapter that enables the PC to communicate with Bluetooth devices. While some desktop computers and most recent laptops come with a built-in Bluetooth radio, others require an external adapter, typically in the form of a small USB \"dongle.\"", "title": "Computer requirements" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Unlike its predecessor, IrDA, which requires a separate adapter for each device, Bluetooth lets multiple devices communicate with a computer over a single adapter.", "title": "Computer requirements" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "For Microsoft platforms, Windows XP Service Pack 2 and SP3 releases work natively with Bluetooth v1.1, v2.0 and v2.0+EDR. Previous versions required users to install their Bluetooth adapter's own drivers, which were not directly supported by Microsoft. Microsoft's own Bluetooth dongles (packaged with their Bluetooth computer devices) have no external drivers and thus require at least Windows XP Service Pack 2. Windows Vista RTM/SP1 with the Feature Pack for Wireless or Windows Vista SP2 work with Bluetooth v2.1+EDR. Windows 7 works with Bluetooth v2.1+EDR and Extended Inquiry Response (EIR). The Windows XP and Windows Vista/Windows 7 Bluetooth stacks support the following Bluetooth profiles natively: PAN, SPP, DUN, HID, HCRP. The Windows XP stack can be replaced by a third party stack that supports more profiles or newer Bluetooth versions. The Windows Vista/Windows 7 Bluetooth stack supports vendor-supplied additional profiles without requiring that the Microsoft stack be replaced. Windows 8 and later support Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). It is generally recommended to install the latest vendor driver and its associated stack to be able to use the Bluetooth device at its fullest extent.", "title": "Computer requirements" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Apple products have worked with Bluetooth since Mac OS X v10.2, which was released in 2002.", "title": "Computer requirements" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "Linux has two popular Bluetooth stacks, BlueZ and Fluoride. The BlueZ stack is included with most Linux kernels and was originally developed by Qualcomm. Fluoride, earlier known as Bluedroid is included in Android OS and was originally developed by Broadcom. There is also Affix stack, developed by Nokia. It was once popular, but has not been updated since 2005.", "title": "Computer requirements" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "FreeBSD has included Bluetooth since its v5.0 release, implemented through netgraph.", "title": "Computer requirements" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "NetBSD has included Bluetooth since its v4.0 release. Its Bluetooth stack was ported to OpenBSD as well, however OpenBSD later removed it as unmaintained.", "title": "Computer requirements" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "DragonFly BSD has had NetBSD's Bluetooth implementation since 1.11 (2008). A netgraph-based implementation from FreeBSD has also been available in the tree, possibly disabled until 2014-11-15, and may require more work.", "title": "Computer requirements" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "The specifications were formalized by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) and formally announced on 20 May 1998. In 2014 it had a membership of over 30,000 companies worldwide. It was established by Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba, and later joined by many other companies.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "All versions of the Bluetooth standards support backwards compatibility. That lets the latest standard cover all older versions.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "The Bluetooth Core Specification Working Group (CSWG) produces mainly 4 kinds of specifications:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Major enhancements include:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "This version of the Bluetooth Core Specification was released before 2005. The main difference is the introduction of an Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) for faster data transfer. The bit rate of EDR is 3 Mbit/s, although the maximum data transfer rate (allowing for inter-packet time and acknowledgements) is 2.1 Mbit/s. EDR uses a combination of GFSK and phase-shift keying modulation (PSK) with two variants, π/4-DQPSK and 8-DPSK. EDR can provide a lower power consumption through a reduced duty cycle.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "The specification is published as Bluetooth v2.0 + EDR, which implies that EDR is an optional feature. Aside from EDR, the v2.0 specification contains other minor improvements, and products may claim compliance to \"Bluetooth v2.0\" without supporting the higher data rate. At least one commercial device states \"Bluetooth v2.0 without EDR\" on its data sheet.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "Bluetooth Core Specification version 2.1 + EDR was adopted by the Bluetooth SIG on 26 July 2007.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "The headline feature of v2.1 is secure simple pairing (SSP): this improves the pairing experience for Bluetooth devices, while increasing the use and strength of security.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "Version 2.1 allows various other improvements, including extended inquiry response (EIR), which provides more information during the inquiry procedure to allow better filtering of devices before connection; and sniff subrating, which reduces the power consumption in low-power mode.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "Version 3.0 + HS of the Bluetooth Core Specification was adopted by the Bluetooth SIG on 21 April 2009. Bluetooth v3.0 + HS provides theoretical data transfer speeds of up to 24 Mbit/s, though not over the Bluetooth link itself. Instead, the Bluetooth link is used for negotiation and establishment, and the high data rate traffic is carried over a colocated 802.11 link.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "The main new feature is AMP (Alternative MAC/PHY), the addition of 802.11 as a high-speed transport. The high-speed part of the specification is not mandatory, and hence only devices that display the \"+HS\" logo actually support Bluetooth over 802.11 high-speed data transfer. A Bluetooth v3.0 device without the \"+HS\" suffix is only required to support features introduced in Core Specification version 3.0 or earlier Core Specification Addendum 1.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "The high-speed (AMP) feature of Bluetooth v3.0 was originally intended for UWB, but the WiMedia Alliance, the body responsible for the flavor of UWB intended for Bluetooth, announced in March 2009 that it was disbanding, and ultimately UWB was omitted from the Core v3.0 specification.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "On 16 March 2009, the WiMedia Alliance announced it was entering into technology transfer agreements for the WiMedia Ultra-wideband (UWB) specifications. WiMedia has transferred all current and future specifications, including work on future high-speed and power-optimized implementations, to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), Wireless USB Promoter Group and the USB Implementers Forum. After successful completion of the technology transfer, marketing, and related administrative items, the WiMedia Alliance ceased operations.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "In October 2009, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group suspended development of UWB as part of the alternative MAC/PHY, Bluetooth v3.0 + HS solution. A small, but significant, number of former WiMedia members had not and would not sign up to the necessary agreements for the IP transfer. As of 2009, the Bluetooth SIG was in the process of evaluating other options for its longer term roadmap.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "The Bluetooth SIG completed the Bluetooth Core Specification version 4.0 (called Bluetooth Smart) and has been adopted as of 30 June 2010. It includes Classic Bluetooth, Bluetooth high speed and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocols. Bluetooth high speed is based on Wi-Fi, and Classic Bluetooth consists of legacy Bluetooth protocols.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "Bluetooth Low Energy, previously known as Wibree, is a subset of Bluetooth v4.0 with an entirely new protocol stack for rapid build-up of simple links. As an alternative to the Bluetooth standard protocols that were introduced in Bluetooth v1.0 to v3.0, it is aimed at very low power applications powered by a coin cell. Chip designs allow for two types of implementation, dual-mode, single-mode and enhanced past versions. The provisional names Wibree and Bluetooth ULP (Ultra Low Power) were abandoned and the BLE name was used for a while. In late 2011, new logos \"Bluetooth Smart Ready\" for hosts and \"Bluetooth Smart\" for sensors were introduced as the general-public face of BLE.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "Compared to Classic Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy is intended to provide considerably reduced power consumption and cost while maintaining a similar communication range. In terms of lengthening the battery life of Bluetooth devices, BLE represents a significant progression.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "Cost-reduced single-mode chips, which enable highly integrated and compact devices, feature a lightweight Link Layer providing ultra-low power idle mode operation, simple device discovery, and reliable point-to-multipoint data transfer with advanced power-save and secure encrypted connections at the lowest possible cost.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "General improvements in version 4.0 include the changes necessary to facilitate BLE modes, as well the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) and Security Manager (SM) services with AES Encryption.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "Core Specification Addendum 2 was unveiled in December 2011; it contains improvements to the audio Host Controller Interface and to the High Speed (802.11) Protocol Adaptation Layer.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "Core Specification Addendum 3 revision 2 has an adoption date of 24 July 2012.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "Core Specification Addendum 4 has an adoption date of 12 February 2013.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "The Bluetooth SIG announced formal adoption of the Bluetooth v4.1 specification on 4 December 2013. This specification is an incremental software update to Bluetooth Specification v4.0, and not a hardware update. The update incorporates Bluetooth Core Specification Addenda (CSA 1, 2, 3 & 4) and adds new features that improve consumer usability. These include increased co-existence support for LTE, bulk data exchange rates—and aid developer innovation by allowing devices to support multiple roles simultaneously.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "New features of this specification include:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "Some features were already available in a Core Specification Addendum (CSA) before the release of v4.1.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "Released on 2 December 2014, it introduces features for the Internet of things.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "The major areas of improvement are:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "Older Bluetooth hardware may receive 4.2 features such as Data Packet Length Extension and improved privacy via firmware updates.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "The Bluetooth SIG released Bluetooth 5 on 6 December 2016. Its new features are mainly focused on new Internet of Things technology. Sony was the first to announce Bluetooth 5.0 support with its Xperia XZ Premium in Feb 2017 during the Mobile World Congress 2017. The Samsung Galaxy S8 launched with Bluetooth 5 support in April 2017. In September 2017, the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X launched with Bluetooth 5 support as well. Apple also integrated Bluetooth 5 in its new HomePod offering released on 9 February 2018. Marketing drops the point number; so that it is just \"Bluetooth 5\" (unlike Bluetooth 4.0); the change is for the sake of \"Simplifying our marketing, communicating user benefits more effectively and making it easier to signal significant technology updates to the market.\"", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "Bluetooth 5 provides, for BLE, options that can double the speed (2 Mbit/s burst) at the expense of range, or provide up to four times the range at the expense of data rate. The increase in transmissions could be important for Internet of Things devices, where many nodes connect throughout a whole house. Bluetooth 5 increases capacity of connectionless services such as location-relevant navigation of low-energy Bluetooth connections.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "The major areas of improvement are:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "Features Added in CSA5 – Integrated in v5.0:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "The following features were removed in this version of the specification:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "The Bluetooth SIG presented Bluetooth 5.1 on 21 January 2019.", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "The major areas of improvement are:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "Features Added in Core Specification Addendum (CSA) 6 – Integrated in v5.1:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "The following features were removed in this version of the specification:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 79, "text": "On 31 December 2019, the Bluetooth SIG published the Bluetooth Core Specification Version 5.2. The new specification adds new features:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 80, "text": "The Bluetooth SIG published the Bluetooth Core Specification Version 5.3 on 13 July 2021. The feature enhancements of Bluetooth 5.3 are:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 81, "text": "The following features were removed in this version of the specification:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 82, "text": "The Bluetooth SIG released the Bluetooth Core Specification Version 5.4 on 7 February 2023. This new version adds the following features:", "title": "Specifications and features" }, { "paragraph_id": 83, "text": "Seeking to extend the compatibility of Bluetooth devices, the devices that adhere to the standard use an interface called HCI (Host Controller Interface) between the host and the controller.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 84, "text": "High-level protocols such as the SDP (Protocol used to find other Bluetooth devices within the communication range, also responsible for detecting the function of devices in range), RFCOMM (Protocol used to emulate serial port connections) and TCS (Telephony control protocol) interact with the baseband controller through the L2CAP (Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol). The L2CAP protocol is responsible for the segmentation and reassembly of the packets.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 85, "text": "The hardware that makes up the Bluetooth device is made up of, logically, two parts; which may or may not be physically separate. A radio device, responsible for modulating and transmitting the signal; and a digital controller. The digital controller is likely a CPU, one of whose functions is to run a Link Controller; and interfaces with the host device; but some functions may be delegated to hardware. The Link Controller is responsible for the processing of the baseband and the management of ARQ and physical layer FEC protocols. In addition, it handles the transfer functions (both asynchronous and synchronous), audio coding (e.g. SBC (codec)) and data encryption. The CPU of the device is responsible for attending the instructions related to Bluetooth of the host device, in order to simplify its operation. To do this, the CPU runs software called Link Manager that has the function of communicating with other devices through the LMP protocol.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 86, "text": "A Bluetooth device is a short-range wireless device. Bluetooth devices are fabricated on RF CMOS integrated circuit (RF circuit) chips.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 87, "text": "Bluetooth is defined as a layer protocol architecture consisting of core protocols, cable replacement protocols, telephony control protocols, and adopted protocols. Mandatory protocols for all Bluetooth stacks are LMP, L2CAP and SDP. In addition, devices that communicate with Bluetooth almost universally can use these protocols: HCI and RFCOMM.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 88, "text": "The Link Manager (LM) is the system that manages establishing the connection between devices. It is responsible for the establishment, authentication and configuration of the link. The Link Manager locates other managers and communicates with them via the management protocol of the LMP link. To perform its function as a service provider, the LM uses the services included in the Link Controller (LC). The Link Manager Protocol basically consists of several PDUs (Protocol Data Units) that are sent from one device to another. The following is a list of supported services:", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 89, "text": "The Host Controller Interface provides a command interface between the controller and the host.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 90, "text": "The Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol (L2CAP) is used to multiplex multiple logical connections between two devices using different higher level protocols. Provides segmentation and reassembly of on-air packets.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 91, "text": "In Basic mode, L2CAP provides packets with a payload configurable up to 64 kB, with 672 bytes as the default MTU, and 48 bytes as the minimum mandatory supported MTU.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 92, "text": "In Retransmission and Flow Control modes, L2CAP can be configured either for isochronous data or reliable data per channel by performing retransmissions and CRC checks.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 93, "text": "Bluetooth Core Specification Addendum 1 adds two additional L2CAP modes to the core specification. These modes effectively deprecate original Retransmission and Flow Control modes:", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 94, "text": "Reliability in any of these modes is optionally and/or additionally guaranteed by the lower layer Bluetooth BDR/EDR air interface by configuring the number of retransmissions and flush timeout (time after which the radio flushes packets). In-order sequencing is guaranteed by the lower layer.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 95, "text": "Only L2CAP channels configured in ERTM or SM may be operated over AMP logical links.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 96, "text": "The Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) allows a device to discover services offered by other devices, and their associated parameters. For example, when you use a mobile phone with a Bluetooth headset, the phone uses SDP to determine which Bluetooth profiles the headset can use (Headset Profile, Hands Free Profile (HFP), Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) etc.) and the protocol multiplexer settings needed for the phone to connect to the headset using each of them. Each service is identified by a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID), with official services (Bluetooth profiles) assigned a short form UUID (16 bits rather than the full 128).", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 97, "text": "Radio Frequency Communications (RFCOMM) is a cable replacement protocol used for generating a virtual serial data stream. RFCOMM provides for binary data transport and emulates EIA-1325 (formerly RS-232) control signals over the Bluetooth baseband layer, i.e., it is a serial port emulation.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 98, "text": "RFCOMM provides a simple, reliable, data stream to the user, similar to TCP. It is used directly by many telephony related profiles as a carrier for AT commands, as well as being a transport layer for OBEX over Bluetooth.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 99, "text": "Many Bluetooth applications use RFCOMM because of its widespread support and publicly available API on most operating systems. Additionally, applications that used a serial port to communicate can be quickly ported to use RFCOMM.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 100, "text": "The Bluetooth Network Encapsulation Protocol (BNEP) is used for transferring another protocol stack's data via an L2CAP channel. Its main purpose is the transmission of IP packets in the Personal Area Networking Profile. BNEP performs a similar function to SNAP in Wireless LAN.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 101, "text": "The Audio/Video Control Transport Protocol (AVCTP) is used by the remote control profile to transfer AV/C commands over an L2CAP channel. The music control buttons on a stereo headset use this protocol to control the music player.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 102, "text": "The Audio/Video Distribution Transport Protocol (AVDTP) is used by the advanced audio distribution (A2DP) profile to stream music to stereo headsets over an L2CAP channel intended for video distribution profile in the Bluetooth transmission.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 103, "text": "The Telephony Control Protocol – Binary (TCS BIN) is the bit-oriented protocol that defines the call control signaling for the establishment of voice and data calls between Bluetooth devices. Additionally, \"TCS BIN defines mobility management procedures for handling groups of Bluetooth TCS devices.\"", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 104, "text": "TCS-BIN is only used by the cordless telephony profile, which failed to attract implementers. As such it is only of historical interest.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 105, "text": "Adopted protocols are defined by other standards-making organizations and incorporated into Bluetooth's protocol stack, allowing Bluetooth to code protocols only when necessary. The adopted protocols include:", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 106, "text": "Depending on packet type, individual packets may be protected by error correction, either 1/3 rate forward error correction (FEC) or 2/3 rate. In addition, packets with CRC will be retransmitted until acknowledged by automatic repeat request (ARQ).", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 107, "text": "Any Bluetooth device in discoverable mode transmits the following information on demand:", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 108, "text": "Any device may perform an inquiry to find other devices to connect to, and any device can be configured to respond to such inquiries. However, if the device trying to connect knows the address of the device, it always responds to direct connection requests and transmits the information shown in the list above if requested. Use of a device's services may require pairing or acceptance by its owner, but the connection itself can be initiated by any device and held until it goes out of range. Some devices can be connected to only one device at a time, and connecting to them prevents them from connecting to other devices and appearing in inquiries until they disconnect from the other device.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 109, "text": "Every device has a unique 48-bit address. However, these addresses are generally not shown in inquiries. Instead, friendly Bluetooth names are used, which can be set by the user. This name appears when another user scans for devices and in lists of paired devices.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 110, "text": "Most cellular phones have the Bluetooth name set to the manufacturer and model of the phone by default. Most cellular phones and laptops show only the Bluetooth names and special programs are required to get additional information about remote devices. This can be confusing as, for example, there could be several cellular phones in range named T610 (see Bluejacking).", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 111, "text": "", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 112, "text": "Many services offered over Bluetooth can expose private data or let a connecting party control the Bluetooth device. Security reasons make it necessary to recognize specific devices, and thus enable control over which devices can connect to a given Bluetooth device. At the same time, it is useful for Bluetooth devices to be able to establish a connection without user intervention (for example, as soon as in range).", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 113, "text": "To resolve this conflict, Bluetooth uses a process called bonding, and a bond is generated through a process called pairing. The pairing process is triggered either by a specific request from a user to generate a bond (for example, the user explicitly requests to \"Add a Bluetooth device\"), or it is triggered automatically when connecting to a service where (for the first time) the identity of a device is required for security purposes. These two cases are referred to as dedicated bonding and general bonding respectively.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 114, "text": "Pairing often involves some level of user interaction. This user interaction confirms the identity of the devices. When pairing completes, a bond forms between the two devices, enabling those two devices to connect in the future without repeating the pairing process to confirm device identities. When desired, the user can remove the bonding relationship.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 115, "text": "During pairing, the two devices establish a relationship by creating a shared secret known as a link key. If both devices store the same link key, they are said to be paired or bonded. A device that wants to communicate only with a bonded device can cryptographically authenticate the identity of the other device, ensuring it is the same device it previously paired with. Once a link key is generated, an authenticated ACL link between the devices may be encrypted to protect exchanged data against eavesdropping. Users can delete link keys from either device, which removes the bond between the devices—so it is possible for one device to have a stored link key for a device it is no longer paired with.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 116, "text": "Bluetooth services generally require either encryption or authentication and as such require pairing before they let a remote device connect. Some services, such as the Object Push Profile, elect not to explicitly require authentication or encryption so that pairing does not interfere with the user experience associated with the service use-cases.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 117, "text": "Pairing mechanisms changed significantly with the introduction of Secure Simple Pairing in Bluetooth v2.1. The following summarizes the pairing mechanisms:", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 118, "text": "SSP is considered simple for the following reasons:", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 119, "text": "Prior to Bluetooth v2.1, encryption is not required and can be turned off at any time. Moreover, the encryption key is only good for approximately 23.5 hours; using a single encryption key longer than this time allows simple XOR attacks to retrieve the encryption key.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 120, "text": "Bluetooth v2.1 addresses this in the following ways:", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 121, "text": "Link keys may be stored on the device file system, not on the Bluetooth chip itself. Many Bluetooth chip manufacturers let link keys be stored on the device—however, if the device is removable, this means that the link key moves with the device.", "title": "Technical information" }, { "paragraph_id": 122, "text": "Bluetooth implements confidentiality, authentication and key derivation with custom algorithms based on the SAFER+ block cipher. Bluetooth key generation is generally based on a Bluetooth PIN, which must be entered into both devices. This procedure might be modified if one of the devices has a fixed PIN (e.g., for headsets or similar devices with a restricted user interface). During pairing, an initialization key or master key is generated, using the E22 algorithm. The E0 stream cipher is used for encrypting packets, granting confidentiality, and is based on a shared cryptographic secret, namely a previously generated link key or master key. Those keys, used for subsequent encryption of data sent via the air interface, rely on the Bluetooth PIN, which has been entered into one or both devices.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 123, "text": "An overview of Bluetooth vulnerabilities exploits was published in 2007 by Andreas Becker.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 124, "text": "In September 2008, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a Guide to Bluetooth Security as a reference for organizations. It describes Bluetooth security capabilities and how to secure Bluetooth technologies effectively. While Bluetooth has its benefits, it is susceptible to denial-of-service attacks, eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle attacks, message modification, and resource misappropriation. Users and organizations must evaluate their acceptable level of risk and incorporate security into the lifecycle of Bluetooth devices. To help mitigate risks, included in the NIST document are security checklists with guidelines and recommendations for creating and maintaining secure Bluetooth piconets, headsets, and smart card readers.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 125, "text": "Bluetooth v2.1 – finalized in 2007 with consumer devices first appearing in 2009 – makes significant changes to Bluetooth's security, including pairing. See the pairing mechanisms section for more about these changes.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 126, "text": "Bluejacking is the sending of either a picture or a message from one user to an unsuspecting user through Bluetooth wireless technology. Common applications include short messages, e.g., \"You've just been bluejacked!\" Bluejacking does not involve the removal or alteration of any data from the device.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 127, "text": "Some form of DoS is also possible, even in modern devices, by sending unsolicited pairing requests in rapid succession; this becomes disruptive because most systems display a full screen notification for every connection request, interrupting every other activity, especially on less powerful devices.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 128, "text": "In 2001, Jakobsson and Wetzel from Bell Laboratories discovered flaws in the Bluetooth pairing protocol and also pointed to vulnerabilities in the encryption scheme. In 2003, Ben and Adam Laurie from A.L. Digital Ltd. discovered that serious flaws in some poor implementations of Bluetooth security may lead to disclosure of personal data. In a subsequent experiment, Martin Herfurt from the trifinite.group was able to do a field-trial at the CeBIT fairgrounds, showing the importance of the problem to the world. A new attack called BlueBug was used for this experiment. In 2004 the first purported virus using Bluetooth to spread itself among mobile phones appeared on the Symbian OS. The virus was first described by Kaspersky Lab and requires users to confirm the installation of unknown software before it can propagate. The virus was written as a proof-of-concept by a group of virus writers known as \"29A\" and sent to anti-virus groups. Thus, it should be regarded as a potential (but not real) security threat to Bluetooth technology or Symbian OS since the virus has never spread outside of this system. In August 2004, a world-record-setting experiment (see also Bluetooth sniping) showed that the range of Class 2 Bluetooth radios could be extended to 1.78 km (1.11 mi) with directional antennas and signal amplifiers. This poses a potential security threat because it enables attackers to access vulnerable Bluetooth devices from a distance beyond expectation. The attacker must also be able to receive information from the victim to set up a connection. No attack can be made against a Bluetooth device unless the attacker knows its Bluetooth address and which channels to transmit on, although these can be deduced within a few minutes if the device is in use.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 129, "text": "In January 2005, a mobile malware worm known as Lasco surfaced. The worm began targeting mobile phones using Symbian OS (Series 60 platform) using Bluetooth enabled devices to replicate itself and spread to other devices. The worm is self-installing and begins once the mobile user approves the transfer of the file (Velasco.sis) from another device. Once installed, the worm begins looking for other Bluetooth enabled devices to infect. Additionally, the worm infects other .SIS files on the device, allowing replication to another device through the use of removable media (Secure Digital, CompactFlash, etc.). The worm can render the mobile device unstable.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 130, "text": "In April 2005, Cambridge University security researchers published results of their actual implementation of passive attacks against the PIN-based pairing between commercial Bluetooth devices. They confirmed that attacks are practicably fast, and the Bluetooth symmetric key establishment method is vulnerable. To rectify this vulnerability, they designed an implementation that showed that stronger, asymmetric key establishment is feasible for certain classes of devices, such as mobile phones.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 131, "text": "In June 2005, Yaniv Shaked and Avishai Wool published a paper describing both passive and active methods for obtaining the PIN for a Bluetooth link. The passive attack allows a suitably equipped attacker to eavesdrop on communications and spoof if the attacker was present at the time of initial pairing. The active method makes use of a specially constructed message that must be inserted at a specific point in the protocol, to make the master and slave repeat the pairing process. After that, the first method can be used to crack the PIN. This attack's major weakness is that it requires the user of the devices under attack to re-enter the PIN during the attack when the device prompts them to. Also, this active attack probably requires custom hardware, since most commercially available Bluetooth devices are not capable of the timing necessary.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 132, "text": "In August 2005, police in Cambridgeshire, England, issued warnings about thieves using Bluetooth enabled phones to track other devices left in cars. Police are advising users to ensure that any mobile networking connections are de-activated if laptops and other devices are left in this way.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 133, "text": "In April 2006, researchers from Secure Network and F-Secure published a report that warns of the large number of devices left in a visible state, and issued statistics on the spread of various Bluetooth services and the ease of spread of an eventual Bluetooth worm.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 134, "text": "In October 2006, at the Luxemburgish Hack.lu Security Conference, Kevin Finistere and Thierry Zoller demonstrated and released a remote root shell via Bluetooth on Mac OS X v10.3.9 and v10.4. They also demonstrated the first Bluetooth PIN and Linkkeys cracker, which is based on the research of Wool and Shaked.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 135, "text": "In April 2017, security researchers at Armis discovered multiple exploits in the Bluetooth software in various platforms, including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Apple iOS, and Google Android. These vulnerabilities are collectively called \"BlueBorne\". The exploits allow an attacker to connect to devices or systems without authentication and can give them \"virtually full control over the device\". Armis contacted Google, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung and Linux developers allowing them to patch their software before the coordinated announcement of the vulnerabilities on 12 September 2017.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 136, "text": "In July 2018, Lior Neumann and Eli Biham, researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology identified a security vulnerability in the latest Bluetooth pairing procedures: Secure Simple Pairing and LE Secure Connections.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 137, "text": "Also, in October 2018, Karim Lounis, a network security researcher at Queen's University, identified a security vulnerability, called CDV (Connection Dumping Vulnerability), on various Bluetooth devices that allows an attacker to tear down an existing Bluetooth connection and cause the deauthentication and disconnection of the involved devices. The researcher demonstrated the attack on various devices of different categories and from different manufacturers.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 138, "text": "In August 2019, security researchers at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, Helmholtz Center for Information Security, and University of Oxford discovered a vulnerability, called KNOB (Key Negotiation Of Bluetooth) in the key negotiation that would \"brute force the negotiated encryption keys, decrypt the eavesdropped ciphertext, and inject valid encrypted messages (in real-time)\". Google released an Android security patch on 5 August 2019, which removed this vulnerability.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 139, "text": "In November 2023, researchers from Eurecom revealed a new class of attacks known as BLUFFS (Bluetooth Low Energy Forward and Future Secrecy Attacks). These 6 new attacks expand on and work in conjunction with the previously known KNOB and BIAS (Bluetooth Impersonation AttackS) attacks. While the previous KNOB and BIAS attacks allowed an attacker to decrypt and spoof Bluetooth packets within a session, BLUFFS extends this capability to all sessions generated by a device (including past, present, and future). All devices running Bluetooth versions 4.2 up to and including 5.4 are effected.", "title": "Security" }, { "paragraph_id": 140, "text": "Bluetooth uses the radio frequency spectrum in the 2.402 GHz to 2.480 GHz range, which is non-ionizing radiation, of similar bandwidth to that used by wireless and mobile phones. No specific harm has been demonstrated, even though wireless transmission has been included by IARC in the possible carcinogen list. Maximum power output from a Bluetooth radio is 100 mW for class 1, 2.5 mW for class 2, and 1 mW for class 3 devices. Even the maximum power output of class 1 is a lower level than the lowest-powered mobile phones. UMTS and W-CDMA output 250 mW, GSM1800/1900 outputs 1000 mW, and GSM850/900 outputs 2000 mW.", "title": "Health concerns" }, { "paragraph_id": 141, "text": "The Bluetooth Innovation World Cup, a marketing initiative of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), was an international competition that encouraged the development of innovations for applications leveraging Bluetooth technology in sports, fitness and health care products. The competition aimed to stimulate new markets.", "title": "Award programs" }, { "paragraph_id": 142, "text": "The Bluetooth Innovation World Cup morphed into the Bluetooth Breakthrough Awards in 2013. Bluetooth SIG subsequently launched the Imagine Blue Award in 2016 at Bluetooth World. The Bluetooth Breakthrough Awards program highlights the most innovative products and applications available today, prototypes coming soon, and student-led projects in the making.", "title": "Award programs" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG) is the standards organization that oversees the development of Bluetooth standards and the licensing of the Bluetooth technologies and trademarks to manufacturers. The SIG is a not-for-profit, non-stock corporation founded in September 1998. The SIG is headquartered in Kirkland, Washington.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The SIG does not make, manufacture or sell Bluetooth-enabled products.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Bluetooth technology provides a way to exchange information between wireless devices such as PDAs, laptops, computers, printers and digital cameras via a secure, low-cost, globally available short-range radio frequency band. Originally developed by Ericsson, Bluetooth technology is now used in many different products by many different manufacturers. These manufacturers must be either Associate or Promoter members of(see below) the Bluetooth SIG before they are granted early access to the Bluetooth specifications, but published Bluetooth specifications are available online via the Bluetooth SIG Website bluetooth.com.", "title": "Introduction" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The SIG owns the Bluetooth word mark, figure mark and combination mark. These trademarks are licensed out for use to companies that are incorporating Bluetooth wireless technology into their products. To become a licensee, a company must become a member of the Bluetooth SIG. The SIG also manages the Bluetooth SIG Qualification program, a certification process required for any product using Bluetooth wireless technology and a pre-condition of the intellectual property license for Bluetooth technology. The main tasks for the SIG are to publish the Bluetooth specifications, protect the Bluetooth trademarks and evangelize Bluetooth wireless technology. In 2016, the SIG introduced a new visual and creative identity to support Bluetooth technology as the catalyst for the Internet of Things (IoT). This change included an updated logo, a new tagline and deprecation of the Bluetooth Smart and Bluetooth Smart Ready logos.", "title": "Introduction" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "At its inception in 1998, the Bluetooth SIG was primarily run by a staff effectively seconded from its member companies. In 2001 Tom Siep served as the group's managing director, and from 2002 to 2004 Mike McCamon led the group as its executive director. In 2004 he was replaced by Michael W. Foley (Mike). In mid-2012, Mark Powell took the reins as the SIG's current executive director. Beginning in 2002 a professional staff was hired, composed of operations, engineering and marketing specialists. From 2002 to 2004 the Bluetooth SIG was based in Overland Park, Kansas, US, and is now based in Kirkland, Washington. In addition to its professional staff, the SIG is supported by its more than 35,000 member companies who participate in the various working groups that produce the standardization documents and oversee the qualification process for new products and help to evangelize the technology.", "title": "Introduction" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The SIG members participate in study groups, expert groups, working groups along with committees.", "title": "Structure" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The study groups carry out research into their various areas which informs the development of the Bluetooth specifications. They may eventually become working groups in their own right.", "title": "Structure" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The expert groups deal with issues of technical importance to all aspects of Bluetooth development. As with the Study Groups their work informs the working groups as well as the corporate groups. Participation in the Expert Groups is restricted to Promoter members and Associate members.", "title": "Structure" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The working groups develop new Bluetooth specifications and enhance adopted specifications. They are responsible for the vast majority of published standards and specifications. Participation in the working groups is restricted to Promoter members and Associate members.", "title": "Structure" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The committees of the SIG deal with the other aspects of licensing, marketing and review including developing and maintaining the Qualification Process, oversight of the Bluetooth specifications, and developing, improving and maintaining the test methodology and concepts as well as other strategic functions.", "title": "Structure" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Any company incorporating Bluetooth wireless technology into products, using the technology to offer goods and services or simply re-branding a product with Bluetooth technology may become a member of the Bluetooth SIG. There are three levels of corporate membership totaling more than 20,000 members, and individuals from member companies may also participate.", "title": "Membership" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "These members are the most active in the SIG and have considerable influence over both the strategic and technological directions of Bluetooth as a whole.", "title": "Membership" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Each Promoter member has one seat (and one vote) on the board of directors and the Qualification Review Board (the body responsible for developing and maintaining the qualification process). They each may have multiple staff in the various working groups and committees that comprise the work of the SIG.", "title": "Membership" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "The SIG's website carries a full list of members.", "title": "Membership" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The Bluetooth SIG Associate membership fees have stayed the same since 2006. Associate membership is renewed annually and the yearly fee depends on the individual company's revenue. Companies with annual revenue in excess of $100M US are considered Large Associates and pay annual membership fees of $42,000 US. Small Associates are categorized as those organizations with revenue less than $100M US and join the SIG with an annual membership fee of $9,000 US. Associate members of the SIG get early access to draft specifications at versions 0.5 and 0.7 and are eligible to participate and gain a voting seat in working groups and committees—a key opportunity to work with other Associate and Promoter members on enhancing existing specifications. They are also eligible for enhanced marketing support, receive discounts on product qualification listings and SIG events including Bluetooth World and UnPlugFest (UPF) testing events.", "title": "Membership" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Adopter membership in the SIG is free and entitles members to use published Bluetooth wireless specifications and Bluetooth trademarks. Adopter members do not have early access to unpublished specifications and may not participate in working groups or committees to influence the development of the technology.", "title": "Membership" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Membership is not currently open to individuals.", "title": "Membership" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Universities or other educational facilities are not accepted for membership.", "title": "Membership" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Next to the development of the technology itself, the qualification process is one of the most important aspects of Bluetooth technology, supporting interoperability, conformance to the Bluetooth specifications, and to strengthening the Bluetooth brand.", "title": "Qualification" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Members of the Bluetooth SIG must complete the qualification and declaration process for their Bluetooth enabled product(s) to demonstrate and declare compliance to the .", "title": "Qualification" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The primary objective of the qualification process is for members to demonstrate their product(s) compliance to the adopted specifications through testing and documentation. After qualification is completed, members need to complete the declaration process. Members declare their compliance to both the Bluetooth Patent/Copyright License Agreement and Bluetooth Trademark License Agreement (“BTLA”).", "title": "Qualification" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "An overview of both processes including steps of the processes, types and fees is available on the Bluetooth SIG public portal.", "title": "Qualification" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Bluetooth Qualification Experts (BQEs) and Bluetooth Qualification Test Facilities (BQTFs) are available to support members through the processes. Members uncertain or unfamiliar with the qualification process are encouraged to consider using one or both of these service types.", "title": "Qualification" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Boney M. are a vocal group that specialize in disco and funk, created by German record producer Frank Farian, who was the group's primary songwriter. Originally based in West Germany, the four original members of the group's official line-up were Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett from Jamaica, Maizie Williams from Montserrat, and Bobby Farrell from Aruba. The group was formed in 1976 and achieved popularity during the disco era of the late 1970s. Since the 1980s, various line-ups of the band have performed with differing personnel.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The band has sold more than 100 million records worldwide and is known for international hits including \"Daddy Cool\", \"Ma Baker\", \"Belfast\", \"Sunny\", \"Rasputin\", \"Mary's Boy Child/Oh My Lord\" and \"Rivers of Babylon\".", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "German singer-songwriter Frank Farian recorded the dance track \"Baby Do You Wanna Bump\" in December 1974. Farian sang the repeated line \"Do you do you wanna bump?\" in a deep voice as well as performing the high falsetto chorus. When the record was released as a single in early 1975, it was credited to \"Boney M.\" Farian had created this pseudonym for himself after watching the Australian television detective series Boney, whose main character was named Napoleon Bonaparte. Farian said:", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "I turned on the TV one day and it was the end of a detective series. I just caught the credits and it said Boney. Nice name, I thought – Boney, Boney, Boney... Boney M. Boney, Boney, Boney M. Nice sound. Simple.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "After a slow start, the song became a hit in the Netherlands and Belgium. It was then that Farian decided to hire performers to create a troupe for TV appearances. Farian found model-turned-singer Maizie Williams (originally from Montserrat), Bobby Farrell, a dancer from Aruba, and singer Marcia Barrett from Jamaica who brought in singer Liz Mitchell, also from Jamaica and a former member of the Les Humphries Singers.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Boney M.'s first album, Take the Heat off Me, was released in 1976. It contained tracks that Marcia Barrett had already recorded with Farian, including the title track and \"Lovin' or Leavin'\", both of which were previously recorded in German by another Farian act, Gilla. As Maizie Williams' voice was not considered suitable for recording purposes by Farian, and a try-out with Bobby Farrell performing \"No Woman No Cry\" did not work, Farian decided to use only Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett along with his own studio-enhanced voice to create the Boney M. sound.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "The album's commercial performance was initially lukewarm. However, the group rigorously toured discos, clubs, and even country fairs to earn a reputation for themselves. The group's big break came when, at the end of summer 1976, German television producer Michael \"Mike\" Leckebusch (of Radio Bremen) requested them for his show Musikladen. Boney M. appeared on the live music show on 18 September 1976, after 10:00 p.m. and in their daring stage costumes, where they performed the song \"Daddy Cool\". The song quickly went to no.1 in Germany, with the album following the success of the single. Another single, \"Sunny\" (a cover of the 1966 Bobby Hebb song) gave the group their second no.1 hit. The group's popularity had also grown throughout Europe, with \"Daddy Cool\" reaching no.1 in Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Spain, France, and Austria. Both singles were also Top 10 hits in the UK, which would become one of their biggest markets.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "In 1977, Boney M. released their second album, Love for Sale, which contained the hits \"Ma Baker\" and \"Belfast\". The group embarked on their first major concert tours with a live band of musicians called \"The Black Beauty Circus\" (given their name after Maizie Williams' first band, \"Black Beautiful People\"). Love for Sale was certified Gold a year after its release in the UK. Both singles from the album reached no.1 in Germany and the UK Top 10.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "1978 was the group's biggest year. They released a new double A-sided single, \"Rivers of Babylon/Brown Girl in the Ring\", which was a hit all over Europe, reaching no. 1 in several countries as well as becoming one of the biggest selling singles of all time in the UK. It also became their most successful single in the United States, peaking at no. 30 on the U.S. pop singles chart. Following this came their biggest-selling album, Nightflight to Venus, which spawned further hit singles with \"Rasputin\" and \"Painter Man\". Continuing with their success, they released \"Mary's Boy Child – Oh My Lord\", which was the 1978 Christmas number one single in the United Kingdom and became another of the biggest selling singles of all time there. Also during 1978, Boney M. made a much-publicized promotional visit to the Soviet Union, one of the very few Western acts along with Elton John to do so, although tracks like \"Rasputin\" were not released in the Soviet Union due to their lyrics.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "While it had never been a secret that Bobby Farrell never sang on the group's records (Farian did the male vocals in the studio), in 1978 it became public knowledge that Maizie Williams did not sing on the studio recordings either, since \"her voice wasn't suited for this kind of music\" as Farian stated in an interview with German teen magazine Bravo. Since this had become common practice within the disco genre of the late 1970s, few people cared – unlike when Farian repeated the practice to much more severe backlash with Milli Vanilli in the late 1980s. While only two of Boney M.'s official members actually contributed to the band's records, all four members of the group, including Williams and Farrell, performed the vocals live at Boney M. concerts. The band's live sound was also augmented by several backing vocalists, which served to mitigate any vocal deficiencies the group may have had compared with the studio productions.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "1979 saw Boney M. release a brand new single, \"Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday\", which became another Top 10 hit across Europe. Later in the year they released their fourth album, Oceans of Fantasy, containing two hit singles – \"Gotta Go Home\"/\"El Lute\" and \"I'm Born Again\"/\"Bahama Mama\". The album also included a \"Lead\" and \"Backing Vocals\" credit for the first time. Oceans of Fantasy reached no.1 in the UK and was certified Platinum, though their run of Top 10 singles had now ended with \"Gotta Go Home\" peaking at no.12 and \"I'm Born Again\" peaking at no. 5.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "In 1980, Boney M. released a greatest hits album, The Magic of Boney M. – 20 Golden Hits, which also contained two new songs, \"My Friend Jack\" and \"I See a Boat on the River\". It made the no. 1 spot in the UK, reaching Gold status within six weeks of release, though it was their last big-selling album in the UK.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Boney M.'s fifth album had been scheduled for release in November 1980 but the recording sessions dragged on all through 1981. When Boonoonoonoos was finally released by the end of that year, Bobby Farrell departed from the group due to issues with Frank Farian. While still a healthy seller in continental Europe, Boonoonoonoos failed to crack the UK Top 100 after three consecutive no. 1 albums due to the group being unable to promote it after Farrell left. Following this, the group released a Christmas Album.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Reggie Tsiboe was hired to replace Farrell as the new male member of Boney M. in 1982 but the singles \"The Carnival Is Over\" and \"Jambo\" fared poorly, and the group's seventh album Ten Thousand Lightyears, issued in 1984, marked another commercial low point, peaking at number 23 in the German album charts. The group, however, returned to the German Top 20 in the autumn of 1984 with \"Kalimba de Luna\" (a Top 10 hit in France) and \"Happy Song\" (a cover of a song by Italian Italo-disco band Baby's Gang), the latter seeing Bobby Farrell return to the group. Both songs were carbon-copies of the original Italian hits by Tony Esposito and Baby's Gang respectively.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "By 1985, Farian clearly began losing interest in the group, and their eighth and final studio album Eye Dance was widely regarded as uninspired and disappointing. After celebrating Boney M.'s 10th anniversary in early 1986, the group officially disbanded after the release of the commercially unsuccessful single \"Young, Free and Single\", which peaked at no. 48.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "From this point, different versions of the group were formed by members, some with cooperation of Farian, others without (for example by independently obtaining the rights to use the Boney M. name in a different country). One version began touring in the first half of 1987 with Marilyn Scharbaai (Carrilho) taking Liz Mitchell's place. Mitchell returned for a second leg of the tour late 1987, and Marcia Barrett soon left the band. At the same time, Bobby Farrell had set up a deal for a new Boney M. album to be recorded without Farian in Belgium. When Farrell failed to show up for either recording or tour, and Maizie Williams had never sung on record, the album ended up being released as Liz Mitchell's first solo album No One Will Force You. Mitchell and Williams completed a tour during 1987–88, adding singer Celena Duncan and Ron Gale as replacements for Barrett and Farrell. Carol Grey later replaced Celena Duncan and Curt De Daran later replaced Ron Gale.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "In October 1988, the classic Boney M. line-up reunited without producer Frank Farian for the album Greatest Hits of All Times – Remix '88 but tensions ran high between the members, and Liz Mitchell left in the spring of 1989 to be replaced by Madeleine Davis. While Mitchell promoted her solo album, the group recorded the single \"Everybody Wants to Dance Like Josephine Baker\", without Farian's knowledge or approval. Threatened with legal action by the producer over the use of the Boney M. name, the single was subsequently withdrawn and Farian issued Stories with his own new Boney M. line-up featuring Liz Mitchell, Reggie Tsiboe and two new members, Sharon Stevens and Patty Onoyewenjo, Stories peaked at number 11 in the Swiss charts. A second remix album Greatest Hits of All Times – Remix '89 – Volume II was released but fared poorly.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "1992 saw a renewed interest in Boney M.'s music with the Boney M. Megamix single returning the group to the UK Top 10 for the first time since 1980, and a subsequent Greatest Hits album reaching the UK Top 20 in 1993. While Marcia Barrett, now residing in Florida, had cancer and was unable to perform, Boney M. toured the world with a line-up of Liz Mitchell, Carol Grey, Patricia Lorna Foster and Curt Dee Daran (replaced by Tony Ashcroft in 1994). They released the single Papa Chico but failed to chart. Maizie Williams assembled her own Boney M. with an ever-changing line-up. Bobby Farrell also toured with varying trios of female performers.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Liz Mitchell was touring the world with her line-up of Boney M., which is the only line-up officially supported by Farian (the court ruling of 1990 stated that all four members are entitled to perform their own Boney M. shows). Bobby Farrell and Liz Mitchell have released solo albums containing their own re-recordings of Boney M.'s classic hits. Maizie Williams released her first solo album in 2006 and her own single version of Boney M.'s Sunny. In 2007 her rendition of \"Daddy Cool\" with Melo-M hit the number one spot in the Latvian (LMK) Charts. Marcia Barrett has released two solo albums with a third scheduled for release in 2010.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "As recounted in his 1988 book Touching the Void, the British climber Joe Simpson was subsequently to find the catchy tune of Brown Girl in the Ring haunting him in the final hours of his struggle to survive the descent of Siula Grande in the Andes, and the song was later used in the 2003 film of Touching the Void made by Kevin Macdonald. Simpson recalls: \"I remember thinking, bloody hell, I'm going to die to Boney M\".", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "A musical based on the music of Boney M., Daddy Cool, opened in London in August 2006 to mixed reviews and sluggish ticket sales, causing it to close in February 2007. From April to July 2007, the show played in a mobile theatre in Berlin, which was specially designed for it.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "In April 2007, Australian pop singer Peter Wilson released a song co-written by Frank Farian entitled \"Doin' Fine\". It is described as \"paying tribute to the sound of Boney M.\" and features the famous string arrangement from their first number 1 hit, \"Daddy Cool\". Boney M. (featuring Marcia Barrett) made a live appearance at the 37th International Film Festival of India (IFFI), which took place on 23 November 2006 in Panaji, the state capital of Goa, India. The group is also popular in the Vietnamese diaspora, and was featured in Thuy Nga music productions.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "In the UK, a new album of their greatest hits, entitled The Magic of Boney M. was released via BMG on 27 November 2006. Special additions to this release were a Mousse T. remix of Sunny and a brand new song from 2006, featuring Liz Mitchell, entitled A Moment of Love. On 10 April 2007, Boney M.'s first four albums were reissued on compact disc with bonus tracks, this time also in the United States (the first time these were available to the U.S. music market since their original releases in the 1970s).", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "In September 2007, Boney M.'s last four original albums, Boonoonoonoos, Ten Thousand Lightyears, Kalimba de Luna - 16 Happy Songs and Eye Dance were reissued on compact disc in Europe and the United States, all including bonus tracks. In November 2007, a new Christmas compilation was scheduled for release as well as the DVD Fantastic Boney M. – On Stage and on the Road featuring a live performance recorded in Vienna on 1 November 1977 (the DVD cover erroneously states it to be a live show from Hamburg), and a film from the band's 1981 visit to Jamaica (made to promote the Boonoonoonoos album that year).", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Bobby Farrell's Boney M. performed a concert at the Amphi in Ra'anana, Israel, in May 2007. On 28 June 2007 Boney M. featuring Matthew Felsenfeld and Liz Mitchell performed at the Oktiabrsky concert hall in St. Petersburg, Russia. In September 2007, Maizie Williams' Boney M. line-up performed live at the Royal Albert Hall, UK, to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in Africa, performing her own renditions of Brown Girl in the Ring and Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "The legal rights to the name \"Boney M.\" have been a matter of controversy, and even court cases, between the former members of the band and producer Frank Farian ever since the late 1980s. Farian, the man who in effect created the group, has continued to work with Liz Mitchell and her line-up all through the 1990s and 2000s. In January 2007, Zanillya Farrell (daughter of Bobby Farrell) and Yasmina Ayad-Saban (ex-wife of Farrell) renewed the trademark to the name Boney M. in Germany for a 10-year period.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "In January 2009, Farian released the single Felicidad America (Obama Obama), a version of the 1980 Boney M. song \"Felicidad (Margherita)\" with new lyrics about newly elected U.S. president Barack Obama. The song was recorded with two new vocalists, and credited to \"Boney M. feat. Sherita O. & Yulee B.\"", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "In July 2010, Maizie Williams headlined a Boney M. performance at Ramallah's Cultural Palace, in the West Bank, as part of the Palestine International Festival. The band played Daddy Cool, Ma Baker and Brown Girl in the Ring, but refrained from playing Rivers of Babylon, rumored to be at the event organizers' request because of its description of the Jewish yearning for Zion.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Bobby Farrell died at the age of 61 from heart failure on 30 December 2010. His agent said Farrell was complaining of breathing problems after performing with his band the evening before. Farrell lived in Amsterdam until his death. His final performance was in Saint Petersburg, Russia (the city where Rasputin first became famous and was later killed): Farrell died in a hotel room there, 94 years to the day after Rasputin.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Maizie Williams' line-up of Boney M. toured Australia in June 2014. They sang at Guilfest, Guildford, UK, on 20 July 2014, and Watchet Live music festival UK, on 24 August 2014.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "In March 2015, Farian released Diamonds, a 3CD box celebrating the 40th anniversary of Boney M. It contained re-mastered versions of the original hit singles or of previously unreleased versions, a remix disc and the new digital single Song of Joy featuring Liz Mitchell. A major DVD set was also released.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "In February 2017, they performed at the closing ceremony of Patras Carnival in Patras, Greece. At the end of 2017 the album World Music for Christmas was released under Boney M. and Friends with Liz Mitchell doing vocals on 3 songs, along with the single and video Like Diamonds in the Sky featuring Liz Mitchell, based on El Cóndor Pasa.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "In 2021, a remix of Rasputin by house music producer and Kiss FM DJ Kevin Christie was released by Sony Music's Ministry of Sound label. Credited to Majestic & Boney M (with the former being the DJ alias of Christie), the record reached number 11 on the UK singles chart and was released with a video featuring Bimini Bon-Boulash from RuPaul's Drag Race UK. In December 2021, Mitchell was one of the contributors to the Channel 5 music show Britain's Biggest 70s Hits alongside other musicians from the era like Dean Friedman and Barry Blue, and radio presenters like David Hamilton.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "In August 2023, Boney M. (headed by Liz Mitchell) embarked on a multi city US tour along with Samantha Fox and Bad Boys Blue, which included stops in Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City and San Jose. The shows were put together by Los Angeles based promoters LA Concert Group.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "In 1978, \"Rivers of Babylon\", a cover of a track by The Melodians with lyrics partly based on Psalm 137 and partly on Psalm 19, became (at the time) the second highest-selling single of all time in the UK. After remaining at no.1 for five weeks, \"Rivers of Babylon\" began dropping down the chart, at which point the B-side \"Brown Girl in the Ring\" was given extensive radio airplay, and the single ascended to no. 2. The single spent six months in the UK Top 40, including 19 weeks in the Top 10. It eventually sold more than two million copies, the second single to do so, and is still one of only seven to achieve this feat. (see List of million-selling singles in the United Kingdom)", "title": "UK sales mark" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "The group achieved a second UK million-seller with their version of the calypso classic \"Mary's Boy Child\", released as a medley \"Mary's Boy Child – Oh My Lord\", which was previously a million-seller for Harry Belafonte. The single sold more than 1.8 million copies, 1.6 million of which were in the four weeks the song was at n.1 in December 1978.", "title": "UK sales mark" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Boney M. is the only artist to appear twice in the top 12 best selling singles of all time in the UK, with \"Rivers of Babylon\" in seventh place and \"Mary's Boy Child/Oh My Lord\" at number 11. They are also one of six artists to sell a million copies with two singles in the same year.", "title": "UK sales mark" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Compared to other best-selling artists of the 1970s like ABBA, Donna Summer, and the Bee Gees, the Boney M. discography is quite unusual – while the greater part of the band's back catalogue has been remixed, remade, remodeled and reissued all through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s by producer Frank Farian and record company BMG-Ariola (now Sony Music), most of the original 7\" and 12\" versions issued on vinyl in the 1970s and early 1980s remained unavailable on CD until 2007, where they were released on various compilations, most notably The Collection (2008), the Ultimate Boney M. series (2008), Let It All Be Music: The Party Album (2009), Hit Story (2010) and Diamonds (2015). Some of these CDs were compiled by Frank Eberlein, who had also been interviewed on a fansite called \"Fantastic Boney M.\" about the compiling process.", "title": "Back catalogue" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "\"Greatest hits\" collections containing edited and/or overdubbed versions of the original recordings are still being released, such as Boney M. & Friends (Their Ultimate Top 40 Collection) (2017), Rasputin - Big And Strong: The Greatest Hits of Boney M. (2021) and the 2022 re-issue of the 2006 compilation \"The Magic of Boney M.\"", "title": "Back catalogue" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "Boney M. was hugely popular in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, although the song \"Rasputin\" was banned by the Soviet authorities during the group's concert in Moscow in December 1978. The song has been used in several movies and television shows, including Johnny English Strikes Again, The King's Man, Black Mirror and in the Doctor Who special The Power of the Doctor, in which The Master dances to the song while disguised as Rasputin himself.", "title": "Popularity outside the West" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "In the Soviet film Repentance (1984, released 1987), \"Sunny\" is played at a party of high-ranked communist officials. \"Sunny\" is played during a few parts of the successful Korean film of the same name, Sunny.", "title": "Popularity outside the West" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "During the 2002 presidential election campaign of South Korea, then-candidate Roh Moo-hyun, who eventually won the presidency at that event, took Bahama Mama to promote his aim of positive political reform.", "title": "Popularity outside the West" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "The 2005 Chinese film Shanghai Dreams features a scene depicting a rural Chinese disco in 1983, with teenagers dancing to \"Rivers of Babylon\" and \"Gotta Go Home\".", "title": "Popularity outside the West" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "In the 2008 Kazakh film Tulpan, the tractor driver Boni continually plays a cassette of \"Rivers of Babylon\", an example of his fascination for all things Western.", "title": "Popularity outside the West" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "In the 2008 Chinese film Cheung Gong 7 hou (English title: CJ7), \"Sunny\" is a vital part of the soundtrack. \"Sunny\" is the theme song of the 2011 Taiwanese drama, Sunny Girl. The song has also appeared in The Umbrella Academy and Boogie Nights.", "title": "Popularity outside the West" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Boney M. was immensely popular in India through the 1970s and 1980s. Liz Mitchell recalled her visits to India in the 1980s in a 2015 interview with Hindustan Times: \"It was amazing. We’ve had the most-wonderful tours here. We even went out shopping to so many places. We met several Bollywood stars and had dinners with them.\"", "title": "Popularity outside the West" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Blade Runner is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The film is set in a dystopian future Los Angeles of 2019, in which synthetic humans known as replicants are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation to work on space colonies. When a fugitive group of advanced replicants led by Roy Batty (Hauer) escapes back to Earth, burnt-out cop Rick Deckard (Ford) reluctantly agrees to hunt them down.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Blade Runner initially underperformed in North American theaters and polarized critics; some praised its thematic complexity and visuals, while others critiqued its slow pacing and lack of action. The film's soundtrack, composed by Vangelis, was nominated in 1982 for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe as best original score. Blade Runner later became a cult film, and has since come to be regarded as one of the greatest science fiction films. Hailed for its production design depicting a high-tech but decaying future, the film is often regarded as both a leading example of neo-noir cinema as well as a foundational work of the cyberpunk genre. It has influenced many science fiction films, video games, anime, and television series. It also brought the work of Dick to Hollywood's attention and led to several film adaptations of his works. In 1993, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Seven different versions of Blade Runner exist as a result of controversial changes requested by studio executives. A director's cut was released in 1992 after a strong response to test screenings of a workprint. This, in conjunction with the film's popularity as a video rental, made it one of the earliest movies to be released on DVD. In 2007, Warner Bros. released The Final Cut, a 25th-anniversary digitally remastered version; this is the only version over which Scott retained artistic control. The film is the first of the franchise of the same name. A sequel, titled Blade Runner 2049, was released in 2017 alongside a trilogy of short films covering the thirty-year span between the two films' settings. The anime series Blade Runner: Black Lotus was released in 2021.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In 2019 Los Angeles, former police officer Rick Deckard is detained by Officer Gaff, who likes to make origami figures, and is brought to his former supervisor, Bryant. Deckard, whose job as a \"blade runner\" was to track down bioengineered humanoids known as replicants and terminally \"retire\" them, is informed that four replicants are on Earth illegally. Deckard begins to leave, but Bryant ambiguously threatens him and Deckard stays. The two watch a video of a blade runner named Holden administering the Voight-Kampff test, which is designed to distinguish replicants from humans based on their emotional responses to questions. The test subject, Leon, shoots Holden on the second question. Bryant wants Deckard to retire Leon and three other Nexus-6 replicants: Roy Batty, Zhora, and Pris.", "title": "Plot" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Bryant has Deckard meet with the CEO of the company that creates the replicants, Eldon Tyrell, so he can administer the test on a Nexus-6 to see if it works. Tyrell expresses his interest in seeing the test fail first and asks him to administer it on his assistant Rachael. After a much longer than standard test, Deckard concludes privately to Tyrell that Rachael is a replicant who believes she is human. Tyrell explains that she is an experiment who has been given false memories to provide an \"emotional cushion\", and that she has no knowledge of her true nature.", "title": "Plot" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "In searching Leon's hotel room, Deckard finds photos and a scale from the skin of an animal, which is later identified as a synthetic snake scale. Deckard returns to his apartment where Rachael is waiting. She tries to prove her humanity by showing him a family photo, but Deckard reveals that her memories are implants from Tyrell's niece, and she leaves in tears.", "title": "Plot" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Replicants Roy and Leon meanwhile investigate a replicant eye-manufacturing laboratory and learn of J. F. Sebastian, a gifted genetic designer who works closely with Tyrell. Pris locates Sebastian and manipulates him to gain his trust.", "title": "Plot" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "A photograph from Leon's apartment and the snake scale lead Deckard to a strip club, where Zhora works. After a confrontation and chase, Deckard kills Zhora. Bryant also orders him to retire Rachael, who has disappeared from the Tyrell Corporation. Deckard spots Rachael in a crowd, but he is ambushed by Leon, who knocks the gun out of Deckard's hand and beats him. As Leon is about to kill Deckard, Rachael saves him by using Deckard's gun to kill Leon. They return to Deckard's apartment and, during a discussion, he promises not to track her down. As Rachael abruptly tries to leave, Deckard restrains her and forces her to kiss him, and she ultimately relents. Deckard leaves Rachael at his apartment and departs to search for the remaining replicants.", "title": "Plot" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Roy arrives at Sebastian's apartment and tells Pris that the other replicants are dead. Sebastian reveals that because of a genetic premature aging disorder, his life will be cut short, like the replicants that were built with a four-year lifespan. Roy uses Sebastian to gain entrance to Tyrell's penthouse. He demands more life from his maker, which Tyrell says is impossible. Roy confesses that he has done \"questionable things\" but Tyrell dismisses this, praising Roy's advanced design and accomplishments in his short life. Roy kisses Tyrell and then kills him by crushing his skull. Sebastian tries to flee and is later reported dead.", "title": "Plot" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "At Sebastian's apartment, Deckard is ambushed by Pris, but he kills her as Roy returns. Roy's body begins to fail as the end of his lifespan nears. He chases Deckard through the building and onto the roof. Deckard tries to jump onto another roof but is left hanging on the edge. Roy makes the jump with ease and, as Deckard's grip loosens, Roy hoists him onto the roof to save him. Before Roy dies, he laments that his memories \"will be lost in time, like tears in rain\". Gaff arrives to congratulate Deckard, also reminding him that Rachael will not live, but \"then again, who does?\" Deckard returns to his apartment to retrieve Rachael. While escorting her to the elevator, he notices a small origami unicorn on the floor. He recalls Gaff's words and departs with Rachael.", "title": "Plot" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Interest in adapting Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? developed shortly after its 1968 publication. Director Martin Scorsese was interested in filming the novel, but never optioned it. Producer Herb Jaffe optioned it in the early 1970s, but Dick was unimpressed with the screenplay written by Herb's son Robert, saying, \"Jaffe's screenplay was so terribly done ... Robert flew down to Santa Ana to speak with me about the project. And the first thing I said to him when he got off the plane was, 'Shall I beat you up here at the airport, or shall I beat you up back at my apartment?'\"", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "The screenplay by Hampton Fancher was optioned in 1977. Producer Michael Deeley became interested in Fancher's draft and convinced director Ridley Scott to film it. Scott had previously declined the project, but after leaving the slow production of Dune, wanted a faster-paced project to take his mind off his older brother's recent death. He joined the project on February 21, 1980, and managed to push up the promised Filmways financing from US$13 million to $15 million. Fancher's script focused more on environmental issues and less on issues of humanity and religion, which are prominent in the novel, and Scott wanted changes. Fancher found a cinema treatment by William S. Burroughs for Alan E. Nourse's novel The Bladerunner (1974), titled Blade Runner (a movie). Scott liked the name, so Deeley obtained the rights to the titles. Eventually, he hired David Peoples to rewrite the script and Fancher left the job over the issue on December 21, 1980, although he later returned to contribute additional rewrites.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Having invested over $2.5 million in pre-production, as the date of commencement of principal photography neared, Filmways withdrew financial backing. In ten days Deeley had secured $21.5 million in financing through a three-way deal between the Ladd Company (through Warner Bros.), the Hong Kong-based producer Sir Run Run Shaw and Tandem Productions.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Dick became concerned that no one had informed him about the film's production, which added to his distrust of Hollywood. After Dick criticized an early version of Fancher's script in an article written for the Los Angeles Select TV Guide, the studio sent Dick the Peoples rewrite. Although Dick died shortly before the film's release, he was pleased with the rewritten script and with a 20-minute special effects test reel that was screened for him when he was invited to the studio. Despite his well-known skepticism of Hollywood in principle, Dick enthused to Scott that the world created for the film looked exactly as he had imagined it. He said, \"I saw a segment of Douglas Trumbull's special effects for Blade Runner on the KNBC news. I recognized it immediately. It was my own interior world. They caught it perfectly.\" He also approved of the film's script, saying, \"After I finished reading the screenplay, I got the novel out and looked through it. The two reinforce each other so that someone who started with the novel would enjoy the movie and someone who started with the movie would enjoy the novel.\" The motion picture was dedicated to Dick. Principal photography of Blade Runner began on March 9, 1981, and ended four months later.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "In 1992, Ford revealed, \"Blade Runner is not one of my favorite films. I tangled with Ridley.\" Apart from friction with the director, Ford also disliked the voiceovers: \"When we started shooting it had been tacitly agreed that the version of the film that we had agreed upon was the version without voiceover narration. It was a f**king [sic] nightmare. I thought that the film had worked without the narration. But now I was stuck re-creating that narration. And I was obliged to do the voiceovers for people that did not represent the director's interests.\" \"I went kicking and screaming to the studio to record it.\" The narration monologs were written by an uncredited Roland Kibbee.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "In 2006, Scott was asked \"Who's the biggest pain in the arse you've ever worked with?\" He replied: \"It's got to be Harrison ... he'll forgive me because now I get on with him. Now he's become charming. But he knows a lot, that's the problem. When we worked together it was my first film up and I was the new kid on the block. But we made a good movie.\" Ford said of Scott in 2000: \"I admire his work. We had a bad patch there, and I'm over it.\" In 2006 Ford reflected on the production of the film saying: \"What I remember more than anything else when I see Blade Runner is not the 50 nights of shooting in the rain, but the voiceover ... I was still obliged to work for these clowns that came in writing one bad voiceover after another.\" Ridley Scott confirmed in the summer 2007 issue of Total Film that Harrison Ford contributed to the Blade Runner Special Edition DVD, and had already recorded his interviews. \"Harrison's fully on board\", said Scott.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles served as a filming location, and a Warner Bros. backlot housed the 2019 Los Angeles street sets. Other locations included the Ennis-Brown House and the 2nd Street Tunnel. Test screenings resulted in several changes, including adding a voice-over, a happy ending, and the removal of a Holden hospital scene. The relationship between the filmmakers and the investors was difficult, which culminated in Deeley and Scott being fired but still working on the film. Crew members created T-shirts during filming saying, \"Yes Guv'nor, My Ass\" that mocked Scott's unfavorable comparison of U.S. and British crews; Scott responded with a T-shirt of his own, \"Xenophobia Sucks\", making the incident known as the T-shirt war.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Casting the film proved troublesome, particularly for the lead role of Deckard. Screenwriter Hampton Fancher envisioned Robert Mitchum as Deckard and wrote the character's dialogue with Mitchum in mind. Director Ridley Scott and the film's producers spent months meeting and discussing the role with Dustin Hoffman, who eventually departed over differences in vision. Harrison Ford was ultimately chosen for several reasons, including his performance in the Star Wars films, Ford's interest in the Blade Runner story, and discussions with Steven Spielberg who was finishing Raiders of the Lost Ark at the time and strongly praised Ford's work in the film. Following his success in those two films, Ford was looking for a role with dramatic depth. According to production documents, several actors were considered for the role, including Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Peter Falk, Nick Nolte, Al Pacino and Burt Reynolds.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "One role that was not difficult to cast was Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty, the violent yet thoughtful leader of the replicants. Scott cast Hauer without having met him, based solely on Hauer's performances in Paul Verhoeven's movies Scott had seen (Katie Tippel, Soldier of Orange, and Turkish Delight). Hauer's portrayal of Batty was regarded by Philip K. Dick as \"the perfect Batty – cold, Aryan, flawless\". Of the many films Hauer made, Blade Runner was his favorite. As he explained in a live chat in 2001, \"Blade Runner needs no explanation. It just [is]. All of the best. There is nothing like it. To be part of a real masterpiece which changed the world's thinking. It's awesome.\" Hauer rewrote his character's \"tears in rain\" speech himself and presented the words to Scott on set prior to filming.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Blade Runner used a number of then-lesser-known actors: Sean Young portrays Rachael, an experimental replicant implanted with the memories of Tyrell's niece, causing her to believe she is human; Nina Axelrod auditioned for the role. Daryl Hannah portrays Pris, a \"basic pleasure model\" replicant; Stacey Nelkin auditioned for the role, but was given another part in the film, which was ultimately cut before filming. Debbie Harry turned down the role of Pris. Casting Pris and Rachael was challenging, requiring several screen tests with Morgan Paull playing the role of Deckard. Paull was cast as Deckard's fellow bounty hunter Holden based on his performances in the tests. Brion James portrays Leon Kowalski, a combat and laborer replicant, and Joanna Cassidy portrays Zhora, an assassin replicant.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Edward James Olmos portrays Gaff. Olmos drew on diverse ethnic sources to help create the fictional \"Cityspeak\" language his character uses in the film. His initial address to Deckard at the noodle bar is partly in Hungarian and means, \"Horse dick [bullshit]! No way. You are the Blade ... Blade Runner.\" M. Emmet Walsh portrays Captain Bryant, a rumpled, hard-drinking and underhanded police veteran typical of the film noir genre. Joe Turkel portrays Dr. Eldon Tyrell, a corporate mogul who built an empire on genetically manipulated humanoid slaves. William Sanderson was cast as J. F. Sebastian, a quiet and lonely genius who provides a compassionate yet compliant portrait of humanity. J. F. sympathizes with the replicants, whom he sees as companions, and he shares their shorter lifespan due to his rapid aging disease. Joe Pantoliano had earlier been considered for the role. James Hong portrays Hannibal Chew, an elderly geneticist specializing in synthetic eyes, and Hy Pyke portrayed the sleazy bar owner Taffey Lewis – in a single take, something almost unheard-of with Scott, whose drive for perfection resulted at times in double-digit takes.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Scott credits Edward Hopper's painting Nighthawks and the French science fiction comics magazine Métal Hurlant, to which the artist Jean \"Moebius\" Giraud contributed, as stylistic mood sources. He also drew on the landscape of \"Hong Kong on a very bad day\" and the industrial landscape of his one-time home in northeast England. The visual style of the movie is influenced by the work of futurist Italian architect Antonio Sant'Elia. Scott hired Syd Mead as his concept artist; like Scott, he was influenced by Métal Hurlant. Moebius was offered the opportunity to assist in the pre-production of Blade Runner, but he declined so that he could work on René Laloux's animated film Les Maîtres du temps – a decision that he later regretted. Production designer Lawrence G. Paull and art director David Snyder realized Scott's and Mead's sketches. Douglas Trumbull and Richard Yuricich supervised the special effects for the film, and Mark Stetson served as chief model maker.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Blade Runner has numerous similarities to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, including a built-up urban environment, in which the wealthy literally live above the workers, dominated by a huge building – the Stadtkrone Tower in Metropolis and the Tyrell Building in Blade Runner. Special effects supervisor David Dryer used stills from Metropolis when lining up Blade Runner's miniature building shots.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The extended end scene in the original theatrical release shows Rachael and Deckard traveling into daylight with pastoral aerial shots filmed by director Stanley Kubrick. Ridley Scott contacted Kubrick about using some of his surplus helicopter aerial photography from The Shining.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "\"Spinner\" is the generic term for the fictional flying cars used in the film. A spinner can be driven as a ground-based vehicle, and take off vertically, hover, and cruise much like vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. They are used extensively by the police as patrol cars, and wealthy people can also acquire spinner licenses. The vehicle was conceived and designed by Syd Mead who described the spinner as an aerodyne – a vehicle which directs air downward to create lift, though press kits for the film stated that the spinner was propelled by three engines: \"conventional internal combustion, jet, and anti-gravity\". A spinner is on permanent exhibit at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in Seattle, Washington. Mead's conceptual drawings were transformed into 25 vehicles by automobile customizer Gene Winfield; at least two were working ground vehicles, while others were light-weight mockups for crane shots and set decoration for street shots. Two of them ended up at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, but were later destroyed, and a few others remain in private collections.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "A very advanced form of lie detector that measures contractions of the iris muscle and the presence of invisible airborne particles emitted from the body. The bellows were designed for the latter function and give the machine the menacing air of a sinister insect. The VK is used primarily by Blade Runners to determine if a suspect is truly human by measuring the degree of his empathic response through carefully worded questions and statements.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "The Voight-Kampff machine is a fictional interrogation tool, originating from the novel (where it is spelled \"Voigt-Kampff\"). The Voight-Kampff is a polygraph-like machine used by blade runners to determine whether an individual is a replicant. It measures bodily functions such as respiration, blush response, heart rate and eye movement in response to questions dealing with empathy.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "The Blade Runner soundtrack by Vangelis is a dark melodic combination of classic composition and futuristic synthesizers which mirrors the film noir retro-future envisioned by Scott. Vangelis, fresh from his Academy Award-winning score for Chariots of Fire, composed and performed the music on his synthesizers. He also made use of various chimes and the vocals of collaborator Demis Roussos. Another memorable sound is the tenor sax solo \"Love Theme\" by British saxophonist Dick Morrissey, who performed on many of Vangelis's albums. Ridley Scott also used \"Memories of Green\" from the Vangelis album See You Later, an orchestral version of which Scott would later use in his film Someone to Watch Over Me.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Along with Vangelis's compositions and ambient textures, the film's soundscape also features a track by the Japanese ensemble Nipponia – \"Ogi no Mato\" or \"The Folding Fan as a Target\" from the Nonesuch Records release Traditional Vocal and Instrumental Music – and a track by harpist Gail Laughton from \"Harps of the Ancient Temples\" on Laurel Records.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Despite being well received by fans and critically acclaimed and nominated in 1982 for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe as best original score, and the promise of a soundtrack album from Polydor Records in the end titles of the film, the release of the official soundtrack recording was delayed for over a decade. There are two official releases of the music from Blade Runner. In light of the lack of a release of an album, the New American Orchestra recorded an orchestral adaptation in 1982 which bore little resemblance to the original. Some of the film tracks would, in 1989, surface on the compilation Vangelis: Themes, but not until the 1992 release of the Director's Cut version would a substantial amount of the film's score see commercial release.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "These delays and poor reproductions led to the production of many bootleg recordings over the years. A bootleg tape surfaced in 1982 at science fiction conventions and became popular given the delay of an official release of the original recordings, and in 1993 \"Off World Music, Ltd\" created a bootleg CD that would prove more comprehensive than Vangelis' official CD in 1994. A set with three CDs of Blade Runner-related Vangelis music was released in 2007. Titled Blade Runner Trilogy, the first disc contains the same tracks as the 1994 official soundtrack release, the second features previously unreleased music from the movie, and the third disc is all newly composed music from Vangelis, inspired by, and in the spirit of the movie.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The film's special effects are generally recognized to be among the best in the genre, using the available (non-digital) technology to the fullest. Special effects engineers who worked on the film are often praised for the innovative technology they used to produce and design certain aspects of those visuals. In addition to matte paintings and models, the techniques employed included multipass exposures. In some scenes, the set was lit, shot, the film rewound, and then rerecorded over with different lighting. In some cases this was done 16 times in all. The cameras were frequently motion controlled using computers. Many effects used techniques which had been developed during the production of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Blade Runner was released in 1,290 theaters on June 25, 1982. That date was chosen by producer Alan Ladd Jr. because his previous highest-grossing films (Star Wars and Alien) had a similar opening date (May 25) in 1977 and 1979, making the 25th of the month his \"lucky day\". Blade Runner grossed reasonably good ticket sales in its opening weekend; earning $6.1 million during its first weekend in theaters. The film was released close to other major science-fiction and fantasy releases such as The Thing, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which affected its commercial success.", "title": "Release" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Several versions of Blade Runner have been shown. The original workprint version (1982, 113 minutes) was shown for audience test previews in Denver and Dallas in March 1982. Negative responses to the previews led to the modifications resulting in the U.S. theatrical version. The workprint was shown as a director's cut without Scott's approval at the Los Angeles Fairfax Theater in May 1990, at an AMPAS showing in April 1991, and in September and October 1991 at the Los Angeles NuArt Theater and the San Francisco Castro Theatre. Positive responses pushed the studio to approve work on an official director's cut. A San Diego Sneak Preview was shown only once, in May 1982, and was almost identical to the U.S. theatrical version but contained three extra scenes not shown in any other version, including the 2007 Final Cut.", "title": "Release" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Two versions were shown in the film's 1982 theatrical release: the U.S. theatrical version (117 minutes), known as the original version or Domestic Cut (released on Betamax, CED Videodisc and VHS in 1983, and on LaserDisc in 1987), and the International Cut (117 minutes), also known as the \"Criterion Edition\" or \"uncut version\", which included more violent action scenes than the U.S. version. Although initially unavailable in the U.S. and distributed in Europe and Asia via theatrical and local Warner Home Video releases, the International Cut was later released on VHS and The Criterion Collection Laserdisc in North America, and re-released in 1992 as a \"10th Anniversary Edition\".", "title": "Release" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Ridley Scott's Director's Cut (1992, 116 minutes) had significant changes from the theatrical version including the removal of Deckard's voice-over, the re-insertion of the unicorn sequence, and the removal of the studio-imposed happy ending. Scott provided extensive notes and consultation to Warner Bros. through film preservationist Michael Arick, who was put in charge of creating the Director's Cut.", "title": "Release" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Scott's definitive The Final Cut (2007, 117 minutes) was released by Warner Bros. theatrically on October 5, 2007, and subsequently released on DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray Disc in December 2007. This is the only version over which Scott had complete artistic and editorial control.", "title": "Release" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 88% approval rating based on 130 reviews, with an average rating of 8.50/10. The website's critics consensus reads, \"Misunderstood when it first hit theaters, the influence of Ridley Scott's mysterious, neo-noir Blade Runner has deepened with time. A visually remarkable, achingly human sci-fi masterpiece.\" Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 84 out of 100 based on 15 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\".", "title": "Reception" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "Initial reactions among film critics were mixed. Some wrote that the plot took a back seat to the film's special effects and did not fit the studio's marketing as an action and adventure film. Others acclaimed its complexity and predicted it would stand the test of time. Negative criticism in the United States cited its slow pace. Sheila Benson from the Los Angeles Times called it \"Blade Crawler\", and Pat Berman in The State and Columbia Record described it as \"science fiction pornography\". Pauline Kael praised Blade Runner as worthy of a place in film history for its distinctive sci-fi vision, yet criticized the film's lack of development in \"human terms\". Ares magazine said, \"Misunderstood by audiences and critics alike, it is by far the best science fiction film of the year.\"", "title": "Reception" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "Academics began analyzing the film almost as soon as it was released. One of the first books on the film was Paul M. Sammon's Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner (1996), which dissects all the details concerning the film making. He was followed by Scott Bukatman's Blade Runner and other books and academic articles. In Postmodern Metanarratives: Blade Runner and Literature in the Age of Image, Décio Torres Cruz analyzes the philosophical and psychological issues and the literary influences in Blade Runner. He examines the film's cyberpunk and dystopic elements by establishing a link between the Biblical, classical and modern traditions and the postmodern aspects in the film's collage of several literary texts.", "title": "Reception" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "The boom in home video formats helped establish a growing cult around the film, which scholars have dissected for its dystopic aspects, questions regarding \"authentic\" humanity, ecofeminist aspects and use of conventions from multiple genres. Popular culture began to reassess its impact as a classic several years after it was released. Roger Ebert praised the visuals of both the original and the Director's Cut and recommended it for that reason; however, he found the human story clichéd and a little thin. He later added The Final Cut to his \"Great Movies\" list. Critic Chris Rodley and Janet Maslin theorized that Blade Runner changed cinematic and cultural discourse through its image repertoire and subsequent influence on films. In 2012, Time film critic Richard Corliss surgically analyzed the durability, complexity, screenplay, sets and production dynamics from a personal, three-decade perspective. Denis Villeneuve, who directed the sequel, Blade Runner 2049, cites the film as a huge influence for him and many others.", "title": "Reception" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "It has also been noted for its postmodernist approach and that it contributes to the historical development of modern dystopia in film. Furthermore, the futuristic version of Los Angeles has been widely discussed by academics with some comparing it to Milton's descriptions of hell in Paradise Lost. A 2019 retrospective in the BBC argued that elements of the film's socio-political themes remained prescient in the real year of the film's setting, such as its depiction of climate change. From a more philosophical perspective, Alison Landsberg described Scott's direction of the film as a \"prosthetic memory\"—an action that has never happened and appears to be divorced from lived experience, yet it defines personhood and identity within the wider Blade Runner universe.", "title": "Reception" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "Blade Runner won or received nominations for the following awards:", "title": "Reception" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "The film operates on multiple dramatic and narrative levels. It employs some of the conventions of film noir, among them the character of a femme fatale; narration by the protagonist (in the original release); chiaroscuro cinematography; and giving the hero a questionable moral outlook – extended to include reflections upon the nature of his own humanity. It is a literate science fiction film, thematically enfolding the philosophy of religion and moral implications of human mastery of genetic engineering in the context of classical Greek drama and hubris. It also draws on Biblical images, such as Noah's flood, and literary sources, such as Frankenstein and William Blake. Although Scott said any similarity was merely coincidental, fans claimed that the chess game between Sebastian and Tyrell was based on the famous Immortal Game of 1851.", "title": "Themes" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Blade Runner delves into the effects of technology on the environment and society by reaching to the past, using literature, religious symbolism, classical dramatic themes, and film noir techniques. This tension between past, present, and future is represented in the \"retrofitted\" future depicted in the film, one which is high-tech and gleaming in places but decayed and outdated elsewhere. In an interview with The Observer in 2002, director Ridley Scott described the film as \"extremely dark, both literally and metaphorically, with an oddly masochistic feel\". He also said that he \"liked the idea of exploring pain\" in the wake of his brother's death: \"When he was ill, I used to go and visit him in London, and that was really traumatic for me.\"", "title": "Themes" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "A sense of foreboding and paranoia pervades the world of the film: corporate power looms large; the police seem omnipresent; vehicle and warning lights probe into buildings; and the consequences of huge biomedical power over the individual are explored – especially regarding replicants' implanted memories. The film depicts a world post ecocide, where warfare and capitalism have led to destruction of 'normal' ecological systems. Control over the environment is exercised on a vast scale, and goes hand in hand with the absence of any natural life; for example, artificial animals stand in for their extinct predecessors. This oppressive backdrop explains the frequently referenced migration of humans to \"off-world\" (extraterrestrial) colonies. Eyes are a recurring motif, as are manipulated images, calling into question the nature of reality and our ability to accurately perceive and remember it.", "title": "Themes" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "These thematic elements provide an atmosphere of uncertainty for Blade Runner's central theme of examining humanity. In order to discover replicants, an empathy test is used, with a number of its questions focused on the treatment of animals – seemingly an essential indicator of one's \"humanity\". Replicants will not respond the same way humans would, showing a lack of concern. The film goes so far as to question if Deckard might be a replicant, in the process asking the audience to re-evaluate what it means to be human.", "title": "Themes" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "The question of whether Deckard is intended to be a human or a replicant has been an ongoing controversy since the film's release. Both Michael Deeley and Harrison Ford wanted Deckard to be human, while Hampton Fancher preferred ambiguity. Ridley Scott has stated that in his vision, Deckard is a replicant. Deckard's unicorn-dream sequence, inserted into Scott's Director's Cut and concomitant with Gaff's parting gift of an origami unicorn, is seen by many as showing that Deckard is a replicant – because Gaff could have retrieved Deckard's implanted memories. The interpretation that Deckard is a replicant is challenged by others who believe the unicorn imagery shows that the characters, whether human or replicant, share the same dreams and recognize their affinity, or that the absence of a decisive answer is crucial to the film's main theme. The film's inherent ambiguity and uncertainty, as well as its textual richness, have permitted multiple interpretations.", "title": "Themes" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "While not initially a success with North American audiences, Blade Runner was popular internationally and garnered a cult following. The film's dark style and futuristic designs have served as a benchmark and its influence can be seen in many subsequent science fiction films, video games, anime, and television programs. For example, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, the producers of the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica, have both cited Blade Runner as one of the major influences for the show.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1993 and is frequently taught in university courses. In 2007, it was named the second-most visually influential film of all time by the Visual Effects Society. The film has also been the subject of parody, such as the comics Blade Bummer by Crazy comics, Bad Rubber by Steve Gallacci, and the Red Dwarf 2009 three-part miniseries \"Back to Earth\". The anime series Psycho-Pass by Production I.G was also highly influenced by the movie.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "Blade Runner continues to reflect modern trends and concerns, and an increasing number of critics consider it one of the greatest science fiction films of all time. It was voted the best science fiction film ever made in a 2004 poll of 60 eminent world scientists. Blade Runner is also cited as an important influence to both the style and story of the Ghost in the Shell franchise, which itself has been highly influential to the future-noir genre. Blade Runner has been very influential to the cyberpunk movement. It also influenced the cyberpunk derivative biopunk, which revolves around biotechnology and genetic engineering. The film is also considered to be one of the early examples of the tech noir subgenre.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "The dialogue and music in Blade Runner has been sampled in music more than any other film of the 20th century. The 2009 album I, Human by Singaporean band Deus Ex Machina makes numerous references to the genetic engineering and cloning themes from the film, and even features a track titled \"Replicant\".", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "Blade Runner is cited as a major influence on Warren Spector, designer of the video game Deus Ex, which displays evidence of the film's influence in both its visual rendering and plot. Indeed, the film's look – and in particular its overall darkness, preponderance of neon lights and opaque visuals – are easier to render than complicated backdrops, making it a popular reference point for video game designers. It has influenced adventure games such as the 2012 graphical text adventure Cypher, Rise of the Dragon, Snatcher, the Tex Murphy series, Beneath a Steel Sky, Flashback: The Quest for Identity, Bubblegum Crisis video games (and their original anime), the role-playing game Shadowrun, the first-person shooter Perfect Dark, the shooter game Skyhammer, and the Syndicate series of video games.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "The logos of Atari, Bell, Coca-Cola, Cuisinart, Pan Am, and RCA, all market leaders at the time, were prominently displayed as product placement in the film, and all experienced setbacks after the film's release, leading to suggestions of a Blade Runner curse. Coca-Cola and Cuisinart recovered, and Tsingtao beer was also featured in the film and was more successful after the film than before.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "The design of Tesla's Cybertruck was inspired by the film. Prior to its release Elon Musk promised that it would \"look like something out of Blade Runner\". Besides referring to the truck as the \"Blade Runner Truck\", Musk chose to debut the truck in order to coincide with the film's setting of November 2019. The film's art designer Syd Mead praised the truck and said he was \"flattered\" by the homage to Blade Runner.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "Before filming began, Cinefantastique magazine commissioned Paul M. Sammon to write a special issue about Blade Runner's production which became the book Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. The book chronicles Blade Runner's evolution, focusing on film-set politics, especially the British director's experiences with his first American film crew; of which producer Alan Ladd, Jr. has said, \"Harrison wouldn't speak to Ridley and Ridley wouldn't speak to Harrison. By the end of the shoot Ford was 'ready to kill Ridley', said one colleague. He really would have taken him on if he hadn't been talked out of it.\" Future Noir has short cast biographies and quotations about their experiences as well as photographs of the film's production and preliminary sketches. A second edition of Future Noir was published in 2007, and additional materials not in either print edition have been published online.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "Philip K. Dick refused a $400,000 offer to write a Blade Runner novelization, saying: \"[I was] told the cheapo novelization would have to appeal to the twelve-year-old audience\" and it \"would have probably been disastrous to me artistically\". He added, \"That insistence on my part of bringing out the original novel and not doing the novelization – they were just furious. They finally recognized that there was a legitimate reason for reissuing the novel, even though it cost them money. It was a victory not just of contractual obligations but of theoretical principles.\" Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was eventually reprinted as a tie-in, with the film poster as a cover and the original title in parentheses below the Blade Runner title. Additionally, a novelization of the movie entitled Blade Runner: A Story of the Future by Les Martin was released in 1982. Archie Goodwin scripted the comic book adaptation, A Marvel Comics Super Special: Blade Runner, published in September 1982, which was illustrated by Al Williamson, Carlos Garzon, Dan Green, and Ralph Reese, and lettered by Ed King.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "Blue Dolphin Enterprises published the film's screenplay combined with selected production storyboards as The Illustrated Blade Runner (June 1982); a book of original production artwork by Syd Mead, Mentor Huebner, Charles Knode, Michael Kaplan, and Ridley Scott as Blade Runner Sketchbook (1982); and The Blade Runner Portfolio (1982), a collection of twelve photographic prints, similar to the artist portfolios released by their Schanes & Schanes imprint.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "There are two video games based on the film, both titled Blade Runner: one from 1985, a side-scrolling video game for Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC by CRL Group PLC, which is marked as \"a video game interpretation of the film score by Vangelis\" rather than of the film itself (due to licensing issues); and another from 1997, a point-and-click adventure for PC by Westwood Studios. The 1997 game has a non-linear plot based in the Blade Runner world, non-player characters that each ran in their own independent AI, and an unusual pseudo-3D engine (which eschewed polygonal solids in favor of voxel elements) that did not require the use of a 3D accelerator card to play the game. Eldon Tyrell, Gaff, Leon, Rachael, Chew, J. F. Sebastian and Howie Lee appear, and their voice files are recorded by the original actors, with the exception of Gaff, who is replaced by Javier Grajeda (as Victor Gardell) and Howie Lee, who is replaced by Toru Nagai. The player assumes the role of McCoy, another replicant-hunter working at the same time as Deckard.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "The television film (and later series) Total Recall 2070 was initially planned as a spin-off of the film Total Recall (based on Philip K. Dick's short story \"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale\"), but was produced as a hybrid of Total Recall and Blade Runner. Many similarities between Total Recall 2070 and Blade Runner were noted, as well as apparent influences on the show from Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel and the TV series Holmes & Yoyo.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "The film has been the subject of several documentaries.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "A sequel was released in 2017, titled Blade Runner 2049, with Ryan Gosling alongside Ford in the starring roles. It entered production in mid-2016 and is set decades after the first film. Harrison Ford reprised his role as Rick Deckard. The film won two Academy Awards, for cinematography and visual effects.", "title": "Sequel and related media" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "The world of Blade Runner has also come to be explored in animation. Blade Runner 2049 was preceded by the release of three short films that served as prequels, where the chronological first, Blade Runner Black Out 2022, was anime (the other two, 2036: Nexus Dawn and 2048: Nowhere to Run, were live action, not animated).", "title": "Sequel and related media" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "In November 2021, a Japanese-American anime television series called Blade Runner: Black Lotus was released. The series tells the story of a female replicant protagonist, rather than that of a male Blade Runner one.", "title": "Sequel and related media" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "Dick's friend K. W. Jeter wrote three authorized Blade Runner novels that continue Rick Deckard's story, attempting to resolve the differences between the film and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? These are Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995), Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996), and Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon (2000)", "title": "Sequel and related media" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "Blade Runner cowriter David Peoples wrote the 1998 action film Soldier, which he referred to as a \"sidequel\" or spiritual successor to the original film; the two are set in a shared universe. A bonus feature on the Blu-ray for Prometheus, the 2012 film by Scott set in the Alien universe, states that Eldon Tyrell, CEO of the Blade Runner Tyrell Corporation, was the mentor of Guy Pearce's character Peter Weyland.", "title": "Sequel and related media" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "In late 2022, Amazon announced a Blade Runner 2049 sequel series would be produced. On October 12, 2022, an apparent official approval to actually make a Blade Runner 2099 TV series was reported.", "title": "Sequel and related media" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "", "title": "External links" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and writer best known for co-founding the software giant Microsoft, along with his childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president, and chief software architect, while also being its largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He was a major entrepreneur of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Gates was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. In 1975, he and Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Gates led the company as its chairman and chief executive officer until stepping down as CEO in January 2000, succeeded by Steve Ballmer, but he remained chairman of the board of directors and became chief software architect. During the late 1990s, he was criticized for his business tactics, which were considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings. In June 2008, Gates transitioned into a part-time role at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation he and his then-wife Melinda had established in 2000. He stepped down as chairman of the Microsoft board in February 2014 and assumed the role of technology adviser to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. In March 2020, Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus on his philanthropic efforts on climate change, global health and development, and education.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the world's billionaires. From 1995 to 2017, he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world every year except in 2008 and from 2010 to 2013. In October 2017, he was surpassed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who had an estimated net worth of US$90.6 billion compared to Gates's net worth of US$89.9 billion at the time. In the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans in 2023, he was ranked 6th with a wealth of $115.0 billion. As of December 2023, Gates has an estimated net worth of US$140 billion, making him the fourth-richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Later in his career and since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft in 2008, Gates has pursued other business and philanthropic endeavors. He is the founder and chairman of several companies, including BEN, Cascade Investment, TerraPower, bgC3, and Breakthrough Energy. He has donated sizable amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reported to be the world's largest private charity. Through the foundation, he led an early 21st century vaccination campaign that significantly contributed to the eradication of the wild poliovirus in Africa. In 2010, Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washingtonas the only son of William H. Gates Sr. (1925–2020) and his first wife, Mary Maxwell Gates (1929–1994). His ancestry includes English, German, and Irish/Scots-Irish. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors of First Interstate BancSystem and United Way of America. Gates's maternal grandfather was J. W. Maxwell, a national bank president. He also has an older sister Kristi (Kristianne) and a younger sister Libby. He is the fourth of his name in his family but is known as William Gates III or \"Trey\" (i.e., three) because his father had the \"II\" suffix. The family lived in the Sand Point area of Seattle in a home that was damaged by a rare tornado when Gates was seven years old.", "title": "Early life and education" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "According to Gates, when he was young, his parents wanted him to pursue a career in law. During his childhood, his family regularly attended a church of the Congregational Christian Churches, a Protestant Reformed denomination. Gates was small for his age and was bullied as a child. The family encouraged competition; one visitor reported that \"it didn't matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock; there was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing\".", "title": "Early life and education" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "At age 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school, where he wrote his first software program. When he was in eighth grade, the Mothers' Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the students. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and he was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine, an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, Gates and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC) which banned Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Gates's best friend and first business partner Kent Evans for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.", "title": "Early life and education" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The four students formed the Lakeside Programmers Club to make money. At the end of the ban, they offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for extra computer time. Rather than using the system remotely via Teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including Fortran, Lisp, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970 when the company went out of business.", "title": "Early life and education" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The following year, a Lakeside teacher enlisted Gates and Evans to automate the school's class-scheduling system, providing them computer time and royalties in return. The duo worked diligently in order to have the program ready for their senior year. Towards the end of their junior year, Evans was killed in a mountain climbing accident, which Gates has described as one of the saddest days of his life. Gates then turned to Allen who helped him finish the system for Lakeside.", "title": "Early life and education" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "At 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen called Traf-O-Data to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. In 1972, he served as a congressional page in the House of Representatives. He was a National Merit Scholar when he graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973. He chose a pre-law major but took mathematics (including Math 55) and graduate level computer science courses. While at Harvard, he met fellow student and future Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Gates left Harvard after two years while Ballmer stayed and graduated magna cum laude. Years later, Ballmer succeeded Gates as Microsoft's CEO and maintained that position from 2000 until his resignation in 2014.", "title": "Early life and education" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems presented in a combinatorics class by professor Harry Lewis. His solution held the record as the fastest version for over 30 years, and its successor is faster by only 2%. His solution was formalized and published in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.", "title": "Early life and education" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen and joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. In 1975, the MITS Altair 8800 was released based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw the opportunity to start their own computer software company. Gates dropped out of Harvard that same year. His parents were supportive of him after seeing how much he wanted to start his own company. He explained his decision to leave Harvard: \"if things hadn't worked out, I could always go back to school. I was officially on leave.\"", "title": "Early life and education" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Gates read the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics which demonstrated the Altair 8800, and contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demonstration, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration was held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, New Mexico; it was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. MITS hired Allen, and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with him at MITS in November 1975. Allen named their partnership \"Micro-Soft\", a combination of \"microcomputer\" and \"software\", and their first office was in Albuquerque. The first employee Gates and Allen hired was their high school collaborator Ric Weiland. They dropped the hyphen within a year and officially registered the trade name \"Microsoft\" with the Secretary of the State of New Mexico on November 26, 1976. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.", "title": "Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Microsoft's Altair BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked out and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, he wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter in which he asserted that more than 90% of the users of Microsoft Altair BASIC had not paid Microsoft for it and the Altair \"hobby market\" was in danger of eliminating the incentive for any professional developers to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software. This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems. The company moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979.", "title": "Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Gates said he personally reviewed and often rewrote every line of code that the company produced in its first five years. As the company grew, he transitioned into a manager role, then an executive.", "title": "Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "DONKEY.BAS, is a computer game written in 1981 and included with early versions of the PC DOS operating system distributed with the original IBM PC. It is a driving game in which the player must avoid hitting donkeys. The game was written by Gates and Neil Konzen.", "title": "Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "IBM, the leading supplier of computer equipment to commercial enterprises at the time, approached Microsoft in July 1980 concerning software for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC, after Gates's mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, mentioned Microsoft to John Opel, IBM's then CEO. IBM first proposed that Microsoft write the BASIC interpreter. IBM's representatives also mentioned that they needed an operating system, and Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system. IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, however, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and asked if Microsoft could provide an operating system. A few weeks later, Gates and Allen proposed using 86-DOS, an operating system similar to CP/M, that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to be the exclusive licensing agent of 86-DOS, and later the full owner. Microsoft employed Paterson to adapt the operating system for the PC and delivered it to IBM as PC DOS for a one-time fee of $50,000.", "title": "Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The contract itself only earned Microsoft a relatively small fee. It was the prestige brought to Microsoft by IBM's adoption of their operating system that would be the origin of Microsoft's transformation from a small business to the leading software company in the world. Gates had not offered to transfer the copyright on the operating system to IBM because he believed that other personal computer makers would clone IBM's PC hardware. They did, making the IBM-compatible PC, running DOS, a de facto standard. The sales of MS-DOS (the version of DOS sold to customers other than IBM) made Microsoft a major player in the industry. The press quickly identified Microsoft as being very influential on the IBM PC. PC Magazine asked if Gates was \"the man behind the machine?\".", "title": "Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates the president and chairman of the board, with Paul Allen as vice president and vice chairman. In early 1983, Allen left the company after receiving a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, effectively ending the formal business partnership between Gates and Allen, which had been strained months prior due to a contentious dispute over Microsoft equity. Later in the decade, Gates repaired his relationship with Allen and together the two donated millions to their childhood school Lakeside. They remained friends until Allen's death in October 2018.", "title": "Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Microsoft and Gates launched their first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, in an attempt to fend off competition from Apple's Macintosh GUI, which had captivated consumers with its simplicity and ease of use. In August 1986, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, the partnership deteriorated due to mounting creative differences. The operating system grew out of DOS in an organic fashion over a decade until Windows 95, which hid the DOS prompt by default. Windows XP was released one year after Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO. Windows 8.1 was the last version of the OS released before Gates left the chair of the firm to John W. Thompson on February 5, 2014.", "title": "Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "During Microsoft's early years, Gates was an active software developer, particularly in the company's programming language products, but his primary role in most of the company's history was as a manager and executive. He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but he wrote code that shipped with the company's products as late as 1989. Jerry Pournelle wrote in 1985 when Gates announced Microsoft Excel: \"Bill Gates likes the program, not because it's going to make him a lot of money (although I'm sure it will do that), but because it's a neat hack.\"", "title": "Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his role at Microsoft to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He gradually divided his responsibilities between two successors when he placed Ray Ozzie in charge of management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy. The process took two years to fully transfer his duties to Ozzie and Mundie, and was completed on June 27, 2008.", "title": "Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft, Gates has continued his philanthropy and works on other projects. On February 4, 2014, Gates stepped down as chairman of Microsoft to become \"technology advisor\" at the firm to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.", "title": "Post Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Gates provided his perspective on a range of issues in a substantial interview that was published in the March 27, 2014, issue of Rolling Stone magazine. In the interview, Gates provided his perspective on climate change, his charitable activities, various tech companies and people involved in them, and the state of America. In response to a question about his greatest fear when he looks 50 years into the future, Gates stated: \"there'll be some really bad things that'll happen in the next 50 or 100 years, but hopefully none of them on the scale of, say, a million people that you didn't expect to die from a pandemic, or nuclear or bioterrorism.\" Gates also identified innovation as the \"real driver of progress\" and pronounced that \"America's way better today than it's ever been.\"", "title": "Post Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Gates has often expressed concern about the potential harms of superintelligence; in a Reddit \"ask me anything\", he stated that:", "title": "Post Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned.", "title": "Post Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "In an interview that was held at the TED conference in March 2015, with Baidu co-founder and CEO, Robin Li, Gates said he would \"highly recommend\" Nick Bostrom's recent work, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. During the conference, Gates warned that the world was not prepared for the next pandemic, a situation that would come to pass in late 2019 when the COVID-19 pandemic began. In March 2018, Gates met at his home in Seattle with Mohammed bin Salman, the reformist crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia to discuss investment opportunities for Saudi Vision 2030. In June 2019, Gates admitted that losing the mobile operating system race to Android was his biggest mistake. He stated that it was within their skill set of being the dominant player, but partially blames the antitrust litigation during the time. That same year, Gates became an advisory board member of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum.", "title": "Post Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "On March 13, 2020, Microsoft announced Gates would be leaving his board positions at Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft to dedicate himself to philanthropic endeavors such as climate change, global health and development, and education.", "title": "Post Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates has widely been looked at by media outlets as an expert on the issue, despite him not being a public official or having any prior medical training. His foundation did, however, establish the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator in 2020 to hasten the development and evaluation of new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients for COVID-19, and, as of February 2021, Gates expressed that he and Anthony Fauci frequently talk and collaborate on matters including vaccines and other medical innovations to fight the pandemic.", "title": "Post Microsoft" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Gates has a multi-billion dollar investment portfolio with stakes in companies in various sectors and has participated in several entrepreneurial ventures beyond Microsoft, including:", "title": "Business ventures and investments (partial list)" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Gates considers climate change and global access to energy to be critical, interrelated issues. He has urged governments and the private sector to invest in research and development to make clean, reliable energy cheaper. Gates envisions that a breakthrough innovation in sustainable energy technology could drive down both greenhouse gas emissions and poverty, and bring economic benefits by stabilizing energy prices. In 2011, he said: \"If you gave me the choice between picking the next 10 presidents or ensuring that energy is environmentally friendly and a quarter as costly, I'd pick the energy thing.\"", "title": "Climate change and energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "In 2015, he wrote about the challenge of transitioning the world's energy system from one based primarily on fossil fuels to one based on sustainable energy sources. Global energy transitions have historically taken decades. He wrote, \"I believe we can make this transition faster, both because the pace of innovation is accelerating, and because we have never had such an urgent reason to move from one source of energy to another.\" This rapid transition, according to Gates, would depend on increased government funding for basic research and financially risky private-sector investment, to enable innovation in diverse areas such as nuclear energy, grid energy storage to facilitate greater use of solar and wind energy, and solar fuels.", "title": "Climate change and energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "Gates spearheaded two initiatives that he announced at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. One was Mission Innovation, in which 20 national governments pledged to double their spending on research and development for carbon-free energy in over five years' time. Another initiative was Breakthrough Energy, a group of investors who agreed to fund high-risk startups in clean energy technologies. Gates, who had already invested $1 billion of his own money in innovative energy startups, committed a further $1 billion to Breakthrough Energy. In December 2020, he called for the U.S. federal government to create institutes for clean energy research, analogous to the National Institutes of Health. Gates has also urged rich nations to shift to 100% synthetic beef industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food production.", "title": "Climate change and energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Gates has been criticised for holding a large stake in Signature Aviation, a company that services emissions-intensive private jets. In 2019, he began to divest from fossil fuels. He does not expect divestment itself to have much practical impact, but says that if his efforts to provide alternatives were to fail, he would not want to personally benefit from an increase in fossil fuel stock prices. After he published his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, parts of the climate activist community criticized Gate's approach as technological solutionism. In 2022, educational streamer Wondrium produced the series \"Solving for Zero: The Search for Climate Innovation\" inspired by the book.", "title": "Climate change and energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "In June 2021, Gates's company TerraPower and Warren Buffett's PacifiCorp announced the first sodium nuclear reactor in Wyoming. Wyoming Governor Mike Gordon hailed the project as a step toward carbon-negative nuclear power. Wyoming Senator John Barrasso also said that it could boost the state's once-active uranium mining industry.", "title": "Climate change and energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Gates spent many efforts to make pass the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 because of his importance to climate. He tried to convince Joe Manchin to support a climate bill from the year 2019 and especially in the months before the adoption of the bill. The bill should cut the global greenhouse gas emissions in a level similar to \"eliminating the annual planet-warming pollution of France and Germany combined\" and may help to limit the warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees – the target of the Paris Agreement. He thanked both Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer for their efforts in a guest essay in The New York Times, where he said \"Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 may be the single most important piece of climate legislation in American history\" given its potential to spur development of new technologies. Gates gave further insights on climate change in his commencement address at Northern Arizona University on May 6, 2023, where he was bestowed an honorary doctorate.", "title": "Climate change and energy" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "In 1998, Gates rejected the need for regulation of the software industry in testimony before the United States Senate. During the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) investigation of Microsoft in the 1990s, Gates was reportedly upset at then Commissioner Dennis Yao for \"float[ing] a line of hypothetical questions suggesting possible curbs on Microsoft's growing monopoly power\". According to one source:", "title": "Political positions" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Gates was vexed. \"He started by calling Yao's ideas socialistic,\" recalls a source familiar with the July 15 meeting, \"and as he got angrier and angrier and louder and louder, he got into calling them Communistic.\"", "title": "Political positions" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "On February 18, 2021, after Facebook and Twitter had banned Donald Trump from their platforms as a result of the 2020 United States presidential election which led to the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Gates said a permanent ban of Trump \"would be a shame\" and would be an \"extreme measure\". He warned that it would cause \"polarization\" if users with different political views divide up among various social networks, and said: \"I don't think banning somebody who actually did get a fair number of votes (in the presidential election) – well less than a majority – but I don't think having him off forever would be that good.\"", "title": "Political positions" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "In April 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates was criticized for suggesting that pharmaceutical companies should hold onto patents for COVID-19 vaccines. The criticism came due to the possibility of this preventing poorer nations from obtaining adequate vaccines. Tara Van Ho of the University of Essex stated, \"Gates speaks as if all the lives being lost in India are inevitable but eventually the West will help when in reality the US & UK are holding their feet on the neck of developing states by refusing to break [intellectual property rights] protections. It's disgusting.\"", "title": "Political positions" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "Gates is opposed to the TRIPS waiver. Bloomberg News reported him as saying he argued that Oxford University should not give away the rights to its COVID-19 information, as it had announced, but instead sell it to a single industry partner, as it did. His views on the value of legal monopolies in medicine have been linked to his views on legal monopolies in software.", "title": "Political positions" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "Gates has been critical of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. According to Gates, cryptocurrencies provide no \"valuable output\", contribute nothing to society, and pose a danger especially for smaller investors who could not survive the potentially high losses. Gates also does not own any cryptocurrencies himself.", "title": "Political positions" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and donated some of his Microsoft stock in 1994 to create the \"William H. Gates Foundation\". In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations and donated stock valued at $5 billion to create the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was identified by the Funds for NGOs company in 2013, as the world's largest charitable foundation, with assets reportedly valued at more than $34.6 billion. The foundation allows benefactors to access information that shows how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust. Gates, through his foundation, also donated $20 million to the Carnegie Mellon University for a new building to be named Gates Center for Computer Science which opened in 2009.", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "Gates has credited the generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller as a major influence. He and his father met with Rockefeller several times, and their charity work is partly modeled on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, whereby they are interested in tackling the global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations.", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "The foundation is organized into five program areas: Global Development Division, Global Health Division, United States Division, and Global Policy & Advocacy Division. Among others, it supports a wide range of public health projects, granting aid to fight transmissible diseases such AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, as well as widespread vaccine programs to eradicate polio. It grants funds to learning institutes and libraries and supports scholarships at universities. The foundation established a water, sanitation and hygiene program to provide sustainable sanitation services in poor countries. Its agriculture division supports the International Rice Research Institute in developing Golden Rice, a genetically modified rice variant used to combat vitamin A deficiency. The foundation aims to provide women and girls in the developing world with information and support regarding contraception and, ultimately, universal access to consensual family planning. In 2007, the Los Angeles Times criticized the foundation for investing its assets in companies that have been accused of worsening poverty, pollution and pharmaceutical firms that do not sell to developing countries. Although the foundation announced a review of its investments to assess social responsibility, it was subsequently canceled and upheld its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Gates delivered his thoughts in a fireside chat moderated by journalist and news anchor Shereen Bhan virtually at the Singapore FinTech Festival on December 8, 2020, on the topic, \"Building Infrastructure for Resilience: What the COVID-19 Response Can Teach Us About How to Scale Financial Inclusion\".", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "Governments are there to think ahead to bad things that might happen. In the case of (the COVID-19) pandemic, not enough was done. We can't forget that another pandemic will come and we'll need to invest in being ready in that, ... while not forgetting that we were not prepared and we're going to have to invest – just like having a fire department – some money in an intelligent way and actually simulate what might happen and make sure that we're ready for it.", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "Gates favors the normalization of COVID-19 masks. In a November 2020 interview, he said: \"What are these, like, nudists? I mean, you know, we ask you to wear pants, and no American says, or very few Americans say, that that's, like, some terrible thing.\"", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "Melinda Gates suggested that people should emulate the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, who sold their home and gave away half of its value, as detailed in their book, The Power of Half. Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9, 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates and investor Warren Buffett each signed a commitment they called the \"Giving Pledge\", which is a commitment by all three to donate at least half of their wealth, over the course of time, to charity.", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Gates has also provided personal donations to educational institutions. In 1999, Gates donated $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the construction of a computer laboratory named the \"William H. Gates Building\" that was designed by architect Frank Gehry. While Microsoft had previously given financial support to the institution, this was the first personal donation received from Gates.", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "The Maxwell Dworkin Laboratory of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is named after the mothers of both Gates and Microsoft President Steven A. Ballmer, both of whom were students (Ballmer was a member of the school's graduating class of 1977, while Gates left his studies for Microsoft), and donated funds for the laboratory's construction. Gates also donated $6 million to the construction of the Gates Computer Science Building, completed in January 1996, on the campus of Stanford University. The building contains the Computer Science Department and the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL) of Stanford's Engineering department.", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "Since 2005, Gates and his foundation have taken an interest in solving global sanitation problems. For example, they announced the \"Reinvent the Toilet Challenge\", which has received considerable media interest. To raise awareness for the topic of sanitation and possible solutions, Gates drank water that was \"produced from human feces\" in 2014 – it was produced from a sewage sludge treatment process called the Omni Processor. In early 2015, he also appeared with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show and challenged him to see if he could taste the difference between this reclaimed water or bottled water.", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "In November 2017, Gates said he would give $50 million to the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital fund that seeks treatment for Alzheimer's disease. He also pledged an additional $50 million to start-up ventures working in Alzheimer's research. Bill and Melinda Gates have said that they intend to leave their three children $10 million each as their inheritance. With only $30 million kept in the family, they are expected to give away about 99.96% of their wealth. On August 25, 2018, Gates distributed $600,000 through his foundation via UNICEF which is helping flood affected victims in Kerala, India.", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "In June 2018, Gates offered free ebooks, to all new graduates of U.S. colleges and universities, and in 2021, offered free ebooks, to all college and university students around the world. The Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation partially funds OpenStax, which creates and provides free digital textbooks.", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "In July 2022 he reiterated the commitment he had made by starting The Giving Pledge campaign by announcing on his Twitter channel he planned to give 'virtually all' his wealth to charity and eventually 'move off of the list of the world's richest people.'", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "On April 29, 2017, Gates partnered with Swiss tennis legend Roger Federer in playing in the Match for Africa 4, a noncompetitive tennis match at a sold-out Key Arena in Seattle. The event was in support of the Roger Federer Foundation's charity efforts in Africa. Federer and Gates played against John Isner, the top-ranked American player for much of this decade, and Mike McCready, the lead guitarist for Pearl Jam. The pair won the match 6 games to 4. Overall, they raised $2 million for children in Africa. The following year, Gates and Federer returned to play in the Match for Africa 5 on March 5, 2018, at San Jose's SAP Center. Their opponents were Jack Sock, one of the top American players and a grand slam winner in doubles, and Savannah Guthrie, a co-anchor for NBC's Today show. Gates and Federer recorded their second match victory together by a score of 6–3 and the event raised over $2.5 million.", "title": "Philanthropy" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "Gates has so far authored four books:", "title": "Books" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "Gates is an avid reader, and the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby. He also enjoys bridge, tennis and golf. His days are planned for him on a minute-by-minute basis, similarly to the U.S. president's schedule. Despite his wealth and extensive business travel, Gates flew coach (economy class) in commercial aircraft until 1997, when he bought a private jet.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "Gates purchased the Codex Leicester, a collection of scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci, for US$30.8 million at an auction in 1994. In 1998, he reportedly paid $30 million for the original 1885 maritime painting Lost on the Grand Banks, at the time a record price for an American painting. In 2016, he revealed that he was color-blind. On May 10, 2022, Gates said that he tested positive for COVID-19 and was experiencing mild symptoms. Gates has received three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "Gates married Melinda French on the Hawaiian Island of Lānaʻi on January 1, 1994. They met in 1987 after Melinda began working at Microsoft. At the time of their marriage, Gates was given permission by Melinda to spend limited time with his ex-girlfriend, businesswoman Ann Winblad. Bill and Melinda have three children: Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe. The family's residence is an earth-sheltered mansion in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. In 2009, property taxes on the mansion were reported to be US$1.063 million, on a total assessed value of US$147.5 million. The 66,000-square-foot (6,100 m) estate has a 60-foot (18 m) swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a 2,500-square-foot (230 m) gym and a 1,000-square-foot (93 m) dining room. On May 3, 2021, the Gateses announced they had decided to divorce after 27 years of marriage and 34 years as a couple. They said they would keep working together on charitable efforts. The Wall Street Journal reported that Melinda had been meeting with divorce attorneys since 2019, citing interviews that suggested Bill's ties with Jeffrey Epstein was at least one of her concerns. The divorce was finalized on August 2, 2021.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "Gates's public image has changed over the years. At first he was perceived as a brilliant but ruthless \"robber baron\", a \"nerd-turned-tycoon\". Starting in 2000 with the foundation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and particularly after he stepped down as head of Microsoft, he turned his attention to philanthropy, spending more than $50 billion on causes like health, poverty, and education. His image morphed from \"tyrannical technocrat to saintly savior\" to a \"huggable billionaire techno-philanthropist\", celebrated on magazine covers and sought after for his opinions on major issues like global health and climate change. Still another shift in public opinion came in 2021 with the announcement that he and Melinda were divorcing. Coverage of that proceeding brought out information about romantic pursuits of women who worked for him, a long-term extra-marital affair, and a friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This information and his response to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in some deterioration of his public image, going from \"a lovable nerd who was out to save the world\" to \"a tech supervillain who wants to protect profits over public health.\"", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "Investigative journalist Tim Schwab has accused Gates of using his contributions to the media to shape their coverage of him in order to protect his public image. In September 2022, Politico published an exposé critical of NGO leadership at the helm of the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic response, written in cooperation with the German newspaper Welt. Criticisms included the interconnectivity of the non-profits with Gates, as well as his personal lack of formal credentials in medicine.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "Gates and the projects of his foundation have been the subject of many conspiracy theories that proliferate on Facebook and elsewhere. He has been implausibly accused of attempting to depopulate the world, distributing harmful or unethical vaccines, and implanting people with privacy-violating microchips. These largely unfounded theories reached a new level of influence during the COVID-19 pandemic when, according to New York Times journalist Rory Smith, the uncertainties of pandemic life drove people to seek explanations from the Internet. When asked about the theories, Gates has remarked that some people are tempted by the \"simple explanation\" that an evil person rather than biological factors are to blame, and that he does not know for what purpose anyone believes he would want to track them with microchips.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gates said in regard to his faith: \"The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important. We've raised our kids in a religious way; they've gone to the Catholic church that Melinda goes to and I participate in. I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that's kind of a religious belief. I mean, it's at least a moral belief.\" In the same 2014 interview he also said: \"I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill. But the mystery and the beauty of the world is overwhelmingly amazing, and there's no scientific explanation of how it came about. To say that it was generated by random numbers, that does seem, you know, sort of an uncharitable view [laughs]. I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know.\"", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "In 1999, his wealth briefly surpassed US$100 billion making him the first person ever to achieve the feat. Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings declined due to the fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he had made to his charitable foundations. In May 2006, Gates remarked that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention that it brought. In March 2010, Gates was the second wealthiest person after Carlos Slim, but regained the top position in 2013, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Slim retook the position again in June 2014 (but then lost the top position back to Gates). Between 2009 and 2014, his wealth doubled from US$40 billion to US$82 billion. In October 2017, Gates was surpassed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world. On November 15, 2019, he once again became the richest person in the world after a 48% increase in Microsoft shares, surpassing Bezos. Gates told the BBC, \"I've paid more tax than any individual ever, and gladly so ... I've paid over $6 billion in taxes.\" He is a proponent of higher taxes, particularly for the rich.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "By 2017, Gates had held the top spot on the list of The World's Billionaires in 18 out of the previous 23 years. Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of US$616,667 and US$350,000 bonus totalling US$966,667. In 1989, he founded Corbis, a digital imaging company. In 2004, he became a board member of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "In 1987, Gates was listed as a billionaire in Forbes magazine's first ever America's richest issue and was the world's youngest self-made billionaire with a net worth of $1.25 billion. Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes The World's Billionaires list and was the wealthiest person from 1995 to 1996, 1998 to 2007, 2009, and held the spot until 2018 before being overtaken by Jeff Bezos. Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans from 1993 through to 2007, 2009, and 2014 through 2017.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "During his tenure as CEO of Microsoft, Gates approved of many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices. In the 1998 United States v. Microsoft case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words such as \"compete\", \"concerned\", and \"we\". Later in the year, when portions of the videotaped deposition were played back in court, the judge was seen laughing and shaking his head. BusinessWeek reported:", "title": "Controversies" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "Early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying \"I don't recall\" so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance were directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of e-mail that Gates both sent and received.", "title": "Controversies" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "Gates later said that he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions. \"Did I fence with Boies? ... I plead guilty ... rudeness to Boies in the first degree.\" Despite Gates's denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization, tying and blocking competition, each in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.", "title": "Controversies" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "Gates had primary responsibility for Microsoft's product strategy from the company's founding in 1975 until 2006. He gained a reputation for being distant from others; an industry executive complained in 1981 that \"Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls.\" An Atari executive recalled that he showed Gates a game and defeated him 35 of 37 times. When they met again a month later, Gates \"won or tied every game. He had studied the game until he solved it. That is a competitor\".", "title": "Controversies" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "In the early 1980s, while business partner Paul Allen was undergoing treatments for cancer, Gates — according to Allen — conspired to reduce the latter's share in Microsoft by issuing himself stock options. In his autobiography, Allen would later recall that Gates was \"scheming to rip me off. It was mercenary opportunism plain and simple\". Gates says he remembers the episode differently. Allen would also recall that Gates was prone to shouting episodes.", "title": "Controversies" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "Gates has often been accused of bullying Microsoft employees. He met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers, and the managers described him as being verbally combative, berating them for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk. Gates saw competition in personal terms; when Borland's Turbo Pascal performed better than Microsoft's own tools, he yelled at programming director Greg Whitten \"for half an hour\" because, Gates believed, Borland's Philippe Kahn had surpassed Gates. Gates interrupted presentations with such comments as \"that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard\" and \"why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?\" The target of his outburst would then have to defend the proposal in detail until Gates was fully convinced. Not all harsh language was criticism; a manager recalled that \"You're full of shit. That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard\" meant that Gates was amazed. \"In the lore of Microsoft, if Bill says that to you, you're made\". When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, \"I'll do it over the weekend\".", "title": "Controversies" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "A 2019 New York Times article reported that Gates's relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein started in 2011, just a few years after Epstein was convicted for procuring a child for prostitution, and continued for some years, including a visit to Epstein's house with his wife in the fall of 2013, despite her declared discomfort. Gates said in 2011 about Epstein: \"His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me\".", "title": "Controversies" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "The depth of the friendship between Gates and Epstein is unclear though Gates generally commented that \"I met him. I didn't have any business relationship or friendship with him\". However, Gates visited Epstein \"many times, despite [Epstein's] past\". It was reported that Epstein and Gates \"discussed the Gates Foundation and philanthropy\". However, in an interview in 2019 Gates completely denied any connection between Epstein and the Gates Foundation or his philanthropy generally. In August 2021, Gates said the reason he had meetings with Epstein was because Gates hoped Epstein could provide money for philanthropic work, though nothing came of the idea. Gates added, \"It was a huge mistake to spend time with him, to give him the credibility of being there.\" Gates came under further scrutiny after it was revealed that he had travelled on Epstein's private jet, though further claims about Gates travelling to Little St James proved unsubstantiated.", "title": "Controversies" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "It has also been reported that Epstein and Gates met with Nobel Committee chair Thorbjørn Jagland at his residence in Strasbourg, France in March 2013 to discuss the Nobel Prize. Also in attendance were representatives of the International Peace Institute which has received millions in grants from the Gates Foundation, including a $2.5 million \"community engagement\" grant in October 2013. In 2023, it was reported that Epstein threatened to expose an alleged affair Gates had with a Russian bridge player.", "title": "Controversies" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "Gates was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs on January 31, 2016, in which he talked about his relationships with his father and Steve Jobs, meeting Melinda Ann French, the start of Microsoft and some of his habits (for example reading The Economist \"from cover to cover every week\"). His choice of things to take on a desert island were, for music: \"Blue Skies\" by Willie Nelson; a book: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker; and luxury item: a DVD Collection of Lectures from The Teaching Company.", "title": "Depiction in media" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "Gates made a guest appearance as himself on the TV show The Big Bang Theory. The episode on which he appeared was appropriately titled \"The Gates Excitation\". He also appeared in a cameo role in 2019 on the series finale of Silicon Valley. Gates was parodied in The Simpsons episode \"Das Bus\".", "title": "Depiction in media" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "In 2023, Gates was the interviewee in an episode of the Amol Rajan Interviews series on BBC Two, and was the subject of an episode of the UK Channel 4 series The Billionaires Who Made Our World.", "title": "Depiction in media" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bourbon may refer to:", "title": "" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Belgian Blue (French: 'Blanc-Bleu Belge', Dutch: 'Belgisch Witblauw', both literally meaning \"Belgian White-Blue\") is a breed of beef cattle from Belgium. It may also be known as the Race de la Moyenne et Haute Belgique, or dikbil (literally \"fat buttocks\" in Dutch). Alternative names for this breed include Belgian Blue-White; Belgian White and Blue Pied; Belgian White Blue; Blue; and Blue Belgian. The Belgian Blue's extremely lean, hyper-sculpted, ultra-muscular physique is termed \"double-muscling\". The double-muscling phenotype is a heritable condition resulting in an increased number of muscle fibres (hyperplasia), instead of the (normal) enlargement of individual muscle fibres (hypertrophy).", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "This particular trait is shared with another breed of cattle known as Piedmontese. Both of these breeds have an increased ability to convert feed into lean muscle, which causes these particular breeds' meat to have a reduced fat content and reduced tenderness. The Belgian Blue is named after its typically blue-grey mottled hair colour; however, its actual colour can vary from white to black.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The breed originated in central and upper Belgium in the 19th century, from crossing local breeds with a Shorthorn breed of cattle from the United Kingdom. Charolais cattle possibly were cross-bred, as well. Belgian Blue cattle were first used as a dairy and beef breed. The modern beef breed was developed in the 1950s by Professor Hanset, working at an artificial insemination centre in Liège Province. The breed's characteristic gene mutation was maintained through linebreeding to the point where the condition was a fixed property in the Belgian Blue breed. In 1978, Belgian Blue cattle were introduced to the United States by Nick Tutt, a farmer from central Canada who emigrated to West Texas and showed the cattle to universities in the region.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The Belgian Blue has been exported to many parts of the world; it is reported to DAD-IS by twenty-four countries, in Africa, the Americas, Europe and Oceania. Of these, ten report population data; in 2022 the worldwide population was estimated to be 107875.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The Belgian Blue has a natural mutation in the myostatin gene which codes for the protein, myostatin (\"myo\" meaning muscle and \"statin\" meaning stop). Myostatin is a protein that inhibits muscle development. This mutation also interferes with fat deposition, resulting in very lean meat. The truncated myostatin gene is unable to function in its normal capacity, resulting in accelerated lean muscle growth. Muscle growth is due primarily to physiological changes in the animal's muscle cells (fibres) from hypertrophy to a hyperplasia mode of growth. This particular type of growth is seen early in the fetus of a pregnant dam, which results in a calf that is born with two times the number of muscle fibres at birth than a calf with no myostatin gene mutation. In addition, a newborn double-muscled calf's birth weight is significantly greater than that of a normal calf.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Belgian Blue cattle have improved feed conversion ratio (FCR) due to lower feed intake compared to weight gain due to an altered composition of body weight gain which includes increased protein and decreased fat deposition. The Belgian Blue's bone structure is the same as normal cattle, albeit holding a greater amount of muscle, which causes them to have a greater meat to bone ratio. These cattle have a muscle yield around 20% more on average than cattle without the genetic myostatin mutation. Because of this breed's increased muscle yield, a diet containing higher protein is required to compensate for the altered mode of weight gain. During finishing, this breed requires high-energy (concentrated) feeds, and will not yield the same results if put on a high-fibre diet.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Double-muscled cows routinely experience dystocia – difficulty in parturition – even when bred to normal beef bulls or dairy bulls, because of a narrower birth canal; the birth weight and width of the calf also may be higher than in animals without the double-muscling gene. Calves are commonly born by Caesarean section; cows may be able to survive five or six deliveries of this type.", "title": "Breed problems" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "In bulls, testicular weight and semen quantity and quality are lower than in other cattle, perhaps because of the greater amount of connective tissue in the testicles. however this is less of an issue when compared to the dam's difficulties in calving.", "title": "Breed problems" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The economics of breeding and raising Belgian Blue cattle are inconclusive because of complications experienced during parturition and metabolic demand for more concentrated feeds. The breed's increased need to have Caesarean sections when calving means increased cost and added work, and can become a welfare issue. However, the carcass value of double-muscled animals may be enhanced due to increased dressing yield, lean carcass content, and upgrading of some cuts leading to a higher proportion of higher valued cuts. The slower rate of fat deposition causes slaughtering to be delayed in most cases, which means an increase in maintenance costs in those animals. Belgian Blue cattle require more skilled management and do not thrive in harsh environments. For these reasons and others, the breed's overall production efficiency in an economic sense is still unclear.", "title": "Economic efficiency" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Boron is a chemical element; it has symbol B and atomic number 5. In its crystalline form it is a brittle, dark, lustrous metalloid; in its amorphous form it is a brown powder. As the lightest element of the boron group it has three valence electrons for forming covalent bonds, resulting in many compounds such as boric acid, the mineral sodium borate, and the ultra-hard crystals of boron carbide and boron nitride.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Boron is synthesized entirely by cosmic ray spallation and supernovae and not by stellar nucleosynthesis, so it is a low-abundance element in the Solar System and in the Earth's crust. It constitutes about 0.001 percent by weight of Earth's crust. It is concentrated on Earth by the water-solubility of its more common naturally occurring compounds, the borate minerals. These are mined industrially as evaporites, such as borax and kernite. The largest known deposits are in Turkey, the largest producer of boron minerals.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Elemental boron is a metalloid that is found in small amounts in meteoroids, but chemically uncombined boron is not otherwise found naturally on Earth. Industrially, the very pure element is produced with difficulty because of contamination by carbon or other elements that resist removal. Several allotropes exist: amorphous boron is a brown powder; crystalline boron is silvery to black, extremely hard (about 9.5 on the Mohs scale), and a poor electrical conductor at room temperature. The primary use of the element itself is as boron filaments with applications similar to carbon fibers in some high-strength materials.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Boron is primarily used in chemical compounds. About half of all production consumed globally is an additive in fiberglass for insulation and structural materials. The next leading use is in polymers and ceramics in high-strength, lightweight structural and heat-resistant materials. Borosilicate glass is desired for its greater strength and thermal shock resistance than ordinary soda lime glass. As sodium perborate, it is used as a bleach. A small amount is used as a dopant in semiconductors, and reagent intermediates in the synthesis of organic fine chemicals. A few boron-containing organic pharmaceuticals are used or are in study. Natural boron is composed of two stable isotopes, one of which (boron-10) has a number of uses as a neutron-capturing agent.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The intersection of boron with biology is very small. Consensus on it as essential for mammalian life is lacking. Borates have low toxicity in mammals (similar to table salt) but are more toxic to arthropods and are occasionally used as insecticides. Boron-containing organic antibiotics are known. Although only traces are required, it is an essential plant nutrient.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The word boron was coined from borax, the mineral from which it was isolated, by analogy with carbon, which boron resembles chemically.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Borax in its mineral form (then known as tincal) first saw use as a glaze, beginning in China circa 300 AD. Some crude borax traveled westward, and was apparently mentioned by the alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan around 700 AD. Marco Polo brought some glazes back to Italy in the 13th century. Georgius Agricola, in around 1600, reported the use of borax as a flux in metallurgy. In 1777, boric acid was recognized in the hot springs (soffioni) near Florence, Italy, at which point it became known as sal sedativum, with ostensible medical benefits. The mineral was named sassolite, after Sasso Pisano in Italy. Sasso was the main source of European borax from 1827 to 1872, when American sources replaced it. Boron compounds were relatively rarely used until the late 1800s when Francis Marion Smith's Pacific Coast Borax Company first popularized and produced them in volume at low cost.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Boron was not recognized as an element until it was isolated by Sir Humphry Davy and by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis Jacques Thénard. In 1808 Davy observed that electric current sent through a solution of borates produced a brown precipitate on one of the electrodes. In his subsequent experiments, he used potassium to reduce boric acid instead of electrolysis. He produced enough boron to confirm a new element and named it boracium. Gay-Lussac and Thénard used iron to reduce boric acid at high temperatures. By oxidizing boron with air, they showed that boric acid is its oxidation product. Jöns Jacob Berzelius identified it as an element in 1824. Pure boron was arguably first produced by the American chemist Ezekiel Weintraub in 1909.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The earliest routes to elemental boron involved the reduction of boric oxide with metals such as magnesium or aluminium. However, the product is almost always contaminated with borides of those metals. Pure boron can be prepared by reducing volatile boron halides with hydrogen at high temperatures. Ultrapure boron for use in the semiconductor industry is produced by the decomposition of diborane at high temperatures and then further purified by the zone melting or Czochralski processes.", "title": "Preparation of elemental boron in the laboratory" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The production of boron compounds does not involve the formation of elemental boron, but exploits the convenient availability of borates.", "title": "Preparation of elemental boron in the laboratory" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Boron is similar to carbon in its capability to form stable covalently bonded molecular networks. Even nominally disordered (amorphous) boron contains regular boron icosahedra which are bonded randomly to each other without long-range order. Crystalline boron is a very hard, black material with a melting point of above 2000 °C. It forms four major allotropes: α-rhombohedral and β-rhombohedral (α-R and β-R), γ-orthorhombic (γ) and β-tetragonal (β-T). All four phases are stable at ambient conditions, and β-rhombohedral is the most common and stable. An α-tetragonal phase also exists (α-T), but is very difficult to produce without significant contamination. Most of the phases are based on B12 icosahedra, but the γ phase can be described as a rocksalt-type arrangement of the icosahedra and B2 atomic pairs. It can be produced by compressing other boron phases to 12–20 GPa and heating to 1500–1800 °C; it remains stable after releasing the temperature and pressure. The β-T phase is produced at similar pressures, but higher temperatures of 1800–2200 °C. The α-T and β-T phases might coexist at ambient conditions, with the β-T phase being the more stable. Compressing boron above 160 GPa produces a boron phase with an as yet unknown structure, and this phase is a superconductor at temperatures below 6–12 K. Borospherene (fullerene-like B40 molecules) and borophene (proposed graphene-like structure) were described in 2014.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Elemental boron is rare and poorly studied because the pure material is extremely difficult to prepare. Most studies of \"boron\" involve samples that contain small amounts of carbon. The chemical behavior of boron resembles that of silicon more than aluminium. Crystalline boron is chemically inert and resistant to attack by boiling hydrofluoric or hydrochloric acid. When finely divided, it is attacked slowly by hot concentrated hydrogen peroxide, hot concentrated nitric acid, hot sulfuric acid or hot mixture of sulfuric and chromic acids.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "The rate of oxidation of boron depends on the crystallinity, particle size, purity and temperature. Boron does not react with air at room temperature, but at higher temperatures it burns to form boron trioxide:", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Boron undergoes halogenation to give trihalides; for example,", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The trichloride in practice is usually made from the oxide.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Boron is the lightest element having an electron in a p-orbital in its ground state. Unlike most other p-elements, it rarely obeys the octet rule and usually places only six electrons (in three molecular orbitals) onto its valence shell. Boron is the prototype for the boron group (the IUPAC group 13), although the other members of this group are metals and more typical p-elements (only aluminium to some extent shares boron's aversion to the octet rule).", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Boron also has much lower electronegativity than subsequent period 2 elements. For the latter, lithium salts are common e.g. lithium fluoride, lithium hydroxide, lithium amide, and methyllithium, but lithium boryllides are extraordinarily rare. Strong bases do not deprotonate a borohydride R2BH to the boryl anion R2B, instead forming the octet-complete adduct R2HB-base.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "In the most familiar compounds, boron has the formal oxidation state III. These include oxides, sulfides, nitrides, and halides.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "The trihalides adopt a planar trigonal structure. These compounds are Lewis acids in that they readily form adducts with electron-pair donors, which are called Lewis bases. For example, fluoride (F) and boron trifluoride (BF3) combined to give the tetrafluoroborate anion, BF4. Boron trifluoride is used in the petrochemical industry as a catalyst. The halides react with water to form boric acid.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "It is found in nature on Earth almost entirely as various oxides of B(III), often associated with other elements. More than one hundred borate minerals contain boron in oxidation state +3. These minerals resemble silicates in some respect, although it is often found not only in a tetrahedral coordination with oxygen, but also in a trigonal planar configuration. Unlike silicates, boron minerals never contain it with coordination number greater than four. A typical motif is exemplified by the tetraborate anions of the common mineral borax, shown at left. The formal negative charge of the tetrahedral borate center is balanced by metal cations in the minerals, such as the sodium (Na) in borax. The tourmaline group of borate-silicates is also a very important boron-bearing mineral group, and a number of borosilicates are also known to exist naturally.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Boranes are chemical compounds of boron and hydrogen, with the generic formula of BxHy. These compounds do not occur in nature. Many of the boranes readily oxidise on contact with air, some violently. The parent member BH3 is called borane, but it is known only in the gaseous state, and dimerises to form diborane, B2H6. The larger boranes all consist of boron clusters that are polyhedral, some of which exist as isomers. For example, isomers of B20H26 are based on the fusion of two 10-atom clusters.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "The most important boranes are diborane B2H6 and two of its pyrolysis products, pentaborane B5H9 and decaborane B10H14. A large number of anionic boron hydrides are known, e.g. [B12H12].", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "The formal oxidation number in boranes is positive, and is based on the assumption that hydrogen is counted as −1 as in active metal hydrides. The mean oxidation number for the borons is then simply the ratio of hydrogen to boron in the molecule. For example, in diborane B2H6, the boron oxidation state is +3, but in decaborane B10H14, it is /5 or +1.4. In these compounds the oxidation state of boron is often not a whole number.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "The boron nitrides are notable for the variety of structures that they adopt. They exhibit structures analogous to various allotropes of carbon, including graphite, diamond, and nanotubes. In the diamond-like structure, called cubic boron nitride (tradename Borazon), boron atoms exist in the tetrahedral structure of carbon atoms in diamond, but one in every four B-N bonds can be viewed as a coordinate covalent bond, wherein two electrons are donated by the nitrogen atom which acts as the Lewis base to a bond to the Lewis acidic boron(III) centre. Cubic boron nitride, among other applications, is used as an abrasive, as it has a hardness comparable with diamond (the two substances are able to produce scratches on each other). In the BN compound analogue of graphite, hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), the positively charged boron and negatively charged nitrogen atoms in each plane lie adjacent to the oppositely charged atom in the next plane. Consequently, graphite and h-BN have very different properties, although both are lubricants, as these planes slip past each other easily. However, h-BN is a relatively poor electrical and thermal conductor in the planar directions.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "A large number of organoboron compounds are known and many are useful in organic synthesis. Many are produced from hydroboration, which employs diborane, B2H6, a simple borane chemical, or carboboration. Organoboron(III) compounds are usually tetrahedral or trigonal planar, for example, tetraphenylborate, [B(C6H5)4] vs. triphenylborane, B(C6H5)3. However, multiple boron atoms reacting with each other have a tendency to form novel dodecahedral (12-sided) and icosahedral (20-sided) structures composed completely of boron atoms, or with varying numbers of carbon heteroatoms.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Organoboron chemicals have been employed in uses as diverse as boron carbide (see below), a complex very hard ceramic composed of boron-carbon cluster anions and cations, to carboranes, carbon-boron cluster chemistry compounds that can be halogenated to form reactive structures including carborane acid, a superacid. As one example, carboranes form useful molecular moieties that add considerable amounts of boron to other biochemicals in order to synthesize boron-containing compounds for boron neutron capture therapy for cancer.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "As anticipated by its hydride clusters, boron forms a variety of stable compounds with formal oxidation state less than three. B2F4 and B4Cl4 are well characterized.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Binary metal-boron compounds, the metal borides, contain boron in negative oxidation states. Illustrative is magnesium diboride (MgB2). Each boron atom has a formal −1 charge and magnesium is assigned a formal charge of +2. In this material, the boron centers are trigonal planar with an extra double bond for each boron, forming sheets akin to the carbon in graphite. However, unlike hexagonal boron nitride, which lacks electrons in the plane of the covalent atoms, the delocalized electrons in magnesium diboride allow it to conduct electricity similar to isoelectronic graphite. In 2001, this material was found to be a high-temperature superconductor. It is a superconductor under active development. A project at CERN to make MgB2 cables has resulted in superconducting test cables able to carry 20,000 amperes for extremely high current distribution applications, such as the contemplated high luminosity version of the Large Hadron Collider.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Certain other metal borides find specialized applications as hard materials for cutting tools. Often the boron in borides has fractional oxidation states, such as −1/3 in calcium hexaboride (CaB6).", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "From the structural perspective, the most distinctive chemical compounds of boron are the hydrides. Included in this series are the cluster compounds dodecaborate (B12H12), decaborane (B10H14), and the carboranes such as C2B10H12. Characteristically such compounds contain boron with coordination numbers greater than four.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Boron has two naturally occurring and stable isotopes, B (80.1%) and B (19.9%). The mass difference results in a wide range of δB values, which are defined as a fractional difference between the B and B and traditionally expressed in parts per thousand, in natural waters ranging from −16 to +59. There are 13 known isotopes of boron; the shortest-lived isotope is B which decays through proton emission and alpha decay with a half-life of 3.5×10 s. Isotopic fractionation of boron is controlled by the exchange reactions of the boron species B(OH)3 and [B(OH)4]. Boron isotopes are also fractionated during mineral crystallization, during H2O phase changes in hydrothermal systems, and during hydrothermal alteration of rock. The latter effect results in preferential removal of the [B(OH)4] ion onto clays. It results in solutions enriched in B(OH)3 and therefore may be responsible for the large B enrichment in seawater relative to both oceanic crust and continental crust; this difference may act as an isotopic signature.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "The exotic B exhibits a nuclear halo, i.e. its radius is appreciably larger than that predicted by the liquid drop model.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The B isotope is useful for capturing thermal neutrons (see neutron cross section#Typical cross sections). The nuclear industry enriches natural boron to nearly pure B. The less-valuable by-product, depleted boron, is nearly pure B.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Because of its high neutron cross-section, boron-10 is often used to control fission in nuclear reactors as a neutron-capturing substance. Several industrial-scale enrichment processes have been developed; however, only the fractionated vacuum distillation of the dimethyl ether adduct of boron trifluoride (DME-BF3) and column chromatography of borates are being used.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Enriched boron or B is used in both radiation shielding and is the primary nuclide used in neutron capture therapy of cancer. In the latter (\"boron neutron capture therapy\" or BNCT), a compound containing B is incorporated into a pharmaceutical which is selectively taken up by a malignant tumor and tissues near it. The patient is then treated with a beam of low energy neutrons at a relatively low neutron radiation dose. The neutrons, however, trigger energetic and short-range secondary alpha particle and lithium-7 heavy ion radiation that are products of the boron-neutron nuclear reaction, and this ion radiation additionally bombards the tumor, especially from inside the tumor cells.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "In nuclear reactors, B is used for reactivity control and in emergency shutdown systems. It can serve either function in the form of borosilicate control rods or as boric acid. In pressurized water reactors, B boric acid is added to the reactor coolant after the plant is shut down for refueling. When the plant is started up again, the boric acid is slowly filtered out over many months as fissile material is used up and the fuel becomes less reactive.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "In future crewed interplanetary spacecraft, B has a theoretical role as structural material (as boron fibers or BN nanotube material) which would also serve a special role in the radiation shield. One of the difficulties in dealing with cosmic rays, which are mostly high energy protons, is that some secondary radiation from interaction of cosmic rays and spacecraft materials is high energy spallation neutrons. Such neutrons can be moderated by materials high in light elements, such as polyethylene, but the moderated neutrons continue to be a radiation hazard unless actively absorbed in the shielding. Among light elements that absorb thermal neutrons, Li and B appear as potential spacecraft structural materials which serve both for mechanical reinforcement and radiation protection.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Cosmic radiation will produce secondary neutrons if it hits spacecraft structures. Those neutrons will be captured in B, if it is present in the spacecraft's semiconductors, producing a gamma ray, an alpha particle, and a lithium ion. Those resultant decay products may then irradiate nearby semiconductor \"chip\" structures, causing data loss (bit flipping, or single event upset). In radiation-hardened semiconductor designs, one countermeasure is to use depleted boron, which is greatly enriched in B and contains almost no B. This is useful because B is largely immune to radiation damage. Depleted boron is a byproduct of the nuclear industry (see above).", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "B is also a candidate as a fuel for aneutronic fusion. When struck by a proton with energy of about 500 keV, it produces three alpha particles and 8.7 MeV of energy. Most other fusion reactions involving hydrogen and helium produce penetrating neutron radiation, which weakens reactor structures and induces long-term radioactivity, thereby endangering operating personnel. The alpha particles from B fusion can be turned directly into electric power, and all radiation stops as soon as the reactor is turned off.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "Both B and B possess nuclear spin. The nuclear spin of B is 3 and that of B is 3/2. These isotopes are, therefore, of use in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy; and spectrometers specially adapted to detecting the boron-11 nuclei are available commercially. The B and B nuclei also cause splitting in the resonances of attached nuclei.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "Boron is rare in the Universe and solar system due to trace formation in the Big Bang and in stars. It is formed in minor amounts in cosmic ray spallation nucleosynthesis and may be found uncombined in cosmic dust and meteoroid materials.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "In the high oxygen environment of Earth, boron is always found fully oxidized to borate. Boron does not appear on Earth in elemental form. Extremely small traces of elemental boron were detected in Lunar regolith.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "Although boron is a relatively rare element in the Earth's crust, representing only 0.001% of the crust mass, it can be highly concentrated by the action of water, in which many borates are soluble. It is found naturally combined in compounds such as borax and boric acid (sometimes found in volcanic spring waters). About a hundred borate minerals are known.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "On 5 September 2017, scientists reported that the Curiosity rover detected boron, an essential ingredient for life on Earth, on the planet Mars. Such a finding, along with previous discoveries that water may have been present on ancient Mars, further supports the possible early habitability of Gale Crater on Mars.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "Economically important sources of boron are the minerals colemanite, rasorite (kernite), ulexite and tincal. Together these constitute 90% of mined boron-containing ore. The largest global borax deposits known, many still untapped, are in Central and Western Turkey, including the provinces of Eskişehir, Kütahya and Balıkesir. Global proven boron mineral mining reserves exceed one billion metric tonnes, against a yearly production of about four million tonnes.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Turkey and the United States are the largest producers of boron products. Turkey produces about half of the global yearly demand, through Eti Mine Works (Turkish: Eti Maden İşletmeleri) a Turkish state-owned mining and chemicals company focusing on boron products. It holds a government monopoly on the mining of borate minerals in Turkey, which possesses 72% of the world's known deposits. In 2012, it held a 47% share of production of global borate minerals, ahead of its main competitor, Rio Tinto Group.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "Almost a quarter (23%) of global boron production comes from the single Rio Tinto Borax Mine (also known as the U.S. Borax Boron Mine) 35°2′34.447″N 117°40′45.412″W / 35.04290194°N 117.67928111°W / 35.04290194; -117.67928111 (Rio Tinto Borax Mine) near Boron, California.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "The average cost of crystalline elemental boron is US$5/g. Elemental boron is chiefly used in making boron fibers, where it is deposited by chemical vapor deposition on a tungsten core (see below). Boron fibers are used in lightweight composite applications, such as high strength tapes. This use is a very small fraction of total boron use. Boron is introduced into semiconductors as boron compounds, by ion implantation.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "Estimated global consumption of boron (almost entirely as boron compounds) was about 4 million tonnes of B2O3 in 2012. As compounds such as borax and kernite its cost was US$377/tonne in 2019. Boron mining and refining capacities are considered to be adequate to meet expected levels of growth through the next decade.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "The form in which boron is consumed has changed in recent years. The use of ores like colemanite has declined following concerns over arsenic content. Consumers have moved toward the use of refined borates and boric acid that have a lower pollutant content.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "Increasing demand for boric acid has led a number of producers to invest in additional capacity. Turkey's state-owned Eti Mine Works opened a new boric acid plant with the production capacity of 100,000 tonnes per year at Emet in 2003. Rio Tinto Group increased the capacity of its boron plant from 260,000 tonnes per year in 2003 to 310,000 tonnes per year by May 2005, with plans to grow this to 366,000 tonnes per year in 2006. Chinese boron producers have been unable to meet rapidly growing demand for high quality borates. This has led to imports of sodium tetraborate (borax) growing by a hundredfold between 2000 and 2005 and boric acid imports increasing by 28% per year over the same period.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "The rise in global demand has been driven by high growth rates in glass fiber, fiberglass and borosilicate glassware production. A rapid increase in the manufacture of reinforcement-grade boron-containing fiberglass in Asia, has offset the development of boron-free reinforcement-grade fiberglass in Europe and the US. The recent rises in energy prices may lead to greater use of insulation-grade fiberglass, with consequent growth in the boron consumption. Roskill Consulting Group forecasts that world demand for boron will grow by 3.4% per year to reach 21 million tonnes by 2010. The highest growth in demand is expected to be in Asia where demand could rise by an average 5.7% per year.", "title": "Production" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "Nearly all boron ore extracted from the Earth is destined for refinement into boric acid and sodium tetraborate pentahydrate. In the United States, 70% of the boron is used for the production of glass and ceramics. The major global industrial-scale use of boron compounds (about 46% of end-use) is in production of glass fiber for boron-containing insulating and structural fiberglasses, especially in Asia. Boron is added to the glass as borax pentahydrate or boron oxide, to influence the strength or fluxing qualities of the glass fibers. Another 10% of global boron production is for borosilicate glass as used in high strength glassware. About 15% of global boron is used in boron ceramics, including super-hard materials discussed below. Agriculture consumes 11% of global boron production, and bleaches and detergents about 6%.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "Boron fibers (boron filaments) are high-strength, lightweight materials that are used chiefly for advanced aerospace structures as a component of composite materials, as well as limited production consumer and sporting goods such as golf clubs and fishing rods. The fibers can be produced by chemical vapor deposition of boron on a tungsten filament.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "Boron fibers and sub-millimeter sized crystalline boron springs are produced by laser-assisted chemical vapor deposition. Translation of the focused laser beam allows production of even complex helical structures. Such structures show good mechanical properties (elastic modulus 450 GPa, fracture strain 3.7%, fracture stress 17 GPa) and can be applied as reinforcement of ceramics or in micromechanical systems.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "Fiberglass is a fiber reinforced polymer made of plastic reinforced by glass fibers, commonly woven into a mat. The glass fibers used in the material are made of various types of glass depending upon the fiberglass use. These glasses all contain silica or silicate, with varying amounts of oxides of calcium, magnesium, and sometimes boron. The boron is present as borosilicate, borax, or boron oxide, and is added to increase the strength of the glass, or as a fluxing agent to decrease the melting temperature of silica, which is too high to be easily worked in its pure form to make glass fibers.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "The highly boronated glasses used in fiberglass are E-glass (named for \"Electrical\" use, but now the most common fiberglass for general use). E-glass is alumino-borosilicate glass with less than 1% w/w alkali oxides, mainly used for glass-reinforced plastics. Other common high-boron glasses include C-glass, an alkali-lime glass with high boron oxide content, used for glass staple fibers and insulation, and D-glass, a borosilicate glass, named for its low dielectric constant.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "Not all fiberglasses contain boron, but on a global scale, most of the fiberglass used does contain it. Because of the ubiquitous use of fiberglass in construction and insulation, boron-containing fiberglasses consume half the global production of boron, and are the single largest commercial boron market.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "Borosilicate glass, which is typically 12–15% B2O3, 80% SiO2, and 2% Al2O3, has a low coefficient of thermal expansion, giving it a good resistance to thermal shock. Schott AG's \"Duran\" and Owens-Corning's trademarked Pyrex are two major brand names for this glass, used both in laboratory glassware and in consumer cookware and bakeware, chiefly for this resistance.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "Several boron compounds are known for their extreme hardness and toughness. Boron carbide is a ceramic material which is obtained by decomposing B2O3 with carbon in an electric furnace:", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "Boron carbide's structure is only approximately B4C, and it shows a clear depletion of carbon from this suggested stoichiometric ratio. This is due to its very complex structure. The substance can be seen with empirical formula B12C3 (i.e., with B12 dodecahedra being a motif), but with less carbon, as the suggested C3 units are replaced with C-B-C chains, and some smaller (B6) octahedra are present as well (see the boron carbide article for structural analysis). The repeating polymer plus semi-crystalline structure of boron carbide gives it great structural strength per weight. It is used in tank armor, bulletproof vests, and numerous other structural applications.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "Boron carbide's ability to absorb neutrons without forming long-lived radionuclides (especially when doped with extra boron-10) makes the material attractive as an absorbent for neutron radiation arising in nuclear power plants. Nuclear applications of boron carbide include shielding, control rods and shut-down pellets. Within control rods, boron carbide is often powdered, to increase its surface area.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "Boron carbide and cubic boron nitride powders are widely used as abrasives. Boron nitride is a material isoelectronic to carbon. Similar to carbon, it has both hexagonal (soft graphite-like h-BN) and cubic (hard, diamond-like c-BN) forms. h-BN is used as a high temperature component and lubricant. c-BN, also known under commercial name borazon, is a superior abrasive. Its hardness is only slightly smaller than, but its chemical stability is superior, to that of diamond. Heterodiamond (also called BCN) is another diamond-like boron compound.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "Boron is added to boron steels at the level of a few parts per million to increase hardenability. Higher percentages are added to steels used in the nuclear industry due to boron's neutron absorption ability.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "Boron can also increase the surface hardness of steels and alloys through boriding. Additionally metal borides are used for coating tools through chemical vapor deposition or physical vapor deposition. Implantation of boron ions into metals and alloys, through ion implantation or ion beam deposition, results in a spectacular increase in surface resistance and microhardness. Laser alloying has also been successfully used for the same purpose. These borides are an alternative to diamond coated tools, and their (treated) surfaces have similar properties to those of the bulk boride.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "For example, rhenium diboride can be produced at ambient pressures, but is rather expensive because of rhenium. The hardness of ReB2 exhibits considerable anisotropy because of its hexagonal layered structure. Its value is comparable to that of tungsten carbide, silicon carbide, titanium diboride or zirconium diboride. Similarly, AlMgB14 + TiB2 composites possess high hardness and wear resistance and are used in either bulk form or as coatings for components exposed to high temperatures and wear loads.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "Borax is used in various household laundry and cleaning products, including the \"20 Mule Team Borax\" laundry booster and \"Boraxo\" powdered hand soap. It is also present in some tooth bleaching formulas.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "Sodium perborate serves as a source of active oxygen in many detergents, laundry detergents, cleaning products, and laundry bleaches. However, despite its name, \"Borateem\" laundry bleach no longer contains any boron compounds, using sodium percarbonate instead as a bleaching agent.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "Boric acid is used as an insecticide, notably against ants, fleas, and cockroaches.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "Boron is a useful dopant for such semiconductors as silicon, germanium, and silicon carbide. Having one fewer valence electron than the host atom, it donates a hole resulting in p-type conductivity. Traditional method of introducing boron into semiconductors is via its atomic diffusion at high temperatures. This process uses either solid (B2O3), liquid (BBr3), or gaseous boron sources (B2H6 or BF3). However, after the 1970s, it was mostly replaced by ion implantation, which relies mostly on BF3 as a boron source. Boron trichloride gas is also an important chemical in semiconductor industry, however, not for doping but rather for plasma etching of metals and their oxides. Triethylborane is also injected into vapor deposition reactors as a boron source. Examples are the plasma deposition of boron-containing hard carbon films, silicon nitride–boron nitride films, and for doping of diamond film with boron.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "Boron is a component of neodymium magnets (Nd2Fe14B), which are among the strongest type of permanent magnet. These magnets are found in a variety of electromechanical and electronic devices, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) medical imaging systems, in compact and relatively small motors and actuators. As examples, computer HDDs (hard disk drives), CD (compact disk) and DVD (digital versatile disk) players rely on neodymium magnet motors to deliver intense rotary power in a remarkably compact package. In mobile phones 'Neo' magnets provide the magnetic field which allows tiny speakers to deliver appreciable audio power.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "Boron shielding is used as a control for nuclear reactors, taking advantage of its high cross-section for neutron capture.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "In pressurized water reactors a variable concentration of boronic acid in the cooling water is used as a neutron poison to compensate the variable reactivity of the fuel. When new rods are inserted the concentration of boronic acid is maximal, and is reduced during the lifetime.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "Boron plays a role in pharmaceutical and biological applications as it is found in various bacteria-produced antibiotics, such as boromycins, aplasmomycins, borophycins, and tartrolons. These antibiotics have shown inhibitory effects on certain bacteria, fungi, and protozoa growth. Boron is also being studied for its potential medicinal applications, including its incorporation into biologically active molecules for therapies like boron neutron capture therapy for brain tumors. Some boron-containing biomolecules may act as signaling molecules interacting with cell surfaces, suggesting a role in cellular communication.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "Boric acid has antiseptic, antifungal, and antiviral properties and, for these reasons, is applied as a water clarifier in swimming pool water treatment. Mild solutions of boric acid have been used as eye antiseptics.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "Bortezomib (marketed as Velcade and Cytomib). Boron appears as an active element in the organic pharmaceutical bortezomib, a new class of drug called the proteasome inhibitor, for treating myeloma and one form of lymphoma (it is currently in experimental trials against other types of lymphoma). The boron atom in bortezomib binds the catalytic site of the 26S proteasome with high affinity and specificity.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "Tavaborole (marketed as Kerydin) is an Aminoacyl tRNA synthetase inhibitor which is used to treat toenail fungus. It gained FDA approval in July 2014.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "Dioxaborolane chemistry enables radioactive fluoride (F) labeling of antibodies or red blood cells, which allows for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of cancer and hemorrhages, respectively. A Human-Derived, Genetic, Positron-emitting and Fluorescent (HD-GPF) reporter system uses a human protein, PSMA and non-immunogenic, and a small molecule that is positron-emitting (boron bound F) and fluorescence for dual modality PET and fluorescent imaging of genome modified cells, e.g. cancer, CRISPR/Cas9, or CAR T-cells, in an entire mouse. The dual-modality small molecule targeting PSMA was tested in humans and found the location of primary and metastatic prostate cancer, fluorescence-guided removal of cancer, and detects single cancer cells in tissue margins.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "In neutron capture therapy (BNCT) for malignant brain tumors, boron is researched to be used for selectively targeting and destroying tumor cells. The goal is to deliver higher concentrations of the non-radioactive boron isotope (B) to the tumor cells than to the surrounding normal tissues. When these B-containing cells are irradiated with low-energy thermal neutrons, they undergo nuclear capture reactions, releasing high linear energy transfer (LET) particles such as α-particles and lithium-7 nuclei within a limited path length. These high-LET particles can destroy the adjacent tumor cells without causing significant harm to nearby normal cells. Boron acts as a selective agent due to its ability to absorb thermal neutrons and produce short-range physical effects primarily affecting the targeted tissue region. This binary approach allows for precise tumor cell killing while sparing healthy tissues. The effective delivery of boron involves administering boron compounds or carriers capable of accumulating selectively in tumor cells compared to surrounding tissue. BSH and BPA have been used clinically, but research continues to identify more optimal carriers. Accelerator-based neutron sources have also been developed recently as an alternative to reactor-based sources, leading to improved efficiency and enhanced clinical outcomes in BNCT. By employing the properties of boron isotopes and targeted irradiation techniques, BNCT offers a potential approach to treating malignant brain tumors by selectively killing cancer cells while minimizing the damage caused by traditional radiation therapies.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 79, "text": "BNCT has shown promising results in clinical trials for various other malignancies, including glioblastoma, head and neck cancer, cutaneous melanoma, hepatocellular carcinoma, lung cancer, and extramammary Paget's disease. The treatment involves a nuclear reaction between nonradioactive boron-10 isotope and low-energy thermal or high-energy epithermal neutrons to generate α particles and lithium nuclei that selectively destroy DNA in tumor cells. The primary challenge lies in developing efficient boron agents with higher content and specific targeting properties tailored for BNCT. Integration of tumor-targeting strategies with BNCT could potentially establish it as a practical personalized treatment option for different types of cancers. Ongoing research explores new boron compounds, optimization strategies, theranostic agents, and radiobiological advances to overcome limitations and cost-effectively improve patient outcomes.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 80, "text": "Magnesium diboride is an important superconducting material with the transition temperature of 39 K. MgB2 wires are produced with the powder-in-tube process and applied in superconducting magnets.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 81, "text": "Amorphous boron is used as a melting point depressant in nickel-chromium braze alloys.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 82, "text": "Hexagonal boron nitride forms atomically thin layers, which have been used to enhance the electron mobility in graphene devices. It also forms nanotubular structures (BNNTs), which have high strength, high chemical stability, and high thermal conductivity, among its list of desirable properties.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 83, "text": "Boron has multiple applications in nuclear fusion research. It is commonly used for conditioning the walls in fusion reactors by depositing boron coatings on plasma-facing components and walls to reduce the release of hydrogen and impurities from the surfaces. It is also being used for the dissipation of energy in the fusion plasma boundary to suppress excessive energy bursts and heat fluxes to the walls.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 84, "text": "Boron is an essential plant nutrient, required primarily for maintaining the integrity of cell walls. However, high soil concentrations of greater than 1.0 ppm lead to marginal and tip necrosis in leaves as well as poor overall growth performance. Levels as low as 0.8 ppm produce these same symptoms in plants that are particularly sensitive to boron in the soil. Nearly all plants, even those somewhat tolerant of soil boron, will show at least some symptoms of boron toxicity when soil boron content is greater than 1.8 ppm. When this content exceeds 2.0 ppm, few plants will perform well and some may not survive.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 85, "text": "It is thought that boron plays several essential roles in animals, including humans, but the exact physiological role is poorly understood. A small human trial published in 1987 reported on postmenopausal women first made boron deficient and then repleted with 3 mg/day. Boron supplementation markedly reduced urinary calcium excretion and elevated the serum concentrations of 17 beta-estradiol and testosterone.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 86, "text": "Boron is not classified as an essential human nutrient because research has not established a clear biological function for boron. Still, studies suggest that boron may exert beneficial effects on reproduction and development, calcium metabolism, bone formation, brain function, insulin and energy substrate metabolism, immunity, and steroid hormone (including estrogen) and vitamin D function, among other functions. The U.S. Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) found the existing data insufficient to derive a Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), Adequate Intake (AI), or Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) for boron. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not established a Daily Value for boron for food and dietary supplement labeling purposes. While low boron status can be detrimental to health, probably increasing the risk of osteoporosis, poor immune function, and cognitive decline; high boron levels are associated with cell damage and toxicity. The exact mechanism by which boron exerts its physiological effects is not fully understood, but may involve interactions with adenosine monophosphate (ADP) and S-adenosyl methionine (SAM-e), two compounds involved in important cellular functions. Furthermore, boron appears to inhibit cyclic ADP-ribose, thereby affecting the release of calcium ions from the endoplasmic reticulum and affecting various biological processes. Some studies suggest that boron may reduce levels of inflammatory biomarkers.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 87, "text": "In humans, boron is usually consumed with food that contains boron, such as fruits, leafy vegetables, and nuts. Foods that are particularly rich in boron include avocados, dried fruits such as raisins, peanuts, pecans, prune juice, grape juice, wine and chocolate powder. According to 2-day food records from the respondents to the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), adult dietary intake was recorded at 0.9 to 1.4 mg/day.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 88, "text": "In 2013, a hypothesis suggested it was possible that boron and molybdenum catalyzed the production of RNA on Mars with life being transported to Earth via a meteorite around 3 billion years ago.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 89, "text": "There exist several known boron-containing natural antibiotics. The first one found was boromycin, isolated from streptomyces in the 1960s. Others are tartrolons, a group of antibiotics discovered in the 1990s from culture broth of the myxobacterium Sorangium cellulosum.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 90, "text": "Congenital endothelial dystrophy type 2, a rare form of corneal dystrophy, is linked to mutations in SLC4A11 gene that encodes a transporter reportedly regulating the intracellular concentration of boron.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 91, "text": "For determination of boron content in food or materials, the colorimetric curcumin method is used. Boron is converted to boric acid or borates and on reaction with curcumin in acidic solution, a red colored boron-chelate complex, rosocyanine, is formed.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 92, "text": "Elemental boron, boron oxide, boric acid, borates, and many organoboron compounds are relatively nontoxic to humans and animals (with toxicity similar to that of table salt). The LD50 (dose at which there is 50% mortality) for animals is about 6 g per kg of body weight. Substances with LD50 above 2 g/kg are considered nontoxic. An intake of 4 g/day of boric acid was reported without incident, but more than this is considered toxic in more than a few doses. Intakes of more than 0.5 grams per day for 50 days cause minor digestive and other problems suggestive of toxicity. Dietary supplementation of boron may be helpful for bone growth, wound healing, and antioxidant activity, and insufficient amount of boron in diet may result in boron deficiency.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 93, "text": "Single medical doses of 20 g of boric acid for neutron capture therapy have been used without undue toxicity.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 94, "text": "Boric acid is more toxic to insects than to mammals, and is routinely used as an insecticide.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 95, "text": "The boranes (boron hydrogen compounds) and similar gaseous compounds are quite poisonous. As usual, boron is not an element that is intrinsically poisonous, but the toxicity of these compounds depends on structure (for another example of this phenomenon, see phosphine). The boranes are also highly flammable and require special care when handling, some combinations of boranes and other compounds are highly explosive. Sodium borohydride presents a fire hazard owing to its reducing nature and the liberation of hydrogen on contact with acid. Boron halides are corrosive.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 96, "text": "Boron is necessary for plant growth, but an excess of boron is toxic to plants, and occurs particularly in acidic soil. It presents as a yellowing from the tip inwards of the oldest leaves and black spots in barley leaves, but it can be confused with other stresses such as magnesium deficiency in other plants.", "title": "Biological role" }, { "paragraph_id": 97, "text": "", "title": "External links" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bromine is a chemical element; it has symbol Br and atomic number 35. It is a volatile red-brown liquid at room temperature that evaporates readily to form a similarly coloured vapour. Its properties are intermediate between those of chlorine and iodine. Isolated independently by two chemists, Carl Jacob Löwig (in 1825) and Antoine Jérôme Balard (in 1826), its name was derived from the Ancient Greek βρῶμος (bromos) meaning \"stench\", referring to its sharp and pungent smell.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Elemental bromine is very reactive and thus does not occur as a free element in nature. Instead, it can be isolated from colourless soluble crystalline mineral halide salts analogous to table salt, a property it shares with the other halogens. While it is rather rare in the Earth's crust, the high solubility of the bromide ion (Br) has caused its accumulation in the oceans. Commercially the element is easily extracted from brine evaporation ponds, mostly in the United States and Israel. The mass of bromine in the oceans is about one three-hundredth that of chlorine.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "At standard conditions for temperature and pressure it is a liquid; the only other element that is liquid under these conditions is mercury. At high temperatures, organobromine compounds readily dissociate to yield free bromine atoms, a process that stops free radical chemical chain reactions. This effect makes organobromine compounds useful as fire retardants, and more than half the bromine produced worldwide each year is put to this purpose. The same property causes ultraviolet sunlight to dissociate volatile organobromine compounds in the atmosphere to yield free bromine atoms, causing ozone depletion. As a result, many organobromine compounds—such as the pesticide methyl bromide—are no longer used. Bromine compounds are still used in well drilling fluids, in photographic film, and as an intermediate in the manufacture of organic chemicals.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Large amounts of bromide salts are toxic from the action of soluble bromide ions, causing bromism. However, bromine is beneficial for human eosinophils, and is an essential trace element for collagen development in all animals. Hundreds of known organobromine compounds are generated by terrestrial and marine plants and animals, and some serve important biological roles. As a pharmaceutical, the simple bromide ion (Br) has inhibitory effects on the central nervous system, and bromide salts were once a major medical sedative, before replacement by shorter-acting drugs. They retain niche uses as antiepileptics.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Bromine was discovered independently by two chemists, Carl Jacob Löwig and Antoine Balard, in 1825 and 1826, respectively.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Löwig isolated bromine from a mineral water spring from his hometown Bad Kreuznach in 1825. Löwig used a solution of the mineral salt saturated with chlorine and extracted the bromine with diethyl ether. After evaporation of the ether, a brown liquid remained. With this liquid as a sample of his work he applied for a position in the laboratory of Leopold Gmelin in Heidelberg. The publication of the results was delayed and Balard published his results first.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Balard found bromine chemicals in the ash of seaweed from the salt marshes of Montpellier. The seaweed was used to produce iodine, but also contained bromine. Balard distilled the bromine from a solution of seaweed ash saturated with chlorine. The properties of the resulting substance were intermediate between those of chlorine and iodine; thus he tried to prove that the substance was iodine monochloride (ICl), but after failing to do so he was sure that he had found a new element and named it muride, derived from the Latin word muria (\"brine\").", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "After the French chemists Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, Louis Jacques Thénard, and Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac approved the experiments of the young pharmacist Balard, the results were presented at a lecture of the Académie des Sciences and published in Annales de Chimie et Physique. In his publication, Balard stated that he changed the name from muride to brôme on the proposal of M. Anglada. The name brôme (bromine) derives from the Greek βρῶμος (brômos, \"stench\"). Other sources claim that the French chemist and physicist Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac suggested the name brôme for the characteristic smell of the vapors. Bromine was not produced in large quantities until 1858, when the discovery of salt deposits in Stassfurt enabled its production as a by-product of potash.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Apart from some minor medical applications, the first commercial use was the daguerreotype. In 1840, bromine was discovered to have some advantages over the previously used iodine vapor to create the light sensitive silver halide layer in daguerreotypy.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Potassium bromide and sodium bromide were used as anticonvulsants and sedatives in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but were gradually superseded by chloral hydrate and then by the barbiturates. In the early years of the First World War, bromine compounds such as xylyl bromide were used as poison gas.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Bromine is the third halogen, being a nonmetal in group 17 of the periodic table. Its properties are thus similar to those of fluorine, chlorine, and iodine, and tend to be intermediate between those of the two neighbouring halogens, chlorine, and iodine. Bromine has the electron configuration [Ar]4s3d4p, with the seven electrons in the fourth and outermost shell acting as its valence electrons. Like all halogens, it is thus one electron short of a full octet, and is hence a strong oxidising agent, reacting with many elements in order to complete its outer shell. Corresponding to periodic trends, it is intermediate in electronegativity between chlorine and iodine (F: 3.98, Cl: 3.16, Br: 2.96, I: 2.66), and is less reactive than chlorine and more reactive than iodine. It is also a weaker oxidising agent than chlorine, but a stronger one than iodine. Conversely, the bromide ion is a weaker reducing agent than iodide, but a stronger one than chloride. These similarities led to chlorine, bromine, and iodine together being classified as one of the original triads of Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner, whose work foreshadowed the periodic law for chemical elements. It is intermediate in atomic radius between chlorine and iodine, and this leads to many of its atomic properties being similarly intermediate in value between chlorine and iodine, such as first ionisation energy, electron affinity, enthalpy of dissociation of the X2 molecule (X = Cl, Br, I), ionic radius, and X–X bond length. The volatility of bromine accentuates its very penetrating, choking, and unpleasant odour.", "title": "Properties" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "All four stable halogens experience intermolecular van der Waals forces of attraction, and their strength increases together with the number of electrons among all homonuclear diatomic halogen molecules. Thus, the melting and boiling points of bromine are intermediate between those of chlorine and iodine. As a result of the increasing molecular weight of the halogens down the group, the density and heats of fusion and vaporisation of bromine are again intermediate between those of chlorine and iodine, although all their heats of vaporisation are fairly low (leading to high volatility) thanks to their diatomic molecular structure. The halogens darken in colour as the group is descended: fluorine is a very pale yellow gas, chlorine is greenish-yellow, and bromine is a reddish-brown volatile liquid that melts at −7.2 °C and boils at 58.8 °C. (Iodine is a shiny black solid.) This trend occurs because the wavelengths of visible light absorbed by the halogens increase down the group. Specifically, the colour of a halogen, such as bromine, results from the electron transition between the highest occupied antibonding πg molecular orbital and the lowest vacant antibonding σu molecular orbital. The colour fades at low temperatures so that solid bromine at −195 °C is pale yellow.", "title": "Properties" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Like solid chlorine and iodine, solid bromine crystallises in the orthorhombic crystal system, in a layered arrangement of Br2 molecules. The Br–Br distance is 227 pm (close to the gaseous Br–Br distance of 228 pm) and the Br···Br distance between molecules is 331 pm within a layer and 399 pm between layers (compare the van der Waals radius of bromine, 195 pm). This structure means that bromine is a very poor conductor of electricity, with a conductivity of around 5 × 10 Ω cm just below the melting point, although this is higher than the essentially undetectable conductivity of chlorine.", "title": "Properties" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "At a pressure of 55 GPa (roughly 540,000 times atmospheric pressure) bromine undergoes an insulator-to-metal transition. At 75 GPa it changes to a face-centered orthorhombic structure. At 100 GPa it changes to a body centered orthorhombic monatomic form.", "title": "Properties" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Bromine has two stable isotopes, Br and Br. These are its only two natural isotopes, with Br making up 51% of natural bromine and Br making up the remaining 49%. Both have nuclear spin 3/2− and thus may be used for nuclear magnetic resonance, although Br is more favourable. The relatively 1:1 distribution of the two isotopes in nature is helpful in identification of bromine containing compounds using mass spectroscopy. Other bromine isotopes are all radioactive, with half-lives too short to occur in nature. Of these, the most important are Br (t1/2 = 17.7 min), Br (t1/2 = 4.421 h), and Br (t1/2 = 35.28 h), which may be produced from the neutron activation of natural bromine. The most stable bromine radioisotope is Br (t1/2 = 57.04 h). The primary decay mode of isotopes lighter than Br is electron capture to isotopes of selenium; that of isotopes heavier than Br is beta decay to isotopes of krypton; and Br may decay by either mode to stable Se or Kr. Br isotopes from Br and heavier undergo beta decay with neutron emission and are of practical importance because they are fission products; Br with half-life 55 s is notable as the longest lived delayed neutron emitter.", "title": "Properties" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Bromine is intermediate in reactivity between chlorine and iodine, and is one of the most reactive elements. Bond energies to bromine tend to be lower than those to chlorine but higher than those to iodine, and bromine is a weaker oxidising agent than chlorine but a stronger one than iodine. This can be seen from the standard electrode potentials of the X2/X couples (F, +2.866 V; Cl, +1.395 V; Br, +1.087 V; I, +0.615 V; At, approximately +0.3 V). Bromination often leads to higher oxidation states than iodination but lower or equal oxidation states to chlorination. Bromine tends to react with compounds including M–M, M–H, or M–C bonds to form M–Br bonds.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The simplest compound of bromine is hydrogen bromide, HBr. It is mainly used in the production of inorganic bromides and alkyl bromides, and as a catalyst for many reactions in organic chemistry. Industrially, it is mainly produced by the reaction of hydrogen gas with bromine gas at 200–400 °C with a platinum catalyst. However, reduction of bromine with red phosphorus is a more practical way to produce hydrogen bromide in the laboratory:", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "At room temperature, hydrogen bromide is a colourless gas, like all the hydrogen halides apart from hydrogen fluoride, since hydrogen cannot form strong hydrogen bonds to the large and only mildly electronegative bromine atom; however, weak hydrogen bonding is present in solid crystalline hydrogen bromide at low temperatures, similar to the hydrogen fluoride structure, before disorder begins to prevail as the temperature is raised. Aqueous hydrogen bromide is known as hydrobromic acid, which is a strong acid (pKa = −9) because the hydrogen bonds to bromine are too weak to inhibit dissociation. The HBr/H2O system also involves many hydrates HBr·nH2O for n = 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, which are essentially salts of bromine anions and hydronium cations. Hydrobromic acid forms an azeotrope with boiling point 124.3 °C at 47.63 g HBr per 100 g solution; thus hydrobromic acid cannot be concentrated beyond this point by distillation.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Unlike hydrogen fluoride, anhydrous liquid hydrogen bromide is difficult to work with as a solvent, because its boiling point is low, it has a small liquid range, its dielectric constant is low and it does not dissociate appreciably into H2Br and HBr2 ions – the latter, in any case, are much less stable than the bifluoride ions (HF2) due to the very weak hydrogen bonding between hydrogen and bromine, though its salts with very large and weakly polarising cations such as Cs and NR4 (R = Me, Et, Bu) may still be isolated. Anhydrous hydrogen bromide is a poor solvent, only able to dissolve small molecular compounds such as nitrosyl chloride and phenol, or salts with very low lattice energies such as tetraalkylammonium halides.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Nearly all elements in the periodic table form binary bromides. The exceptions are decidedly in the minority and stem in each case from one of three causes: extreme inertness and reluctance to participate in chemical reactions (the noble gases, with the exception of xenon in the very unstable XeBr2); extreme nuclear instability hampering chemical investigation before decay and transmutation (many of the heaviest elements beyond bismuth); and having an electronegativity higher than bromine's (oxygen, nitrogen, fluorine, and chlorine), so that the resultant binary compounds are formally not bromides but rather oxides, nitrides, fluorides, or chlorides of bromine. (Nonetheless, nitrogen tribromide is named as a bromide as it is analogous to the other nitrogen trihalides.)", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Bromination of metals with Br2 tends to yield lower oxidation states than chlorination with Cl2 when a variety of oxidation states is available. Bromides can be made by reaction of an element or its oxide, hydroxide, or carbonate with hydrobromic acid, and then dehydrated by mildly high temperatures combined with either low pressure or anhydrous hydrogen bromide gas. These methods work best when the bromide product is stable to hydrolysis; otherwise, the possibilities include high-temperature oxidative bromination of the element with bromine or hydrogen bromide, high-temperature bromination of a metal oxide or other halide by bromine, a volatile metal bromide, carbon tetrabromide, or an organic bromide. For example, niobium(V) oxide reacts with carbon tetrabromide at 370 °C to form niobium(V) bromide. Another method is halogen exchange in the presence of excess \"halogenating reagent\", for example:", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "When a lower bromide is wanted, either a higher halide may be reduced using hydrogen or a metal as a reducing agent, or thermal decomposition or disproportionation may be used, as follows:", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Most metal bromides with the metal in low oxidation states (+1 to +3) are ionic. Nonmetals tend to form covalent molecular bromides, as do metals in high oxidation states from +3 and above. Both ionic and covalent bromides are known for metals in oxidation state +3 (e.g. scandium bromide is mostly ionic, but aluminium bromide is not). Silver bromide is very insoluble in water and is thus often used as a qualitative test for bromine.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "The halogens form many binary, diamagnetic interhalogen compounds with stoichiometries XY, XY3, XY5, and XY7 (where X is heavier than Y), and bromine is no exception. Bromine forms a monofluoride and monochloride, as well as a trifluoride and pentafluoride. Some cationic and anionic derivatives are also characterised, such as BrF2, BrCl2, BrF2, BrF4, and BrF6. Apart from these, some pseudohalides are also known, such as cyanogen bromide (BrCN), bromine thiocyanate (BrSCN), and bromine azide (BrN3).", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The pale-brown bromine monofluoride (BrF) is unstable at room temperature, disproportionating quickly and irreversibly into bromine, bromine trifluoride, and bromine pentafluoride. It thus cannot be obtained pure. It may be synthesised by the direct reaction of the elements, or by the comproportionation of bromine and bromine trifluoride at high temperatures. Bromine monochloride (BrCl), a red-brown gas, quite readily dissociates reversibly into bromine and chlorine at room temperature and thus also cannot be obtained pure, though it can be made by the reversible direct reaction of its elements in the gas phase or in carbon tetrachloride. Bromine monofluoride in ethanol readily leads to the monobromination of the aromatic compounds PhX (para-bromination occurs for X = Me, Bu, OMe, Br; meta-bromination occurs for the deactivating X = –CO2Et, –CHO, –NO2); this is due to heterolytic fission of the Br–F bond, leading to rapid electrophilic bromination by Br.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "At room temperature, bromine trifluoride (BrF3) is a straw-coloured liquid. It may be formed by directly fluorinating bromine at room temperature and is purified through distillation. It reacts violently with water and explodes on contact with flammable materials, but is a less powerful fluorinating reagent than chlorine trifluoride. It reacts vigorously with boron, carbon, silicon, arsenic, antimony, iodine, and sulfur to give fluorides, and will also convert most metals and many metal compounds to fluorides; as such, it is used to oxidise uranium to uranium hexafluoride in the nuclear power industry. Refractory oxides tend to be only partially fluorinated, but here the derivatives KBrF4 and BrF2SbF6 remain reactive. Bromine trifluoride is a useful nonaqueous ionising solvent, since it readily dissociates to form BrF2 and BrF4 and thus conducts electricity.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Bromine pentafluoride (BrF5) was first synthesised in 1930. It is produced on a large scale by direct reaction of bromine with excess fluorine at temperatures higher than 150 °C, and on a small scale by the fluorination of potassium bromide at 25 °C. It also reacts violently with water and is a very strong fluorinating agent, although chlorine trifluoride is still stronger.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Although dibromine is a strong oxidising agent with a high first ionisation energy, very strong oxidisers such as peroxydisulfuryl fluoride (S2O6F2) can oxidise it to form the cherry-red Br2 cation. A few other bromine cations are known, namely the brown Br3 and dark brown Br5. The tribromide anion, Br3, has also been characterised; it is analogous to triiodide.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Bromine oxides are not as well-characterised as chlorine oxides or iodine oxides, as they are all fairly unstable: it was once thought that they could not exist at all. Dibromine monoxide is a dark-brown solid which, while reasonably stable at −60 °C, decomposes at its melting point of −17.5 °C; it is useful in bromination reactions and may be made from the low-temperature decomposition of bromine dioxide in a vacuum. It oxidises iodine to iodine pentoxide and benzene to 1,4-benzoquinone; in alkaline solutions, it gives the hypobromite anion.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "So-called \"bromine dioxide\", a pale yellow crystalline solid, may be better formulated as bromine perbromate, BrOBrO3. It is thermally unstable above −40 °C, violently decomposing to its elements at 0 °C. Dibromine trioxide, syn-BrOBrO2, is also known; it is the anhydride of hypobromous acid and bromic acid. It is an orange crystalline solid which decomposes above −40 °C; if heated too rapidly, it explodes around 0 °C. A few other unstable radical oxides are also known, as are some poorly characterised oxides, such as dibromine pentoxide, tribromine octoxide, and bromine trioxide.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "The four oxoacids, hypobromous acid (HOBr), bromous acid (HOBrO), bromic acid (HOBrO2), and perbromic acid (HOBrO3), are better studied due to their greater stability, though they are only so in aqueous solution. When bromine dissolves in aqueous solution, the following reactions occur:", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Hypobromous acid is unstable to disproportionation. The hypobromite ions thus formed disproportionate readily to give bromide and bromate:", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "Bromous acids and bromites are very unstable, although the strontium and barium bromites are known. More important are the bromates, which are prepared on a small scale by oxidation of bromide by aqueous hypochlorite, and are strong oxidising agents. Unlike chlorates, which very slowly disproportionate to chloride and perchlorate, the bromate anion is stable to disproportionation in both acidic and aqueous solutions. Bromic acid is a strong acid. Bromides and bromates may comproportionate to bromine as follows:", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "There were many failed attempts to obtain perbromates and perbromic acid, leading to some rationalisations as to why they should not exist, until 1968 when the anion was first synthesised from the radioactive beta decay of unstable SeO4. Today, perbromates are produced by the oxidation of alkaline bromate solutions by fluorine gas. Excess bromate and fluoride are precipitated as silver bromate and calcium fluoride, and the perbromic acid solution may be purified. The perbromate ion is fairly inert at room temperature but is thermodynamically extremely oxidising, with extremely strong oxidising agents needed to produce it, such as fluorine or xenon difluoride. The Br–O bond in BrO4 is fairly weak, which corresponds to the general reluctance of the 4p elements arsenic, selenium, and bromine to attain their group oxidation state, as they come after the scandide contraction characterised by the poor shielding afforded by the radial-nodeless 3d orbitals.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Like the other carbon–halogen bonds, the C–Br bond is a common functional group that forms part of core organic chemistry. Formally, compounds with this functional group may be considered organic derivatives of the bromide anion. Due to the difference of electronegativity between bromine (2.96) and carbon (2.55), the carbon atom in a C–Br bond is electron-deficient and thus electrophilic. The reactivity of organobromine compounds resembles but is intermediate between the reactivity of organochlorine and organoiodine compounds. For many applications, organobromides represent a compromise of reactivity and cost.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Organobromides are typically produced by additive or substitutive bromination of other organic precursors. Bromine itself can be used, but due to its toxicity and volatility, safer brominating reagents are normally used, such as N-bromosuccinimide. The principal reactions for organobromides include dehydrobromination, Grignard reactions, reductive coupling, and nucleophilic substitution.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Organobromides are the most common organohalides in nature, even though the concentration of bromide is only 0.3% of that for chloride in sea water, because of the easy oxidation of bromide to the equivalent of Br, a potent electrophile. The enzyme bromoperoxidase catalyzes this reaction. The oceans are estimated to release 1–2 million tons of bromoform and 56,000 tons of bromomethane annually.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "An old qualitative test for the presence of the alkene functional group is that alkenes turn brown aqueous bromine solutions colourless, forming a bromohydrin with some of the dibromoalkane also produced. The reaction passes through a short-lived strongly electrophilic bromonium intermediate. This is an example of a halogen addition reaction.", "title": "Chemistry and compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "Bromine is significantly less abundant in the crust than fluorine or chlorine, comprising only 2.5 parts per million of the Earth's crustal rocks, and then only as bromide salts. It is the forty-sixth most abundant element in Earth's crust. It is significantly more abundant in the oceans, resulting from long-term leaching. There, it makes up 65 parts per million, corresponding to a ratio of about one bromine atom for every 660 chlorine atoms. Salt lakes and brine wells may have higher bromine concentrations: for example, the Dead Sea contains 0.4% bromide ions. It is from these sources that bromine extraction is mostly economically feasible.", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "The main sources of bromine production are Israel and Jordan. The element is liberated by halogen exchange, using chlorine gas to oxidise Br to Br2. This is then removed with a blast of steam or air, and is then condensed and purified. Today, bromine is transported in large-capacity metal drums or lead-lined tanks that can hold hundreds of kilograms or even tonnes of bromine. The bromine industry is about one-hundredth the size of the chlorine industry. Laboratory production is unnecessary because bromine is commercially available and has a long shelf life.", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "A wide variety of organobromine compounds are used in industry. Some are prepared from bromine and others are prepared from hydrogen bromide, which is obtained by burning hydrogen in bromine.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "Brominated flame retardants represent a commodity of growing importance, and make up the largest commercial use of bromine. When the brominated material burns, the flame retardant produces hydrobromic acid which interferes in the radical chain reaction of the oxidation reaction of the fire. The mechanism is that the highly reactive hydrogen radicals, oxygen radicals, and hydroxy radicals react with hydrobromic acid to form less reactive bromine radicals (i.e., free bromine atoms). Bromine atoms may also react directly with other radicals to help terminate the free radical chain-reactions that characterise combustion.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "To make brominated polymers and plastics, bromine-containing compounds can be incorporated into the polymer during polymerisation. One method is to include a relatively small amount of brominated monomer during the polymerisation process. For example, vinyl bromide can be used in the production of polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride or polypropylene. Specific highly brominated molecules can also be added that participate in the polymerisation process For example, tetrabromobisphenol A can be added to polyesters or epoxy resins, where it becomes part of the polymer. Epoxies used in printed circuit boards are normally made from such flame retardant resins, indicated by the FR in the abbreviation of the products (FR-4 and FR-2). In some cases, the bromine-containing compound may be added after polymerisation. For example, decabromodiphenyl ether can be added to the final polymers.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "A number of gaseous or highly volatile brominated halomethane compounds are non-toxic and make superior fire suppressant agents by this same mechanism, and are particularly effective in enclosed spaces such as submarines, airplanes, and spacecraft. However, they are expensive and their production and use has been greatly curtailed due to their effect as ozone-depleting agents. They are no longer used in routine fire extinguishers, but retain niche uses in aerospace and military automatic fire suppression applications. They include bromochloromethane (Halon 1011, CH2BrCl), bromochlorodifluoromethane (Halon 1211, CBrClF2), and bromotrifluoromethane (Halon 1301, CBrF3).", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "Silver bromide is used, either alone or in combination with silver chloride and silver iodide, as the light sensitive constituent of photographic emulsions.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Ethylene bromide was an additive in gasolines containing lead anti-engine knocking agents. It scavenges lead by forming volatile lead bromide, which is exhausted from the engine. This application accounted for 77% of the bromine use in 1966 in the US. This application has declined since the 1970s due to environmental regulations (see below).", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "Brominated vegetable oil (BVO), a complex mixture of plant-derived triglycerides that have been reacted to contain atoms of the element bromine bonded to the molecules, is used primarily to help emulsify citrus-flavored soft drinks, preventing them from separating during distribution.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "Poisonous bromomethane was widely used as pesticide to fumigate soil and to fumigate housing, by the tenting method. Ethylene bromide was similarly used. These volatile organobromine compounds are all now regulated as ozone depletion agents. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer scheduled the phase out for the ozone depleting chemical by 2005, and organobromide pesticides are no longer used (in housing fumigation they have been replaced by such compounds as sulfuryl fluoride, which contain neither the chlorine or bromine organics which harm ozone). Before the Montreal protocol in 1991 (for example) an estimated 35,000 tonnes of the chemical were used to control nematodes, fungi, weeds and other soil-borne diseases.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "In pharmacology, inorganic bromide compounds, especially potassium bromide, were frequently used as general sedatives in the 19th and early 20th century. Bromides in the form of simple salts are still used as anticonvulsants in both veterinary and human medicine, although the latter use varies from country to country. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not approve bromide for the treatment of any disease, and it was removed from over-the-counter sedative products like Bromo-Seltzer, in 1975. Commercially available organobromine pharmaceuticals include the vasodilator nicergoline, the sedative brotizolam, the anticancer agent pipobroman, and the antiseptic merbromin. Otherwise, organobromine compounds are rarely pharmaceutically useful, in contrast to the situation for organofluorine compounds. Several drugs are produced as the bromide (or equivalents, hydrobromide) salts, but in such cases bromide serves as an innocuous counterion of no biological significance.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Other uses of organobromine compounds include high-density drilling fluids, dyes (such as Tyrian purple and the indicator bromothymol blue), and pharmaceuticals. Bromine itself, as well as some of its compounds, are used in water treatment, and is the precursor of a variety of inorganic compounds with an enormous number of applications (e.g. silver bromide for photography). Zinc–bromine batteries are hybrid flow batteries used for stationary electrical power backup and storage; from household scale to industrial scale.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "Bromine is used in cooling towers (in place of chlorine) for controlling bacteria, algae, fungi, and zebra mussels.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "Because it has similar antiseptic qualities to chlorine, bromine can be used in the same manner as chlorine as a disinfectant or antimicrobial in applications such as swimming pools. However, bromine is usually not used outside for these applications due to it being relatively more expensive than chlorine and the absence of a stabilizer to protect it from the sun. For indoor pools, it can be a good option as it is effective at a wider pH range. It is also more stable in a heated pool or hot tub.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "A 2014 study suggests that bromine (in the form of bromide ion) is a necessary cofactor in the biosynthesis of collagen IV, making the element essential to basement membrane architecture and tissue development in animals. Nevertheless, no clear deprivation symptoms or syndromes have been documented in mammals. In other biological functions, bromine may be non-essential but still beneficial when it takes the place of chlorine. For example, in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, H2O2, formed by the eosinophil, and either chloride or bromide ions, eosinophil peroxidase provides a potent mechanism by which eosinophils kill multicellular parasites (such as the nematode worms involved in filariasis) and some bacteria (such as tuberculosis bacteria). Eosinophil peroxidase is a haloperoxidase that preferentially uses bromide over chloride for this purpose, generating hypobromite (hypobromous acid), although the use of chloride is possible.", "title": "Biological role and toxicity" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "α-Haloesters are generally thought of as highly reactive and consequently toxic intermediates in organic synthesis. Nevertheless, mammals, including humans, cats, and rats, appear to biosynthesize traces of an α-bromoester, 2-octyl 4-bromo-3-oxobutanoate, which is found in their cerebrospinal fluid and appears to play a yet unclarified role in inducing REM sleep. Neutrophil myeloperoxidase can use H2O2 and Br to brominate deoxycytidine, which could result in DNA mutations. Marine organisms are the main source of organobromine compounds, and it is in these organisms that bromine is more firmly shown to be essential. More than 1600 such organobromine compounds were identified by 1999. The most abundant is methyl bromide (CH3Br), of which an estimated 56,000 tonnes is produced by marine algae each year. The essential oil of the Hawaiian alga Asparagopsis taxiformis consists of 80% bromoform. Most of such organobromine compounds in the sea are made by the action of a unique algal enzyme, vanadium bromoperoxidase.", "title": "Biological role and toxicity" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "The bromide anion is not very toxic: a normal daily intake is 2 to 8 milligrams. However, high levels of bromide chronically impair the membrane of neurons, which progressively impairs neuronal transmission, leading to toxicity, known as bromism. Bromide has an elimination half-life of 9 to 12 days, which can lead to excessive accumulation. Doses of 0.5 to 1 gram per day of bromide can lead to bromism. Historically, the therapeutic dose of bromide is about 3 to 5 grams of bromide, thus explaining why chronic toxicity (bromism) was once so common. While significant and sometimes serious disturbances occur to neurologic, psychiatric, dermatological, and gastrointestinal functions, death from bromism is rare. Bromism is caused by a neurotoxic effect on the brain which results in somnolence, psychosis, seizures and delirium.", "title": "Biological role and toxicity" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "Elemental bromine is toxic and causes chemical burns on human flesh. Inhaling bromine gas results in similar irritation of the respiratory tract, causing coughing, choking, shortness of breath, and death if inhaled in large enough amounts. Chronic exposure may lead to frequent bronchial infections and a general deterioration of health. As a strong oxidising agent, bromine is incompatible with most organic and inorganic compounds. Caution is required when transporting bromine; it is commonly carried in steel tanks lined with lead, supported by strong metal frames. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the United States has set a permissible exposure limit (PEL) for bromine at a time-weighted average (TWA) of 0.1 ppm. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit (REL) of TWA 0.1 ppm and a short-term limit of 0.3 ppm. The exposure to bromine immediately dangerous to life and health (IDLH) is 3 ppm. Bromine is classified as an extremely hazardous substance in the United States as defined in Section 302 of the U.S. Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (42 U.S.C. 11002), and is subject to strict reporting requirements by facilities which produce, store, or use it in significant quantities.", "title": "Biological role and toxicity" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Barium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ba and atomic number 56. It is the fifth element in group 2 and is a soft, silvery alkaline earth metal. Because of its high chemical reactivity, barium is never found in nature as a free element.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The most common minerals of barium are baryte (barium sulfate, BaSO4) and witherite (barium carbonate, BaCO3). The name barium originates from the alchemical derivative \"baryta\", from Greek βαρὺς (barys), meaning 'heavy'. Baric is the adjectival form of barium. Barium was identified as a new element in 1772, but not reduced to a metal until 1808 with the advent of electrolysis.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Barium has few industrial applications. Historically, it was used as a getter for vacuum tubes and in oxide form as the emissive coating on indirectly heated cathodes. It is a component of YBCO (high-temperature superconductors) and electroceramics, and is added to steel and cast iron to reduce the size of carbon grains within the microstructure. Barium compounds are added to fireworks to impart a green color. Barium sulfate is used as an insoluble additive to oil well drilling fluid. In a purer form it is used as X-ray radiocontrast agents for imaging the human gastrointestinal tract. Water-soluble barium compounds are poisonous and have been used as rodenticides.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Barium is a soft, silvery-white metal, with a slight golden shade when ultrapure. The silvery-white color of barium metal rapidly vanishes upon oxidation in air yielding a dark gray layer containing the oxide. Barium has a medium specific weight and high electrical conductivity. Because barium is difficult to purify, many of its properties have not been accurately determined.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "At room temperature and pressure, barium metal adopts a body-centered cubic structure, with a barium–barium distance of 503 picometers, expanding with heating at a rate of approximately 1.8×10/°C. It is a very soft metal with a Mohs hardness of 1.25. Its melting temperature of 1,000 K (730 °C; 1,340 °F) is intermediate between those of the lighter strontium (1,050 K or 780 °C or 1,430 °F) and heavier radium (973 K or 700 °C or 1,292 °F); however, its boiling point of 2,170 K (1,900 °C; 3,450 °F) exceeds that of strontium (1,655 K or 1,382 °C or 2,519 °F). The density (3.62 g/cm) is again intermediate between those of strontium (2.36 g/cm) and radium (≈5 g/cm).", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Barium is chemically similar to magnesium, calcium, and strontium, but even more reactive. It is usually found in the +2 oxidation state. Most exceptions are in a few rare and unstable molecular species that are only characterised in the gas phase such as BaF, but in 2018 a barium(I) species was reported in a graphite intercalation compound. Reactions with chalcogens are highly exothermic (release energy); the reaction with oxygen or air occurs at room temperature. For this reason, metallic barium is often stored under oil or in an inert atmosphere. Reactions with other nonmetals, such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon, and hydrogen, are generally exothermic and proceed upon heating. Reactions with water and alcohols are very exothermic and release hydrogen gas:", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Barium reacts with ammonia to form complexes such as Ba(NH3)6.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The metal is readily attacked by acids. Sulfuric acid is a notable exception because passivation stops the reaction by forming the insoluble barium sulfate on the surface. Barium combines with several other metals, including aluminium, zinc, lead, and tin, forming intermetallic phases and alloys.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Barium salts are typically white when solid and colorless when dissolved. They are denser than the strontium or calcium analogs, except for the halides (see table; zinc is given for comparison).", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Barium hydroxide (\"baryta\") was known to alchemists, who produced it by heating barium carbonate. Unlike calcium hydroxide, it absorbs very little CO2 in aqueous solutions and is therefore insensitive to atmospheric fluctuations. This property is used in calibrating pH equipment.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Volatile barium compounds burn with a green to pale green flame, which is an efficient test to detect a barium compound. The color results from spectral lines at 455.4, 493.4, 553.6, and 611.1 nm.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Organobarium compounds are a growing field of knowledge: recently discovered are dialkylbariums and alkylhalobariums.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Barium found in the Earth's crust is a mixture of seven primordial nuclides, barium-130, 132, and 134 through 138. Barium-130 undergoes very slow radioactive decay to xenon-130 by double beta plus decay, with a half-life of (0.5–2.7)×10 years (about 10 times the age of the universe). Its abundance is ≈0.1% that of natural barium. Theoretically, barium-132 can similarly undergo double beta decay to xenon-132; this decay has not been detected. The radioactivity of these isotopes is so weak that they pose no danger to life.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Of the stable isotopes, barium-138 composes 71.7% of all barium; other isotopes have decreasing abundance with decreasing mass number.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "In total, barium has 40 known isotopes, ranging in mass between 114 and 153. The most stable artificial radioisotope is barium-133 with a half-life of approximately 10.51 years. Five other isotopes have half-lives longer than a day. Barium also has 10 meta states, of which barium-133m1 is the most stable with a half-life of about 39 hours.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Alchemists in the early Middle Ages knew about some barium minerals. Smooth pebble-like stones of mineral baryte were found in volcanic rock near Bologna, Italy, and so were called \"Bologna stones\". Alchemists were attracted to them because after exposure to light they would glow for years. The phosphorescent properties of baryte heated with organics were described by V. Casciorolus in 1602.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Carl Scheele determined that baryte contained a new element in 1772, but could not isolate barium, only barium oxide. Johan Gottlieb Gahn also isolated barium oxide two years later in similar studies. Oxidized barium was at first called \"barote\" by Guyton de Morveau, a name that was changed by Antoine Lavoisier to baryte (in French) or baryta (in Latin). Also in the 18th century, English mineralogist William Withering noted a heavy mineral in the lead mines of Cumberland, now known to be witherite. Barium was first isolated by electrolysis of molten barium salts in 1808 by Sir Humphry Davy in England. Davy, by analogy with calcium, named \"barium\" after baryta, with the \"-ium\" ending signifying a metallic element. Robert Bunsen and Augustus Matthiessen obtained pure barium by electrolysis of a molten mixture of barium chloride and ammonium chloride.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The production of pure oxygen in the Brin process was a large-scale application of barium peroxide in the 1880s, before it was replaced by electrolysis and fractional distillation of liquefied air in the early 1900s. In this process barium oxide reacts at 500–600 °C (932–1,112 °F) with air to form barium peroxide, which decomposes above 700 °C (1,292 °F) by releasing oxygen:", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "Barium sulfate was first applied as a radiocontrast agent in X-ray imaging of the digestive system in 1908.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "The abundance of barium is 0.0425% in the Earth's crust and 13 μg/L in sea water. The primary commercial source of barium is baryte (also called barytes or heavy spar), a barium sulfate mineral. with deposits in many parts of the world. Another commercial source, far less important than baryte, is witherite, barium carbonate. The main deposits are located in Britain, Romania, and the former USSR.", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The baryte reserves are estimated between 0.7 and 2 billion tonnes. The maximum production, 8.3 million tonnes, was produced in 1981, but only 7–8% was used for barium metal or compounds. Baryte production has risen since the second half of the 1990s from 5.6 million tonnes in 1996 to 7.6 in 2005 and 7.8 in 2011. China accounts for more than 50% of this output, followed by India (14% in 2011), Morocco (8.3%), US (8.2%), Turkey (2.5%), Iran and Kazakhstan (2.6% each).", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "The mined ore is washed, crushed, classified, and separated from quartz. If the quartz penetrates too deeply into the ore, or the iron, zinc, or lead content is abnormally high, then froth flotation is used. The product is a 98% pure baryte (by mass); the purity should be no less than 95%, with a minimal content of iron and silicon dioxide. It is then reduced by carbon to barium sulfide:", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "The water-soluble barium sulfide is the starting point for other compounds: treating BaS with oxygen produces the sulfate, with nitric acid the nitrate, with aqueous carbon dioxide the carbonate, and so on. The nitrate can be thermally decomposed to yield the oxide. Barium metal is produced by reduction with aluminium at 1,100 °C (2,010 °F). The intermetallic compound BaAl4 is produced first:", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "BaAl4 is an intermediate reacted with barium oxide to produce the metal. Note that not all barium is reduced.", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The remaining barium oxide reacts with the formed aluminium oxide:", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "and the overall reaction is", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Barium vapor is condensed and packed into molds in an atmosphere of argon. This method is used commercially, yielding ultrapure barium. Commonly sold barium is about 99% pure, with main impurities being strontium and calcium (up to 0.8% and 0.25%) and other contaminants contributing less than 0.1%.", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "A similar reaction with silicon at 1,200 °C (2,190 °F) yields barium and barium metasilicate. Electrolysis is not used because barium readily dissolves in molten halides and the product is rather impure.", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "The barium mineral, benitoite (barium titanium silicate), occurs as a very rare blue fluorescent gemstone, and is the official state gem of California.", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Barium in seawater", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Barium exists in seawater as the Ba ion with an average oceanic concentration of 109 nmol/kg. Barium also exists in the ocean as BaSO4, or barite. Barium has a nutrient-like profile with a residence time of 10,000 years.", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Barium shows a relatively consistent concentration in upper ocean seawater, excepting regions of high river inputs and regions with strong upwelling. There is little depletion of barium concentrations in the upper ocean for an ion with a nutrient-like profile, thus lateral mixing is important. Barium isotopic values show basin-scale balances instead of local or short-term processes.", "title": "Occurrence and production" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "Barium, as a metal or when alloyed with aluminium, is used to remove unwanted gases (gettering) from vacuum tubes, such as TV picture tubes. Barium is suitable for this purpose because of its low vapor pressure and reactivity towards oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water; it can even partly remove noble gases by dissolving them in the crystal lattice. This application is gradually disappearing due to the rising popularity of the tubeless LCD, LED, and plasma sets.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Other uses of elemental barium are minor and include an additive to silumin (aluminium–silicon alloys) that refines their structure, as well as", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Barium sulfate (the mineral baryte, BaSO4) is important to the petroleum industry as a drilling fluid in oil and gas wells. The precipitate of the compound (called \"blanc fixe\", from the French for \"permanent white\") is used in paints and varnishes; as a filler in ringing ink, plastics, and rubbers; as a paper coating pigment; and in nanoparticles, to improve physical properties of some polymers, such as epoxies.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Barium sulfate has a low toxicity and relatively high density of ca. 4.5 g/cm (and thus opacity to X-rays). For this reason it is used as a radiocontrast agent in X-ray imaging of the digestive system (\"barium meals\" and \"barium enemas\"). Lithopone, a pigment that contains barium sulfate and zinc sulfide, is a permanent white with good covering power that does not darken when exposed to sulfides.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Other compounds of barium find only niche applications, limited by the toxicity of Ba ions (barium carbonate is a rat poison), which is not a problem for the insoluble BaSO4.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Palaeoceanography", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "The lateral mixing of barium is caused by water mass mixing and ocean circulation. Global ocean circulation reveals a strong correlation between dissolved barium and silicic acid. The large-scale ocean circulation combined with remineralization of barium show a similar correlation between dissolved barium and ocean alkalinity.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "Dissolved barium's correlation with silicic acid can be seen both vertically and spatially. Particulate barium shows a strong correlation with particulate organic carbon or POC. Barium is becoming more popular to be used a base for palaeoceanographic proxies. With both dissolved and particulate barium's links with silicic acid and POC, it can be used to determine historical variations in the biological pump, carbon cycle, and global climate.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "The barium particulate barite (BaSO4), as one of many proxies, can be used to provide a host of historical information on processes in different oceanic settings (water column, sediments, and hydrothermal sites). In each setting there are differences in isotopic and elemental composition of the barite particulate. Barite in the water column, known as marine or pelagic barite, reveals information on seawater chemistry variation over time. Barite in sediments, known as diagenetic or cold seeps barite, gives information about sedimentary redox processes. Barite formed via hydrothermal activity at hydrothermal vents, known as hydrothermal barite, reveals alterations in the condition of the earth's crust around those vents.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "Because of the high reactivity of the metal, toxicological data are available only for compounds. Soluble barium compounds are poisonous. In low doses, barium ions act as a muscle stimulant, and higher doses affect the nervous system, causing cardiac irregularities, tremors, weakness, anxiety, shortness of breath, and paralysis. This toxicity may be caused by Ba blocking potassium ion channels, which are critical to the proper function of the nervous system. Other organs damaged by water-soluble barium compounds (i.e., barium ions) are the eyes, immune system, heart, respiratory system, and skin causing, for example, blindness and sensitization.", "title": "Toxicity" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "Barium is not carcinogenic and does not bioaccumulate. Inhaled dust containing insoluble barium compounds can accumulate in the lungs, causing a benign condition called baritosis. The insoluble sulfate is nontoxic and is not classified as a dangerous goods in transport regulations.", "title": "Toxicity" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "To avoid a potentially vigorous chemical reaction, barium metal is kept in an argon atmosphere or under mineral oils. Contact with air is dangerous and may cause ignition. Moisture, friction, heat, sparks, flames, shocks, static electricity, and exposure to oxidizers and acids should be avoided. Anything that may contact with barium should be electrically grounded.", "title": "Toxicity" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "", "title": "External links" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Berkelium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Bk and atomic number 97. It is a member of the actinide and transuranium element series. It is named after the city of Berkeley, California, the location of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (then the University of California Radiation Laboratory) where it was discovered in December 1949. Berkelium was the fifth transuranium element discovered after neptunium, plutonium, curium and americium.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The major isotope of berkelium, Bk, is synthesized in minute quantities in dedicated high-flux nuclear reactors, mainly at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, United States, and at the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad, Russia. The longest-lived and second-most important isotope, Bk, can be synthesized via irradiation of Cm with high-energy alpha particles.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Just over one gram of berkelium has been produced in the United States since 1967. There is no practical application of berkelium outside scientific research which is mostly directed at the synthesis of heavier transuranium elements and superheavy elements. A 22-milligram batch of berkelium-249 was prepared during a 250-day irradiation period and then purified for a further 90 days at Oak Ridge in 2009. This sample was used to synthesize the new element tennessine for the first time in 2009 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Russia, after it was bombarded with calcium-48 ions for 150 days. This was the culmination of the Russia–US collaboration on the synthesis of the heaviest elements on the periodic table.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Berkelium is a soft, silvery-white, radioactive metal. The berkelium-249 isotope emits low-energy electrons and thus is relatively safe to handle. It decays with a half-life of 330 days to californium-249, which is a strong emitter of ionizing alpha particles. This gradual transformation is an important consideration when studying the properties of elemental berkelium and its chemical compounds, since the formation of californium brings not only chemical contamination, but also free-radical effects and self-heating from the emitted alpha particles.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Berkelium is a soft, silvery-white, radioactive actinide metal. In the periodic table, it is located to the right of the actinide curium, to the left of the actinide californium and below the lanthanide terbium with which it shares many similarities in physical and chemical properties. Its density of 14.78 g/cm lies between those of curium (13.52 g/cm) and californium (15.1 g/cm), as does its melting point of 986 °C, below that of curium (1340 °C) but higher than that of californium (900 °C). Berkelium is relatively soft and has one of the lowest bulk moduli among the actinides, at about 20 GPa (2×10 Pa).", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Berkelium(III) ions shows two sharp fluorescence peaks at 652 nanometers (red light) and 742 nanometers (deep red – near-infrared) due to internal transitions at the f-electron shell. The relative intensity of these peaks depends on the excitation power and temperature of the sample. This emission can be observed, for example, after dispersing berkelium ions in a silicate glass, by melting the glass in presence of berkelium oxide or halide.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Between 70 K and room temperature, berkelium behaves as a Curie–Weiss paramagnetic material with an effective magnetic moment of 9.69 Bohr magnetons (µB) and a Curie temperature of 101 K. This magnetic moment is almost equal to the theoretical value of 9.72 µB calculated within the simple atomic L-S coupling model. Upon cooling to about 34 K, berkelium undergoes a transition to an antiferromagnetic state. Enthalpy of dissolution in hydrochloric acid at standard conditions is −600 kJ/mol, from which the standard enthalpy of formation (ΔfH°) of aqueous Bk ions is obtained as −601 kJ/mol. The standard electrode potential Bk/Bk is −2.01 V. The ionization potential of a neutral berkelium atom is 6.23 eV.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "At ambient conditions, berkelium assumes its most stable α form which has a hexagonal symmetry, space group P63/mmc, lattice parameters of 341 pm and 1107 pm. The crystal has a double-hexagonal close packing structure with the layer sequence ABAC and so is isotypic (having a similar structure) with α-lanthanum and α-forms of actinides beyond curium. This crystal structure changes with pressure and temperature. When compressed at room temperature to 7 GPa, α-berkelium transforms to the β modification, which has a face-centered cubic (fcc) symmetry and space group Fm3m. This transition occurs without change in volume, but the enthalpy increases by 3.66 kJ/mol. Upon further compression to 25 GPa, berkelium transforms to an orthorhombic γ-berkelium structure similar to that of α-uranium. This transition is accompanied by a 12% volume decrease and delocalization of the electrons at the 5f electron shell. No further phase transitions are observed up to 57 GPa.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Upon heating, α-berkelium transforms into another phase with an fcc lattice (but slightly different from β-berkelium), space group Fm3m and the lattice constant of 500 pm; this fcc structure is equivalent to the closest packing with the sequence ABC. This phase is metastable and will gradually revert to the original α-berkelium phase at room temperature. The temperature of the phase transition is believed to be quite close to the melting point.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Like all actinides, berkelium dissolves in various aqueous inorganic acids, liberating gaseous hydrogen and converting into the berkelium(III) state. This trivalent oxidation state (+3) is the most stable, especially in aqueous solutions, but tetravalent (+4), pentavalent (+5), and possibly divalent (+2) berkelium compounds are also known. The existence of divalent berkelium salts is uncertain and has only been reported in mixed lanthanum(III) chloride-strontium chloride melts. A similar behavior is observed for the lanthanide analogue of berkelium, terbium. Aqueous solutions of Bk ions are green in most acids. The color of Bk ions is yellow in hydrochloric acid and orange-yellow in sulfuric acid. Berkelium does not react rapidly with oxygen at room temperature, possibly due to the formation of a protective oxide layer surface. However, it reacts with molten metals, hydrogen, halogens, chalcogens and pnictogens to form various binary compounds.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Nineteen isotopes and six nuclear isomers (excited states of an isotope) of berkelium have been characterized, with mass numbers ranging from 233 to 253 (except 235 and 237). All of them are radioactive. The longest half-lives are observed for Bk (1,380 years), Bk (over 300 years), and Bk (330 days); the half-lives of the other isotopes range from microseconds to several days. The isotope which is the easiest to synthesize is berkelium-249. This emits mostly soft β-particles which are inconvenient for detection. Its alpha radiation is rather weak (1.45×10%) with respect to the β-radiation, but is sometimes used to detect this isotope. The second important berkelium isotope, berkelium-247, is an alpha-emitter, as are most actinide isotopes.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "All berkelium isotopes have a half-life far too short to be primordial. Therefore, any primordial berkelium − that is, berkelium present on the Earth during its formation − has decayed by now.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "On Earth, berkelium is mostly concentrated in certain areas, which were used for the atmospheric nuclear weapons tests between 1945 and 1980, as well as at the sites of nuclear incidents, such as the Chernobyl disaster, Three Mile Island accident and 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash. Analysis of the debris at the testing site of the first United States' first thermonuclear weapon, Ivy Mike, (1 November 1952, Enewetak Atoll), revealed high concentrations of various actinides, including berkelium. For reasons of military secrecy, this result was not published until 1956.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "Nuclear reactors produce mostly, among the berkelium isotopes, berkelium-249. During the storage and before the fuel disposal, most of it beta decays to californium-249. The latter has a half-life of 351 years, which is relatively long compared to the half-lives of other isotopes produced in the reactor, and is therefore undesirable in the disposal products.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The transuranium elements from americium to fermium, including berkelium, occurred naturally in the natural nuclear fission reactor at Oklo, but no longer do so.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Berkelium is also one of the elements that have theoretically been detected in Przybylski's Star.", "title": "Characteristics" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Although very small amounts of berkelium were possibly produced in previous nuclear experiments, it was first intentionally synthesized, isolated and identified in December 1949 by Glenn T. Seaborg, Albert Ghiorso, Stanley Gerald Thompson, and Kenneth Street Jr. They used the 60-inch cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. Similar to the nearly simultaneous discovery of americium (element 95) and curium (element 96) in 1944, the new elements berkelium and californium (element 98) were both produced in 1949–1950.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The name choice for element 97 followed the previous tradition of the Californian group to draw an analogy between the newly discovered actinide and the lanthanide element positioned above it in the periodic table. Previously, americium was named after a continent as its analogue europium, and curium honored scientists Marie and Pierre Curie as the lanthanide above it, gadolinium, was named after the explorer of the rare-earth elements Johan Gadolin. Thus the discovery report by the Berkeley group reads: \"It is suggested that element 97 be given the name berkelium (symbol Bk) after the city of Berkeley in a manner similar to that used in naming its chemical homologue terbium (atomic number 65) whose name was derived from the town of Ytterby, Sweden, where the rare earth minerals were first found.\" This tradition ended with berkelium, though, as the naming of the next discovered actinide, californium, was not related to its lanthanide analogue dysprosium, but after the discovery place.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "The most difficult steps in the synthesis of berkelium were its separation from the final products and the production of sufficient quantities of americium for the target material. First, americium (Am) nitrate solution was coated on a platinum foil, the solution was evaporated and the residue converted by annealing to americium dioxide (AmO2). This target was irradiated with 35 MeV alpha particles for 6 hours in the 60-inch cyclotron at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley. The (α,2n) reaction induced by the irradiation yielded the Bk isotope and two free neutrons:", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "After the irradiation, the coating was dissolved with nitric acid and then precipitated as the hydroxide using concentrated aqueous ammonia solution. The product was centrifugated and re-dissolved in nitric acid. To separate berkelium from the unreacted americium, this solution was added to a mixture of ammonium and ammonium sulfate and heated to convert all the dissolved americium into the oxidation state +6. Unoxidized residual americium was precipitated by the addition of hydrofluoric acid as americium(III) fluoride (AmF3). This step yielded a mixture of the accompanying product curium and the expected element 97 in form of trifluorides. The mixture was converted to the corresponding hydroxides by treating it with potassium hydroxide, and after centrifugation, was dissolved in perchloric acid.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Further separation was carried out in the presence of a citric acid/ammonium buffer solution in a weakly acidic medium (pH≈3.5), using ion exchange at elevated temperature. The chromatographic separation behavior was unknown for the element 97 at the time, but was anticipated by analogy with terbium. The first results were disappointing because no alpha-particle emission signature could be detected from the elution product. With further analysis, searching for characteristic X-rays and conversion electron signals, a berkelium isotope was eventually detected. Its mass number was uncertain between 243 and 244 in the initial report, but was later established as 243.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Berkelium is produced by bombarding lighter actinides uranium (U) or plutonium (Pu) with neutrons in a nuclear reactor. In a more common case of uranium fuel, plutonium is produced first by neutron capture (the so-called (n,γ) reaction or neutron fusion) followed by beta-decay:", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Plutonium-239 is further irradiated by a source that has a high neutron flux, several times higher than a conventional nuclear reactor, such as the 85-megawatt High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, USA. The higher flux promotes fusion reactions involving not one but several neutrons, converting Pu to Cm and then to Cm:", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Curium-249 has a short half-life of 64 minutes, and thus its further conversion to Cm has a low probability. Instead, it transforms by beta-decay into Bk:", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The thus-produced Bk has a long half-life of 330 days and thus can capture another neutron. However, the product, Bk, again has a relatively short half-life of 3.212 hours and thus does not yield any heavier berkelium isotopes. It instead decays to the californium isotope Cf:", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Although Bk is the most stable isotope of berkelium, its production in nuclear reactors is very difficult because its potential progenitor Cm has never been observed to undergo beta decay. Thus, Bk is the most accessible isotope of berkelium, which still is available only in small quantities (only 0.66 grams have been produced in the US over the period 1967–1983) at a high price of the order 185 USD per microgram. It is the only berkelium isotope available in bulk quantities, and thus the only berkelium isotope whose properties can be extensively studied.", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "The isotope Bk was first obtained in 1956 by bombarding a mixture of curium isotopes with 25 MeV α-particles. Although its direct detection was hindered by strong signal interference with Bk, the existence of a new isotope was proven by the growth of the decay product Cf which had been previously characterized. The half-life of Bk was estimated as 23±5 hours, though later 1965 work gave a half-life in excess of 300 years (which may be due to an isomeric state). Berkelium-247 was produced during the same year by irradiating Cm with alpha-particles:", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Berkelium-242 was synthesized in 1979 by bombarding U with B, U with B, Th with N or Th with N. It converts by electron capture to Cm with a half-life of 7.0±1.3 minutes. A search for an initially suspected isotope Bk was then unsuccessful; Bk has since been synthesized.", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "The fact that berkelium readily assumes oxidation state +4 in solids, and is relatively stable in this state in liquids greatly assists separation of berkelium away from many other actinides. These are inevitably produced in relatively large amounts during the nuclear synthesis and often favor the +3 state. This fact was not yet known in the initial experiments, which used a more complex separation procedure. Various inorganic oxidation agents can be applied to the berkelium(III) solutions to convert it to the +4 state, such as bromates (BrO−3), bismuthates (BiO−3), chromates (CrO2−4 and Cr2O2−7), silver(I) thiolate (Ag2S2O8), lead(IV) oxide (PbO2), ozone (O3), or photochemical oxidation procedures. More recently, it has been discovered that some organic and bio-inspired molecules, such as the chelator called 3,4,3-LI(1,2-HOPO), can also oxidize Bk(III) and stabilize Bk(IV) under mild conditions. Berkelium(IV) is then extracted with ion exchange, extraction chromatography or liquid-liquid extraction using HDEHP (bis-(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid), amines, tributyl phosphate or various other reagents. These procedures separate berkelium from most trivalent actinides and lanthanides, except for the lanthanide cerium (lanthanides are absent in the irradiation target but are created in various nuclear fission decay chains).", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "A more detailed procedure adopted at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory was as follows: the initial mixture of actinides is processed with ion exchange using lithium chloride reagent, then precipitated as hydroxides, filtered and dissolved in nitric acid. It is then treated with high-pressure elution from cation exchange resins, and the berkelium phase is oxidized and extracted using one of the procedures described above. Reduction of the thus-obtained berkelium(IV) to the +3 oxidation state yields a solution, which is nearly free from other actinides (but contains cerium). Berkelium and cerium are then separated with another round of ion-exchange treatment.", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "In order to characterize chemical and physical properties of solid berkelium and its compounds, a program was initiated in 1952 at the Material Testing Reactor, Arco, Idaho, US. It resulted in preparation of an eight-gram plutonium-239 target and in the first production of macroscopic quantities (0.6 micrograms) of berkelium by Burris B. Cunningham and Stanley Gerald Thompson in 1958, after a continuous reactor irradiation of this target for six years. This irradiation method was and still is the only way of producing weighable amounts of the element, and most solid-state studies of berkelium have been conducted on microgram or submicrogram-sized samples.", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "The world's major irradiation sources are the 85-megawatt High Flux Isotope Reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, USA, and the SM-2 loop reactor at the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors (NIIAR) in Dimitrovgrad, Russia, which are both dedicated to the production of transcurium elements (atomic number greater than 96). These facilities have similar power and flux levels, and are expected to have comparable production capacities for transcurium elements, although the quantities produced at NIIAR are not publicly reported. In a \"typical processing campaign\" at Oak Ridge, tens of grams of curium are irradiated to produce decigram quantities of californium, milligram quantities of berkelium-249 and einsteinium, and picogram quantities of fermium. In total, just over one gram of berkelium-249 has been produced at Oak Ridge since 1967.", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The first berkelium metal sample weighing 1.7 micrograms was prepared in 1971 by the reduction of berkelium(III) fluoride with lithium vapor at 1000 °C; the fluoride was suspended on a tungsten wire above a tantalum crucible containing molten lithium. Later, metal samples weighing up to 0.5 milligrams were obtained with this method.", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Similar results are obtained with berkelium(IV) fluoride. Berkelium metal can also be produced by the reduction of berkelium(IV) oxide with thorium or lanthanum.", "title": "Synthesis and extraction" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Two oxides of berkelium are known, with the berkelium oxidation state of +3 (Bk2O3) and +4 (BkO2). Berkelium(IV) oxide is a brown solid, while berkelium(III) oxide is a yellow-green solid with a melting point of 1920 °C and is formed from BkO2 by reduction with molecular hydrogen:", "title": "Compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Upon heating to 1200 °C, the oxide Bk2O3 undergoes a phase change; it undergoes another phase change at 1750 °C. Such three-phase behavior is typical for the actinide sesquioxides. Berkelium(II) oxide, BkO, has been reported as a brittle gray solid but its exact chemical composition remains uncertain.", "title": "Compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "In halides, berkelium assumes the oxidation states +3 and +4. The +3 state is the most stable, especially in solutions, while the tetravalent halides BkF4 and Cs2BkCl6 are only known in the solid phase. The coordination of berkelium atom in its trivalent fluoride and chloride is tricapped trigonal prismatic, with the coordination number of 9. In trivalent bromide, it is bicapped trigonal prismatic (coordination 8) or octahedral (coordination 6), and in the iodide it is octahedral.", "title": "Compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Berkelium(IV) fluoride (BkF4) is a yellow-green ionic solid and is isotypic with uranium tetrafluoride or zirconium tetrafluoride. Berkelium(III) fluoride (BkF3) is also a yellow-green solid, but it has two crystalline structures. The most stable phase at low temperatures is isotypic with yttrium(III) fluoride, while upon heating to between 350 and 600 °C, it transforms to the structure found in lanthanum trifluoride.", "title": "Compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "Visible amounts of berkelium(III) chloride (BkCl3) were first isolated and characterized in 1962, and weighed only 3 billionths of a gram. It can be prepared by introducing hydrogen chloride vapors into an evacuated quartz tube containing berkelium oxide at a temperature about 500 °C. This green solid has a melting point of 600 °C, and is isotypic with uranium(III) chloride. Upon heating to nearly melting point, BkCl3 converts into an orthorhombic phase.", "title": "Compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "Two forms of berkelium(III) bromide are known: one with berkelium having coordination 6, and one with coordination 8. The latter is less stable and transforms to the former phase upon heating to about 350 °C. An important phenomenon for radioactive solids has been studied on these two crystal forms: the structure of fresh and aged BkBr3 samples was probed by X-ray diffraction over a period longer than 3 years, so that various fractions of berkelium-249 had beta decayed to californium-249. No change in structure was observed upon the BkBr3—CfBr3 transformation. However, other differences were noted for BkBr3 and CfBr3. For example, the latter could be reduced with hydrogen to CfBr2, but the former could not – this result was reproduced on individual BkBr3 and CfBr3 samples, as well on the samples containing both bromides. The intergrowth of californium in berkelium occurs at a rate of 0.22% per day and is an intrinsic obstacle in studying berkelium properties. Beside a chemical contamination, Cf, being an alpha emitter, brings undesirable self-damage of the crystal lattice and the resulting self-heating. The chemical effect however can be avoided by performing measurements as a function of time and extrapolating the obtained results.", "title": "Compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "The pnictides of berkelium-249 of the type BkX are known for the elements nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic and antimony. They crystallize in the rock-salt structure and are prepared by the reaction of either berkelium(III) hydride (BkH3) or metallic berkelium with these elements at elevated temperature (about 600 °C) under high vacuum.", "title": "Compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "Berkelium(III) sulfide, Bk2S3, is prepared by either treating berkelium oxide with a mixture of hydrogen sulfide and carbon disulfide vapors at 1130 °C, or by directly reacting metallic berkelium with elemental sulfur. These procedures yield brownish-black crystals.", "title": "Compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "Berkelium(III) and berkelium(IV) hydroxides are both stable in 1 molar solutions of sodium hydroxide. Berkelium(III) phosphate (BkPO4) has been prepared as a solid, which shows strong fluorescence under excitation with a green light. Berkelium hydrides are produced by reacting metal with hydrogen gas at temperatures about 250 °C. They are non-stoichiometric with the nominal formula BkH2+x (0 < x < 1). Several other salts of berkelium are known, including an oxysulfide (Bk2O2S), and hydrated nitrate (Bk(NO3)3·4H2O), chloride (BkCl3·6H2O), sulfate (Bk2(SO4)3·12H2O) and oxalate (Bk2(C2O4)3·4H2O). Thermal decomposition at about 600 °C in an argon atmosphere (to avoid oxidation to BkO2) of Bk2(SO4)3·12H2O yields the crystals of berkelium(III) oxysulfate (Bk2O2SO4). This compound is thermally stable to at least 1000 °C in inert atmosphere.", "title": "Compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "Berkelium forms a trigonal (η–C5H5)3Bk metallocene complex with three cyclopentadienyl rings, which can be synthesized by reacting berkelium(III) chloride with the molten beryllocene (Be(C5H5)2) at about 70 °C. It has an amber color and a density of 2.47 g/cm. The complex is stable to heating to at least 250 °C, and sublimates without melting at about 350 °C. The high radioactivity of berkelium gradually destroys the compound (within a period of weeks). One cyclopentadienyl ring in (η–C5H5)3Bk can be substituted by chlorine to yield [Bk(C5H5)2Cl]2. The optical absorption spectra of this compound are very similar to those of (η–C5H5)3Bk.", "title": "Compounds" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "There is currently no use for any isotope of berkelium outside basic scientific research. Berkelium-249 is a common target nuclide to prepare still heavier transuranium elements and superheavy elements, such as lawrencium, rutherfordium and bohrium. It is also useful as a source of the isotope californium-249, which is used for studies on the chemistry of californium in preference to the more radioactive californium-252 that is produced in neutron bombardment facilities such as the HFIR.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "A 22 milligram batch of berkelium-249 was prepared in a 250-day irradiation and then purified for 90 days at Oak Ridge in 2009. This target yielded the first 6 atoms of tennessine at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Dubna, Russia, after bombarding it with calcium ions in the U400 cyclotron for 150 days. This synthesis was a culmination of the Russia-US collaboration between JINR and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on the synthesis of elements 113 to 118 which was initiated in 1989.", "title": "Applications" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "The nuclear fission properties of berkelium are different from those of the neighboring actinides curium and californium, and they suggest berkelium to perform poorly as a fuel in a nuclear reactor. Specifically, berkelium-249 has a moderately large neutron capture cross section of 710 barns for thermal neutrons, 1200 barns resonance integral, but very low fission cross section for thermal neutrons. In a thermal reactor, much of it will therefore be converted to berkelium-250 which quickly decays to californium-250. In principle, berkelium-249 can sustain a nuclear chain reaction in a fast breeder reactor. Its critical mass is relatively high at 192 kg; it can be reduced with a water or steel reflector but would still exceed the world production of this isotope.", "title": "Nuclear fuel cycle" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "Berkelium-247 can maintain chain reaction both in a thermal-neutron and in a fast-neutron reactor, however, its production is rather complex and thus the availability is much lower than its critical mass, which is about 75.7 kg for a bare sphere, 41.2 kg with a water reflector and 35.2 kg with a steel reflector (30 cm thickness).", "title": "Nuclear fuel cycle" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "Little is known about the effects of berkelium on human body, and analogies with other elements may not be drawn because of different radiation products (electrons for berkelium and alpha particles, neutrons, or both for most other actinides). The low energy of electrons emitted from berkelium-249 (less than 126 keV) hinders its detection, due to signal interference with other decay processes, but also makes this isotope relatively harmless to humans as compared to other actinides. However, berkelium-249 transforms with a half-life of only 330 days to the strong alpha-emitter californium-249, which is rather dangerous and has to be handled in a glovebox in a dedicated laboratory.", "title": "Health issues" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Most available berkelium toxicity data originate from research on animals. Upon ingestion by rats, only about 0.01% of berkelium ends in the blood stream. From there, about 65% goes to the bones, where it remains for about 50 years, 25% to the lungs (biological half-life about 20 years), 0.035% to the testicles or 0.01% to the ovaries where berkelium stays indefinitely. The balance of about 10% is excreted. In all these organs berkelium might promote cancer, and in the skeleton, its radiation can damage red blood cells. The maximum permissible amount of berkelium-249 in the human skeleton is 0.4 nanograms.", "title": "Health issues" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "", "title": "External links" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bauxite is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. It is the world's main source of aluminium and gallium. Bauxite consists mostly of the aluminium minerals gibbsite (Al(OH)3), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)) and diaspore (α-AlO(OH)), mixed with the two iron oxides goethite (FeO(OH)) and haematite (Fe2O3), the aluminium clay mineral kaolinite (Al2Si2O5(OH)4) and small amounts of anatase (TiO2) and ilmenite (FeTiO3 or FeO.TiO2). Bauxite appears dull in luster and is reddish-brown, white, or tan.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "In 1821, the French geologist Pierre Berthier discovered bauxite near the village of Les Baux in Provence, southern France.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Numerous classification schemes have been proposed for bauxite but, as of 1982, there was no consensus.", "title": "Formation" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Vadász (1951) distinguished lateritic bauxites (silicate bauxites) from karst bauxite ores (carbonate bauxites):", "title": "Formation" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "In the case of Jamaica, recent analysis of the soils showed elevated levels of cadmium, suggesting that the bauxite originates from Miocene volcanic ash deposits from episodes of significant volcanism in Central America.", "title": "Formation" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Australia is the largest producer of bauxite, followed by Guinea and China. Bauxite is usually strip mined because it is almost always found near the surface of the terrain, with little or no overburden. Increased aluminium recycling, which requires less electric power than producing aluminium from ores, will considerably extend the world's bauxite reserves.", "title": "Production and reserves" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "As of 2010, approximately 70% to 80% of the world's dry bauxite production is processed first into alumina and then into aluminium by electrolysis. Bauxite rocks are typically classified according to their intended commercial application: metallurgical, abrasive, cement, chemical, and refractory.", "title": "Aluminium production" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Bauxite ore is usually heated in a pressure vessel along with a sodium hydroxide solution at a temperature of 150 to 200 °C (300 to 390 °F). At these temperatures, the aluminium is dissolved as sodium aluminate (the Bayer process). The aluminium compounds in the bauxite may be present as gibbsite(Al(OH)3), boehmite(AlOOH) or diaspore(AlOOH); the different forms of the aluminium component will dictate the extraction conditions. The undissolved waste, bauxite tailings, after the aluminium compounds are extracted contains iron oxides, silica, calcia, titania and some un-reacted alumina. After separation of the residue by filtering, pure gibbsite is precipitated when the liquid is cooled, and then seeded with fine-grained aluminium hydroxide. The gibbsite is usually converted into aluminium oxide, Al2O3, by heating in rotary kilns or fluid flash calciners to a temperature in excess of 1,000 °C (1,830 °F). This aluminium oxide is dissolved at a temperature of about 960 °C (1,760 °F) in molten cryolite. Next, this molten substance can yield metallic aluminium by passing an electric current through it in the process of electrolysis, which is called the Hall–Héroult process, named after its American and French discoverers.", "title": "Aluminium production" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Prior to the invention of this process, and prior to the Deville process, aluminium ore was refined by heating ore along with elemental sodium or potassium in a vacuum. The method was complicated and consumed materials that were themselves expensive at that time. This made early elemental aluminium more expensive than gold.", "title": "Aluminium production" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "As a bulk cargo, bauxite is a Group A cargo that may liquefy if excessively moist. Liquefaction and the free surface effect can cause the cargo to shift rapidly inside the hold and make the ship unstable, potentially sinking the ship. One vessel suspected to have been sunk in this way was the MS Bulk Jupiter in 2015. One method which can demonstrate this effect is the \"can test\", in which a sample of the material is placed in a cylindrical can and struck against a surface many times. If a moist slurry forms in the can, then there is a likelihood for the cargo to liquefy; although conversely, even if the sample remains dry it does not conclusively prove that it will remain that way, or that it is safe for loading.", "title": "Maritime safety" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Bauxite is the main source of the rare metal gallium.", "title": "Source of gallium" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "During the processing of bauxite to alumina in the Bayer process, gallium accumulates in the sodium hydroxide liquor. From this it can be extracted by a variety of methods. The most recent is the use of ion-exchange resin. Achievable extraction efficiencies critically depend on the original concentration in the feed bauxite. At a typical feed concentration of 50 ppm, about 15 percent of the contained gallium is extractable. The remainder reports to the red mud and aluminium hydroxide streams.", "title": "Source of gallium" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Bauxite is also a potential source for vanadium.", "title": "Source of gallium" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bavaria (/bəˈvɛəriə/ bə-VAIR-ee-ə; German: Bayern [ˈbaɪɐn] ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (German: Freistaat Bayern [ˈfʁaɪʃtaːt ˈbaɪɐn] ; Bavarian: Freistoot Bayern), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of 70,550.19 km (27,239.58 sq mi), Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total land area of Germany. With over 13 million inhabitants it is the second most populous German state behind North Rhine-Westphalia, but due to its large physical size its population density is below the German average. Major cities include Munich (its capital and largest city, which is also the third largest city in Germany), Nuremberg, and Augsburg.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The history of Bavaria includes its earliest settlement by Iron Age Celtic tribes, followed by the conquests of the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC, when the territory was incorporated into the provinces of Raetia and Noricum. It became the Duchy of Bavaria (a stem duchy) in the 6th century AD following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. It was later incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire, became an independent kingdom after 1806, joined the Prussian-led German Empire in 1871 while retaining its title of kingdom, and finally became a state of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Bavaria has a distinct culture, largely because of the state's Catholic heritage and conservative traditions, which includes a language, cuisine, architecture, festivals and elements of Alpine symbolism. The state also has the second largest economy among the German states by GDP figures, giving it the status of a wealthy German region.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Contemporary Bavaria also includes parts of the historical regions of Franconia and Swabia, in addition to Altbayern.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The Celts settled in the Bavarian Alps, also known as Celto-Slavs or Alpines, these peoples were famed, romanticized, and subjected to ancientness.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "In the 530s, the Merovingian dynasty incorporated the kingdom of Thuringia after their defeat by the Franks. The Baiuvarii were Frankicised a century later. The Lex Thuringorum documents an upper class nobility of adalingi. From about 554 to 788, the house of Agilolfing ruled the Duchy of Bavaria, ending with Tassilo III who was deposed by Charlemagne.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Tassilo I of Bavaria tried unsuccessfully to hold the eastern frontier against the expansion of Slavic peoples and the Pannonian Avars around 600. Garibald II seems to have achieved a balance of power between 610 and 616.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "At Hugbert's death in 735, the duchy passed to Odilo of Bavaria from the neighboring Alemannia. Odilo issued a Lex Baiuvariorum for Bavaria, completed the process of church organization in partnership with Saint Boniface in 739, and tried to intervene in Frankish succession disputes by fighting for the claims of the Carolingian dynasty. He was defeated near Augsburg in 743 but continued to rule until his death in 748.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Saint Boniface completed the people's conversion to Christianity in the early 8th century. Tassilo III of Bavaria succeeded to rule Bavaria. He initially ruled under Frankish oversight but began to function independently from 763 onward. He was particularly noted for founding new monasteries and for expanding eastwards, fighting Slavs in the eastern Alps and along the Danube and colonizing these lands. After 781, however, Charlemagne began to exert pressure and Tassilo III was deposed in 788. Dissenters attempted a coup against Charlemagne at Regensburg in 792, led by Pepin the Hunchback.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "With the revolt of Henry II, Duke of Bavaria in 976, Bavaria lost large territories in the south and southeast.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "One of the most important dukes of Bavaria was Henry the Lion of the house of Welf, founder of Munich, and de facto the second most powerful man in the empire as the ruler of two duchies. When in 1180, Henry the Lion was deposed as Duke of Saxony and Bavaria by his cousin, Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor (a.k.a. \"Barbarossa\" for his red beard), Bavaria was awarded as fief to the Wittelsbach family, counts palatinate of Schyren (\"Scheyern\" in modern German). They ruled for 738 years, from 1180 to 1918. In 1180, however, Styria was also separated from Bavaria. The Electorate of the Palatinate by Rhine (Kurpfalz in German) was also acquired by the House of Wittelsbach in 1214, which they would subsequently hold for six centuries.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "The first of several divisions of the duchy of Bavaria occurred in 1255. With the extinction of the Hohenstaufen in 1268, Swabian territories were acquired by the Wittelsbach dukes. Emperor Louis the Bavarian acquired Brandenburg, Tyrol, Holland and Hainaut for his House but released the Upper Palatinate for the Palatinate branch of the Wittelsbach in 1329. That time also Salzburg finally became independent from the Duchy of Bavaria.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "In the 14th and 15th centuries, upper and lower Bavaria were repeatedly subdivided. Four Duchies existed after the division of 1392: Bavaria-Straubing, Bavaria-Landshut, Bavaria-Ingolstadt and Bavaria-Munich. In 1506 with the Landshut War of Succession, the other parts of Bavaria were reunited, and Munich became the sole capital. The country became a center of the Jesuit-inspired Counter-Reformation.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "In 1623, the Bavarian duke replaced his relative of the Palatinate branch, the Electorate of the Palatinate in the early days of the Thirty Years' War and acquired the powerful prince-elector dignity in the Holy Roman Empire, determining its Emperor thence forward, as well as special legal status under the empire's laws. During the early and mid-18th century the ambitions of the Bavarian prince electors led to several wars with Austria as well as occupations by Austria (War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession with the election of a Wittelsbach emperor instead of a Habsburg).", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "To mark the unification of Bavaria and the Electoral Palatinate, both being principal Wittelsbach territories, Maximilian III Joseph, Elector of Bavaria was crowned king of Bavaria. King Maximilian III Joseph was quick to change the coat of arms. The various heraldic symbols were replaced and a classical Wittelsbach pattern introduced. The white and blue lozenges symbolized the unity of the territories within the Bavarian kingdom.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The new state also comprised the Duchy of Jülich and Berg as these on their part were in personal union with the Palatinate.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "When Napoleon abolished the Holy Roman Empire, Bavaria became a kingdom in 1806 due, in part, to the Confederation of the Rhine.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Its area doubled after the Duchy of Jülich was ceded to France, since the Electoral Palatinate was divided between France and the Grand Duchy of Baden. The Duchy of Berg was given to Jerome Bonaparte. The county of Tyrol and the federal state of Salzburg were temporarily reunited with Bavaria but finally ceded to Austria at the Congress of Vienna.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "In return, Bavaria was allowed to annex the modern-day region of Palatinate to the west of the Rhine and Franconia in 1815. Between 1799 and 1817, the leading minister, Count Montgelas, followed a strict policy of modernization copying Napoleonic France; he laid the foundations of centralized administrative structures that survived the monarchy and, in part, have retained core validity through to the 21st century.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "In May 1808, a first constitution was passed by Maximilian I, being modernized in 1818. This second version established a bicameral Parliament with a House of Lords (Kammer der Reichsräte) and a House of Commons (Kammer der Abgeordneten). That constitution was followed until the collapse of the monarchy at the end of World War I.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "After the rise of Prussia in the early 18th century, Bavaria preserved its independence by playing off the rivalry of Prussia and Austria. Allied to Austria, it was defeated along with Austria in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War and was not incorporated into the North German Confederation of 1867, but the question of German unity was still alive. When France declared war on Prussia in 1870, all the south German states (Baden, Württemberg, Hessen-Darmstadt and Bavaria) aside from Austria, joined the Prussian forces and ultimately joined the Federation, which was renamed Deutsches Reich (German Empire) in 1871.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Bavaria continued formally as a monarchy, and it had some special rights within the federation (such as an army, railways, postal service and a diplomatic body of its own) but the diplomatic body were later undone by Wilhelm II who declared them illegal and abolished the diplomatic service.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "When Bavaria became part of the newly formed German Empire, this action was considered controversial by Bavarian nationalists who had wanted to retain independence from the rest of Germany, as had Austria.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "As Bavaria had a heavily Catholic majority population, many people resented being ruled by the mostly Protestant northerners in Prussia. As a direct result of the Bavarian-Prussian feud, political parties formed to encourage Bavaria to break away and regain its independence.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "In the early 20th century, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Henrik Ibsen, and other artists were drawn to Bavaria, especially to the Schwabing district in Munich, a center of international artistic activity at the time.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Free State has been an adopted designation after the abolition of monarchy in the aftermath of World War I in several German states.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "On 12 November 1918, Ludwig III signed a document, the Anif declaration, releasing both civil and military officers from their oaths; the newly formed republican government, or \"People's State\" of Socialist premier Kurt Eisner, interpreted this as an abdication. To date, however, no member of the House of Wittelsbach has ever formally declared renunciation of the throne.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "On the other hand, none has ever since officially called upon their Bavarian or Stuart claims. Family members are active in cultural and social life, including the head of the house, Franz, Duke of Bavaria. They step back from any announcements on public affairs, showing approval or disapproval solely by Franz's presence or absence.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Eisner was assassinated in February 1919, ultimately leading to a Communist revolt and the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic being proclaimed 6 April 1919. After violent suppression by elements of the German Army and notably the Freikorps, the Bavarian Soviet Republic fell in May 1919. The Bamberg Constitution (Bamberger Verfassung) was enacted on 12 or 14 August 1919 and came into force on 15 September 1919 creating the Free State of Bavaria within the Weimar Republic.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Extremist activity further increased, notably the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch led by the Nazis, and Munich and Nuremberg became seen as strongholds of Nazism during the Weimar Republic and Nazi dictatorship. However, in the crucial German federal election, March 1933, the Nazis received less than 50% of the votes cast in Bavaria.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "As a manufacturing centre, Munich was heavily bombed during World War II and was occupied by United States Armed Forces, becoming a major part of the American Zone of Allied-occupied Germany, which lasted from 1945 to 1947, and then of Bizone.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "The Rhenish Palatinate was detached from Bavaria in 1946 and made part of the new state Rhineland-Palatinate. During the Cold War, Bavaria was part of West Germany. In 1949, the Free State of Bavaria chose not to sign the Founding Treaty (Gründungsvertrag) for the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany, opposing the division of Germany into two countries after World War II.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The Bavarian Parliament did not sign the Basic Law of Germany, mainly because it was seen as not granting sufficient powers to the individual Länder (states), but at the same time decided that it would still come into force in Bavaria if two-thirds of the other Länder ratified it. All of the other Länder ratified it, however, so it became law.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Bavarians have often emphasized a separate national identity and considered themselves as \"Bavarians\" first, \"Germans\" second.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "In the 19th-century sense, an independent Bavarian State existed from only 1806 to 1871. This feeling started to come about more strongly among Bavarians when the Kingdom of Bavaria was forced by Otto von Bismarck to join the Protestant Prussian-dominated German Empire in 1871, while the Bavarian nationalists wanted to keep Bavaria as Catholic and an independent state. Aside from the minority Bavaria Party, most Bavarians now accept Bavaria is part of Germany.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Another consideration is that Bavarians foster different cultural identities. Franconia in the north speaks East Franconian German. Bavarian Swabia in the south west speaks Swabian German. Altbayern, the so-called \"Old Bavaria\", is the regions forming the historic pentagon-shaped Bavaria before the acquisitions through the Vienna Congress. At present the districts of the Upper Palatinate, Lower and Upper Bavaria) speak Austro-Bavarian.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Uniquely among German states, Bavaria has two official flags of equal status, one with a white and blue stripe, the other with white and blue lozenges. Either may be used by civilians and government offices, who are free to choose between them. Unofficial versions of the flag, especially a lozenge style with coat of arms, are sometimes used by civilians.", "title": "Flags and coat of arms" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "The modern coat of arms of Bavaria was designed by Eduard Ege in 1946, following heraldic traditions.", "title": "Flags and coat of arms" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "Bavaria shares international borders with Austria (Salzburg, Tyrol, Upper Austria and Vorarlberg) and the Czech Republic (Karlovy Vary, Plzeň and South Bohemian Regions), as well as with Switzerland (across Lake Constance to the Canton of St. Gallen).", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "Neighboring states within Germany are Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Thuringia, and Saxony. Two major rivers flow through the state: the Danube (Donau) and the Main. The Bavarian Forest and the Bohemian Forest form the vast majority of the frontier with the Czech Republic and Bohemia.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "The geographic center of the European Union is located in the northwestern corner of Bavaria.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "At lower elevations the climate is classified according to Köppen's guide as \"Cfb\" or \"Dfb\". At higher altitudes the climate becomes \"Dfc\" and \"ET\".", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "The summer months have been getting hotter in recent years. For example, June 2019 was the warmest June in Bavaria since weather observations have been recorded and the winter 2019/2020 was 3 degrees Celsius warmer than the average temperature for many years all over Bavaria. On 20 December 2019 a record temperature of 20.2 °C (68.4 °F) was recorded in Piding. In general winter months are seeing more precipitation which is taking the form of rain more often than that of snow compared to the past. Extreme weather like the 2013 European floods or the 2019 European heavy snowfalls is occurring more and more often. One effect of the continuing warming is the melting of almost all Bavarian Alpine glaciers: Of the five glaciers of Bavaria only the Höllentalferner is predicted to exist over a longer time perspective. The Südliche Schneeferner has almost vanished since the 1980s.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "Bavaria is divided into seven administrative regions called Regierungsbezirke (singular Regierungsbezirk). Each of these regions has a state agency called the Bezirksregierung (district government).", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "Bezirke (regional districts) are the third communal layer in Bavaria; the others are the Landkreise and the Gemeinden or Städte. The Bezirke in Bavaria are territorially identical with the Regierungsbezirke, but they are self-governing regional corporation, having their own parliaments. In the other larger states of Germany, there are only Regierungsbezirke as administrative divisions and no self-governing entities at the level of the Regierungsbezirke as the Bezirke in Bavaria.", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "The second communal layer is made up of 71 rural districts (called Landkreise, singular Landkreis) that are comparable to counties, as well as the 25 independent cities (Kreisfreie Städte, singular Kreisfreie Stadt), both of which share the same administrative responsibilities.", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "Rural districts:", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "Independent cities:", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "The 71 rural districts are on the lowest level divided into 2,031 regular municipalities (called Gemeinden, singular Gemeinde). Together with the 25 independent cities (kreisfreie Städte, which are in effect municipalities independent of Landkreis administrations), there are a total of 2,056 municipalities in Bavaria.", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "In 44 of the 71 rural districts, there are a total of 215 unincorporated areas (as of 1 January 2005, called gemeindefreie Gebiete, singular gemeindefreies Gebiet), not belonging to any municipality, all uninhabited, mostly forested areas, but also four lakes (Chiemsee-without islands, Starnberger See-without island Roseninsel, Ammersee, which are the three largest lakes of Bavaria, and Waginger See).", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "Source: Bayerisches Landesamt für Statistik und Datenverarbeitung", "title": "Administrative divisions" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "Bavaria has a multiparty system dominated by the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), which has won every election since 1945 with the exception of the 1950 ballot. Other important parties are The Greens, which became the second biggest political party in the 2018 local parliament elections and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), who have dominated the city of Munich until 2020. Hitherto, Wilhelm Hoegner has been the only SPD candidate to ever become Minister-President; notable successors in office include multi-term Federal Minister Franz Josef Strauss, a key figure among West German conservatives during the Cold War years, and Edmund Stoiber, who both failed with their bids for Chancellorship.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "The German Greens and the center-right Free Voters have been represented in the state parliament since 1986 and 2008 respectively.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "In the 2003 elections the CSU won a ⅔ supermajority – something no party had ever achieved in postwar Germany. However, in the subsequent 2008 elections the CSU lost the absolute majority for the first time in 46 years.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "The losses were partly attributed by some to the CSU's stance for an anti-smoking bill. (A first anti-smoking law had been proposed by the CSU and passed but was watered down after the election, after which a referendum enforced a strict antismoking bill with a large majority).", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "The last state elections were held on 8 October 2023. The CSU could almost maintain the results from the last elections with 37%. The Greens lost 3% compared to the last election with a result of 14.4%. The SPD lost again compared to the last election and was now at 8.4%. The liberals of the FDP were not able to reach the five-percent-threshold thus they are not part of the Landtag anymore, the second time after the 2013 elections. The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained another 4% with now at 14.6% of the vote.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "The center-right Free Voters party gained 15.8% of the votes and for the second time formed a government coalition with the CSU which led to the subsequent reelection of Markus Söder as Minister-President of Bavaria.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "The Constitution of Bavaria of the Free State of Bavaria was enacted on 8 December 1946. The new Bavarian Constitution became the basis for the Bavarian State after the Second World War.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "Bavaria has a unicameral Landtag (English: State Parliament), elected by universal suffrage. Until December 1999, there was also a Senat, or Senate, whose members were chosen by social and economic groups in Bavaria, but following a referendum in 1998, this institution was abolished.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "The Bavarian State Government consists of the Minister-President of Bavaria, eleven Ministers and six Secretaries of State. The Minister-President is elected for a period of five years by the State Parliament and is head of state. With the approval of the State Parliament he appoints the members of the State Government. The State Government is composed of the:", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "Political processes also take place in the seven regions (Regierungsbezirke or Bezirke) in Bavaria, in the 71 rural districts (Landkreise) and the 25 towns and cities forming their own districts (kreisfreie Städte), and in the 2,031 local authorities (Gemeinden).", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "In 1995 Bavaria introduced direct democracy on the local level in a referendum. This was initiated bottom-up by an association called Mehr Demokratie (English: More Democracy). This is a grass-roots organization which campaigns for the right to citizen-initiated referendums. In 1997 the Bavarian Supreme Court tightened the regulations considerably (including by introducing a turn-out quorum). Nevertheless, Bavaria has the most advanced regulations on local direct democracy in Germany. This has led to a spirited citizens' participation in communal and municipal affairs—835 referendums took place from 1995 through 2005.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "Unlike most German states (Länder), which simply designate themselves as \"State of\" (Land [...]), Bavaria uses the style of \"Free State of Bavaria\" (Freistaat Bayern). The difference from other states is purely terminological, as German constitutional law does not draw a distinction between \"States\" and \"Free States\". The situation is thus analogous to the United States, where some states use the style \"Commonwealth\" rather than \"State\". The term \"Free State\", a creation of the 19th century and intended to be a German alternative to (or translation of) the Latin-derived republic, was common among the states of the Weimar Republic, after German monarchies had been abolished. Unlike most other states – many of which were new creations – Bavaria has resumed this terminology after World War II. Two other states, Saxony and Thuringia, also call themselves \"Free State\".", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "In July 2017, Bavaria's parliament enacted a new revision of the \"Gefährdergesetz\", allowing the authorities to imprison a person for a three months term, renewable indefinitely, when they have not committed a crime but it is assumed that they might commit a crime \"in the near future\". Critics like the prominent journalist Heribert Prantl have called the law \"shameful\" and compared it to Guantanamo Bay detention camp, assessed it to be in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, and also compared it to the legal situation in Russia, where a similar law allows for imprisonment for a maximum term of two years (i.e., not indefinitely).", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "Bavaria has long had one of the largest economies of any region in Germany, and in Europe. Its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007 exceeded €434 billion (about U.S. $600 billion). This makes Bavaria itself one of the largest economies in Europe, and only 20 countries in the world have a higher GDP. The GDP of the region increased to €617.1 billion in 2018, accounting for 18.5% of German economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was €43,500 or 145% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 114% of the EU average. This makes Bavaria one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. Bavaria has strong economic ties with Austria, Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Northern Italy. In 2019 GDP was €832.4 ($905.7) billion, €48,323 ($52,577.3) per capita.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "The most distinctive high points of Bavarian agriculture are:", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "Bavaria has the best developed industry in Germany and the lowest unemployment rate with 2.9% as of October 2021.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "Branches:", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "Many large companies are headquartered in Bavaria, including Adidas, Allianz, Audi, BMW, Brose, BSH Hausgeräte, HypoVereinsbank, Infineon, KUKA, Traton, MTU Aero Engines, Munich Re, Osram, Puma, Rohde & Schwarz, Schaeffler, Siemens, Wacker Chemie, Linde, Vitesco Technologies, Webasto, Grob, Heidenhain, Koenig & Bauer, Kaeser Compressors, Krones, Knorr-Bremse, Wacker Neuson, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Siltronic, Leoni, Fielmann, MediaMarkt, Conrad Electronic, BayWa, ProSiebenSat.1 Media, Telefónica Germany, Knauf, Rehau, and Giesecke+Devrient.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "Several American companies have established research and development facilities in the Munich region: Apple (chip design), Google (data security), IBM (Watson technology), Intel (drones and telecommunication chips), General Electric (3D-printers and additive manufacturing), Gleason (gears manufacturing), Texas Instruments (chip design and manufacturing), Coherent (lasers).", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "With 40 million tourists in 2019, Bavaria is the most visited German state and one of Europe's leading tourist destinations.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "Attractions include:", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "The unemployment rate stood at 2.6% in October 2018, the lowest in Germany and one of the lowest in the European Union.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "Bavaria has a population of approximately 13.1 million inhabitants (2020). Eight of the 80 largest cities in Germany are located within Bavaria with Munich being the largest (1,484,226 inhabitants, approximately 6.1 million when including the broader metropolitan area), followed by Nuremberg (518,370 inhabitants, approximately 3.6 million when including the broader metropolitan area), Augsburg (296,582 inhabitants) and Regensburg (153,094 inhabitants). All other cities in Bavaria had less than 150,000 inhabitants each in 2020. Population density in Bavaria was 186/km (480/sq mi), below the national average of 233/km (600/sq mi). Foreign nationals resident in Bavaria (both immigrants and refugees/asylum seekers) were principally from other EU countries and Turkey.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "Some features of the Bavarian culture and mentality are remarkably distinct from the rest of Germany. Noteworthy differences (especially in rural areas, less significant in the major cities) can be found with respect to religion, traditions, and language.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "Bavarian culture (Altbayern) has a long and predominant tradition of Roman Catholic faith. Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Alois Ratzinger) was born in Marktl am Inn in Upper Bavaria and was Cardinal-Archbishop of Munich and Freising. Otherwise, the culturally Franconian and Swabian regions of the modern State of Bavaria are historically more diverse in religiosity, with both Catholic and Protestant traditions. In 1925, 70.0% of the Bavarian population was Catholic, 28.8% was Protestant, 0.7% was Jewish, and 0.5% was placed in other religious categories.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "As of 2020 46.9% of Bavarians adhered to Catholicism (a decline from 70.4% in 1970). 17.2 percent of the population adheres to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, which has also declined since 1970. Three percent was Orthodox, Muslims make up 4.0% of the population of Bavaria. 31.9 percent of Bavarians are irreligious or adhere to other religions.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "Bavarians commonly emphasize pride in their traditions. Traditional costumes collectively known as Tracht are worn on special occasions and include in Altbayern Lederhosen for males and Dirndl for females. Centuries-old folk music is performed. The Maibaum, or Maypole (which in the Middle Ages served as the community's business directory, as figures on the pole represented the trades of the village), and the bagpipes of the Upper Palatinate region bear witness to the ancient Celtic and Germanic remnants of cultural heritage of the region. There are many traditional Bavarian sports disciplines, e.g. the Aperschnalzen, competitive whipcracking.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "Whether in Bavaria, overseas or with citizens from other nations Bavarians continue to cultivate their traditions. They hold festivals and dances to keep their heritage alive.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 79, "text": "Bavarians tend to place a great value on food and drink. In addition to their renowned dishes, Bavarians also consume many items of food and drink which are unusual elsewhere in Germany; for example Weißwurst (\"white sausage\") or in some instances a variety of entrails. At folk festivals and in many beer gardens, beer is traditionally served by the litre (in a Maß). Bavarians are particularly proud of the traditional Reinheitsgebot, or beer purity law, initially established by the Duke of Bavaria for the City of Munich (i.e. the court) in 1487 and the duchy in 1516. According to this law, only three ingredients were allowed in beer: water, barley, and hops. In 1906 the Reinheitsgebot made its way to all-German law, and remained a law in Germany until the EU partly struck it down in 1987 as incompatible with the European common market. German breweries, however, cling to the principle, and Bavarian breweries still comply with it in order to distinguish their beer brands. Bavarians are also known as some of the world's most prolific beer drinkers, with an average annual consumption of 170 liters per person.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 80, "text": "Bavaria is also home to the Franconia wine region, which is situated along the river Main in Franconia. The region has produced wine (Frankenwein) for over 1,000 years and is famous for its use of the Bocksbeutel wine bottle. The production of wine forms an integral part of the regional culture, and many of its villages and cities hold their own wine festivals (Weinfeste) throughout the year.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 81, "text": "Three German dialects are most commonly spoken in Bavaria: Austro-Bavarian in Old Bavaria (Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria, and the Upper Palatinate), Swabian German (an Alemannic German dialect) in the Bavarian part of Swabia (southwest) and East Franconian German in Franconia (north). In the small town Ludwigsstadt in the north, district Kronach in Upper Franconia, Thuringian dialect is spoken. During the 20th century an increasing part of the population began to speak Standard German (Hochdeutsch), mainly in the cities.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 82, "text": "Bavarians consider themselves to be egalitarian and informal. Their sociability can be experienced at the annual Oktoberfest, the world's largest beer festival, which welcomes around six million visitors every year, or in the famous beer gardens. In traditional Bavarian beer gardens, patrons may bring their own food but buy beer only from the brewery that runs the beer garden.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 83, "text": "There are around 1,300 museums in Bavaria, including museums of art and cultural history, castles and palaces, archaeological and natural history collections, museums of technological and industrial history, and farm and open-air museums. The history of Bavarian museums dates back to manorial cabinets of curiosities and treasuries. The art holdings of the House of Wittelsbach thus formed the first and essential foundation of later state museums. As early as the mid-16th century, Duke Albrecht V (r. 1550–1579) had collected paintings as well as Greek and Roman sculptures (or copies made of them). He had the Antiquarium in the Munich Residence built specifically for his collection of antique sculptures. The electors Maximilian I (r. 1594–1651) and Max II. Emanuel (r. 1679–1726) expanded the art collections considerably. In the Age of Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century, there was a demand to open up art collections to the general public in the spirit of \"popular education\". But Museums were not founded by the state until the time of the art-loving King Ludwig I (r. 1825–1848). In Munich, he built Glyptothek (opened 1830), Alte Pinakothek (opened 1836), and Neue Pinakothek (opened 1853). Also, the foundation of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (1852), the establishment of the Neue Pinakothek, which opened in 1853, and the Bavarian National Museum (1867) in Munich were of central importance for the development of museums in Bavaria in the 19th century. With the end of the monarchy in 1918, many castles and formerly Wittelsbach property passed to the young Free State. In particular, the castles of king Ludwig II (r. 1864–1886) Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee, quickly became magnets for the public. Since then, the number oif Bavarian Museums has grown considerably, from 125 in 1907 to around 1,300 today.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 84, "text": "Bavaria is home to several football clubs including FC Bayern Munich, 1. FC Nürnberg, FC Augsburg, TSV 1860 Munich, FC Ingolstadt 04 and SpVgg Greuther Fürth. Bayern Munich is the most successful football team in Germany having won a record 32 German titles and 6 UEFA Champions League titles. They are followed by 1. FC Nürnberg who have won 9 titles. SpVgg Greuther Fürth have won 3 championships while TSV 1860 Munich have been champions once.", "title": "Sports" }, { "paragraph_id": 85, "text": "Bavaria is also home to four professional basketball teams, including FC Bayern Munich, Brose Baskets Bamberg, s.Oliver Würzburg, Nürnberg Falcons BC, and TSV Oberhaching Tropics.", "title": "Sports" }, { "paragraph_id": 86, "text": "There are five Bavarian ice hockey teams playing in the German top-tier league DEL: EHC Red Bull München, Nürnberg Ice Tigers, Augsburger Panther, ERC Ingolstadt, and Straubing Tigers.", "title": "Sports" }, { "paragraph_id": 87, "text": "Notable people who have lived, or live currently, in Bavaria include:", "title": "Notable people" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Brandenburg ([ˈbʁandn̩bʊʁk] ; Low German: Brannenborg; Polabian: Branibor; Lower Sorbian: Bramborska [ˈbrambɔrska]), officially the State of Brandenburg (German: Land Brandenburg; Low German: Land Brannenborg; Lower Sorbian: Kraj Bramborska), is a state in northeastern Germany. Brandenburg borders the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 square kilometres (11,382 square miles) and a population of 2.5 million residents, it is the fifth-largest German state by area and the tenth-most populous. Potsdam is the state capital and largest city, and other major towns are Cottbus, Brandenburg an der Havel and Frankfurt (Oder).", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Brandenburg surrounds the national capital and city-state of Berlin, and together they form the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, the third-largest metropolitan area in Germany with a total population of about 6.2 million. There was an unsuccessful attempt to unify both states in 1996 and the states cooperate on many matters to this day.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "Brandenburg originated in the Northern March in the 900s AD, from areas conquered from the Wends. It later became the Margraviate of Brandenburg, a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire. In the 15th century, it came under the rule of the House of Hohenzollern, which later also became the ruling house of the Duchy of Prussia and established Brandenburg-Prussia, the core of the later Kingdom of Prussia. From 1815 to 1947, Brandenburg was a province of Prussia.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Following the abolition of Prussia after World War II, Brandenburg was established as a state by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, and became a state of the German Democratic Republic in 1949. In 1952, the state was dissolved and broken up into multiple regional districts. Following German reunification, Brandenburg was re-established in 1990 and became one of the five new states of the Federal Republic of Germany.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "The origin of the name Brandenburg is believed to be West Slavic brani boru, meaning 'defensive forest'.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "In late medieval and early modern times, Brandenburg was one of seven electoral states of the Holy Roman Empire, and, along with Prussia, formed the original core of the German Empire, the first unified German state. Governed by the Hohenzollern dynasty from 1415, it contained the future German capital Berlin. After 1618 the Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia were combined to form Brandenburg-Prussia, which was ruled by the same branch of the House of Hohenzollern. In 1701 the state was elevated as the Kingdom of Prussia. Franconian Nuremberg and Ansbach, Swabian Hohenzollern, the eastern European connections of Berlin, and the status of Brandenburg's ruler as prince-elector together were instrumental in the rise of that state.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Brandenburg is situated in territory known in antiquity as Magna Germania, which reached to the Vistula river. By the 7th century, Slavic peoples are believed to have settled in the Brandenburg area. The Slavs expanded from the east, possibly driven from their homelands in present-day Ukraine and perhaps Belarus by the invasions of the Huns and Avars. They relied heavily on river transport. The two principal Slavic groups in the present-day area of Brandenburg were the Hevelli in the west and the Sprevane in the east.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Beginning in the early 10th century, Henry the Fowler and his successors conquered territory up to the Oder River. Slavic settlements such as Brenna (Brandenburg an der Havel), Budusin (Bautzen), and Chośebuz (Cottbus) came under imperial control through the installation of margraves. Their main function was to defend and protect the eastern marches. In 948 Emperor Otto I established margraves to exert imperial control over the pagan Slavs west of the Oder River. Otto founded the Bishoprics of Brandenburg and Havelberg. The Northern March was founded as a northeastern border territory of the Holy Roman Empire. However, a great uprising of Wends drove imperial forces from the territory of present-day Brandenburg in 983. The region returned to the control of Slavic leaders.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "During the 12th century, the German kings and emperors re-established control over the mixed Slav-inhabited lands of present-day Brandenburg, although some Slavs like the Sorbs in Lusatia adapted to Germanization while retaining their distinctiveness. The Roman Catholic Church brought bishoprics which, with their walled towns, afforded protection from attacks for the townspeople. With the monks and bishops, the history of the town of Brandenburg an der Havel, which was the first center of the state of Brandenburg, began.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "In 1134, in the wake of a German crusade against the Wends, the German magnate, Albert the Bear, was granted the Northern March by the Emperor Lothar III. He formally inherited the town of Brandenburg and the lands of the Hevelli from their last Wendish ruler, Pribislav, in 1150. After crushing a force of Sprevane who occupied the town of Brandenburg in the 1150s, Albert proclaimed himself ruler of the new Margraviate of Brandenburg. Albert, and his descendants the Ascanians, then made considerable progress in conquering, colonizing, Christianizing, and cultivating lands as far east as the Oder. Within this region, Slavic and German residents intermarried. During the 13th century, the Ascanians began acquiring territory east of the Oder, later known as the Neumark (see also Altmark).", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In 1320, the Brandenburg Ascanian line came to an end, and from 1323 up until 1415 Brandenburg was under the control of the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, followed by the Luxembourg Dynasties. Under the Luxembourgs, the Margrave of Brandenburg gained the status of a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire. In the period 1373–1415, Brandenburg was a part of the Bohemian Crown. In 1415, the Electorate of Brandenburg was granted by Emperor Sigismund to the House of Hohenzollern, which would rule until the end of World War I. The Hohenzollerns established their capital in Berlin, by then the economic center of Brandenburg.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Brandenburg converted to Protestantism in 1539 in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, and generally did quite well in the 16th century, with the expansion of trade along the Elbe, Havel, and Spree rivers. The Hohenzollerns expanded their territory by co-rulership since 1577 and acquiring the Duchy of Prussia in 1618, the Duchy of Cleves (1614) in the Rhineland, and territories in Westphalia. The result was a sprawling, disconnected country known as Brandenburg-Prussia that was in poor shape to defend itself during the Thirty Years' War.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Beginning near the end of that devastating conflict, however, Brandenburg enjoyed a string of talented rulers who expanded their territory and power in Europe. The first of these was Frederick William, the so-called \"Great Elector\", who worked tirelessly to rebuild and consolidate the nation. He moved the royal residence to Potsdam. At the Peace of Westphalia, his envoy Joachim Friedrich von Blumenthal negotiated the acquisition of several important territories such as Halberstadt. Under the Treaty of Oliva Christoph Caspar von Blumenthal (son of the above) negotiated the incorporation of the Duchy of Prussia into the Hohenzollern inheritance.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "When Frederick William died in 1688, he was followed by his son Frederick, third of that name in Brandenburg. As the lands that had been acquired in Prussia were outside the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick assumed (as Frederick I) the title of \"King in Prussia\" (1701). Although his self-promotion from margrave to king relied on his title to the Duchy of Prussia, Brandenburg was still the most important portion of the kingdom. However, this combined state is known as the Kingdom of Prussia.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Brandenburg remained the core of the Kingdom of Prussia, and it was the site of the kingdom's capitals, Berlin and Potsdam. When Prussia was subdivided into provinces in 1815, the territory of the Margraviate of Brandenburg became the Province of Brandenburg, again subdivided into the government region of Frankfurt and Potsdam. In 1881, the City of Berlin was separated from the Province of Brandenburg. However, industrial towns ringing Berlin lay within Brandenburg, and the growth of the region's industrial economy brought an increase in the population of the province. The Province of Brandenburg had an area of 39,039 km (15,073 sq mi) and a population of 2.6 million (1925). After Germany's defeat in World War II, the Neumark, the part of Brandenburg east of the Oder–Neisse line, even absent any Polish-speaking population in this area, became part of Poland. The entire population of former East Brandenburg was expelled en masse. The remainder of the province became a state in the Soviet Zone of occupation in Germany when Prussia was dissolved in 1947.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "After the foundation of East Germany in 1949, Brandenburg formed one of its component states. The State of Brandenburg was completely dissolved in 1952 by the Socialist government of East Germany, doing away with all component states. The East German government then divided Brandenburg among several Bezirke or districts. (See Administrative division of the German Democratic Republic). Most of Brandenburg lay within the Bezirke of Cottbus, Frankfurt, or Potsdam, but parts of the former province passed to the Schwerin, Neubrandenburg and Magdeburg districts (town Havelberg). East Germany relied heavily on lignite (the lowest grade of coal) as an energy source, and lignite strip mines marred areas of south-eastern Brandenburg. The industrial towns surrounding Berlin were important to the East German economy, while rural Brandenburg remained mainly agricultural.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The present State of Brandenburg was re-established on 3 October 1990 upon German reunification. The newly elected Landtag of Brandenburg first met on 26 October 1990. As in other former parts of East Germany, the lack of modern infrastructure and exposure to West Germany's competitive market economy brought widespread unemployment and economic difficulty. In the recent years, however, Brandenburg's infrastructure has been modernized and unemployment has slowly declined.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The legal basis for a combined state of Berlin and Brandenburg is different from other state fusion proposals. Normally, Article 29 of the Basic Law stipulates that states may only merge after a specific federal Act of Parliament is enacted. However, a clause added to the Basic Law in 1994, Article 118a, allows Berlin and Brandenburg to unify without federal approval, requiring a referendum and a ratification by both state parliaments.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "In 1996, an attempt of unifying the states of Berlin and Brandenburg was rejected at referendum. Both share a common history, dialect and culture and in 2020, over 225,000 residents of Brandenburg commute to Berlin. The fusion had the near-unanimous support by a broad coalition of both state governments, political parties, media, business associations, trade unions and churches. Though Berlin voted in favor by a small margin, largely based on support in former West Berlin, Brandenburg voters disapproved of the fusion by a large margin. It failed largely due to Brandenburg voters not wanting to take on Berlin's large and growing public debt and fearing losing identity and influence to the capital.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Brandenburg is bordered by Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the north, Poland in the east, the Freistaat Sachsen in the south, Saxony-Anhalt in the west, and Lower Saxony in the northwest.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The Oder river forms a part of the eastern border, the Elbe river a portion of the western border. The main rivers in the state itself are the Spree and the Havel. In the southeast, there is a wetlands region called the Spreewald; it is the northernmost part of Lusatia, where the Sorbs, a Slavic people, still live. These areas are bilingual, i.e., German and Sorbian are both used.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Brandenburg is known for its well-preserved natural environment and its ambitious natural protection policies which began in the 1990s. 15 large protected areas were designated following Germany's reunification. Each of them is provided with state-financed administration and a park ranger staff, who guide visitors and work to ensure nature conservation. Most protected areas have visitor centers.", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "National parks", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Biosphere reserves", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Nature parks", "title": "Geography" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Brandenburg has the second lowest population density among the German states, after Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "17.1% of the Brandenburgers are registered members of the local, regional Protestant church (mostly the Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia), while 3.1% are registered with the Roman Catholic Church (mostly the Archdiocese of Berlin, and a minority in the Diocese of Görlitz). The majority (79.8%) of Brandenburgers, whether of Christian or other beliefs, choose not to register with the government as members of these churches, and therefore do not pay the church tax.", "title": "Demographics" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Politically, Brandenburg is a stronghold of the Social Democratic Party, which won the largest share of the vote and seats in every state election. All three Minister-Presidents of Brandenburg have come from the Social Democratic Party (unlike any other state except Bremen) and they even won an absolute majority of seats and every single-member constituency in the 1994 state election.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "On a federal level, the Social Democratic Party has also been the strongest party in most federal elections, their strongholds being the northwestern part of the state and Potsdam and its surrounding areas. However, the Christian Democratic Union won the most votes in 1990, their 2013 landslide and in 2017. In 2009, The Left won the most votes in a year where, like in 2017, the Social Democratic collapsed. Prominent politicians from Brandenburg include Social Democrats Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who served in the Bundestag for Brandenburg before being elected President of Germany, and likely Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz, who sits in the Bundestag for Potsdam.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Like in all other New states of Germany, the populist parties The Left and, more recently, the Alternative for Germany are especially strong in Brandenburg.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Brandenburg has 4 out of 69 votes in the Bundesrat and, as of 2021, 25 seats out of 736 in the Bundestag.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Brandenburg is divided into 14 rural districts (Landkreise) and four urban districts (kreisfreie Städte), shown with their population in 2011:", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The most recent election took place on 1 September 2019. A coalition government was formed by the Social Democrats, The Greens, and the Christian Democratic Union led by incumbent Minister-President Dietmar Woidke (SPD), replacing the previous coalition between the Social Democrats and The Left. The next ordinary state election will likely occur in autumn 2024.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the state was 72.9 billion euros in 2018, accounting for 2.2% of German economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 26,700 euros or 88% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 91% of the EU average. The GDP per capita was the third lowest of all states in Germany.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "The unemployment rate stood at 5.6% in November 2022 and was higher than the German average but lower than the average of Eastern Germany.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg is located in Brandenburg.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Berlin Schönefeld Airport (IATA code: SXF) was the largest airport in Brandenburg. It was the second largest international airport of the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan region and was located 18 km (11 mi) southeast of central Berlin in Schönefeld. The airport was a base for Condor, easyJet and Ryanair. In 2016, Schönefeld handled 11,652,922 passengers (an increase of 36.7%).", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Schönefeld's existing infrastructure and terminals were incorporated into the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER), which did open in 2020. Berlin Brandenburg Airport had an initial capacity of 35–40 million passengers a year. Due to increasing air traffic in Berlin and Brandenburg, plans for airport expansions were in the making.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "Berlin Brandenburg Airport receives over sixty combined passenger, charter and cargo airlines.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "In 2016, around 49,000 students were enrolled in Brandenburg universities and higher education facilities. The largest institution is the University of Potsdam, located southwest of Berlin. In 2019 the state of Brandenburg adopted an Open Access strategy calling on universities to develop transformation strategies to make knowledge from Brandenburg freely accessible to all.", "title": "Education and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "Universities in Brandenburg:", "title": "Education and research" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "The Brandenburg Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach (original title: Six Concerts à plusieurs instruments) are a collection of six instrumental works presented by Bach to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt, in 1721 (though probably composed earlier). They are widely regarded as among the finest musical compositions of the Baroque era and are among the composer's best known works.", "title": "Culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "A famous speciality food from Brandenburg are the Spreewald gherkins. The wet soil of the Spreewald makes the region ideal for growing cucumbers. Spreewald gherkins are protected by the EU as a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). They are one of the biggest exports of Brandenburg.", "title": "Culture" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The Bundestag (German pronunciation: [ˈbʊndəstaːk] , \"Federal Diet\") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people, comparable to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The Bundestag was established by Title III of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Grundgesetz, pronounced [ˈɡʁʊntɡəˌzɛt͡s] ) in 1949 as one of the legislative bodies of Germany and thus it is the historical successor to the earlier Reichstag.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "The members of the Bundestag are representatives of the German people as a whole, are not bound by any orders or instructions and are only accountable to their electorate. The minimum legal number of members of the Bundestag (German: Mitglieder des Bundestages) is 598; however, due to the system of overhang and leveling seats the current 20th Bundestag has a total of 736 members, making it the largest Bundestag to date and the largest freely elected national parliamentary chamber in the world.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The Bundestag is elected every four years by German citizens aged 18 or over. Elections use a mixed-member proportional representation system which combines first-past-the-post elected seats with a proportional party list to ensure its composition mirrors the national popular vote. An early election is only possible in the cases outlined in Articles 63 and 68 of the Grundgesetz", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The Bundestag has several functions. It is the chief legislative body on the federal level. The individual states (Bundesländer) of Germany participate in the legislative process through the Bundesrat, a separate assembly. The Bundestag also elects and oversees the chancellor, Germany's head of government, and sets the government budget.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Since 1999, it has met in the Reichstag building in Berlin. The Bundestag also operates in multiple new government buildings in Berlin and has its own police force (the Bundestagspolizei). The current president of the Bundestag since 2021 is Bärbel Bas of the SPD. The 20th Bundestag has five vice presidents and is the most visited parliament in the world.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "With the dissolution of the German Confederation in 1866 and the founding of the German Empire (German Reich) in 1871, the Reichstag was established as the German parliament in Berlin, which was the capital of the then Kingdom of Prussia (the largest and most influential state in both the Confederation and the empire). Two decades later, the current parliament building was erected. The Reichstag delegates were elected by direct and equal male suffrage (and not the three-class electoral system prevailing in Prussia until 1918). The Reichstag did not participate in the appointment of the chancellor until the parliamentary reforms of October 1918. After the Revolution of November 1918 and the establishment of the Weimar Constitution, women were given the right to vote for (and serve in) the Reichstag, and the parliament could use the no-confidence vote to force the chancellor or any cabinet member to resign. In 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor and through the Reichstag Fire Decree, the Enabling Act of 1933 and the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in 1934, gained unlimited power. After this, the Reichstag met only rarely, usually at the Kroll Opera House to unanimously rubber-stamp the decisions of the government. It last convened on 26 April 1942.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "With the new constitution of 1949, the Bundestag was established as the new West German parliament. Because West Berlin was not officially under the jurisdiction of the constitution, a legacy of the Cold War, the Bundestag met in Bonn in several different buildings, including (provisionally) a former waterworks facility. In addition, owing to the city's legal status, citizens of West Berlin were unable to vote in elections to the Bundestag, and were instead represented by 22 non-voting delegates chosen by the House of Representatives, the city's legislature.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The Bundeshaus in Bonn is the former parliament building of Germany. The sessions of the German Bundestag were held there from 1949 until its move to Berlin in 1999. Today it houses the International Congress Centre Bundeshaus Bonn and in the northern areas the branch office of the Bundesrat (\"Federal Council\"), which represents the Länder – the federated states. The southern areas became part of German offices for the United Nations in 2008.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The former Reichstag building housed a history exhibition (Fragen an die deutsche Geschichte) and served occasionally as a conference center. The Reichstag building was also occasionally used as a venue for sittings of the Bundestag and its committees and the Federal Convention, the body which elects the German federal president. However, the Soviets harshly protested against the use of the Reichstag building by institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany and tried to disturb the sittings by flying supersonic jets close to the building.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Since 19 April 1999, the German parliament has again assembled in Berlin in its original Reichstag building, which was built in 1888 based on the plans of German architect Paul Wallot and underwent a significant renovation under the lead of British architect Lord Norman Foster. Parliamentary committees and subcommittees, public hearings and parliamentary group meetings take place in three auxiliary buildings, which surround the Reichstag building: the Jakob-Kaiser-Haus, Paul-Löbe-Haus and Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "In 2005, a small aircraft crashed close to the German Parliament. It was then decided to ban private air traffic over Central Berlin.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Together with the Bundesrat, the Bundestag is the legislative branch of the German political system.", "title": "Tasks" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Although most legislation is initiated by the executive branch, the Bundestag considers the legislative function its most important responsibility, concentrating much of its energy on assessing and amending the government's legislative program. The committees (see below) play a prominent role in this process. Plenary sessions provide a forum for members to engage in public debate on legislative issues before them, but they tend to be well attended only when significant legislation is being considered.", "title": "Tasks" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "The Bundestag members are the only federal officials directly elected by the public; the Bundestag in turn elects the chancellor and, in addition, exercises oversight of the executive branch on issues of both substantive policy and routine administration. This check on executive power can be employed through binding legislation, public debates on government policy, investigations, and direct questioning of the chancellor or cabinet officials. For example, the Bundestag can conduct a question hour (Fragestunde), in which a government representative responds to a written question previously submitted by a member. Members can ask related questions during the question hour. The questions can concern anything from a major policy issue to a specific constituent's problem. Use of the question hour has increased markedly over the past forty years, with more than 20,000 questions being posed during the 1987–90 term. The opposition parties actively exercise their parliamentary right to scrutinize government actions.", "title": "Tasks" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Constituent services also take place via the Petition Committee. In 2004, the Petition Committee received over 18,000 complaints from citizens and was able to negotiate a mutually satisfactory solution to more than half of them. In 2005, as a pilot of the potential of internet petitions, a version of e-petitioner was produced for the Bundestag. This was a collaborative project involving The Scottish Parliament, International Teledemocracy Centre and the Bundestag 'Online Services Department'. The system was formally launched on 1 September 2005, and in 2008 the Bundestag moved to a new system based on its evaluation.", "title": "Tasks" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "The Bundestag is elected for four years, and new elections must be held between 46 and 48 months after the beginning of its electoral term, unless the Bundestag is dissolved prematurely. Its term ends when the next Bundestag convenes, which must occur within 30 days of the election. Prior to 1976, there could be a period where one Bundestag had been dissolved and the next Bundestag could not be convened; during this period, the rights of the Bundestag were exercised by a so-called \"Permanent Committee\".", "title": "Electoral term" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Germany uses the mixed-member proportional representation system, a system of proportional representation combined with elements of first-past-the-post voting. The Bundestag has 598 nominal members, elected for a four-year term; these seats are distributed between the sixteen German states in proportion to the states' population eligible to vote.", "title": "Election" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "Every elector has two votes: a constituency vote (first vote) and a party list vote (second vote). Based solely on the first votes, 299 members are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting. The second votes are used to produce a proportional number of seats for parties, first in the states, and then on the federal level. Seats are allocated using the Sainte-Laguë method. If a party wins fewer constituency seats in a state than its second votes would entitle it to, it receives additional seats from the relevant state list. Parties can file lists in every single state under certain conditions – for example, a fixed number of supporting signatures. Parties can receive second votes only in those states in which they have filed a state list.", "title": "Election" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "If a party, by winning single-member constituencies in one state, receives more seats than it would be entitled to according to its second vote share in that state (so-called overhang seats), the other parties receive compensation seats. Owing to this provision, the Bundestag usually has more than 598 members. The 20th and current Bundestag, for example, has 736 seats: 598 regular seats and 138 overhang and compensation seats. Overhang seats are calculated at the state level, so many more seats are added to balance this out among the different states, adding more seats than would be needed to compensate for overhang at the national level in order to avoid negative vote weight.", "title": "Election" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "To qualify for seats based on the party-list vote share, a party must either win three single-member constituencies via first votes (basic mandate clause) or exceed a threshold of 5% of the second votes nationwide. If a party only wins one or two single-member constituencies and fails to get at least 5% of the second votes, it keeps the single-member seat(s), but other parties that accomplish at least one of the two threshold conditions receive compensation seats. In the most recent example of this, during the 2002 election, the PDS won only 4.0% of the second votes nationwide, but won two constituencies in the state of Berlin. The same applies if an independent candidate wins a single-member constituency, which has not happened since the 1949 election.", "title": "Election" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "If a voter cast a first vote for a successful independent candidate or a successful candidate whose party failed to qualify for proportional representation, their second vote does not count toward proportional representation. However, it does count toward whether the elected party exceeds the 5% threshold.", "title": "Election" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Parties representing recognized national minorities (currently Danes, Frisians, Sorbs, and Romani people) are exempt from both the 5% threshold and the basic mandate clause, but normally only run in state elections. The only party that has been able to benefit from this provision so far on the federal level is the South Schleswig Voters' Association, which represents the minorities of Danes and Frisians in Schleswig-Holstein and managed to win a seat in 1949 and 2021.", "title": "Election" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "The latest federal election was held on Sunday, 26 September 2021, to elect the members of the 20th Bundestag.", "title": "Latest election result" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Parties that were only present between 1949 and 1957", "title": "List of Bundestag by session" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The most important organisational structures within the Bundestag are parliamentary groups (Fraktionen; sing. Fraktion). A parliamentary group must consist of at least 5% of all members of parliament. Members of parliament from different parties may only join in a group if those parties did not run against each other in any German state during the election. Normally, all parties that surpassed the 5%-threshold build a parliamentary group. The CDU and CSU have always formed a single united Fraktion (CDU/CSU), which is possible, as the CSU only runs in the state of Bavaria and the CDU only runs in the other 15 states. The size of a party's Fraktion determines the extent of its representation on committees, the time slots allotted for speaking, the number of committee chairs it can hold, and its representation in executive bodies of the Bundestag. The Fraktionen, not the members, receive the bulk of government funding for legislative and administrative activities.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "The leadership of each Fraktion consists of a parliamentary party leader, several deputy leaders, and an executive committee. The leadership's major responsibilities are to represent the Fraktion, enforce party discipline and orchestrate the party's parliamentary activities. The members of each Fraktion are distributed among working groups focused on specific policy-related topics such as social policy, economics, and foreign policy. The Fraktion meets every Tuesday afternoon in the weeks in which the Bundestag is in session to consider legislation before the Bundestag and formulate the party's position on it.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "Parties that do not hold 5% of the Bundestag-seats may be granted the status of a Gruppe (literally \"group\", but a different status from Fraktion) in the Bundestag; this is decided case by case, as the rules of procedure do not state a fixed number of seats for this. Most recently, this applied to the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) from 1990 to 1998. This status entails some privileges which are in general less than those of a Fraktion.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "The Bundestag's executive bodies include the Council of Elders and the Presidium. The council consists of the Bundestag leadership, together with the most senior representatives of each Fraktion, with the number of these representatives tied to the strength of the Parliamentary groups in the chamber. The council is the coordination hub, determining the daily legislative agenda and assigning committee chairpersons based on Parliamentary group representation. The council also serves as an important forum for interparty negotiations on specific legislation and procedural issues. The Presidium is responsible for the routine administration of the Bundestag, including its clerical and research activities. It consists of the chamber's president (usually elected from the largest Fraktion) and vice presidents (one from each Fraktion).", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Most of the legislative work in the Bundestag is the product of standing committees, which exist largely unchanged throughout one legislative period. The number of committees approximates the number of federal ministries, and the titles of each are roughly similar (e.g., defense, agriculture, and labor). There are, as of the current nineteenth Bundestag, 24 standing committees. The distribution of committee chairs and the membership of each committee reflect the relative strength of the various Parliamentary groups in the chamber. In the current nineteenth Bundestag, the CDU/CSU chaired ten committees, the SPD five, the AfD and the FDP three each, The Left and the Greens two each. Members of the opposition party can chair a significant number of standing committees (e.g. the budget committee is by tradition chaired by the biggest opposition party). These committees have either a small staff or no staff at all.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "The members of Bundestag and the presidium are supported by the Bundestag Administration. It is headed by the Director, that reports to the President of the Bundestag. The Bundestag Administrations four departments are Parliament Service, Research, Information / Documentation and Central Affairs. The Bundestag Administration employs around 3,000 employees.", "title": "Organization" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "As is the case with some other parliaments, the Bundestag is subject to the principle of discontinuation, meaning that a newly elected Bundestag is legally regarded to be a body and entity completely different from the previous Bundestag. This leads to the result that any motion, application or action submitted to the previous Bundestag, e.g. a bill referred to the Bundestag by the Federal Government, is regarded as void by non-decision (German terminology: \"Die Sache fällt der Diskontinuität anheim\"). Thus any bill that has not been decided upon by the beginning of the new electoral period must be brought up by the government again if it aims to uphold the motion, this procedure in effect delaying the passage of the bill. Furthermore, any newly elected Bundestag will have to freshly decide on the rules of procedure (Geschäftsordnung), which is done by a formal decision of taking over such rules from the preceding Bundestag by reference.", "title": "Principle of discontinuation" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Any Bundestag (even after a snap election) is considered dissolved only once a newly elected Bundestag has actually gathered in order to constitute itself (Article 39 sec. 1 sentence 2 of the Basic Law), which has to happen within 30 days of its election (Article 39 sec. 2 of the Basic Law). Thus, it may happen (and has happened) that the old Bundestag gathers and makes decisions even after the election of a new Bundestag that has not gathered in order to constitute itself. For example, elections to the 16th Bundestag took place on 18 September 2005, but the 15th Bundestag still convened after election day to make some decisions on German military engagement abroad, and was entitled to do so, as the newly elected 16th Bundestag did not convene for the first time until 18 October 2005.", "title": "Principle of discontinuation" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "Informational notes", "title": "References" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "Citations", "title": "References" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "52°31′07″N 13°22′34″E / 52.51861°N 13.37611°E / 52.51861; 13.37611", "title": "External links" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bundesrat is a German word that means federal council and may refer to:", "title": "" } ]

[ "Template:Disambiguation" ]

[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, abbreviated as BMW (German pronunciation: [ˌbeːʔɛmˈveː] ), is a German multinational manufacturer of luxury vehicles and motorcycles headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. The company was founded in 1916 as a manufacturer of aircraft engines, which it produced from 1917 to 1918 and again from 1933 to 1945.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Automobiles are marketed under the brands BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce, and motorcycles are marketed under the brand BMW Motorrad. In 2017, BMW was the world's fourteenth-largest producer of motor vehicles, with 2,279,503 vehicles produced and in 2022 the 7th largest by revenue. The company has significant motor-sport history, especially in touring cars, sports cars, and the Isle of Man TT.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "BMW is headquartered in Munich and produces motor vehicles in Germany, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Quandt family [de] is a long-term shareholder of the company, following investments by the brothers Herbert and Harald Quandt in 1959 that saved BMW from bankruptcy, with the remaining shares owned by the public.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Otto Flugmaschinenfabrik was founded in 1910 by Gustav Otto in Bavaria, Germany. The firm was reorganized on 7 March 1916 into Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG. This company was then renamed to Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) in 1922. However, the name BMW dates back to 1913, when the original company to use the name was founded by Karl Rapp (initially as Rapp Motorenwerke GmbH). The name and Rapp Motorenwerke's engine-production assets were transferred to Bayerische Flugzeugwerke in 1922, who adopted the name the same year. BMW's first product was a straight-six aircraft engine called the BMW IIIa, designed in the spring of 1917 by engineer Max Friz. Following the end of World War I, BMW remained in business by producing motorcycle engines, farm equipment, household items and railway brakes. The company produced its first motorcycle, the BMW R 32 in 1923.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "BMW became an automobile manufacturer in 1928 when it purchased Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach, which, at the time, built Austin Sevens under licence under the Dixi marque. The first car sold as a BMW was a rebadged Dixi called the BMW 3/15, following BMW's acquisition of the car manufacturer Automobilwerk Eisenach. Throughout the 1930s, BMW expanded its range into sports cars and larger luxury cars.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Aircraft engines, motorcycles, and automobiles would be BMW's main products until World War II. During the war, BMW concentrated on aircraft engine production using as many as 40,000 slave laborers. These consisted primarily of prisoners from concentration camps, most prominently Dachau. Motorcycles remained as a side-line and automobile manufacture ceased altogether.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "BMW's factories were heavily bombed during the war and its remaining West German facilities were banned from producing motor vehicles or aircraft after the war. Again, the company survived by making pots, pans, and bicycles. In 1948, BMW restarted motorcycle production. BMW resumed car production in Bavaria in 1952 with the BMW 501 luxury saloon. The range of cars was expanded in 1955, through the production of the cheaper Isetta microcar under licence. Slow sales of luxury cars and small profit margins from microcars meant BMW was in serious financial trouble and in 1959 the company was nearly taken over by rival Daimler-Benz.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "A large investment in BMW by Herbert Quandt and Harald Quandt resulted in the company surviving as a separate entity. The Quandts' father, Günther Quandt, was a well-known German industrialist. Quandt joined the Nazi party in 1933 and made a fortune arming the German Wehrmacht, manufacturing weapons and batteries. Many of his enterprises were appropriated from Jewish owners under duress with minimal compensation. At least three of his enterprises made extensive use of slave laborers, as many as 50,000 in all. One of his battery factories had its own on-site concentration camp, complete with gallows. Life expectancy for laborers was six months. While Quandt and BMW were not directly connected during the war, funds amassed in the Nazi era by his father allowed Herbert Quandt to buy BMW.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The relative success of the small BMW 700 assisted in the company's recovery, allowing them to develop the New Class sedans.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "The 1962 introduction of the BMW New Class compact sedans was the beginning of BMW's reputation as a leading manufacturer of sport-oriented cars. Throughout the 1960s, BMW expanded its range by adding coupé and luxury sedan models. The BMW 5 Series mid-size sedan range was introduced in 1972, followed by the BMW 3 Series compact sedans in 1975, the BMW 6 Series luxury coupés in 1976 and the BMW 7 Series large luxury sedans in 1978.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "The BMW M division released its first road car, a mid-engine supercar, in 1978. This was followed by the BMW M5 in 1984 and the BMW M3 in 1986. Also in 1986, BMW introduced its first V12 engine in the 750i luxury sedan.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "The company purchased the Rover Group in 1994, however the takeover was not successful and was causing BMW large financial losses. In 2000, BMW sold off most of the Rover brands, retaining only the Mini brand.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "In 1998, BMW also acquired the rights to the Rolls-Royce brand from Vickers Plc.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "The 1995 BMW Z3 expanded the line-up to include a mass-production two-seat roadster and the 1999 BMW X5 was the company's entry into the SUV market.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The first modern mass-produced turbocharged petrol engine was introduced in 2006, (from 1973 to 1975, BMW built 1672 units of a turbocharged M10 engine for the BMW 2002 turbo), with most engines switching over to turbocharging over the 2010s. The first hybrid BMW was the 2010 BMW ActiveHybrid 7, and BMW's first mass-production electric car was the BMW i3 city car, which was released in 2013, (from 1968 to 1972, BMW built two battery-electric BMW 1602 Elektro saloons for the 1972 Olympic Games). After many years of establishing a reputation for sporting rear-wheel drive cars, BMW's first front-wheel drive car was the 2014 BMW 2 Series Active Tourer multi-purpose vehicle (MPV).", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "In January 2021, BMW announced that its sales in 2020 fell by 8.4% due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions. However, in the fourth quarter of 2020, BMW witnessed a rise of 3.2% in its customers' demands.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "On 18 January 2022, BMW announced a new limited edition M760Li xDrive simply called \"The Final V12,\" the last BMW series production vehicle to be fitted with a V-12 engine.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "BMW and Toyota aim to sell jointly-developed hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as soon as 2025.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "On 5 October 2023, it was announced that BMW UK CEO Chris Brownridge will succeed Torsten Müller-Ötvös as the CEO of Rolls-Royce starting 1 December 2023, as a result of Müller-Ötvös retiring.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "BMW is an abbreviation for Bayerische Motoren Werke (German pronunciation: [ˈbaɪ̯ʁɪʃə mɔˈtʰɔʁn̩ ˈvɛɐ̯kə]). This name is grammatically incorrect (in German, compound words must not contain spaces), which is why the grammatically correct form of the name, Bayerische Motorenwerke (German pronunciation: [ˈbaɪ̯ʁɪʃə mɔˈtʰɔʁn̩vɛɐ̯kə] ) has been used in several publications and advertisements in the past. Bayerische Motorenwerke translates into English as Bavarian Motor Works. The suffix AG, short for Aktiengesellschaft, signifies an incorporated entity owned by shareholders, thus akin to \"Inc.\" (US) or PLC, \"Public Limited Company\" (UK).", "title": "Branding" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "The terms Beemer, Bimmer and Bee-em are sometimes used as slang for BMW in the English language and are sometimes used interchangeably for cars and motorcycles.", "title": "Branding" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "The circular blue and white BMW logo or roundel evolved from the circular Rapp Motorenwerke company logo, which featured a black ring bearing the company name surrounding the company logo, an image of a horse head on a plinth. BMW retained Rapp's black ring inscribed with the company name, but the interior of the ring is quartered blue and white, reminiscent of the coat of arms and flag of Bavaria (which in turn are based on the arms of the historic House of Wittelsbach, which ruled Bavaria for many centuries). The logo does not bear the distinctive lozenge shape found on the coat of arms, however, as local laws at the time it was introduced forbade the use of state coats of arms on commercial logos.", "title": "Branding" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "A persistent myth claims that the logo is based on the image of an airplane propeller spinning in a blue sky. This myth likely stems from a 1929 BMW advertisement that depicted the logo superimposed on a rotating propeller. However, the logo predates that advertisement by 12 years.", "title": "Branding" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "The current iteration of the logo was introduced in 2020, removing 3D effects that had been used in previous renderings of the logo while removing the black outline encircling the rondel. The logo is used for BMW's branding but it is not used on vehicles.", "title": "Branding" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The slogan 'The Ultimate Driving Machine' was first used in North America in 1974. In 2010, this long-lived campaign was mostly supplanted by a campaign intended to make the brand more approachable and to better appeal to women, 'Joy'. By 2012 BMW had returned to 'The Ultimate Driving Machine'.", "title": "Branding" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "In November 2018 BMW's shares traded at over €77 per share, and its market capitalization was valued at US 55.3 billion.", "title": "Finances" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "The key trends of the BMW Group are (as at the financial year ending December 31):", "title": "Finances" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "BMW began production of motorcycle engines and then motorcycles after World War I. Its motorcycle brand is now known as BMW Motorrad. Their first successful motorcycle after the failed Helios and Flink, was the \"R32\" in 1923, though production originally began in 1921. This had a \"boxer\" twin engine, in which a cylinder projects into the air-flow from each side of the machine. Apart from their single-cylinder models (basically to the same pattern), all their motorcycles used this distinctive layout until the early 1980s. Many BMW's are still produced in this layout, which is designated the R Series.", "title": "Motorcycles" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "The entire BMW Motorcycle production has, since 1969, been located at the company's Berlin-Spandau factory.", "title": "Motorcycles" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "During the Second World War, BMW produced the BMW R75 motorcycle with a motor-driven sidecar attached, combined with a lockable differential, this made the vehicle very capable off-road.", "title": "Motorcycles" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "In 1982, came the K Series, shaft drive but water-cooled and with either three or four cylinders mounted in a straight line from front to back. Shortly after, BMW also started making the chain-driven F and G series with single and parallel twin Rotax engines.", "title": "Motorcycles" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "In the early 1990s, BMW updated the airhead Boxer engine which became known as the oilhead. In 2002, the oilhead engine had two spark plugs per cylinder. In 2004 it added a built-in balance shaft, an increased capacity to 1,170 cc (71 cu in) and enhanced performance to 75 kW (101 hp) for the R1200GS, compared to 63 kW (84 hp) of the previous R1150GS. More powerful variants of the oilhead engines are available in the R1100S and R1200S, producing 73 and 91 kW (98 and 122 hp), respectively.", "title": "Motorcycles" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "In 2004, BMW introduced the new K1200S Sports Bike which marked a departure for BMW. It had an engine producing 125 kW (168 hp), derived from the company's work with the Williams F1 team, and is lighter than previous K models. Innovations include electronically adjustable front and rear suspension, and a Hossack-type front fork that BMW calls Duolever.", "title": "Motorcycles" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "BMW introduced anti-lock brakes on production motorcycles starting in the late 1980s. The generation of anti-lock brakes available on the 2006 and later BMW motorcycles paved the way for the introduction of electronic stability control, or anti-skid technology later in the 2007 model year.", "title": "Motorcycles" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "BMW has been an innovator in motorcycle suspension design, taking up telescopic front suspension long before most other manufacturers. Then they switched to an Earles fork, front suspension by swinging fork (1955 to 1969). Most modern BMWs are truly rear swingarm, single sided at the back (compare with the regular swinging fork usually, and wrongly, called swinging arm). Some BMWs started using yet another trademark front suspension design, the Telelever, in the early 1990s. Like the Earles fork, the Telelever significantly reduces dive under braking.", "title": "Motorcycles" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "BMW Group, on 31 January 2013, announced that Pierer Industrie AG has bought Husqvarna Motorcycles for an undisclosed amount, which will not be revealed by either party in the future. The company is headed by Stephan Pierer (CEO of KTM). Pierer Industrie AG is 51% owner of KTM and 100% owner of Husqvarna.", "title": "Motorcycles" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "In September 2018, BMW unveiled a new self-driving motorcycle with BMW Motorrad with a goal of using the technology to help improve road safety. The design of the bike was inspired by the company's BMW R1200 GS model.", "title": "Motorcycles" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "The current model lines of BMW cars are:", "title": "Automobiles" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "The current model lines of the X Series SUVs and crossovers are:", "title": "Automobiles" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "The current model line of the Z Series two-door roadsters is the Z4 (model code G29).", "title": "Automobiles" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "All-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles are sold under the BMW i sub-brand. The current model range consists of:", "title": "Automobiles" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "In addition, several plug-in hybrid models built on existing platforms have been marketed as iPerformance models. Examples include the 225xe using a 1.5 L three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine with an electric motor, the 330e/530e using a 2.0 L four-cylinder engine with an electric motor, and the 740e using a 2.0 litre turbocharged petrol engine with an electric motor. Also, crossover and SUV plug-in hybrid models have been released using i technology: X1 xDrive25e, X2 xDrive25e, X3 xDrive30e, and X5 xDrive40e.", "title": "Automobiles" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "The BMW M GmbH subsidiary (called BMW Motorsport GmbH until 1993) started making high-performance versions of various BMW models in 1978.", "title": "Automobiles" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "As of March 2023, the M lineup is:", "title": "Automobiles" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "The letter \"M\" is also often used in the marketing of BMW's regular models, for example the F20 M140i model, the G11 M760Li model and various optional extras called \"M Sport\", \"M Performance\" or similar.", "title": "Automobiles" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "BMW has a long history of motorsport activities, including:", "title": "Motorsport" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "In 1975, sculptor Alexander Calder was commissioned to paint the BMW 3.0 CSL racing car driven by Hervé Poulain at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which became the first in the series of BMW Art Cars. Since Calder's work of art, many other renowned artists throughout the world have created BMW Art Cars, including David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol. To date, a total of 19 BMW Art Cars, based on both racing and regular production vehicles, have been created.", "title": "Involvement in the arts" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "The global BMW Headquarters in Munich represents the cylinder head of a 4-cylinder engine. It was designed by Karl Schwanzer and was completed in 1972. The building has become a European icon and was declared a protected historic building in 1999. The main tower consists of four vertical cylinders standing next to and across from each other. Each cylinder is divided horizontally in its center by a mold in the facade. Notably, these cylinders do not stand on the ground; they are suspended on a central support tower.", "title": "Involvement in the arts" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "BMW Museum is a futuristic cauldron-shaped building, which was also designed by Karl Schwanzer and opened in 1972. The interior has a spiral theme and the roof is a 40-metre diameter BMW logo.", "title": "Involvement in the arts" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "BMW Welt, the company's exhibition space in Munich, was designed by Coop Himmelb(l)au and opened in 2007. It includes a showroom and lifting platforms where a customer's new car is theatrically unveiled to the customer.", "title": "Involvement in the arts" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "In 2001 and 2002, BMW produced a series of 8 short films called The Hire, which had plots based around BMW models being driven to extremes by Clive Owen. The directors for The Hire included Guy Ritchie, John Woo, John Frankenheimer and Ang Lee. In 2016, a ninth film in the series was released.", "title": "Involvement in the arts" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "The 2006 \"BMW Performance Series\" was a marketing event geared to attract black car buyers. It consisted of seven concerts by jazz musician Mike Phillips, and screenings of films by black filmmakers.", "title": "Involvement in the arts" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "BMW sponsors a number of awards in the visual arts. These include the BMW Art Journey award, which honors a young or mid-career artist in collaboration with Art Basel, and the BMW Painting Award, which was created to promote painting in Spain by finding new talent and showcasing their work.", "title": "Involvement in the arts" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "BMW was the principal sponsor of the 1998 The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition at various Guggenheim museums, though the financial relationship between BMW and the Guggenheim Foundation was criticised in many quarters.", "title": "Involvement in the arts" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "In 2012, BMW began sponsoring Independent Collectors production of the BMW Art Guide, which is the first global guide to private and publicly accessible collections of contemporary art worldwide. The fourth edition, released in 2016, features 256 collections from 43 countries.", "title": "Involvement in the arts" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "BMW produces complete automobiles in the following countries:", "title": "Production and sales" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "BMW also has local assembly operation using complete knock-down (CKD) components in Brazil, Thailand, Russia, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and India.", "title": "Production and sales" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "In the UK, BMW has a Mini factory near Oxford, plants in Swindon and Hams Hall, and Rolls-Royce vehicle assembly at Goodwood. In 2020, these facilities were shut down for the period from 23 March to 17 April due to the coronavirus outbreak.", "title": "Production and sales" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "The BMW group (including Mini and Rolls-Royce) produced 1,366,838 automobiles in 2006 and then 1,481,253 automobiles in 2010. BMW Motorcycles are being produced at the company's Berlin factory, which earlier had produced aircraft engines for Siemens.", "title": "Production and sales" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "By 2011, about 56% of BMW-brand vehicles produced are powered by petrol engines and the remaining 44% are powered by diesel engines. Of those petrol vehicles, about 27% are four-cylinder models and about nine percent are eight-cylinder models. On average, 9,000 vehicles per day exit BMW plants, and 63% are transported by rail.", "title": "Production and sales" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "Annual production since 2005, according to BMW's annual reports:", "title": "Production and sales" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "Annual sales since 2005, according to BMW's annual reports:", "title": "Production and sales" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "* In 2008–2012, motorcycle productions figures include Husqvarna models. ** Excluding Husqvarna, sales volume up to 2013: 59,776 units.", "title": "Production and sales" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "In November 2016, BMW recalled 136,000 2007–2012 model year U.S. cars for fuel pump wiring problems possibly resulting in fuel leak and engine stalling or restarting issues.", "title": "Recalls" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "In 2018, BMW recalled 106,000 diesel vehicles in South Korea with a defective exhaust gas recirculation module, which caused 39 engine fires. The recall was then expanded to 324,000 more cars in Europe. Following the recall in South Korea, the government banned cars which had not yet been inspected from driving on public roads. This affected up to 25% of the recalled cars, where the owners had been notified but the cars had not yet been inspected. BMW is reported to have been aware since 2016 that more than 4% of the affected cars in South Korea had experienced failures in the EGR coolers, leading to approximately 20 owners suing the company.", "title": "Recalls" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "BMW has collaborated with other car manufacturers on the following occasions:", "title": "Industry collaboration" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "BMW made a six-year sponsorship deal with the United States Olympic Committee in July 2010.", "title": "Sponsorships" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "In golf, BMW has sponsored various events, including the PGA Championship since 2007, the Italian Open from 2009 to 2012, the BMW Masters in China from 2012 to 2015 and the BMW International Open in Munich since 1989.", "title": "Sponsorships" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "In rugby, BMW sponsored the South Africa national rugby union team from 2011 to 2015.", "title": "Sponsorships" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "DriveNow was a joint-venture between BMW and Sixt that operated in Europe from 2011 until 2019. By December 2012, DriveNow operated over 1,000 vehicles, in five cities and with approximately 60,000 customers.", "title": "Car-sharing services" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "In 2012, the BMW-owned subsidiary Alphabet began a corporate car-sharing service in Europe called AlphaCity.", "title": "Car-sharing services" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "The ReachNow car-sharing service was launched in Seattle in April 2016. ReachNow currently operates in Seattle, Portland and Brooklyn.", "title": "Car-sharing services" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "In 2018, BMW announced the launching of a pilot car subscription service for the United States called Access by BMW (its first one for the country), in Nashville, Tennessee. In January 2021, the company said that Access by BMW was \"suspended\".", "title": "Car-sharing services" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "The first BMW production facility in China was opened in 2004, as a result of a joint venture between BMW and Brilliance Auto. The plant was opened in the Shenyang industrial area and produces 3 Series and 5 Series models for the Chinese market. In 2012, a second factory was opened in Shenyang.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "Between January and November 2014, BMW sold 415,200 vehicles in China, through a network of over 440 BMW stores and 100 Mini stores.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "On 7 October 2021, BMW announced it would begin additional production of the X5 in China.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "In February 2022, BMW invested an additional $4.2 billion into the Chinese joint venture, increasing its stake from 50% to 75%, becoming one of the first foreign automakers holding majority stake in China.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "In June 2022, BMW announced a new plant project in Lydia, Shenyang designed for electric vehicles. It will become BMW Group's largest single project in China, costing 15 billion yuan (2.13 billion euros). The investment amount was raised by a further 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) in November 2022, following German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's visit to China.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "On 31 July 2018, BMW announced to build a 1 billion euro car factory in Hungary. The plant, to be built near Debrecen, will have a production capacity of 150,000 cars a year.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 79, "text": "In July 2014, BMW announced it was establishing a plant in Mexico, in the city and state of San Luis Potosi involving an investment of $1 billion. The plant will employ 1,500 people, and produce 150,000 cars annually.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 80, "text": "The Mini Convertible, Mini Countryman and BMW X1 are currently produced in the Netherlands at the VDL Nedcar factory in Born. Long-term orders for the Mini Countryman ended in 2020.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 81, "text": "BMWs have been assembled in South Africa since 1968, when Praetor Monteerders' plant was opened in Rosslyn, near Pretoria. BMW initially bought shares in the company, before fully acquiring it in 1975; in so doing, the company became BMW South Africa, the first wholly owned subsidiary of BMW to be established outside Germany. Unlike United States manufacturers, such as Ford and GM, which divested from the country in the 1980s, BMW retained full ownership of its operations in South Africa.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 82, "text": "Following the end of apartheid in 1994, and the lowering of import tariffs, BMW South Africa ended local production of the 5 Series and 7 Series, in order to concentrate on production of the 3 Series for the export market. South African–built BMWs are now exported to right hand drive markets including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, as well as Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1997, BMW South Africa has produced vehicles in left-hand drive for export to Taiwan, the United States and Iran, as well as South America.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 83, "text": "Three unique models that BMW Motorsport created for the South African market were the E23 M745i (1983), which used the M88 engine from the BMW M1, the BMW 333i (1986), which added a six-cylinder 3.2-litre M30 engine to the E30, and the E30 BMW 325is (1989) which was powered by an Alpina-derived 2.7-litre engine.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 84, "text": "The plant code (position 11 in the VIN) for South African built models is \"N\".", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 85, "text": "BMW cars have been officially sold in the United States since 1956 and manufactured in the United States since 1994. The first BMW dealership in the United States opened in 1975. In 2016, BMW was the twelfth highest selling brand in the United States.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 86, "text": "The manufacturing plant in Greer, South Carolina has the highest production of the BMW plants worldwide, currently producing approximately 1,500 vehicles per day. The models produced at the Spartanburg plant are the X3, X4, X5, X6, X7 and XM SUV models.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 87, "text": "In addition to the South Carolina manufacturing facility, BMW's North American companies include sales, marketing, design, and financial services operations in the United States, Mexico, Canada and Latin America.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 88, "text": "On 9 October 2014, BMW's new complete knock-down (CKD) assembly plant in Araquari, assembled its first car— an F30 3 Series.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 89, "text": "The cars assembled at Araquari are the F20 1 Series, F30 3 Series, F48 X1, F25 X3 and Mini Countryman.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 90, "text": "Bavarian Auto Group became the importer of the BMW and Mini brands in 2003.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 91, "text": "Since 2005, the 3 Series, 5 Series, 7 Series, X1 and X3 models sold in Egypt are assembled from complete knock-down components at the BMW plant in 6th of October City.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 92, "text": "BMW India was established in 2006 as a sales subsidiary with a head office located in Gurugram.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 93, "text": "A BMW complete knock-down assembly plant was opened in Chennai in 2007, assembling Indian-market 3 Series, 5 Series, 7 Series, X1, X3, X5, Mini Countryman and motorcycle models. The 20 Million Euro plant aims to produce 1,700 cars per year.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 94, "text": "PT. BMW Indonesia was established in 2001 as a subsidiary with a head office located in Central Jakarta. It was managed by PT. Astra International.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 95, "text": "10 years later in 2011, BMW Group invested more than 100 Billion Indonesian rupiah to expand its production, by establish the complete knock-down (CKD) assembly plant in Gaya Motor's production facility in Sunter, Jakarta. the plant is currently assembling Indonesian-market 2 Series (gran coupé), 3 Series (sedan), 5 Series (sedan), 7 Series, X1, X3, X5, X7, and Mini Countryman.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 96, "text": "BMW's complete knock-down (CKD) assembly plant in Kedah. Assembled Malaysia-market 1 Series, 3 Series, 5 Series, 7 Series, X1, X3, X4, X5, X6 and Mini Countryman since 2008.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 97, "text": "Russian-market 3 Series and 5 Series cars are assembled from complete knock-down components in Kaliningrad beginning in 1999. In March 2022, BMW left Russian market and stopped importing and producing cars in Russia due to International sanctions during the Russo-Ukrainian War.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 98, "text": "BMW's first dealership in Canada, located in Ottawa, was opened in 1969. In 1986, BMW established a head office in Canada.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 99, "text": "BMW sold 28,149 vehicles in Canada in 2008.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 100, "text": "BMW Japan Corp, a wholly owned subsidiary, imports and distributes BMW vehicles in Japan.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 101, "text": "BMW Philippines, an owned subsidiary of San Miguel Corporation, is the official importer and distributor of BMW in the Philippines.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 102, "text": "BMW sold 920 vehicles in the Philippines in 2019.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" }, { "paragraph_id": 103, "text": "BMW Korea imports BMW vehicles in South Korea with more than fifty service centers to fully accomplish to South Korean customers. Also, BMW Korea has its own driving center in Incheon.", "title": "Overseas subsidiaries" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bisexuality better known as bisexual, in human sexuality, describes a person that is sexually attracted to persons of both the same sex and persons of the opposite sex.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Bisexual may also refer to:", "title": "" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bornholm (Danish pronunciation: [pɒːnˈhʌlˀm]) is a Danish island in the Baltic Sea, to the east of the rest of Denmark, south of Sweden, northeast of Germany and north of Poland.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Strategically located, Bornholm has been fought over for centuries. It has usually been ruled by Denmark, but also by Sweden and by Lübeck. The ruin of Hammershus, at the northwestern tip of the island, is the largest medieval fortress in northern Europe, testament to the importance of its location. Bornholm and Ertholmene comprise the last remaining Danish territory in Skåneland east of Øresund, having been surrendered to Sweden in 1658, but regained by Denmark in 1660 after a local revolt.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The island is known as solskinsøen (\"sunshine island\") because of its weather and klippeøen (\"rock island\") because of its geology, which consists of granite, except along the southern coast. The heat from the summer is stored in the rock formations and the weather is quite warm until October. As a result of the climate, a local variety of the common fig, known as Bornholm's Diamond (Bornholms Diamant), can grow locally on the island. The island's topography consists of dramatic rock formations in the north (unlike the rest of Denmark, which is mostly gentle rolling hills) sloping down towards pine and deciduous forests (greatly affected by storms in the 1950s), farmland in the middle and sandy beaches in the south.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "The island is home to many of Denmark's round churches. Occupying an area of 584.59 square kilometres (225.71 sq mi), the island had a total population of 39,602 as of January 2023.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "In Old Norse the island was known as Burgundaholmr, and in ancient Danish especially the island's name was Borghand or Borghund; these names were related to Old Norse borg 'height' and bjarg/berg 'mountain, rock' because it is an island that rises high from the sea. Other names known for the island include Burgendaland (9th century), Hulmo / Holmus (Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum), Burgundehulm (1145), and Borghandæholm (14th century). The Old English translation of Orosius uses the form Burgenda land. Some scholars believe that the Burgundians are named after Bornholm. The Burgundians were Germanic peoples who moved west when the Western Roman Empire collapsed and occupied and named Burgundy in France.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Bornholm formed part of the historical Lands of Denmark when the nation united out of a series of petty chiefdoms. It was originally administratively part of the province of Scania and was administered by the Scanian Law after this was codified in the 13th century. Control over the island evolved into a long-raging dispute between the See of Lund and the Danish crown, culminating in several battles. The first fortress on the island was Gamleborg, which was replaced by Lilleborg built by the king in 1150. In 1149 the king accepted the transfer of three of the island's four herreder (districts) to the archbishop. In 1250, the archbishop constructed his own fortress, Hammershus. A campaign launched from it in 1259 conquered the remaining part of the island including Lilleborg. The island's status remained a matter of dispute for an additional 200 years.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Bornholm was pawned to Lübeck for 50 years starting in 1525. Its first militia, Bornholms Milits, was formed in 1624. Swedish forces conquered the island in 1645, but returned the island to Denmark in the following peace settlement. After the war in 1658, Denmark ceded the island to Sweden under the Treaty of Roskilde along with the rest of the Skåneland, Bohuslän and Trøndelag, and it was occupied by Swedish forces. A revolt broke out the same year, culminating in Villum Clausen's shooting of the Swedish commander Johan Printzensköld on 8 December 1658. Following the revolt, a deputation of islanders presented the island as a gift to King Frederick III of Denmark on the condition that the island would never be ceded again. This status was confirmed in the Treaty of Copenhagen in 1660.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "Swedes, notably from Småland and Scania, emigrated to the island during the 19th century, seeking work and better conditions. Most of the migrants did not remain.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "Bornholm also attracted many famous artists at the beginning of the 20th century, forming a group now known as the Bornholm school of painters. In addition to Oluf Høst, they include Karl Isaksson (1878–1922) from Sweden, and the Danes Edvard Weie (1879–1943), Olaf Rude (1886–1957), Niels Lergaard (1893–1982), and Kræsten Iversen (1886–1955).", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Bornholm, as a part of Denmark, was captured by Nazi Germany on 10 April 1940, and served as a lookout post and listening station during the war, as it was a part of the Eastern Front. The island's perfect central position in the Baltic Sea meant that it was an important \"natural fortress\" between Germany and Sweden, effectively keeping submarines and destroyers away from Nazi-occupied waters. Several concrete coastal installations were built during the war, as well as several coastal batteries, which had tremendous range. However, none of them were ever used, and only a single test shot was fired during the occupation. These remnants of Nazi rule have since fallen into disrepair and are mostly regarded today as historical curiosities. Many tourists visit the ruins each year, however, providing supplemental income to the tourist industry.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "On 22 August 1942 a V-1 flying bomb (numbered V83, probably launched from a Heinkel He 111) crashed on Bornholm during a test – the warhead was a dummy made of concrete. The wreckage was photographed and sketched by the Danish Naval Officer-in-Charge on Bornholm, Lieutenant Commander Hasager Christiansen. This was one of the first signs British Intelligence saw of Germany's aspirations to develop flying bombs and rockets which were to become known as V-1. The Bornholm rocket turned out to be from Peenemünde.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Bornholm was heavily bombarded by the Soviet Air Forces in May 1945, as it was a part of the Eastern Front. The German garrison commander, German Navy Captain Gerhard von Kamptz (1902–1998), refused to surrender to the Soviets, as his orders were to surrender only to the Western Allies. The Germans sent several telegrams to Copenhagen requesting that at least one British soldier should be transferred to Bornholm, so that the Germans could surrender to the Western Allied forces instead of the Soviets. When von Kamptz failed to provide a written capitulation as demanded by the Soviet commanders, Soviet aircraft relentlessly bombed and destroyed more than 800 civilian houses in Rønne and in Nexø, and seriously damaged roughly 3,000 more on 7–8 May 1945. The population had been forewarned of the bombardments, and the towns were evacuated, but 10 local people were killed. Soldiers were also killed and wounded. Some of them were conscripts from occupied Latvia fighting in German ranks against the Soviets.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "During the Soviet bombing of the two main towns on 7-8 May, Danish radio was not allowed to broadcast the news because it was thought it would spoil the liberation festivities in Denmark. On 9 May Soviet troops landed on the island, and after a short fight, the German garrison (about 12,000 strong) surrendered. Soviet forces left the island on 5 April 1946.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "After the evacuation of their forces from Bornholm, the Soviets took the position that the stationing of foreign troops on Bornholm would be considered a declaration of war against the Soviet Union, and that Denmark should keep troops on it at all times to protect it from such foreign aggression. This policy remained in force after NATO was formed, with Denmark as a founding member. The Soviets accepted the stationing there of Danish troops, which were part of NATO but viewed as militarily inferior elements of the alliance, but they strongly objected to the presence of other NATO troops on Bornholm, US troops in particular.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "On 5 March 1953, the day of Stalin's death, Polish pilot Franciszek Jarecki defected from the Eastern Bloc and landed a MiG-15 fighter on the island. He was later granted asylum and rewarded for providing Western intelligence with the then-newest Soviet jet fighter.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "In 2017, Denmark's Defence Intelligence Service decided to build a listening tower near Østermarie, almost 90 meters high, to intercept radio communications across the Baltic Sea and in parts of Russia.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Bornholm Regional Municipality is the local authority (Danish, kommune) covering the entire island. Its formal name is Bornholm Municipality. It is given the right in the law establishing it to be called Bornholm Regional Municipality. (For explanation read on). It is the result of a merger of the five former (1 April 1970 until 2002) municipalities on the island (Allinge-Gudhjem, Hasle, Nexø, Rønne and Aakirkeby) and the former Bornholm County. Bornholm Regional Municipality was also a county in its own right during its first four years from 1 January 2003 until 31 December 2006. From 1 January 2007 all counties were abolished, and Bornholm became part of the Capital Region of Denmark whose main responsibility is the health service. In the bill (Danish forslag) (Bill of Law on merger of the municipalities of Bornholm) presented 30 January 2002 by the Minister of Interior and Health to Folketinget, it says in §1 that (1st sentence) \"The 1st of January 2003 Bornholm Municipality is established by a merger of (names of municipalities mentioned, and county's name mentioned), and (2nd sentence) Bornholm Municipality is called Bornholm Regional Municipality\".", "title": "Municipality" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The island had 21 municipalities until March 1970, of which 6 were market towns and 15 parishes. In addition to supervising parish municipalities, which was the responsibility of the counties in all of Denmark, the market town municipalities of Bornholm were supervised by Bornholm County as well and not by the Interior Ministry as was the case in the rest of Denmark. The seat of the municipal council is the island's main town, Rønne. The voters decided to merge the county with the municipalities in a referendum 29 May 2001, effective from 1 January 2003. The question on the ballot was, \"Do you want the six municipal entities of Bornholm to be joined to form one municipal entity as of 1 January 2003?\" 73.9% voted in favour. The lowest percentage for the merger was in Nexø municipality (966 more people voting \"Yes\" than \"No\"), whose mayor, Annelise Molin, a Social Democrat, spoke out against the merger. It was required that each municipality had more \"Yes\" votes than \"No\" votes. Otherwise the merger would have to be abandoned altogether. The six municipal entities had up to 122 councillors (of which county clls were 18, from 1998 15), reduced to 89 in the municipalities from the 1990s, in the 1970s and the new regional municipality would have 27 councillors from the start 1 January 2003. They were reduced to 23 from 1 January 2018 (election November 2017). From 1 January 2003 until 31 December 2006 the 27 cllrs were called Regional Council (Danish Regionsråd), from 1 January 2007 changed to Municipal Board (Danish Kommunalbestyrelse) as is the usual term in almost all Danish municipalities. This was to avoid confusion with the Regional Council in Region Hovedstaden, and in the other regions", "title": "Municipality" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "The merger was approved in a law by the Folketing 19 (and signature by the head of state 25) March 2002, transferring the tasks of the abolished county and old municipalities to the new Bornholm Regional Municipality. The first regional mayor in the first three years from 2003 until 2005 was Thomas Thors (born 28 July 1949), a physician and member of the Social Democrats and previously the last mayor of Rønne Municipality for five years from 1998 until 2002. He became a mayor again in 2021. Bjarne Kristiansen, who was the last mayor of Hasle 2+1⁄2 years from the summer of 2000 until 2002, representing the local Borgerlisten political party, served as mayor for four years from 1 January 2006 until 2009. From 1 January 2007, Bornholm became a part of the Capital Region of Denmark. From 1 January 2010 until 31 December 2020 the mayor was Winni Grosbøll, a high school teacher and a member of the Social Democrats (Socialdemokratiet) political party. The deputy mayor Morten Riis was mayor for a short interlude from 1 January until 4 January 2021. He is from the Red-Green Alliance. Thomas Thors, who was elected again in 2017, became mayor again from 4 January 2021. After the 2021 Danish local elections Jacob Trøst became mayor from January 2022. He is from the Conservative party. This was after an agreement (aftale om konstituering) between the Red-Green Alliance, amongst whom Morten Riis will be deputy mayor, and the Danish People's Party with the Conservatives.", "title": "Municipality" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Bornholm's municipal council today consists of 23 members, elected every four years. In the first four local elections in the newly created municipality there were 27 members elected to the municipal council. The 2002 local election only took place on Bornholm. From the election in 2017 the number of councillors elected was reduced to 23 members, serving their term of office from 1 January 2018 until 31 December 2021.", "title": "Municipality" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Below are the election results to the new merged municipal council beginning with the first election 29 May 2002.", "title": "Municipality" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "Ferry services connect Rønne to Świnoujście (Poland), Sassnitz (Germany), Køge, 45 kilometres (28 miles) by road (34 kilometres or 21 miles as the crow flies) south of Copenhagen, Denmark; the destination to Køge replaced the nighttime route directly to and from Copenhagen (for both cargo and passengers) from 1 October 2004; and catamaran services to Ystad (Sweden). Simrishamn (Sweden) has a ferry connection during the summer. There are also regular catamaran services between Nexø and the Polish ports of Kołobrzeg, Łeba and Ustka. There are direct bus connections Ystad-Copenhagen, coordinated with the catamaran. There are also flights from Bornholm Airport to Copenhagen and other locations.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "Because of its remote location Bornholm Regional Municipality has its own traffic company, BAT, and is its own employment region, and also performs other tasks normally carried out by the regions in the rest of Denmark. In some respects the municipality forms a region of its own.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Bornholm Regional Municipality was not merged with other municipalities on 1 January 2007 in the nationwide Municipal Reform of 2007.", "title": "Transport" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "The larger towns on the island are located on the coast and have harbours. There is however one exception, centrally placed Aakirkeby, which was also the name of the municipality from 1970 until 2002, but it included the harbour of Boderne, 5 kilometres (3.1 miles) to the south. The largest town is Rønne; it is the seat, in the southwest on the westernmost point of the island. The other main towns (clockwise around the island) are Hasle, Sandvig, Allinge, Gudhjem, Svaneke and Nexø. Monday morning 22 September 2014 it was documented by Folkeregistret in the municipality that the number of people living in the municipality that day were 39,922, the lowest number in over 100 years.", "title": "Towns and villages" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "As of 2018, Statistics Denmark gave the populations as follows:", "title": "Towns and villages" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "The town of Rønne after the merger of the island's administrative entities 1 January 2003 reached a low point of 13,568 inhabitants 1 January 2014. 15,957 people in 1965 (date unknown;number not registerbased) lived in the two parishes that would become Rønne municipality from 1 April 1970. In the table, numbers for Rønne are for the parish of Rønne, Rønne Sogn, alone. The year is unknown but sometime between 2000 and 2005. It does not include Knudsker Sogn, which was also part of Rønne Municipality. Other localities (with approximate populations, not updated) include Aarsballe (86), Arnager (151), Olsker (67), Rutsker (64), Rø (181), Stenseby (?) and Vang (92). In 2010 and 2018 10,297 and 9,111 respectively lived in rural districts, and 88 and 71 had no fixed address. A rural district is defined by Statistics Denmark as a settlement with less than 200 inhabitants.", "title": "Towns and villages" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Year: Beginning with 2007; 2018;", "title": "Demography" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Population numbers are from 1 January. Christiansø Parish (which encompasses Ertholmene) is not a part of Bornholm Regional Municipality. It is included because Danmarks Statistik includes it as parish number 7568. Bornholm has 21 parishes (2018) that before 1 April 1970 were parish (15) or market city (6) municipalities themselves. There are 2,158 parishes (2021) in the Church of Denmark.", "title": "Demography" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Source:Statistikbanken.dk/Befolkning og valg/(table)FODIE (births);FOD207 (deaths);BEV107 (births;deaths;birth surplus);KM1 (parishes).", "title": "Demography" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "On 22 September 2014 population numbers showed fewer than 40,000 inhabitants on the island for the first time in over 100 years. The Folkeregister in the municipality could document 39,922 inhabitants in the municipality on that date.", "title": "Demography" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Many inhabitants speak the Bornholmsk dialect, which is officially a dialect of Danish. Bornholmsk retains three grammatical genders, like Faroese, Icelandic and most dialects of Norwegian, but unlike standard Danish. Its phonology includes archaisms (unstressed [a] and internal [d̥, ɡ̊], where other dialects have [ə] and [ð̞, ʊ / ɪ]) and innovations ([tɕ, dʝ] for [kʰ, ɡ̊] before and after front vowels). This makes the dialect difficult to understand for some Danish speakers. However, Swedish speakers often consider Bornholmian to be easier to understand than standard Danish. The intonation resembles the dialects spoken in nearby Scania, Blekinge and Halland the southernmost provinces of Sweden.", "title": "Demography" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "Most inhabitants are members of the Lutheran Church of Denmark (Folkekirken). Various Christian denominations have become established on the island, most during the 19th century.", "title": "Demography" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "On the surface of Bornholm older geological formations can be seen better than in the rest of Denmark. Stubbeløkken – which is still operating (Danish i drift) – and Klippeløkken granite quarries in Knudsker parish just east of central Rønne – and statistically a part of the town – are among the few remaining quarries of what was once many active quarries on the island. The island's varied geography and seascapes attract visitors to its many beauty spots from the Hammeren promontory in the northwest to the Almindingen forest in the centre and the Dueodde beaches in the southeast. Of special interest are the rocky sea cliffs at Jons Kapel and Helligdomsklipperne, the varied topography of Paradisbakkerne and rift valleys such as Ekkodalen and Døndalen. Bornholm's numerous windmills include the post mill of Egeby and the well-kept Dutch mill at Aarsdale. The lighthouse at Dueodde is Denmark's tallest, while Hammeren Lighthouse stands at a height of 85 metres (279 ft) above sea level and Rønne Lighthouse rises over the waterfront.", "title": "Sights and landmarks" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Examples of roads that have (very) steep climbs and descents are: (inland) Simblegårdsvej in Klemensker, which begins by the village inn Klemens Kro, and Slamrebjergvej just outside Nexø extending northward from the main road from Rønne. Along the coast there are several steep roads, which is also the case in some parts of Denmark as a whole, for instance in and around Vejle.", "title": "Sights and landmarks" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "The island hosts examples of 19th- and early-20th-century architecture, and about 300 wooden houses in Rønne and Nexø, donated by Sweden after World War II, when the island was repairing damage caused by the war. The island is home to 15 medieval churches, four of which are round churches with unique artwork and architecture. The ancient site of Rispebjerg has remains of sun temples from the Neolithic and earthworks from the Iron Age.", "title": "Sights and landmarks" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "There are 14 European bison near Åkirkeby, attracting 100,000 visitors a year.", "title": "Sights and landmarks" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Because of the dilapidated state of their buildings, all secondary educational facilities in Rønne, including adult evening classes, are being transferred to new facilities at Campus Bornholm in 2018. Campus Bornholm is a merger formed in June 2010 consisting of Bornholms Erhvervsskole (youth and adults), Bornholm High School (youth) and VUC Bornholm (adults), then occupying separate addresses. Learning institutions not part of this formalised collaboration will also be housed at Minervavej in Rønne. The building costs were over 300 million DKK (US$46.9 million (29 June 2018)). The A.P. Møller Foundation contributed a sum of 56 million DKK (US$8.76 million (29 June 2018)) to the project.", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "", "title": "Education" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "Among Bornholm's chief industrial activities are dairy farming and arts and crafts industries such as glass production and pottery using locally worked clay. Jensen-Group, an industrial washing and folding machine company, was founded on the island and has a factory in Rønne. It is headquartered in Belgium.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "Tourism is also important during the summer months.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "Bornholm is connected to the Swedish electricity grid by a submarine 60 kV AC cable, which is among the longest AC cables in Europe. This cable is capable of delivering all the electrical energy consumed on Bornholm. However Bornholm also generates its own electricity at small thermal power plants and especially wind turbines.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "Bornholm is also home to a large internationally funded demonstration project to test the viability of novel energy market mechanisms to regulate energy networks with a high prevalence of renewables (such as wind turbines and photovoltaics). 50% of the EcoGrid project is EU-funded, with the remainder coming mainly from large corporations.", "title": "Economy" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "Bornholm hosts a Marines like squadron (4th Basic Training Squadron), of the Guard Hussar Regiment at Almegårds Kaserne.", "title": "Military" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "Bornholm has an oceanic climate relatively similar to southern Sweden and mainland Denmark, whose summer highs and winter lows are heavily moderated by its maritime and isolated position. Though intense heat is rare, the climate is sunny during summer and rainfall is generally sparse for a climate of this type. The winter of 2010 – 2011 was exceptionally extreme with snow depth reaching at least 146 cm (58 inches) and snowdrifts of six meters (20 feet), the highest in Northern Europe. Military assistance was needed to clear roadways. The DMI estimated the weight of snow to be 100 million tons.", "title": "Climate" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Bornholm's geography as an island and moderate climate makes Bornholm an ideal location for sailing and other water-based sports. Bornholm has also become an internationally recognised venue for 'match racing', a sailing sport where two identical yachts are raced in one-on-one events on the water. The Danish Open event was held in Bornholm in September 2010 at the port town of Rønne on the western coast of Bornholm. The five-day Danish Open is a key event in the World Match Racing Tour calendar which is one of only 3 events awarded 'special event' status by the International Sailing Federation. The Tour is the world's leading professional 'match racing' series and features a nine-event calendar which crosses three continents during the series. Points accrued during the Danish Open contribute directly to the World Match Racing Tour championship with the winner of the season finale at the Monsoon Cup in Malaysia claiming the ultimate match racing title ISAF World Match Racing Champion.", "title": "Sports" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "There are two small stadiums: Nexø Stadion, in Nexø, where NB Bornholm association football club play; and the slightly larger multi-use stadium Rønne Stadion Nord in Rønne, which serves the Bornholm national football team, multi-section club most well known for athletics IK Viking, and several local football clubs. The DBU Bornholm is the local branch governing football on the island.", "title": "Sports" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "A bay is an area of water bordered by land on three sides.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Bay, Bays or baying may also refer to:", "title": "" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. It can also be a handwritten or printed work of fiction or nonfiction, usually on sheets of paper fastened or bound together within covers. The technical term for this physical arrangement is codex (plural, codices). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's Physics is called a book. In an unrestricted sense, a book is the compositional whole of which such sections, whether called books or chapters or parts, are parts.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "The intellectual content in a physical book need not be a composition, nor even be called a book. Books can consist only of drawings, engravings or photographs, crossword puzzles or cut-out dolls. In a physical book, the pages can be left blank or can feature an abstract set of lines to support entries, such as in an account book, appointment book, autograph book, notebook, diary or sketchbook. Some physical books are made with pages thick and sturdy enough to support other physical objects, like a scrapbook or photograph album. Books may be distributed in electronic form as ebooks and other formats.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "Although in ordinary academic parlance a monograph is understood to be a specialist academic work, rather than a reference work on a scholarly subject, in library and information science monograph denotes more broadly any non-serial publication complete in one volume (book) or a finite number of volumes (even a novel like Proust's seven-volume In Search of Lost Time), in contrast to serial publications like a magazine, journal or newspaper. An avid reader or collector of books is a bibliophile or, colloquially, \"bookworm\". Books are traded at both regular stores and specialized bookstores, and people can read borrowed books, often for free, at libraries. Google has estimated that by 2010, approximately 130,000,000 titles had been published.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "In some wealthier nations, the sale of printed books has decreased because of the increased usage of e-books. However, in most countries, printed books continue to outsell their digital counterparts due to many people still preferring to read in a traditional way. The 21st century has also seen a rapid rise in the popularity of audiobooks, which are recordings of books being read aloud.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "The word book comes from Old English bōc, which in turn comes from the Germanic root *bōk-, cognate to 'beech'. In Slavic languages like Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian буква bukva—'letter' is cognate with 'beech'. In Russian, Serbian and Macedonian, the word букварь (bukvar') or буквар (bukvar) refers to a primary school textbook that helps young children master the techniques of reading and writing. It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood. The Latin word codex, meaning a book in the modern sense (bound and with separate leaves), originally meant 'block of wood'.", "title": "Etymology" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "When writing systems were created in ancient civilizations, a variety of objects, such as stone, clay, tree bark, metal sheets, and bones, were used for writing; these are studied in epigraphy.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "A tablet is a physically robust writing medium, suitable for casual transport and writing. Clay tablets were flattened and mostly dry pieces of clay that could be easily carried, and impressed with a stylus. They were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age. Wax tablets were pieces of wood covered in a coating of wax thick enough to record the impressions of a stylus. They were the normal writing material in schools, in accounting, and for taking notes. They had the advantage of being reusable: the wax could be melted, and reformed into a blank.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "The custom of binding several wax tablets together (Roman pugillares) is a possible precursor of modern bound (codex) books. The etymology of the word codex (block of wood) also suggests that it may have developed from wooden wax tablets.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Scrolls can be made from papyrus, a thick paper-like material made by weaving the stems of the papyrus plant, then pounding the woven sheet with a hammer-like tool until it is flattened. Papyrus was used for writing in Ancient Egypt, perhaps as early as the First Dynasty, although the first evidence is from the account books of King Neferirkare Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2400 BC). Papyrus sheets were glued together to form a scroll. Tree bark such as lime and other materials were also used.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "According to Herodotus (History 5:58), the Phoenicians brought writing and papyrus to Greece around the 10th or 9th century BC. The Greek word for papyrus as writing material (biblion) and book (biblos) come from the Phoenician port town Byblos, through which papyrus was exported to Greece. From Greek we also derive the word tome (Greek: τόμος), which originally meant a slice or piece and from there began to denote \"a roll of papyrus\". Tomus was used by the Latins with exactly the same meaning as volumen (see also below the explanation by Isidore of Seville).", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Whether made from papyrus, parchment, or paper, scrolls were the dominant form of book in the Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese, Hebrew, and Macedonian cultures. The Romans and Etruscans also made 'books' out of folded linen called in Latin Libri lintei, the only extant example of which is the Etruscan Liber Linteus. The more modern codex book format form took over the Roman world by late antiquity, but the scroll format persisted much longer in Asia.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Isidore of Seville (died 636) explained the then-current relation between a codex, book, and scroll in his Etymologiae (VI.13): \"A codex is composed of many books; a book is of one scroll. It is called codex by way of metaphor from the trunks (codex) of trees or vines, as if it were a wooden stock, because it contains in itself a multitude of books, as it were of branches\". Modern usage differs.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "A codex (in modern usage) is the first information repository that modern people would recognize as a \"book\": leaves of uniform size bound in some manner along one edge, and typically held between two covers made of some more robust material. The first written mention of the codex as a form of book is from Martial, in his Apophoreta CLXXXIV at the end of the first century, where he praises its compactness. However, the codex never gained much popularity in the pagan Hellenistic world, and only within the Christian community did it gain widespread use. This change happened gradually during the 3rd and 4th centuries, and the reasons for adopting the codex form of the book are several: the format is more economical, as both sides of the writing material can be used; and it is portable, searchable, and easy to conceal. A book is much easier to read, to find a page that you want, and to flip through. A scroll is more awkward to use. The Christian authors may also have wanted to distinguish their writings from the pagan and Judaic texts written on scrolls. In addition, some metal books were made, that required smaller pages of metal, instead of an impossibly long, unbending scroll of metal. A book can also be easily stored in more compact places, or side by side in a tight library or shelf space.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "The fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD saw the decline of the culture of ancient Rome. Papyrus became difficult to obtain due to lack of contact with Egypt, and parchment, which had been used for centuries, became the main writing material. Parchment is a material made from processed animal skin and used, mainly in the past, for writing on, especially in the Middle Ages. Parchment is most commonly made of calfskin, sheepskin, or goatskin. It was historically used for writing documents, notes, or the pages of a book, and first came into use around the 200s BC. Parchment is limed, scraped and dried under tension. It is not tanned, and is thus different from leather. This makes it more suitable for writing on, but leaves it very reactive to changes in relative humidity and makes it revert to rawhide if overly wet.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "Monasteries carried on the Latin writing tradition in the Western Roman Empire. Cassiodorus, in the monastery of Vivarium (established around 540), stressed the importance of copying texts. St. Benedict of Nursia, in his Rule of Saint Benedict (completed around the middle of the 6th century) later also promoted reading. The Rule of Saint Benedict (Ch. XLVIII), which set aside certain times for reading, greatly influenced the monastic culture of the Middle Ages and is one of the reasons why the clergy were the predominant readers of books. The tradition and style of the Roman Empire still dominated, but slowly the peculiar medieval book culture emerged.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "Before the invention and adoption of the printing press, almost all books were copied by hand, which made books expensive and comparatively rare. Smaller monasteries usually had only a few dozen books, medium-sized perhaps a few hundred. By the 9th century, larger collections held around 500 volumes and even at the end of the Middle Ages, the papal library in Avignon and Paris library of the Sorbonne held only around 2,000 volumes.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "The scriptorium of the monastery was usually located over the chapter house. Artificial light was forbidden for fear it may damage the manuscripts. There were five types of scribes:", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "The bookmaking process was long and laborious. The parchment had to be prepared, then the unbound pages were planned and ruled with a blunt tool or lead, after which the text was written by the scribe, who usually left blank areas for illustration and rubrication. Finally, the book was bound by the bookbinder.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Different types of ink were known in antiquity, usually prepared from soot and gum, and later also from gall nuts and iron vitriol. This gave writing a brownish black color, but black or brown were not the only colors used. There are texts written in red or even gold, and different colors were used for illumination. For very luxurious manuscripts the whole parchment was colored purple, and the text was written on it with gold or silver (for example, Codex Argenteus).", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Irish monks introduced spacing between words in the 7th century. This facilitated reading, as these monks tended to be less familiar with Latin. However, the use of spaces between words did not become commonplace before the 12th century. It has been argued that the use of spacing between words shows the transition from semi-vocalized reading into silent reading.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "The first books used parchment or vellum (calfskin) for the pages. The book covers were made of wood and covered with leather. Because dried parchment tends to assume the form it had before processing, the books were fitted with clasps or straps. During the later Middle Ages, when public libraries appeared, up to the 18th century, books were often chained to a bookshelf or a desk to prevent theft. These chained books are called libri catenati.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "At first, books were copied mostly in monasteries, one at a time. With the rise of universities in the 13th century, the Manuscript culture of the time led to an increase in the demand for books, and a new system for copying books appeared. The books were divided into unbound leaves (pecia), which were lent out to different copyists, so the speed of book production was considerably increased. The system was maintained by secular stationers guilds, which produced both religious and non-religious material.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "Judaism has kept the art of the scribe alive up to the present. According to Jewish tradition, the Torah scroll placed in a synagogue must be written by hand on parchment and a printed book would not do, though the congregation may use printed prayer books and printed copies of the Scriptures are used for study outside the synagogue. A sofer \"scribe\" is a highly respected member of many Jewish communities.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "People of various religious (Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Muslims) and ethnic backgrounds (Syriac, Coptic, Persian, Arab etc.) in the Middle East also produced and bound books in the Islamic Golden Age (mid 8th century to 1258), developing advanced techniques in Islamic calligraphy, miniatures and bookbinding. A number of cities in the medieval Islamic world had book production centers and book markets. Yaqubi (died 897) says that in his time Baghdad had over a hundred booksellers. Book shops were often situated around the town's principal mosque as in Marrakesh, Morocco, that has a street named Kutubiyyin or book sellers in English and the famous Koutoubia Mosque is named so because of its location in this street.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "The medieval Muslim world also used a method of reproducing reliable copies of a book in large quantities known as check reading, in contrast to the traditional method of a single scribe producing only a single copy of a single manuscript. In the check reading method, only \"authors could authorize copies, and this was done in public sessions in which the copyist read the copy aloud in the presence of the author, who then certified it as accurate.\" With this check-reading system, \"an author might produce a dozen or more copies from a single reading,\" and with two or more readings, \"more than one hundred copies of a single book could easily be produced.\" By using as writing material the relatively cheap paper instead of parchment or papyrus the Muslims, in the words of Pedersen \"accomplished a feat of crucial significance not only to the history of the Islamic book, but also to the whole world of books\".", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "In woodblock printing, a relief image of an entire page was carved into blocks of wood, inked, and used to print copies of that page. This method originated in China, in the Han dynasty (before 220 AD), as a method of printing on textiles and later paper, and was widely used throughout East Asia. The oldest dated book printed by this method is The Diamond Sutra (868 AD). The method (called woodcut when used in art) arrived in Europe in the early 14th century. Books (known as block-books), as well as playing-cards and religious pictures, began to be produced by this method. Creating an entire book was a painstaking process, requiring a hand-carved block for each page; and the wood blocks tended to crack, if stored for long. The monks or people who wrote them were paid highly.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "The Chinese inventor Bi Sheng made movable type of earthenware c. 1045, but there are no known surviving examples of his printing. Around 1450, in what is commonly regarded as an independent invention, Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Europe, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. This invention gradually made books less expensive to produce and more widely available.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Early printed books, single sheets and images which were created before 1501 in Europe are known as incunables or incunabula. \"A man born in 1453, the year of the fall of Constantinople, could look back from his fiftieth year on a lifetime in which about eight million books had been printed, more perhaps than all the scribes of Europe had produced since Constantine founded his city in AD 330.\"", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Steam-powered printing presses became popular in the early 19th century. These machines could print 1,100 sheets per hour, but workers could only set 2,000 letters per hour. Monotype and linotype typesetting machines were introduced in the late 19th century. They could set more than 6,000 letters per hour and an entire line of type at once. There have been numerous improvements in the printing press. As well, the conditions for freedom of the press have been improved through the gradual relaxation of restrictive censorship laws. See also intellectual property, public domain, copyright. In mid-20th century, European book production had risen to over 200,000 titles per year.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Throughout the 20th century, libraries have faced an ever-increasing rate of publishing, sometimes called an information explosion. The advent of electronic publishing and the internet means that much new information is not printed in paper books, but is made available online through a digital library, on CD-ROM, in the form of ebooks or other online media. An on-line book is an ebook that is available online through the internet. Though many books are produced digitally, most digital versions are not available to the public, and there is no decline in the rate of paper publishing. There is an effort, however, to convert books that are in the public domain into a digital medium for unlimited redistribution and infinite availability. This effort is spearheaded by Project Gutenberg combined with Distributed Proofreaders. There have also been new developments in the process of publishing books. Technologies such as POD or \"print on demand\", which make it possible to print as few as one book at a time, have made self-publishing (and vanity publishing) much easier and more affordable. On-demand publishing has allowed publishers, by avoiding the high costs of warehousing, to keep low-selling books in print rather than declaring them out of print.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Goddess Saraswati image dated 132 AD excavated from Kankali tila depicts her holding a manuscript in her left hand represented as a bound and tied palm leaf or birch bark manuscript. In India a bounded manuscript made of birch bark or palm leaf existed side by side since antiquity. The text in palm leaf manuscripts was inscribed with a knife pen on rectangular cut and cured palm leaf sheets; colouring was then applied to the surface and wiped off, leaving the ink in the incised grooves. Each sheet typically had a hole through which a string could pass, and with these the sheets were tied together with a string to bind like a book.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "The codices of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America) had the same form as the European codex, but were instead made with long folded strips of either fig bark (amatl) or plant fibers, often with a layer of whitewash applied before writing. New World codices were written as late as the 16th century (see Maya codices and Aztec codices). Those written before the Spanish conquests seem all to have been single long sheets folded concertina-style, sometimes written on both sides of the local amatl paper.", "title": "History" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The methods used for the printing and binding of books continued fundamentally unchanged from the 15th century into the early 20th century. While there was more mechanization, a book printer in 1900 had much in common with Gutenberg. Gutenberg's invention was the use of movable metal types, assembled into words, lines, and pages and then printed by letterpress to create multiple copies. Modern paper books are printed on papers designed specifically for printed books. Traditionally, book papers are off-white or low-white papers (easier to read), are opaque to minimize the show-through of text from one side of the page to the other and are (usually) made to tighter caliper or thickness specifications, particularly for case-bound books. Different paper qualities are used depending on the type of book: Machine finished coated papers, woodfree uncoated papers, coated fine papers and special fine papers are common paper grades.", "title": "Modern manufacturing" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Today, the majority of books are printed by offset lithography. When a book is printed, the pages are laid out on the plate so that after the printed sheet is folded the pages will be in the correct sequence. Books tend to be manufactured nowadays in a few standard sizes. The sizes of books are usually specified as \"trim size\": the size of the page after the sheet has been folded and trimmed. The standard sizes result from sheet sizes (therefore machine sizes) which became popular 200 or 300 years ago, and have come to dominate the industry. British conventions in this regard prevail throughout the English-speaking world, except for the US. The European book manufacturing industry works to a completely different set of standards.", "title": "Modern manufacturing" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "Modern bound books are organized according to a particular format called the book's layout. Although there is great variation in layout, modern books tend to adhere to a set of rules with regard to what the parts of the layout are and what their content usually includes. A basic layout will include a front cover, a back cover and the book's content which is called its body copy or content pages. The front cover often bears the book's title (and subtitle, if any) and the name of its author or editor(s). The inside front cover page is usually left blank in both hardcover and paperback books. The next section, if present, is the book's front matter, which includes all textual material after the front cover but not part of the book's content such as a foreword, a dedication, a table of contents and publisher data such as the book's edition or printing number and place of publication. Between the body copy and the back cover goes the end matter which would include any indices, sets of tables, diagrams, glossaries or lists of cited works (though an edited book with several authors usually places cited works at the end of each authored chapter). The inside back cover page, like that inside the front cover, is usually blank. The back cover is the usual place for the book's ISBN and maybe a photograph of the author(s)/ editor(s), perhaps with a short introduction to them. Also here often appear plot summaries, barcodes and excerpted reviews of the book.", "title": "Modern manufacturing" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "The body of the books is usually divided into parts, chapters, sections and sometimes subsections that are composed of at least a paragraph or more.", "title": "Modern manufacturing" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "Some books, particularly those with shorter runs (i.e. with fewer copies) will be printed on sheet-fed offset presses, but most books are now printed on web presses, which are fed by a continuous roll of paper, and can consequently print more copies in a shorter time. As the production line circulates, a complete \"book\" is collected together in one stack of pages, and another machine carries out the folding, pleating, and stitching of the pages into bundles of signatures (sections of pages) ready to go into the gathering line. The pages of a book are printed two at a time, not as one complete book. Excess numbers are printed to make up for any spoilage due to make-readies or test pages to assure final print quality.", "title": "Modern manufacturing" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "A make-ready is the preparatory work carried out by the pressmen to get the printing press up to the required quality of impression. Included in make-ready is the time taken to mount the plate onto the machine, clean up any mess from the previous job, and get the press up to speed. As soon as the pressman decides that the printing is correct, all the make-ready sheets will be discarded, and the press will start making books. Similar make readies take place in the folding and binding areas, each involving spoilage of paper.", "title": "Modern manufacturing" }, { "paragraph_id": 39, "text": "After the signatures are folded and gathered, they move into the bindery. In the middle of last century there were still many trade binders—stand-alone binding companies which did no printing, specializing in binding alone. At that time, because of the dominance of letterpress printing, typesetting and printing took place in one location, and binding in a different factory. When type was all metal, a typical book's worth of type would be bulky, fragile and heavy. The less it was moved in this condition the better: so printing would be carried out in the same location as the typesetting. Printed sheets on the other hand could easily be moved. Now, because of increasing computerization of preparing a book for the printer, the typesetting part of the job has flowed upstream, where it is done either by separately contracting companies working for the publisher, by the publishers themselves, or even by the authors. Mergers in the book manufacturing industry mean that it is now unusual to find a bindery which is not also involved in book printing (and vice versa).", "title": "Modern manufacturing" }, { "paragraph_id": 40, "text": "If the book is a hardback its path through the bindery will involve more points of activity than if it is a paperback. Unsewn binding is now increasingly common. The signatures of a book can also be held together by \"Smyth sewing\" using needles, \"McCain sewing\", using drilled holes often used in schoolbook binding, or \"notch binding\", where gashes about an inch long are made at intervals through the fold in the spine of each signature. The rest of the binding process is similar in all instances. Sewn and notch bound books can be bound as either hardbacks or paperbacks.", "title": "Modern manufacturing" }, { "paragraph_id": 41, "text": "\"Making cases\" happens off-line and prior to the book's arrival at the binding line. In the most basic case-making, two pieces of cardboard are placed onto a glued piece of cloth with a space between them into which is glued a thinner board cut to the width of the spine of the book. The overlapping edges of the cloth (about 5/8\" all round) are folded over the boards, and pressed down to adhere. After case-making the stack of cases will go to the foil stamping area for adding decorations and type.", "title": "Modern manufacturing" }, { "paragraph_id": 42, "text": "Recent developments in book manufacturing include the development of digital printing. Book pages are printed, in much the same way as an office copier works, using toner rather than ink. Each book is printed in one pass, not as separate signatures. Digital printing has permitted the manufacture of much smaller quantities than offset, in part because of the absence of make readies and of spoilage. One might think of a web press as printing quantities over 2000, quantities from 250 to 2000 being printed on sheet-fed presses, and digital presses doing quantities below 250. These numbers are of course only approximate and will vary from supplier to supplier, and from book to book depending on its characteristics. Digital printing has opened up the possibility of print-on-demand, where no books are printed until after an order is received from a customer.", "title": "Digital printing" }, { "paragraph_id": 43, "text": "In the 2000s, due to the rise in availability of affordable handheld computing devices, the opportunity to share texts through electronic means became an appealing option for media publishers. Thus, the \"ebook\" was made. The term ebook is a contraction of \"electronic book\"; which refers to a book-length publication in digital form. An ebook is usually made available through the internet, but also on CD-ROM and other forms. Ebooks may be read either via a computing device with an LED display such as a traditional computer, a smartphone, or a tablet computer; or by means of a portable e-ink display device known as an ebook reader, such as the Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo eReader, or the Amazon Kindle. Ebook readers attempt to mimic the experience of reading a print book by using the e-ink technology, since the displays on ebook readers are much less reflective.", "title": "Digital printing" }, { "paragraph_id": 44, "text": "Audiobooks, or recordings of people reading books aloud, were first created in 1932 in the United States. The first audiobooks were created by the American Foundation for the Blind on vinyl records, where each side could hold 15 minutes of recording. The first recorded pieces were some of William Shakespeare's plays, the Constitution of the United States, and the novel As the Earth Turns by Gladys Hasty Carroll. Gradually over the course of the 20th century and with the dawn of cassette tapes and compact discs, audiobooks began to be sold by booksellers who often had dedicated sections. Publishers of books additionally created divisions within their companies dedicated to audiobooks. By the turn of the millennium, audiobooks were digitally distributed on devices designed around audiobooks, and audiobooks began to receive different narrators for different parts. Some companies, such as the Amazon subsidiary Audible, are tailored to work exclusively in audiobooks, and while their effectiveness is subject to wide debate, sales of audiobooks continue to skyrocket in the present day.", "title": "Digital printing" }, { "paragraph_id": 45, "text": "Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various components of a book into a coherent whole. In the words of Jan Tschichold, book design \"though largely forgotten today, methods and rules upon which it is impossible to improve have been developed over centuries. To produce perfect books these rules have to be brought back to life and applied.\" Richard Hendel describes book design as \"an arcane subject\" and refers to the need for a context to understand what that means. Many different creators can contribute to book design, including graphic designers, artists and editors.", "title": "Design" }, { "paragraph_id": 46, "text": "The size of a modern book is based on the printing area of a common flatbed press. The pages of type were arranged and clamped in a frame, so that when printed on a sheet of paper the full size of the press, the pages would be right side up and in order when the sheet was folded, and the folded edges trimmed.", "title": "Sizes" }, { "paragraph_id": 47, "text": "The most common book sizes are:", "title": "Sizes" }, { "paragraph_id": 48, "text": "Sizes smaller than 16mo are:", "title": "Sizes" }, { "paragraph_id": 49, "text": "Small books can be called booklets.", "title": "Sizes" }, { "paragraph_id": 50, "text": "Sizes larger than quarto are:", "title": "Sizes" }, { "paragraph_id": 51, "text": "The largest extant medieval manuscript in the world is Codex Gigas 92 × 50 × 22 cm. The world's largest book is made of stone and is in Kuthodaw Pagoda (Burma).", "title": "Sizes" }, { "paragraph_id": 52, "text": "A common separation by content are fiction and non-fiction books. This simple separation can be found in most collections, libraries, and bookstores. There are other types such as books of sheet music.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 53, "text": "Many of the books published today are \"fiction\", meaning that they contain invented material, and are creative literature. Other literary forms such as poetry are included in the broad category. Most fiction is additionally categorized by literary form and genre.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 54, "text": "The novel is the most common form of fiction book. Novels are stories that typically feature a plot, setting, themes and characters. Stories and narrative are not restricted to any topic; a novel can be whimsical, serious or controversial. The novel has had a tremendous impact on entertainment and publishing markets. A novella is a term sometimes used for fiction prose typically between 17,500 and 40,000 words, and a novelette between 7,500 and 17,500. A short story may be any length up to 10,000 words, but these word lengths vary.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 55, "text": "Comic books or graphic novels are books in which the story is illustrated. The characters and narrators use speech or thought bubbles to express verbal language.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 56, "text": "Non-fiction books are in principle based on fact, on subjects such as history, politics, social and cultural issues, as well as autobiographies and memoirs. Nearly all academic literature is non-fiction. A reference book is a general type of non-fiction book which provides information as opposed to telling a story, essay, commentary, or otherwise supporting a point of view.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 57, "text": "An almanac is a very general reference book, usually one-volume, with lists of data and information on many topics. An encyclopedia is a book or set of books designed to have more in-depth articles on many topics. A book listing words, their etymology, meanings, and other information is called a dictionary. A book which is a collection of maps is an atlas. A more specific reference book with tables or lists of data and information about a certain topic, often intended for professional use, is often called a handbook. Books which try to list references and abstracts in a certain broad area may be called an index, such as Engineering Index, or abstracts such as chemical abstracts and biological abstracts.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 58, "text": "Books with technical information on how to do something or how to use some equipment are called instruction manuals. Other popular how-to books include cookbooks and home improvement books.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 59, "text": "Students typically store and carry textbooks and schoolbooks for study purposes.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 60, "text": "Many types of book are private, often filled in by the owner, for a variety of personal records. Elementary school pupils often use workbooks, which are published with spaces or blanks to be filled by them for study or homework. In US higher education, it is common for a student to take an exam using a blue book.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 61, "text": "There is a large set of books that are made only to write private ideas, notes, and accounts. These books are rarely published and are typically destroyed or remain private. Notebooks are blank papers to be written in by the user. Students and writers commonly use them for taking notes. Scientists and other researchers use lab notebooks to record their notes. They often feature spiral coil bindings at the edge so that pages may easily be torn out.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 62, "text": "Address books, phone books, and calendar/appointment books are commonly used on a daily basis for recording appointments, meetings and personal contact information. Books for recording periodic entries by the user, such as daily information about a journey, are called logbooks or logs. A similar book for writing the owner's daily private personal events, information, and ideas is called a diary or personal journal. Businesses use accounting books such as journals and ledgers to record financial data in a practice called bookkeeping (now usually held on computers rather than in hand-written form).", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 63, "text": "There are several other types of books which are not commonly found under this system. Albums are books for holding a group of items belonging to a particular theme, such as a set of photographs, card collections, and memorabilia. One common example is stamp albums, which are used by many hobbyists to protect and organize their collections of postage stamps. Such albums are often made using removable plastic pages held inside in a ringed binder or other similar holder. Picture books are books for children with pictures on every page and less text (or even no text).", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 64, "text": "Hymnals are books with collections of musical hymns that can typically be found in churches. Prayerbooks or missals are books that contain written prayers and are commonly carried by monks, nuns, and other devoted followers or clergy. Lap books are a learning tool created by students.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 65, "text": "A leveled book collection is a set of books organized in levels of difficulty from the easy books appropriate for an emergent reader to longer more complex books adequate for advanced readers. Decodable readers or books are a specialized type of leveled books that use decodable text only including controlled lists of words, sentences and stories consistent with the letters and phonics that have been taught to the emergent reader. New sounds and letters are added to higher level decodable books, as the level of instruction progresses, allowing for higher levels of accuracy, comprehension and fluency.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 66, "text": "Hardcover books have a stiff binding. Paperback books have cheaper, flexible covers which tend to be less durable. An alternative to paperback is the glossy cover, otherwise known as a dust cover, found on magazines, and comic books. Spiral-bound books are bound by spirals made of metal or plastic. Examples of spiral-bound books include teachers' manuals and puzzle books (crosswords, sudoku).", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 67, "text": "Publishing is a process for producing pre-printed books, magazines, and newspapers for the reader/user to buy.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 68, "text": "Publishers may produce low-cost, pre-publication copies known as galleys or 'bound proofs' for promotional purposes, such as generating reviews in advance of publication. Galleys are usually made as cheaply as possible, since they are not intended for sale.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 69, "text": "Dummy books (or faux books) are books that are designed to imitate a real book by appearance to deceive people, some books may be whole with empty pages, others may be hollow or in other cases, there may be a whole panel carved with spines which are then painted to look like books, titles of some books may also be fictitious.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 70, "text": "There are many reasons to have dummy books on display such as; to allude visitors of the vast wealth of information in their possession and to inflate the owner's appearance of wealth, to conceal something, for shop displays or for decorative purposes.", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 71, "text": "In early 19th century at Gwrych Castle, North Wales, Lloyd Hesketh Bamford-Hesketh was known for his vast collection of books at his library, however, at the later part of that same century, the public became aware that parts of his library was a fabrication, dummy books were built and then locked behind glass doors to stop people from trying to access them, from this a proverb was born, \"Like Hesky's library, all outside\".", "title": "Types" }, { "paragraph_id": 72, "text": "Private or personal libraries made up of non-fiction and fiction books, (as opposed to the state or institutional records kept in archives) first appeared in classical Greece. In the ancient world, the maintaining of a library was usually (but not exclusively) the privilege of a wealthy individual. These libraries could have been either private or public, i.e. for people who were interested in using them. The difference from a modern public library lies in that they were usually not funded from public sources. It is estimated that in the city of Rome at the end of the 3rd century there were around 30 public libraries. Public libraries also existed in other cities of the ancient Mediterranean region (for example, Library of Alexandria). Later, in the Middle Ages, monasteries and universities also had libraries that could be accessible to the general public. Typically not the whole collection was available to the public; the books could not be borrowed and often were chained to reading stands to prevent theft.", "title": "Libraries" }, { "paragraph_id": 73, "text": "The beginning of the modern public library begins around 15th century when individuals started to donate books to towns. The growth of a public library system in the United States started in the late 19th century and was much helped by donations from Andrew Carnegie. This reflected classes in a society: the poor or the middle class had to access most books through a public library or by other means, while the rich could afford to have a private library built in their homes. In the United States the Boston Public Library 1852 Report of the Trustees established the justification for the public library as a tax-supported institution intended to extend educational opportunity and provide for general culture.", "title": "Libraries" }, { "paragraph_id": 74, "text": "The advent of paperback books in the 20th century led to an explosion of popular publishing. Paperback books made owning books affordable for many people. Paperback books often included works from genres that had previously been published mostly in pulp magazines. As a result of the low cost of such books and the spread of bookstores filled with them (in addition to the creation of a smaller market of extremely cheap used paperbacks), owning a private library ceased to be a status symbol for the rich.", "title": "Libraries" }, { "paragraph_id": 75, "text": "The development of libraries has prompted innovations to help store and organize books on shelves. In library and booksellers' catalogues, it is common to include an abbreviation such as \"Crown 8vo\" to indicate the paper size from which the book is made. When rows of books are lined on a book holder, bookends are sometimes needed to keep them from slanting.", "title": "Libraries" }, { "paragraph_id": 76, "text": "During the 20th century, librarians were concerned about keeping track of the many books being added yearly to the Gutenberg Galaxy. Through a global society called the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), they devised a series of tools including the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD). Each book is specified by an International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, which is unique to every edition of every book produced by participating publishers, worldwide. It is managed by the ISBN Society. An ISBN has four parts: the first part is the country code, the second the publisher code, and the third the title code. The last part is a check digit, and can take values from 0–9 and X (10). The EAN Barcodes numbers for books are derived from the ISBN by prefixing 978, for Bookland, and calculating a new check digit.", "title": "Identification and classification" }, { "paragraph_id": 77, "text": "Commercial publishers in industrialized countries generally assign ISBNs to their books, so buyers may presume that the ISBN is part of a total international system, with no exceptions. However, many government publishers, in industrial as well as developing countries, do not participate fully in the ISBN system, and publish books which do not have ISBNs. A large or public collection requires a catalogue. Codes called \"call numbers\" relate the books to the catalogue, and determine their locations on the shelves. Call numbers are based on a Library classification system. The call number is placed on the spine of the book, normally a short distance before the bottom, and inside. Institutional or national standards, such as ANSI/NISO Z39.41 – 1997, establish the correct way to place information (such as the title, or the name of the author) on book spines, and on \"shelvable\" book-like objects, such as containers for DVDs, video tapes and software.", "title": "Identification and classification" }, { "paragraph_id": 78, "text": "One of the earliest and most widely known systems of cataloguing books is the Dewey Decimal System. Another widely known system is the Library of Congress Classification system. Both systems are biased towards subjects which were well represented in US libraries when they were developed, and hence have problems handling new subjects, such as computing, or subjects relating to other cultures. Information about books and authors can be stored in databases like online general-interest book databases. Metadata, which means \"data about data\" is information about a book. Metadata about a book may include its title, ISBN or other classification number (see above), the names of contributors (author, editor, illustrator) and publisher, its date and size, the language of the text, its subject matter, etc.", "title": "Identification and classification" }, { "paragraph_id": 79, "text": "Aside from the primary purpose of reading them, books are also used for other ends:", "title": "Uses" }, { "paragraph_id": 80, "text": "Once the book is published, it is put on the market by distributors and bookstores. Meanwhile, its promotion comes from various media reports. Book marketing is governed by the law in many states.", "title": "Marketing" }, { "paragraph_id": 81, "text": "In recent years, the book had a second life in the form of reading aloud. This is called public readings of published works, with the assistance of professional readers (often known actors) and in close collaboration with writers, publishers, booksellers, librarians, leaders of the literary world and artists.", "title": "Marketing" }, { "paragraph_id": 82, "text": "Many individual or collective practices exist to increase the number of readers of a book. Among them:", "title": "Marketing" }, { "paragraph_id": 83, "text": "This form of the book chain has hardly changed since the eighteenth century, and has not always been this way. Thus, the author has asserted gradually with time, and the copyright dates only from the nineteenth century. For many centuries, especially before the invention of printing, each freely copied out books that passed through his hands, adding if desired his own comments. Similarly, bookseller and publisher jobs have emerged with the invention of printing, which made the book an industrial product, requiring structures of production and marketing.", "title": "Marketing" }, { "paragraph_id": 84, "text": "The invention of the Internet, e-readers, tablets, and projects like Wikipedia and Gutenberg, are likely to change the book industry for years to come.", "title": "Marketing" }, { "paragraph_id": 85, "text": "Paper was first made in China as early as 200 BC, and reached Europe through Muslim territories. At first made of rags, the Industrial Revolution changed paper-making practices, allowing for paper to be made out of wood pulp. Papermaking in Europe began in the 11th century, although vellum was also common there as page material up until the beginning of the 16th century, vellum being the more expensive and durable option. Printers or publishers would often issue the same publication on both materials, to cater to more than one market.", "title": "Paper and conservation" }, { "paragraph_id": 86, "text": "Paper made from wood pulp became popular in the early 20th century, because it was cheaper than linen or abaca cloth-based papers. Pulp-based paper made books less expensive to the general public. This paved the way for huge leaps in the rate of literacy in industrialised nations, and enabled the spread of information during the Second Industrial Revolution.", "title": "Paper and conservation" }, { "paragraph_id": 87, "text": "Pulp paper, however, contains acid which eventually destroys the paper from within. Earlier techniques for making paper used limestone rollers, which neutralized the acid in the pulp. Books printed between 1850 and 1950 are primarily at risk; more recent books are often printed on acid-free or alkaline paper. Libraries today have to consider mass deacidification of their older collections in order to prevent decay.", "title": "Paper and conservation" }, { "paragraph_id": 88, "text": "Stability of the climate is critical to the long-term preservation of paper and book material. Good air circulation is important to keep fluctuation in climate stable. The HVAC system should be up to date and functioning efficiently. Light is detrimental to collections. Therefore, care should be given to the collections by implementing light control. General housekeeping issues can be addressed, including pest control. In addition to these helpful solutions, a library must also make an effort to be prepared if a disaster occurs, one that they cannot control. Time and effort should be given to create a concise and effective disaster plan to counteract any damage incurred through \"acts of God\", therefore an emergency management plan should be in place.", "title": "Paper and conservation" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "The B-52 is an American strategic bomber aircraft.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "B-52 or B52 may also refer to:", "title": "" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bal Keshav Thackeray (Marathi pronunciation: [baːɭ̆ keːʃəʋ ʈʰaːk(ə)ɾeː]; 23 January 1926 – 17 November 2012) also known as Balasaheb Thackeray, was an Indian politician who founded the Shiv Sena, a right-wing pro-Marathi and Hindu nationalist party active mainly in the state of Maharashtra.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "Thackeray began his professional career as a cartoonist with the English-language daily, The Free Press Journal in Bombay, but he left the paper in 1960 to form his own political weekly, Marmik. His political philosophy was largely shaped by his father Keshav Sitaram Thackeray, a leading figure in the Samyukta Maharashtra (United Maharashtra) movement, which advocated the creation of a separate linguistic state for Marathi speakers. Through Marmik, Bal Thackeray campaigned against the growing influence of non-Marathis in Mumbai.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "He had a large political influence in the state, especially in Mumbai. An inquiry report by human rights watch, submitted to the government found that Thackeray and Chief Minister of Maharashtra Manohar Joshi incited members of the Shiv Sena to commit violence against Muslims during the 1992–1993 Bombay riots.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Thackeray built the Shiv Sena with help of Madhav Mehere chief attorney for trade union of India, Babasaheb Purandare, historian for Govt of Maharastra and Madhav Deshpande Head Accountant for Shiv Sena, these three individuals to a large extent were responsible for the success of Shiv Sena and stability of politics in Mumbai till 2000 to ensure it grows into an economic power center. Thackeray was also the founder of the Marathi-language newspaper Saamana. After the riots of 1992–93, he and his party took a Hindutva stance. In 1999, Thackeray was banned from voting and contesting in any election for six years on the recommendations of the Election Commission for indulging in seeking votes in the name of religion. Thackeray was arrested multiple times and spent a brief stint in prison, but he never faced any major legal repercussions. Upon his death, he was accorded a state funeral, at which many mourners were present. Thackeray did not hold any official positions, and he was never formally elected as the leader of his party.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "Thackeray was born on 23 January 1926 in Pune, the son of Prabodhankar Thackeray and his wife Ramabai Thackeray. The family belongs to the Marathi Hindu Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu community. His father Keshav was an admirer of India-born British writer William Makepeace Thackeray, and changed his own surname from Panvelkar to \"Thackeray\" an Anglicised version of their ancestral surname \"Thakre\".", "title": "Early life" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "Bal's father was a journalist and cartoonist by profession, he was also a social activist and a writer who was involved in a Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti, which advocated the creation of a separate linguistic state for Marathi speakers. He also started a magazine named Prabodhan, where he promoted Hindu philosophies and nationalistic ideals to revive Hindutva in society. This proved to highly influential in shaping Bal Thackeray's political views.", "title": "Early life" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "Thackeray began his career as a cartoonist in the Free Press Journal in Mumbai. His cartoons were also published in the Sunday edition of The Times of India. After Thackeray's differences with the Free Press Journal, he and four or five people, including politician George Fernandes, left the paper and started their own daily, News Day. The paper survived for one or two months. In 1960, he launched the cartoon weekly Marmik with his brother Srikant. It focused on issues of common \"Marathi Manoos\" (Marathi, or Marathi-speaking, people) including unemployment, immigration and the retrenchment of Marathi workers. Its office in Ranade Road became the rallying point for Marathi youth. Bal Thackeray later stated that it was \"not just a cartoon weekly but also the prime reason for the birth and growth of the Sena\". It was the issue of Marmik on 5 June 1966 which first announced the launch of membership for the Shiv Sena.", "title": "Career" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "The success of Marmik prompted Thackeray to form the Shiv Sena on 19 June 1966. The name Shiv Sena (Shivaji's Army) is a reference to the 17th century Maratha Emperor Shivaji. Initially, Thackeray said it was not a political party but an army of Shivaji Maharaj, inclined to fight for the Marathi manoos (person). It demanded that native speakers of the state's local language Marathi (the \"sons of the soil\" movement) be given preferential treatment in private and public sector jobs. The early objective of the Shiv Sena was to ensure their job security competing against South Indians and Gujaratis. In its 1966 party manifesto, Thackeray primarily blamed south Indians. In Marmik, Thackeray published a list of corporate officials from a local directory, many being south Indians, citing it as proof that Maharashtrians were being discriminated against.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "His party grew in the next ten years. Senior leaders such as Babasaheb Purandare, chief attorney for Trade Union of Maharashtra Madhav Mehere joined the party and chartered accountant Madhav Gajanan Deshpande backed various aspects of the party operations. In 1969, Thackeray and Manohar Joshi were jailed after participating in a protest demanding the merger of Karwar, Belgaum and Nipani regions in Maharashtra. During the 1970s, it did not succeed in the local elections and it was active mainly in Mumbai, compared to the rest of the state. The party set up local branch offices and settled disputes, complaints against the government. It later started violent tactics with attacks against rival parties, migrants and the media; the party agitated by destroying public and private property. Thackeray publicly supported Indira Gandhi during the 1975 Emergency to avoid getting arrested; Thackeray supported the Congress party numerous times.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "Dr. Hemchandra Gupte, Mayor of Mumbai and the former family physician and confidant of Thackeray, left Shiv Sena in 1976 citing the emphasis given to money, violence committed by the Shiv Sena members, and Thackeray's support for Indira Gandhi and the 1975 emergency.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 10, "text": "Politically, the Shiv Sena was anti-communist, and wrested control of trade unions in Mumbai from the Communist Party of India (CPI). Local unemployed youth from the declining textile industry joined the party and it further expanded because of Marathi migrants from the Konkan region. By the 1980s, it became a threat to the ruling Congress party which had initially encouraged it because of it rivalling the CPI. In 1989, the Sena's newspaper Saamna was launched by Thackeray. Because of Thackeray being against the Mandal Commission report, his close aide Chhagan Bhujbal left the party in 1991. Following the 1992 Bombay riots, Thackeray took stances viewed as anti-Muslim and based on Hindutva. Shiv Sena later allied itself with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance won the 1995 Maharashtra State Assembly elections and were in power from 1995 to 1999. Thackeray declared himself to be the \"remote control\" chief minister.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 11, "text": "Thackeray and the Chief Minister Manohar Joshi were explicitly named for inciting the Shivsainiks for violence against Muslims during the 1992–1993 riots in an inquiry ordered by the government of India, the Srikrishna Commission Report.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 12, "text": "Thackeray had influence in the film industry. His party workers agitated against films he found controversial and would disrupt film screenings, causing losses. Bombay, a 1995 film on the riots, was opposed by them.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 13, "text": "On 28 July 1999, Thackeray was banned from voting and contesting in any election for six years from 11 December 1999 till 10 December 2005 on the recommendations of the Election Commission for indulging in corrupt practice by seeking votes in the name of religion. In 2000, he was arrested for his role in the riots but was released because the statute of limitations expired. In 2002, Thackeray issued a call to form Hindu suicide bomber squads to take on the menace of terrorism. In response, the Maharashtra government registered a case against him for inciting enmity between different groups. At least two organisations founded and managed by retired Indian Army officers, Lt Col Jayant Rao Chitale and Lt Gen. P.N. Hoon (former commander-in-chief of the Western Command), responded to the call with such statements as not allowing Pakistanis to work in India due to accusations against Pakistan for supporting attacks in India by militants. After the six-year voting ban on Thackeray was lifted in 2005, he voted for the first time in the 2007 BMC elections. Eight or nine cases against Thackeray and Saamna for inflammatory writings were not investigated by the government.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 14, "text": "Thackeray said that the Shiv Sena had helped the Marathi people in Mumbai, especially in the public sector. Thackeray believed that Hindus must be organised to struggle against those who oppose their identity and religion. Opposition leftist parties alleged that the Shiv Sena has done little to solve the problem of unemployment facing a large proportion of Maharashtrian youth during its tenure, in contradiction to its ideological foundation of 'sons of the soil.'", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 15, "text": "In 2006, Thackeray's nephew Raj Thackeray broke away from Shiv Sena to form the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) during Thackeray's retirement and appointment of his son, Uddhav rather than Raj as the leader of Shiv Sena. Narayan Rane also quit around that time.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 16, "text": "The Sena acted as a \"moral police\" and opposed Valentine's Day celebrations. On 14 February 2006, Thackeray condemned and apologised for the violent attacks by its Shiv Sainiks on a private celebration in Mumbai. \"It is said that women were beaten up in the Nallasopara incident. If that really happened, then it is a symbol of cowardice. I have always instructed Shiv Sainiks that in any situation women should not be humiliated and harassed.\" Thackeray and the Shiv Sena remained opposed to it, although they indicated support for an Indian alternative.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 17, "text": "In 2007, he was briefly arrested and let out on bail after referring to Muslims as 'Green Poison' during a Shiv Sena rally.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 18, "text": "On 27 March 2008, in protest to Thackeray's editorial, leaders of Shiv Sena in Delhi resigned, citing its outrageous conduct towards non-Marathis in Maharashtra and announced that they would form a separate party. Addressing a press conference, Shiv Sena's North India chief Jai Bhagwan Goyal said the decision to leave the party was taken because of the partial attitude of the party high command towards Maharashtrians. Goyal further said that Shiv Sena is no different from Khalistan and Jammu and Kashmir militant groups which are trying to create a rift between people along regional lines. The main aim of these forces is to split our country. Like the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, the Shiv Sena too has demeaned North Indians and treated them inhumanely.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 19, "text": "Thackeray was criticised for his praise of Adolf Hitler. He was quoted by Asiaweek as saying: \"I am a great admirer of Hitler, and I am not ashamed to say so! I do not say that I agree with all the methods he employed, but he was a wonderful organiser and orator, and I feel that he and I have several things in common...What India really needs is a dictator who will rule benevolently, but with an iron hand.\" In a 1993 interview, Thackeray stated, \"There is nothing wrong if Muslims are treated as Jews were in Nazi Germany.\" In another 1992 interview, Thackeray stated, \"If you take Mein Kampf and if you remove the word 'Jew' and put in the word 'Muslim', that is what I believe in\". Indian Express published an interview on 29 January 2007: \"Hitler did very cruel and ugly things. But he was an artist, I love him [for that]. He had the power to carry the whole nation, the mob with him. You have to think what magic he had. He was a miracle...The killing of Jews was wrong. But the good part about Hitler was that he was an artist. He was a daredevil. He had good qualities and bad. I may also have good qualities and bad ones.\"", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 20, "text": "Thackeray also declared that he was not against every Muslim, but only those who reside in this country but do not obey the laws of the land...I consider such people [to be] traitors. The Shiv Sena is viewed by the media as being anti-Muslim, though Shiv sena members officially reject this accusation. When explaining his views on Hindutva, he conflated Islam with violence and called on Hindus to fight terrorism and fight Islam. In an interview with Suketu Mehta, he called for the mass expulsion of illegal Bangladeshi Muslim migrants from India and for a visa system to enter Mumbai, the Indian National Congress state government had earlier during the Indira Gandhi declared national emergency considered a similar measure.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 21, "text": "He told India Today \"[Muslims] are spreading like a cancer and should be operated on like a cancer. The country...should be saved from the Muslims and the police should support them [Hindu Maha Sangh] in their struggle just like the police in Punjab were sympathetic to the Khalistanis.\" However, in an interview in 1998, he said that his stance had changed on many issues that the Shiv Sena had with Muslims, particularly regarding the Babri Mosque or Ram Janmabhoomi issue: \"We must look after the Muslims and treat them as part of us.\" He also expressed admiration for Muslims in Mumbai in the wake of the 11 July 2006 Mumbai train bombings perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists. In response to threats made by Abu Azmi, a leader of the Samajwadi Party, that accusations of terrorism directed at Indian Muslims would bring about communal strife, Thackeray said that the unity of Mumbaikars (residents of Mumbai) in the wake of the attacks was a slap to fanatics of Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi and that Thackeray salute[s] those Muslims who participated in the two minutes' silence on 18 July to mourn the blast victims. Again in 2008 he wrote: \"Islamic terrorism is growing and Hindu terrorism is the only way to counter it. We need suicide bomb squads to protect India and Hindus.\" He also reiterated a desire for Hindus to unite across linguistic barriers to see a Hindustan for Hindus and to bring Islam in this country down to its knees.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 22, "text": "In 2008, following agitation against Biharis and other north Indians travelling to Maharashtra to take civil service examinations for the Indian Railways due to an overlimit of the quota in their home provinces, Thackeray also said of Bihari MPs that they were spitting in the same plate from which they ate when they criticised Mumbaikars and Maharashtrians. He wrote: \"They are trying to add fuel to the fire that has been extinguished, by saying that Mumbaikars have rotten brains.\" He also criticised Chhath Puja, a holiday celebrated by Biharis and those from eastern Uttar Pradesh, which occurs on six days of the Hindu month of Kartik. He said that it was not a real holiday. This was reportedly a response to MPs from Bihar who had disrupted the proceedings of the Lok Sabha in protest to the attacks on North Indians. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, upset with the remarks, called on the prime minister and the central government to intervene in the matter. A Saamna editorial prompted at least 16 MPs from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, belonging to the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United), Samajwadi Party and the Indian National Congress, to give notice for breach of privilege proceedings against Thackeray. After the matter was raised in the Lok Sabha, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee said: \"If anybody has made any comment on our members' functioning in the conduct of business in the House, not only do we treat that with the contempt that it deserves, but also any action that may be necessary will be taken according to procedure and well established norms. Nobody will be spared.'\"", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 23, "text": "In 2009, he criticised Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, a \"Marathi icon\", for saying he was an Indian before he was a Maharashtrian.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 24, "text": "Thackeray firmly opposed caste based reservation and said - \"There are only two castes in the world, the rich are rich and the poor is poor, make the poor rich but don't make the rich poor. Besides these two castes I don't believe in any other casteism.\" The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) supported caste based reservations based on the Mandal commission. Thackarey, despite being warned that opposition to the reservations would be politically suicidal for the Shiv Sena party, opposed the BJP over this issue and said he would initiate divorce proceedings against the BJP if the BJP supported caste based reservations. This also led to his conflict with Chhagan Bhujbal, an OBC, who later left the Shiv Sena.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 25, "text": "Thackeray defended Veer Savarkar against criticism and praised him as a great leader. In 2002, when President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam unveiled a portrait of Savarkar in the presence of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Congress Party opposed the unveiling of the portrait and boycotted the function. Thackeray criticised the opposition and said, \"Who is [Congress president and Leader of the Opposition] Sonia Gandhi to object to the portrait? What relation does she have with the country? How much does she know about the history and culture of India?\". Years later, when Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh made a statement that Savarkar was the first to suggest the two-nation theory that led to the partition, Thackeray rejected the statement of Singh.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 26, "text": "In 1990, Bal Thackeray got seats reserved in engineering colleges for the children of Kashmiri Pandits in Maharashtra. At a meeting with them he supported the idea that the Kashmiri Pandits could be armed for their self-defence against Jihadis.", "title": "Politics" }, { "paragraph_id": 27, "text": "Thackeray was married to Meena Thackeray (née Sarla Vaidya) on 13 June 1948 and had three sons, oldest son Bindumadhav, middle son Jaidev, and youngest son Uddhav. Meena died in 1995 and Bindumadhav died the following year in a car accident. Bal was the eldest of eight siblings, three among them being brothers Shrikant Thackeray (father of Raj Thackeray) and Ramesh Thackeray, and five sisters (Sanjeevani Karandikar, Prabhavati (Pama) Tipnis, Malati (Sudha) Sule, Sarla Gadkari and Susheela Gupte).", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 28, "text": "Raj is his brother Shrikant's son. Despite Raj's breakaway from the main party, Raj continues to maintain that Thackeray was his ideologue and relations between them improved during Thackeray's final years. Raj broke away from Shiv Sena to form his own political party called the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 29, "text": "Sanjeevani Karandikar is Bal Thackeray's sister.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 30, "text": "Thackeray drew cartoons for the Free Press Journal, the Times of India and Marmik besides contributing to Saamna till 2012. He cited the New Zealander cartoonist David Low as his inspiration.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 31, "text": "Thackeray died on 17 November 2012, of cardiac arrest. Mumbai came to a virtual halt immediately as the news broke out about his death, with shops and commercial establishments shutting down. The entire state of Maharashtra was put on high alert. The police appealed for calm and 20,000 Mumbai police officers, 15 units of the State Reserve Police Force and three contingents of the Rapid Action Force were deployed. It was reported that Shiv Sena workers forced shops to close down in some areas. The then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for calm in the city and praised Thackeray's \"strong leadership\", while there were also statements of praise and condolences from other senior politicians such as the then-Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP leader and MP (Former Deputy Prime Minister of India), L. K. Advani.", "title": "Death" }, { "paragraph_id": 32, "text": "He was accorded a state funeral at Shivaji Park, which generated some controversy and resulted from demands made by Shiv Sena. It was the first public funeral in the city since that of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1920. Thackeray's body was moved to the park on 18 November. Many mourners attended his funeral, although there were no official figures. The range reported in media sources varied from around 1 million, to 1.5 million and as many as nearly 2 million. His cremation took place the next day, where his son Uddhav lit the pyre. Among those present at his cremation were senior representatives of the Maharashtra government and the event was broadcast live on national television channels. The Parliament of India opened for its winter session on 21 November 2012. Thackeray was the only non-member to be noted in its traditional list of obituaries. He is one of few people to have been recorded thus without being a member of either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha. Despite having not held any official position, he was given the 21-gun salute, which was again a rare honour. Both houses of Bihar Assembly also paid tribute. The funeral expenses created further controversies when media reports claimed that the BMC had used taxpayers' money. In response to these reports, the party later sent a cheque of Rs. 500,000 to the corporation.", "title": "Death" }, { "paragraph_id": 33, "text": "The Hindu, in an editorial, said regarding the shutdown that \"Thackeray’s legion of followers raised him to the status of a demigod who could force an entire State to shut down with the mere threat of violence\". Following his death, police arrested a 21-year-old woman who posted a Facebook comment against him, as well as her friend who \"liked\" the comment. Shiv Sena members also vandalised the clinic owned by the woman's relative.", "title": "Death" }, { "paragraph_id": 34, "text": "Thackeray was called Hindu Hriday Samrat (\"Emperor of Hindu Hearts\") by his supporters. His yearly address at Shivaji Park was popular among his followers. In 2012, he instead gave a video-taped speech and urged his followers \"to give the same love and affection to his son and political heir Uddhav as they had given him\". Thackeray was known to convert popular sentiment into votes, getting into controversies and making no apologies for it though his son has tried to tone down the party's stance after his death. He was known for his inflammatory writings, was seen as a good orator who used cruel humour to engage his audience. He had a large political influence throughout the state, especially in Mumbai. His party never had any formal internal elections nor was he ever formally elected as its chief at any point. Gyan Prakash said, \"Of course, the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement had mobilized Marathi speakers as a political entity, but it was Thackeray who successfully deployed it as an anti-immigrant, populist force.\" He inspired Baliram Kashyap the leader of Bastar who often regarded as the Thackeray of Bastar.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 35, "text": "A memorial for him was proposed at Shivaji Park but legal issues and opposition from local residents continue to delay it.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 36, "text": "Thackeray is satirised in Salman Rushdie's 1995 novel The Moor's Last Sigh as 'Raman Fielding'. The book was banned by the Maharashtra state government. Suketu Mehta interviewed Thackeray in his critically acclaimed, Pulitzer-nominated, non-fiction 2004 book Maximum City. Thackeray previewed director Ram Gopal Verma's film Sarkar, which is loosely based on him, released in 2005. The 2011 documentary Jai Bhim Comrade depicted a speech by Thackeray at a public rally, in which he articulated \"genocidal sentiments\" about Muslims, stating that they were the \"species to be exterminated.\" The documentary followed this by showing several Dalit leaders criticising Thackeray for his beliefs.", "title": "Legacy" }, { "paragraph_id": 37, "text": "A Bollywood biopic titled Thackeray, starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui and written by Shiv Sena politician Sanjay Raut was released on 25 January 2019.", "title": "In popular culture" }, { "paragraph_id": 38, "text": "Makarand Padhye played Balasaheb Thakeray in the 2022 marathi film Dharmaveer based on the life of Shivsena politician Anand Dighe.", "title": "In popular culture" } ]

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[ { "paragraph_id": 0, "text": "Bille August RD (born 9 November 1948) is a Danish director, screenwriter, and cinematographer of film and television. In a career spanning over four decades, he has been the recipient of numerous accolades, making him one of the most acclaimed contemporary Danish filmmakers.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 1, "text": "August's 1987 film Pelle the Conqueror won the Palme d'Or, Academy Award and Golden Globe Award. He is one of only nine directors to win the Palme d'Or twice, winning the award again in 1992 for The Best Intentions, based on the autobiographical script by Ingmar Bergman.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 2, "text": "His filmography includes The House of the Spirits, based on the novel by Isabel Allende; Smilla's Sense of Snow; Les Misérables; Night Train to Lisbon, Silent Heart, The Chinese Widow and A Fortunate Man. He has received five Robert Awards (including Best Film and Best Director) and three Bodil Awards for Best Danish Film. He is also a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog.", "title": "" }, { "paragraph_id": 3, "text": "August was born on 9 November 1948, in Brede, Denmark. After attending local schools, he graduated from the Foto- og Dokumentarskolan in Stockholm, Sweden, and later from the National Film School of Denmark. He began his career as a cinematographer. He made his feature directorial debut in 1978 with In My Life, which won the Bodil Award for Best Danish Film.", "title": "Life and career" }, { "paragraph_id": 4, "text": "He collaborated twice with then wife Pernilla August under George Lucas on The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones in The Perils of Cupid and Tales of Innocence. Pernilla would later star in the first two films of the Star Wars prequel trilogy and appeared in an episode of The Clone Wars television series to reprise her role from the films.", "title": "Life and career" }, { "paragraph_id": 5, "text": "After decades of writing, directing and producing notable films in Denmark, on 23 September 2011, Bille August announced that he had opened a studio in Hangzhou, China and taken a position as Tianpeng Media's Art Director, in order to produce Chinese films for Tianpeng Media over the next few years. Tianpeng Media is a new media company established in 2010. The company produced two films, The Women Knight of Mirror (竞雄女侠秋瑾) and The Years of Qi Xiao Fu (七小福之燃情岁月), to be released later in 2011. He is the first foreign director to be hired by the Chinese film company. In 2011 August also accepted the invitation from the Hangzhou government to serve as a \"culture consultant\" for the city.", "title": "Life and career" }, { "paragraph_id": 6, "text": "His film Night Train to Lisbon (2013) premiered out of competition at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. He had planned to direct a Gianni Versace biopic with Antonio Banderas as Versace, but this project was cancelled. In August 2021, it was announced that August would direct a feature film adaptation of Karen Blixen's novel Ehrengard, which is being produced by Netflix and SF Studios.", "title": "Life and career" }, { "paragraph_id": 7, "text": "August has been married four times and has a total of eight children with five different women.", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 8, "text": "He was first married to Annie Munksgård Lauritzen, together they had a son Anders Frithiof August (born 15 June 1978). His second wife was Masja Dessau with whom he had a son Adam August (born in 1983), both sons have become screenwriters. His third marriage to Swedish actress Pernilla August was from 1991 to 1997. Together they had daughters Asta Kamma August (born 5 November 1991) and Alba Adèle August (born 6 June 1993); he also became the stepfather of her daughter Agnes from her first marriage to Swedish novelist and screenwriter Klas Östergren. In 2012, he married his fourth and current wife, actress Sara-Marie Maltha after 10 years together. Together they have three children: Amaryllis April August (born 2003), Albert Amadeus August (born 2005), and Aya Anemone August (born 2013).", "title": "Personal life" }, { "paragraph_id": 9, "text": "In addition, he has a daughter from a previous relationship, Melina August, (born in 1969).", "title": "Personal life" } ]

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