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3,538	Foreign relations of Belarus	The Byelorussian SSR was one of only two Soviet republics to be separate members of the United Nations (the other being the Ukrainian SSR). Both republics and the Soviet Union joined the UN when the organization was founded in 1945. ==Prior to 2001== After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, at which time Belarus gained its independence, Belarus became a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), NATO's Partnership for Peace, the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. The adoption by Supreme Council of the BSSR of the declaration of State Sovereignty of Belarus in 1990 was a turning point on the development of the state. It has also been in a supranational union with Russia since 2 April 1996, although this has had little practical effect. Belarus-Council of Europe relations are based on cooperation and it is not a member (like Russia). ===Belarus–Russia relations=== The introduction of free trade between Russia and Belarus in mid-1995 led to a spectacular growth in bilateral trade, which was only temporarily reversed in the wake of the financial crisis of 1998. President Alexander Lukashenko sought to develop a closer relationship with Russia. The framework for the Union of Russia and Belarus was set out in the Treaty on the Formation of a Community of Russia and Belarus (1996), the Treaty on Russia-Belarus Union, the Union Charter (1997), and the Treaty of the Formation of a Union State (1999). The integration treaties contained commitments to monetary union, equal rights, single citizenship, and a common defence and foreign policy. ===Belarus–European Union relations=== Following the recognition of Belarus as an independent state in December 1991 by the European Community, EC/EU-Belarus relations initially experienced a steady progress. The signature of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) in 1995 signaled a commitment to political, economic and trade cooperation. Some assistance was provided to Belarus within the framework of the TACIS programme and also through various aid programs and loans. However, progress in EU-Belarus relations stalled in 1996 after serious setbacks to the development of democracy, and the Drazdy conflict. The EU did not recognize the 1996 constitution, which replaced the 1994 constitution. The Council of the European Union decided against Belarus in 1997: The PCA was not concluded, nor was its trade-related part; Belarusian membership in the Council of Europe was not supported; bilateral relations at the ministerial level were suspended and EU technical assistance programs were frozen. Acknowledging the lack of progress in relation to bilateral relations and the internal situation following the position adopted in 1997, the EU adopted a step-by-step approach in 1999, whereby sanctions would be gradually lifted upon fulfillment of the four benchmarks set by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. In 2000, some moderately positive developments toward the implementation of recommendations made by the OSCE AMG were observed but were not sufficient in the realm of access to fair and free elections. ===Belarus–United Kingdom relations=== Belarus established diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom on 27 January 1992. Belarus maintains an embassy in London. The United Kingdom is accredited to Belarus through its embassy in Minsk. Both countries share common membership of the OSCE. Bilaterally the two countries have a Double Taxation Agreement, and an Investment Agreement. ===Belarus–United States relations=== The United States has encouraged Belarus to conclude and adhere to agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the program of macroeconomic stabilization and related reform measures, as well as to undertake increased privatization and to create a favorable climate for business and investment. Although there has been some American direct private investment in Belarus, its development has been relatively slow given the uncertain pace of reform. An Overseas Private Investment Corporation agreement was signed in June 1992 but has been suspended since 1995 because Belarus did not fulfill its obligations under the agreement. Belarus is eligible for Export-Import Bank short-term financing insurance for U.S. investments, but because of the adverse business climate, no projects have been initiated. The IMF granted standby credit in September 1995, but Belarus has fallen off the program and did not receive the second tranche of funding, which had been scheduled for regular intervals throughout 1996. The United States - along with the European Union - has restricted the travel of President Alexander Lukashenko and members of his inner circle, as well as imposing economic sanctions. ===Belarus–Baltic relations=== , , ==Present situation (2001 onwards)== ===Relations with the European Union=== The structure of Belarus trade reflects the low competitiveness and output decline of manufacturing industry in the country over the past decade, leading to the predominance of primary production, work-intensive goods as exports. Belarusian exports to the EU consist mainly of agricultural and textile products, while imports from the EU are primarily machinery. Belarus is a beneficiary of the EU's Generalised System of Preferences (GSP). The European Commission decided in 2003 to initiate an investigation into violations of freedom of association in Belarus as the first step towards a possible temporary withdrawal of the GSP from Belarus. In December 2004, the EU adopted a position aimed at imposing travel restrictions on officials from Belarus responsible for the fraudulent parliamentary elections and referendum on 17 October 2004, and for human rights violations during subsequent peaceful political demonstrations in Minsk. The European Parliament released a statement in March 2005 in which it denounced the Belarusian government as a dictatorship. The European parliamentarians were primarily concerned about the suppression of independent media outlets in the country and the fraudulent referendum. A resolution of the European Parliament declared that the personal bank accounts of President Lukashenko and other high-ranking Belarusian officials should be tracked and frozen. In 2005, Amnesty International reported a pattern of deliberate obstruction, harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders in Belarus. Reporters Without Borders accused the Belarusian authorities of hounding and arresting journalists from the country's Polish minority. Lukashenko has closed the country's main Polish newspaper, printing a bogus paper instead with the same name and size that praises his incumbent government. Several foreign, mainly Polish, journalists have been arrested or expelled from the country. Lukashenko accused Poland of an attempt to overthrow his government by stirring up a peaceful revolution in Belarus comparable to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. Later in 2005 the Belarusian riot police seized the headquarters of the Union of Poles in Belarus, an association representing the 400,000 ethnic minority Polish living in western areas the country that were part of Poland until World War II. The dispute between Poland and Belarus escalated further as Poland responded by recalling its ambassador from Belarus for indefinite consultations, and called on the European Union to impose sanctions on the Belarusian leadership in order to curtail the human rights abuses in Belarus. Belarusian papers described this as a 'dirty political game', and part of a 'cold war' waged on president Lukashenko. Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld said a clampdown was under way, aimed at destroying "all elements of political pluralism and independence" in Belarus. In August 2005 the EU's executive commission called for human rights to be respected in Belarus. The commission said it was considering offering support to independent media in the country and had set aside more than eight million euros from its budget to offer support for human rights activities. France expressed her solidarity with Poland on the issue of human rights in Belarus a day after the EU declared it was worried about the situation in that country. Several former Soviet Republics, including neighbouring Ukraine, also expressed their concerns about the development of the situation in Belarus. In May 2009 Belarus and the EU agree on cooperation in the Eastern Partnership (EaP). However, it is contended by some scholars that the (EaP) is unable to create a workable partnership. This proved to be correct when Belarus withdrew from the Partnership on 30 September 2011. In August 2012, Belarus expelled all Swedish diplomats, including the Swedish Ambassador to Belarus, Stefan Eriksson, and closed its embassy in Stockholm, after a Swedish public relations firm released teddy bears carrying pro-democracy flyers in parachutes from an airplane over Minsk on 4 July 2012. Lukashenko also fired his air defence chief and the head of the border guards over the incident. Their replacements have been told not to hesitate to use force to stop future intrusions from abroad. ===Relations with Russia=== Russia remains the largest and most important partner for Belarus both in the political and economic fields. After protracted disputes and setbacks, the two countries' customs duties were unified in March 2001 but the customs controls were soon restored. In terms of trade, almost half of Belarusian export goes to Russia. Due to the structure of Belarusian industry, Belarus relies heavily on Russia both for export markets and for the supply of raw materials and components. After initial negotiation with the Russian Central Bank on monetary union, the Russian ruble was set to be introduced in Belarus in 2004, but this was postponed first until 2005, then until 2006, and now seems to have been suspended indefinitely. ===Relations with the United States=== Belarus has had an ongoing discussion to relaunch IMF-backed reforms, concluding an arrangement for an IMF Staff-monitored program (SMP) in 2001. However, the authorities did not follow through with reforms as hoped, leaving an uncertain future for IMF-backed cooperation. Belarus authorities have said on several occasions that they find IMF intervention and recommendations in Belarus counter-productive to the economic development of those countries. The relationships with the United States have been further strained, after Congress of the United States unanimously passed the Belarus Democracy Act of 2004. On 7 March 2008 the government of Belarus ejected US Ambassador Karen B. Stewart from the country, following a row over travel restrictions placed on President Lukashenko and sanctions against state-owned chemical company Belneftekhim. The Belarusian Foreign Ministry announced at the same time that it was recalling its own ambassador to the US. This was followed by the expulsion of ten other U.S. embassy staff from Minsk in late April. At the same time the government of Belarus ordered the U.S. Embassy in Minsk to cut its staff by half. A White House spokesman described the expulsion as "deeply disappointing". ===Relations with other countries=== Due to strained relations with the United States and the European Union, as well as occasional high-level disputes with Russia over prices on core imported natural resources such as oil and gas, Belarus aims to develop better relations with countries in other regions, like the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. ====Hong Kong national security law==== Belarus was one of 53 countries that in June 2020 supported the Hong Kong national security law at the United Nations Human Rights Council. ===Nuclear weapons offer=== In May 2023, the President of Belarus offered nuclear weapons to other countries who join Belarus and Russia. ==Diplomatic relations== List of countries which Belarus maintains diplomatic relations with: == Bilateral relations == ===Multilateral=== ===Africa=== ===Americas=== ===Asia=== ===Europe=== ===Oceania===	[ "Central Bank of the Russian Federation", "Pakistan–Belarus relations", "consulate", "ethnic minority", "Novosibirsk", "Hoogeveen", "Commonwealth of Independent States", "human rights", "Brest Fortress", "civil rights", "Washington, D.C.", "Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe", "Bern", "Nizhny Novgorod", "Belarusian SSR", "Sergei Martynov (politician)", "Warsaw", "Belarus–Croatia relations", "Brest, Belarus", "Munich", "Daugavpils", "Madrid", "List of diplomatic missions in Belarus", "Rostov-on-Don", "Roger Vadim", "Murmansk", "Ufa", "Russian Empire", "USSR", "Klaipėda", "Central European Initiative", "Hanoi", "Belarus–Latvia relations", "Prague", "Kolkata", "Belarus–Poland relations", "Adam Rotfeld", "BBC News", "Moscow", "Russian invasion of Ukraine", "Montevideo", "Sister city", "Budapest", "Belarus–Russia relations", "History of post-Soviet Russia", "Israel", "Belarus–Greece relations", "Dushanbe", "Burgas", "New York City", "Khabarovsk", "Belarus–United Kingdom relations", "Vyacheslav Osipenko", "Sofia", "Belarus Democracy Act of 2004", "Astana", "Reggio Emilia", "Bratislava", "Soviet Union", "Hamburg (city)", "Cagliari", "Belarus–Georgia relations", "HINA", "riot police", "Naples", "Vitebsk", "Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe", "Nikol Pashinyan", "NATO", "dissolution of the Soviet Union", "Belarus–Ukraine relations", "Partnership for Peace", "Foreign relations of North Korea", "Armenia–Belarus relations", "Axios (website)", "Visa requirements for Belarusian citizens", "public relations", "Kim Il Sung", "Ukraine", "Tel Aviv", "Saint Petersburg", "Kyiv", "Tatarstan", "Bonn", "The Hague", "European Community", "Amnesty International", "Caracas", "Russian ruble", "Foreign relations of South Korea", "Turin", "teddy bear", "Brasília", "Collective Security Treaty Organisation", "CNN", "Eurasian Economic Community", "Eindhoven", "Bucharest", "Bishkek", "Amsterdam", "Microsoft Word", "Damascus", "Lyon", "Rathdrum, County Wicklow", "Council of Europe", "Latin America", "Quito", "Nicosia", "Gdańsk", "White House", "Santo Domingo", "South Hamgyong Province", "Belarus–Spain relations", "Elena Korosteleva", "Libyan Civil War (2014–present)", "Grodno", "Ankara", "Dhaka", "Tonino Picula", "Drazdy conflict", "Belarus–Mexico relations", "Foreign relations of the United Kingdom", "Stockholm", "Industrial sector", "Belarus–NATO relations", "Ukrainian SSR", "Council of the European Union", "Islamabad", "Byelorussian SSR", "Alexander Lukashenko", "Helsinki", "Foreign relations of Turkey", "Croatia", "Almaty", "Szeged", "Armenian diaspora", "free trade", "Riga", "Kazan", "North Korea", "HM Revenue and Customs", "Pakistan", "Kathmandu", "customs union", "embassy", "Belgrade", "Lithuania", "Consulate general", "Karen B. Stewart", "Cottbus", "Ashgabat", "Union of Poles in Belarus", "Reporters Without Borders", "Israel-Belarus relations", "Vilnius", "World Bank", "Belarus–Netherlands relations", "Tashkent", "Tbilisi", "2020 Hong Kong national security law", "Ottawa", "Belarus–Romania relations", "Belarus–South Korea relations", "Bordeaux", "London", "Belarus–Iran relations", "Smolensk", "European Parliament", "Białystok", "United Nations", "Belarus-Myanmar relations", "World War II", "Baku", "Belarus", "TACIS", "Orange Revolution", "Yerevan", "Russia", "Congress of the United States", "Buenos Aires", "International Monetary Fund", "Minsk", "Tallinn", "Belneftekhim", "Addis Ababa", "Ekaterinburg", "Belarus–Libya relations", "Belarus–Lithuania relations", "Tehran", "Belarus–Sudan relations", "Krasnoyarsk", "insurance", "Export-Import Bank of the United States", "Hrodna", "Sergei Chichuk", "Ryanair Flight 4978", "Krasnodar", "2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh", "gov.uk", "Nairobi", "Azerbaijan–Belarus relations", "UN Trade and Development", "Syria–Belarus relations", "Kaliningrad", "Belarus–United States relations", "Belarus-Council of Europe relations", "Ecuador", "Non-Aligned Movement", "Belarus–Denmark relations", "Baku Initiative", "Rijeka", "Florence", "North Atlantic Cooperation Council", "Vasily Sakovich", "Belarus–Serbia relations", "Union State", "Sweden", "raw material", "foreign policy", "Eastern Partnership", "Belarus–European Union relations", "Harare", "Tripoli, Libya", "Colombo", "WP:SDNONE", "Marseille", "monetary union", "United Nations Human Rights Council", "List of diplomatic missions of Belarus", "Embassy of Belarus, London", "Mexico City", "Lviv", "Tokyo", "Biała Podlaska", "Rome", "Pretoria", "Vienna", "Eternal leaders of North Korea" ]
3,545	Telecommunications in Belgium	Communications in Belgium are extensive and advanced. Belgium possesses the infrastructure for both mobile and land-based telecom, as well as having significant television, radio and internet infrastructure. The country code for Belgium is BE. ==Services== ===Mail=== Mail regulation is a national competency. Postal service in Belgium is in many cases performed by Belgian Post Group, a semi-private public company. Competitors include DHL and UPS. Postal codes in Belgium consist of four digits which indicate regional areas, e.g. "9000" is the postal code for Ghent. ===Telephone=== The telephone system itself is highly developed and technologically advanced, with full automation in facilities that handle domestic and international telecom. Domestically speaking, the county has a nationwide cellular telephone system and an extensive network of telephone cables. Telephone regulation is a national competency. The country code for Belgium is 32 and the international call prefix is 00. A telephone number in Belgium is a sequence of nine or ten numbers dialled on a telephone to make a call on the telephone network in Belgium. Belgium is under a closed telephone numbering plan, but retains the trunk code, "0", for all national dialling. ====Fixed telephones==== There were 4.668 million land telephone lines in use in Belgium in 2007, a slight decrease on the 4.769 million in use in 1997. The majority state-owned public telephone company of Belgium is Proximus. Some other or private operators exist, as Scarlet (Proximus) and Base (Telenet). ====Mobile telephones==== Mobile telephone ownership has increased by nearly one thousand percent in the period 1997–2007, from 974,494 to 10.23 million. There are three licensed mobile network operators (MNO) in Belgium, Proximus (Belgacom), Orange Belgium (Orange S.A.) and Telenet/Base and numerous mobile virtual network operators (MVNO). A fourth license will be auctioned off by the government in January 2010. ===Internet=== There were 61 (2003) internet service providers in Belgium, serving 8.113 million internet users in 2009. The country code for Belgian websites is .be. In September 2009 in Flanders there were 3,048,260 broadband internet customers (DSL and cable), of which 2,520,481 were residential users and 527,779 business users. Only 65,175 dial-up internet access accounts remained in the residential market and 9,580 in the business market. ====Internet providers==== =====xDSL Internet Providers===== Belgium has numerous copper cable internet providers: Altercom End service 2011 Base Proximus Destiny Digiweb EDPnet Evonet Full Telecom Interxion iPFix LCL Mobistar (Orange S.A.) End service : 2013 Numericable (France Numericable) Perceval Portima Proximedia Group Scarlet (Belgacom) Verizon Business (Verizon Communications) Ergatel Only Belgacom and Numericable currently offers fixed telephony and digital television in a triple play formula. All other companies offer also fixed telephony in a duo play formula. =====Cable Internet Providers===== Belgium has three major fiberglass cable internet providers: Numéricable for the Brussels region (Ypso Holding) Telenet for the Flanders and Brussels regions (Liberty Global) VOO for the Walloon and Brussels regions (TECTEO) Orange Belgium use Telenet and VOO network combined These companies all offer fixed telephony and digital television in a triple play formula. Interoute Managed Services Interxion LCL Nucleus Verizon Business (Verizon Communications) These companies all offer specialised services. =====Terrestrial Internet Providers===== Clearwire in Brussels, Ghent, Leuven, Aalst, Halle and Vilvoorde (Sprint Nextel) Perceval =====Satellite Internet Providers===== Verizon Business (Verizon Communications) =====ISP for public services===== The Brussels Regional Informatics Center (BRIC, Centre d'Informatique pour la Région Bruxelloise in French) offers Internet access to public administrations in the Brussels-Capital Region, relying directly on the national Belnet network and the IRISnet network. =====Not categorized===== Other ISP are Chat.be, Connexeon, HostIT, Microsoft Belgium, Netlog, Ulysse, Ven Brussels, Rack66 (EUSIP bvba), WSD Hosting. ===Other=== The microwave relay network is, however, more limited. For international communications, Belgium has 5 submarine cables and a number of satellite earth stations, two of which are Intelsat, and one Eutelsat.	[ "Aalst, Belgium", "VOO", "Interoute Managed Services", "Altercom", "Verizon Business", "Destiny (telco)", "Halle, Belgium", "country code", "Portima", "telephone numbering plan", "LCL (telco)", "iPFix", "EDPnet", "Leuven", "Vilvoorde", "Liberty Global", "Nucleus (telco)", "Orange Belgium", ".be", "Numericable", "WSD Hosting", "Belgium", "Ven Brussels", "Rack66 (EUSIP bvba)", "Sprint Nextel", "Intelsat", "mobile virtual network operator", "Proximus Group", "Microsoft Belgium", "Ulysse", "mobile network operator", "telephone", "United Parcel Service", "Proximedia Group", "digital television", "Postal codes in Belgium", "Clearwire", "Telephone numbering plan", "Scarlet (telco)", "triple play (telecommunications)", "TECTEO", "Bpost", "Telenet", "Brussels-Capital Region", "internet service provider", "Ypso Holding", "Belnet", "Eutelsat", "Perceval (telco)", "Brussels", "Proximus", "Full Telecom", "internaut", "telephone company", "City of Brussels", "Numéricable", "Interxion", "Ergatel", "DHL Express", "Chat.be", "List of international call prefixes", "Digiweb", "Mobistar", "fixed telephony", "Mobile phone", "Evonet", "Verizon Communications", "Base (mobile telephony provider)", "Orange S.A.", "HostIT", "telephone number", "Connexeon", "microwave relay", "Telenet (Belgium)", "mobile phone", "Belgacom", "coaxial cable", "IRISnet", "WP:SDNONE", "France Numericable", "Ghent", "Netlog" ]
3,546	Transport in Belgium	Transport in Belgium is facilitated with well-developed road, air, rail and water networks. The rail network has of electrified tracks. There are of roads, among which there are of motorways, of main roads and of other paved roads. There is also a well-developed urban rail network in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent and Charleroi. The ports of Antwerp and Zeebrugge are two of the biggest seaports in Europe. Brussels Airport is Belgium its biggest airport. ==Railways== Rail transport in Belgium was historically managed by the National Railway Company of Belgium, known as SNCB in French and NMBS in Dutch. In 2005, the public company was split into 2 companies: Infrabel, which manages the rail network and SNCB/NMBS itself, which manages the freight and passenger services. There is a total of , ( double track (as of 1998)), of which are electrified, mainly at 3,000 volts DC but with at 25 kV 50 Hz AC (2004) and all on standard gauge of . In 2004 the National Railway Company of Belgium, carried 178.4 million passengers a total of 8,676 million passenger-kilometres. Due to the high population density, operations are relatively profitable, so tickets are cheap and the frequency of services is high. The SNCB/NMBS is continually updating its rolling stock. The network currently includes four high speed lines, three operating up to , and one up to . HSL 1 runs from just south of Brussels to the French border, where it continues to Lille, and from there to Paris or London. HSL 2 runs from Leuven to Liège. HSL 3 continues this route from Liège to the German border near Aachen. HSL 4 runs from Antwerp to Rotterdam by meeting HSL-Zuid at the border with Netherlands. Electrification is at 3 kV DC, with the exception of the new high-speed lines, and of two recently electrified lines in the south of the country which are at 25 kV AC. Trains, contrary to tram and road traffic, run on the left. ===Rail links with adjacent countries=== France — voltage change 3 kV DC – 25 kV AC LGV 1 — voltage remains at 25 kV AC. via France to the UK on HSL 1, LGV 1, Channel Tunnel and CTRL (Channel Tunnel Rail Link) — voltage remains at 25 kV AC. Germany — voltage change 3 kV DC – 15 kV AC HSL 3 — voltage remains at 25 kV AC. Netherlands — voltage change 3 kV DC – 1500 V DC HSL-Zuid — voltage remains at 25 kV AC. Luxembourg — no voltage change at the border (the line Hatrival (Libramont)-Luxembourg is at 25 kV AC and the line Gouvy-Luxembourg is at 25 kV AC) ===Urban rail=== An urban commuter rail network, Brussels RER (, ), is operational in the Brussels-Capital Region and surrounding areas. ===Metros and light rail=== In Belgium an extensive system of tram-like local railways called vicinal or buurtspoor lines crossed the country in the first half of the 20th century, and had a greater route length than the main-line railway system. The only survivors of the vicinal/buurtspoor system are the Kusttram (covering almost the entire coast from France to the Netherlands, being the longest tram line in the world) and some sections of the Charleroi lightrail system. Urban tram networks exist in Antwerp (the Antwerp Pre-metro), Ghent and Brussels (the Brussels trams), and are gradually being extended. The only rapid transit system in Belgium is the Brussels Metro. Some heavy metro infrastructures were built in Brussels, Antwerp and the Charleroi area, but these are currently used by light rail vehicles, and their conversion to full metro is not envisaged at present due to lack of funds. Regional transport in Belgium is operated by regional companies: De Lijn in Flanders operates the Kusttram and the Antwerp pre-metro and tram, and the tram in Gent, as well as a bus network both urban and interurban, TEC in Wallonia operates the Charleroi lightrail system as well as a bus network and MIVB/STIB in the Brussels Capital-Region operates the Brussels metro as well as the Brussels tram and bus network. Despite this regional organization, some bus and tram routes operated by STIB/MIVB go beyond the regional border, and some bus routes operated by TEC or De Lijn transport passengers from the Flemish or Walloon regions to the capital city or in the other regions. ==Road transport== ===Road network=== The road network in Belgium is managed by regional authorities, meaning that a road section in Flanders is managed by the Flemish Government, a road section in Brussels by the Brussels government and a road section in Wallonia by the Walloon Government. This explains that road signs in Flanders are written in Dutch, even when referring to a Walloon region, and conversely, which can be confusing for foreigners who do not know the different translations of Flemish or Walloon cities in the other language. The road network in Belgium is made of highways, national (or regional) roads (the secondary network) and communal roads (or streets). Communal roads are managed at the municipal level. There are also a number of orbital roads in Belgium around major cities. total: 152,256 km (2006) country comparison to the world: 35 paved: 119,079 km (including 1,763 km of expressways) unpaved: 33,177 km Belgian road numbering evolved during the middle decades of the twentieth century, in a relatively inconsistent way. Road number allocations became less systematic during the surge in road building that took place in the 1960s and 70s. Frequently downgraded and deteriorating older national roads retained two digit numbers while newer major roads were identified with less instantly memorable three digit numbers, if only because the shorter numbers were already taken. 1985 saw a comprehensive renumbering of the "N" (National) roads which now followed the scheme described below. ====Highways==== The highways (motorways) in Belgium are marked with a letter A and a number. Most often however the European numbering system for the international E-road network is used. There is however not always a one-on-one relationship between the two numbering systems along the whole length of the highways. A1 (E19): Brussels - Antwerp - Breda A2 (E314): Leuven - Lummen - Genk A3 (E40): Brussels - Leuven - Liège - Aachen A4 (E411): Brussels - Wavre - Namur - Arlon - Luxembourg A10 (E40): Brussels - Ghent - Bruges - Ostend A12 (Brussels - Boom - Antwerp - Netherlands (Bergen op Zoom):(includes a section not yet fully upgraded to motorway standard) A13 (E313): Antwerp - Beringen - Hasselt - Liège A14 (E17): Lille - Kortrijk - Ghent - Antwerp A15 (E42): Charleroi - Namur - Huy - Liège A17 (E403): Bruges - Kortrijk - Tournai A18 (E40): Bruges - Veurne - Dunkerque ====Ringways==== The ringways (or orbital roads) around bigger cities have their own series of numbers. The names start with a R then a first digit indicating the (old) province, and sometimes a second digit to further differentiate in between different ringways. Some major examples are: R0 is the outer ringway around Brussels. The R20 and R22 are (parts of) inner ringways around Brussels. R1 is the southern half ringway and R2 is the northern half ringway around Antwerp. R3 is the outer ringway and R9 is the inner ringway around Charleroi. The inner ring is counterclockwise-only. R4 is the outer ringway and R40 is the inner ringway around Ghent. R6 is the outer ringway and R12 is the inner ringway around Mechelen. R8 is the outer ringway and R36 is the inner ringway around Kortrijk. R23 is the ringway around Leuven. R30 is the inner ringway around Bruges. ====National roads==== The national roads were renumbered in 1985 according to a national scheme and are identified with the letter N followed by a number. The principal national roads fan out from Brussels, numbered in clockwise order: N1: Brussels - Mechelen - Antwerp N2: Brussels - Leuven - Diest - Hasselt - Maastricht N3: Brussels - Leuven - Tienen - Sint-Truiden - Liège - Aachen N4: Brussels - Wavre - Namur - Marche-en-Famenne - Bastogne - Arlon N5: Brussels - Charleroi - Philippeville N6: Brussels - Halle - Soignies - Mons N7: Halle - Ath - Tournai N8: Brussels - Ninove - Oudenaarde - Kortrijk - Ypres - Veurne - Koksijde N9: Brussels - Aalst - Ghent - Eeklo - Bruges - Ostend Secondary national roads intersect these. National roads have an N plus 1, 2 or 3 digits. National roads numbered with 3 digits are provincial roads, their first number indicating the province in which the road begins: N1xx Province of Antwerp N2xx Provinces of Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant N3xx Province of West Flanders N4xx Province of East Flanders N5xx Province of Hainaut N6xx Province of Liège N7xx Province of Limburg N8xx Province of Luxembourg N9xx Province of Namur ===Cars=== ====Changes==== Between 1993 and 2012 the average age of the passengers cars registered as running in Belgium increased from just over 6 years and 4 months to 8 years and 17 days. 2012 data for other European countries are not yet available, but in 2010 the average age of car Belgium was 7.9 years against a European Union average of 8.3 years. Government policy provides an important clue as to one reason for the relative newness of the national car parc. Despite recent high-profile plant closures by Ford and Renault, Belgium remains an important centre for automobile component and passenger car production, with important plants operated by Volvo and Audi, and this is reflected in a relatively benign taxation environment whereby company cars are a still a popular and relatively tax efficient element in many remuneration packages. ==Water== ===Ports and harbours=== ====Sea ports==== Antwerp - Port of Antwerp (one of the world's busiest ports) Bruges (Zeebrugge) - Port of Bruges-Zeebrugge [http://www.zeebruggeport.be/ (one of the busiest in Europe) Ghent - Port of Ghent *Ostend - Port of Ostend [http://www.portofoostende.be/ ====Main inland ports==== Brussels - Port of Brussels (also accessible for ocean-going ships) Liège - Port of Liège [https://web.archive.org/web/20041127031815/http://www.liege.port-autonome.be/ (one of the busiest in Europe) ====European portuary context==== European Sea Ports Organisation ESPO European Federation of Inland Ports FEPI Inland Navigation Europe INE 2002 ranking of world ports by tonnage and by container volume (in TEU) Port ranking ===Merchant marine=== ===Waterways=== The Belgian waterway network has 2,043 km, 1,532 km of which is in regular commercial use. The main waterways are: the Albert Canal connecting Antwerp to Liège, the Ghent–Terneuzen Canal through the port of Ghent connecting Ghent with the Westerschelde, the Boudewijn Canal through the port of Bruges-Zeebrugge connecting Bruges with the North Sea, the Brussels-Charleroi Canal, Brussels–Scheldt Maritime Canal and Scheldt connecting Charleroi to Antwerp, the Nimy-Blaton-Péronnes Canal and Scheldt connecting the Borinage to Antwerp, the connection between the North Sea and Antwerp and the connection between Dunkerque and Liège via the Nimy-Blaton-Péronnes Canal, the Canal du Centre, the lower Sambre and the Meuse. Waterways are managed on a regional level in Belgium. The region of Brussels only managed 14 km of waterways from the Anderlecht lock to the Vilvoorde bridge. In Flanders, the management of waterways is outsourced to four companies: NV De Scheepvaart, Departement Mobiliteit en Openbare Werken, Agentschap voor Maritieme Dienstverlening en Kust and Waterwegen en Zeekanaal NV. ==Air transport== According to the 2009 CIA World Factbook, there are a total of 43 airports in Belgium, 27 of which have paved runways. Five airports have passenger flights; the largest of these is Brussels Airport. The other four are Ostend-Bruges International Airport, Brussels-South Charleroi Airport, Liège Airport and Antwerp International Airport. Other airports are military airports or small civil airports with no scheduled flights. Well-known military airports include the Melsbroek Air Base and the Beauvechain Air Base. The Belgian national airline was Sabena from 1923 to 2001, until it went into bankruptcy. A new Belgian airline named SN Brussels Airlines was then founded by businessman Étienne Davignon. The company was then renamed as Brussels Airlines in 2006. In 2016, Air Belgium was founded by Nicky Terzakis, former CEO of TNT Airways, with the goal of connecting Belgium, offering long-haul flights. In 2019, Brussels Airlines became a subsidiary of German airline Lufthansa.	[ "Aalst, Belgium", "Flemish Brabant", "R0 road (Belgium)", "East Flanders", "N3 road (Belgium)", "HSL 4", "France", "Belgian coast tram", "Mechelen", "Westerschelde", "Air Belgium", "West Flanders", "Halle, Belgium", "Hainaut Province", "Breda", "Port of Antwerp", "Nimy-Blaton-Péronnes Canal", "List of railway electrification systems", "Genk Body & Assembly", "A10 road (Belgium)", "N7 road (Belgium)", "Europe", "Mons, Belgium", "Audi Brussels", "Lufthansa", "Limburg (Belgium)", "rapid transit", "Antwerp International Airport", "railway", "Rail transport in Germany", "R3 ring road (Belgium)", "Société Régionale Wallonne du Transport", "N1 road (Belgium)", "Transport in France", "Vilvoorde", "Lille", "Leuven", "Genk", "Luxembourg (Belgium)", "Scheldt", "Netherlands", "Tournai", "Government of the Brussels-Capital Region", "Bruges", "De Lijn", "N2 road (Belgium)", "R22 road (Belgium)", "Port of Zeebrugge", "Charleroi", "Transport in Germany", "N4 road (Belgium)", "Rail transport in the Netherlands", "Belgium", "Brussels Airlines", "High Speed 1", "Ghent–Terneuzen Canal", "Brussels-Charleroi Canal", "North Sea", "Liège Province", "A3 road (Belgium)", "Tienen", "R2 road (Belgium)", "Flanders", "Port of Ostend", "Ostend-Bruges International Airport", "Melsbroek Air Base", "Infrabel", "Étienne Davignon", "Bergen op Zoom", "Ath", "Wallonia", "A18 road (Belgium)", "Eeklo", "Dunkerque", "standard gauge", "A12 road (Belgium)", "Namur Province", "R1 ring road (Belgium)", "European route E314", "European route E19", "Huy", "R4 road (Belgium)", "European Union", "Port of Brussels", "Albert Canal", "Métro Léger de Charleroi", "Ostend", "Namur", "Liège Airport", "R12 road (Belgium)", "Walloon Government", "HSL 3", "United Kingdom", "Borinage", "Sambre", "Antwerp Pre-metro", "Vicinal tramway", "light rail", "Meuse", "Transport in the Netherlands", "Flemish Government", "Plug-in electric vehicles in Belgium", "Kortrijk", "High-speed rail in Belgium", "European Sea Ports Organisation", "Brussels South railway station", "European route E17", "A15 road (Belgium)", "HSL 2", "LGV 1", "Beauvechain Air Base", "R9 road (Belgium)", "Veurne", "N6 road (Belgium)", "European route E313", "international E-road network", "Bastogne", "Port of Liège", "Rail transport in France", "European route E403", "R30 road (Belgium)", "Maastricht", "Brussels", "Luxembourg City", "Channel Tunnel", "Rail transport in Luxembourg", "Philippeville", "Boudewijn Canal", "Ninove", "Brussels–Scheldt Maritime Canal", "London", "Vilvoorde Renault Factory", "25 kV AC railway electrification", "R20 road (Belgium)", "A2 motorway (Belgium)", "Anderlecht", "A13 road (Belgium)", "N9 road (Belgium)", "Sint-Truiden", "Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company", "N8 road (Belgium)", "Hasselt", "R23 road (Belgium)", "Canal du Centre (Belgium)", "A14 road (Belgium)", "Marche-en-Famenne", "Antwerp Province", "European route E411", "Diest", "N5 road (Belgium)", "port of Antwerp", "Koksijde", "Beringen, Belgium", "Port of Ghent", "Volvo Cars Ghent", "Aachen", "R8 road (Belgium)", "Brussels-South Charleroi Airport", "HSL-Zuid", "Rotterdam", "Walloon Brabant", "R36 road (Belgium)", "Zeebrugge", "Arlon", "Sabena", "Brussels Airport", "R40 road (Belgium)", "A4 road (Belgium)", "Liège", "Oudenaarde", "European route E40", "Boom, Antwerp", "A17 road (Belgium)", "A1 road (Belgium)", "List of tunnels in Belgium", "SN Brussels Airlines", "Antwerp", "National Railway Company of Belgium", "Lummen", "Paris", "Brussels Metro", "European route E42", "HSL 1", "Brussels Capital-Region", "R6 road (Belgium)", "Ghent", "Ypres", "Soignies", "Port of Bruges-Zeebrugge", "Wavre", "Brussels trams" ]
3,565	Economy of Benin	\|gini = 47.8 (2015) \|hdi = \|labor = \|occupations = \|unemployment = 1% (2014 est.) \|industries = textiles, food processing, construction materials, cement \|exports = $1.974 billion (2017 est.) B (Domestic) B (Foreign) BBB- (T&C Assessment)}} \|aid = \|cianame = benin \|spelling = }} The economy of Benin remains underdeveloped and dependent on subsistence agriculture and cotton. Cotton accounts for 40% of Benin's GDP and roughly 80% of official export receipts. There is also production of textiles, palm products, and cocoa beans. Maize (corn), beans, rice, peanuts, cashews, pineapples, cassava, yams, and other various tubers are grown for local subsistence. Benin began producing a modest quantity of offshore oil in October 1982. Production ceased in recent years but exploration of new sites is ongoing. A modest fishing fleet provides fish and shrimp for local subsistence and export to Europe. Formerly government-owned commercial activities are now privatized. A French brewer acquired the former state-run brewery. Smaller businesses are privately owned by Beninese citizens, but some firms are foreign owned, primarily French and Lebanese. The private commercial and agricultural sectors remain the principal contributors to growth. ==Economic development== Since the transition to a democratic government in 1990, Benin has undergone an economic recovery. A large injection of external investment from both private and public sources has alleviated the economic difficulties of the early 1990s caused by global recession and persistently low commodity prices (although the latter continues to affect the economy). The manufacturing sector is confined to some light industry, which is mainly involved in processing primary products and the cow production of consumer goods. A planned joint hydroelectric project with neighboring Togo is intended to reduce Benin's dependence on imported energy mostly from Ghana, which currently accounts for a significant proportion of the country's imports. The service sector has grown quickly, stimulated by economic liberalization and fiscal reform, and the use of modern technology such as automobiles and computers has grown considerably as a result. Membership of the CFA Franc Zone offers reasonable currency stability as well as access to French economic support. Benin sells its products mainly to France and, in smaller quantities, to the Netherlands, Korea, Japan, and India. France is Benin's leading source for imports. Benin is also a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Despite its rapid growth, the economy of Benin still remains underdeveloped and dependent on subsistence agriculture, cotton production, and regional trade. Growth in real output averaged a sound 5% since 1996, but a rapid population rise offset much of this growth on a per capita basis. Inflation has subsided over the past several years. Commercial and transport activities, which make up a large part of GDP, are vulnerable to developments in Nigeria, particularly fuel shortages. Although trade unions in Benin represent up to 75% of the formal workforce, the large informal economy has been noted by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITCU) to contain ongoing problems, including a lack of women's wage equality, the use of child labour, and the continuing issue of forced labour. In December 2014, the Bureau of International Labor Affairs issued a List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor in which the Republic of Benin was mentioned among 74 other countries where significant instances of child labor were observed. Two major products involved such working conditions in Benin: cotton and crushed granite. ==Agriculture== Benin produced in 2018: 3.8 million tons of cassava (17th largest producer in the world); 2.7 million tons of yam (4th largest producer in the world, losing only to Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast); 1.5 million tons of maize; 758 thousand tons of cotton (12th largest producer in the world); 598 thousand tons of palm oil; 459 thousand tons of rice; 372 thousand tons of pineapple; 319 thousand tons of sorghum; 253 thousand tons of tomato; 225 thousand tons of peanut; 221 thousand tons of soy; 215 thousand tons of cashew nuts (5th largest producer in the world, losing only to Vietnam, India, Ivory Coast and Philippines); In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products. ==Financial Sector== Benin's financial sector is dominated by banks, and in general remains shallow. However, a series of reforms were undertaken in the 1990s, which resulted in the consolidation of the banking sector and in the privatization of all state banks. A legal framework regarding licensing, bank activities, organizational and capital requirements, inspections and sanctions (all applicable to all countries of the Union) is in place and underwent significant reforms in 1999. There is no customer deposit insurance system. Benin has a lively and diversified microfinance sector. Data from 2003 by the Central Bank stated a penetration rate of microfinance services of almost 60 percent. In 2006 the Ministry of Microfinance and Employment of Youth and Women counted 762 organizations with 1308 branches, including Cooperatives, NGOs, Savings/Credit Associations and government projects. Programmes for strengthening the sector are carried out on national and regional levels, such as the PRAFIDE (Programme Régional d’Appui à la finance Décentralisée). The microfinance sector is also subject to supervision through the Central Bank as well as the responsible Ministry for Microfinance and Employment of Youth and Women. Benin is member of the Bourse Regionale des Valeures Mobilières (BRVM) located in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Stocks were issued by a number of companies in the region. Listed bonds were partly issued by companies and partly by governments of the West African Monetary and Economic Union (UEMOA). The payment and settlement system and clearing mechanisms were reformed in 2004 through the BCEAO and offer RTGS and SWIFT access to banks, financial institutions, the stock exchange as well as the Central bank and special banks. Banque Internationale du Bénin (BI.BE) Bank of Africa Benin Continental Bank Benin Diamond Bank Benin (DBB) Ecobank Financial Bank Finadev Caisse Nationale d'Epargne Credit du Bénin Equibail United Bank of Africa Africa Bank for the Industry and the trade Sahelo-Saharian Bank of the Industry and Trade Development == Data == The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2024.	[ "Fishing in Benin", "Standard & Poor's", "Least developed countries", "Continental Bank", "List of countries by inequality-adjusted HDI", "Benin", "palm tree", "Central Intelligence Agency", "Lebanon", "West African CFA franc", "pineapple", "textile", "maize", "hydroelectric", "Economic Community of West African States", "Financial Bank", "Equibail", "World Trade Organization", "child labor", "seafood", "brewing", "cotton", "Purchasing power parity", "subsistence agriculture", "Caisse Nationale d'Epargne", "Finadev", "cassava", "Cotonou", "shea butter", "palm oil", "unfree labour", "Human Development Report", "CFA Franc Zone", "Banque Internationale du Bénin", "Ghana", "Togo", "List of countries by Human Development Index", "Community of Sahel–Saharan States", "yam (vegetable)", "soy", "cashew nuts", "United Nations Economic Commission for Africa", "List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita", "African Continental Free Trade Agreement", "bean", "Ecobank", "United Nations Development Programme", "Credit du Bénin", "Yam (vegetable)", "African Union", "Secondary sector of the economy", "Agriculture in Benin", "World Bank", "Tertiary sector of the economy", "Bureau of International Labor Affairs", "List of countries by GDP (nominal)", "Nigeria", "sorghum", "International Trade Union Confederation", "Foreign trade of Benin", "Diamond Bank Benin", "Maize", "Bank of Africa", "Ease of doing business index", "International Monetary Fund", "List of countries by GDP (PPP)", "Primary sector of the economy", "cocoa bean", "Democracy", "tomato", "peanut", "cashew", "List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita", "trade unions in Benin", "Cotton", "Least Developed Countries", "List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor", "rice" ]
3,583	Economy of Bhutan	{{Infobox economy \| country = Bhutan \| image = Thimpu Bazar 31.JPG \| image_size = 310px \| caption = Thimphu is the largest economic centre of Bhutan. \| currency = ngultrum (BTN)Indian rupee (INR) \| year = 1 July – 30 June \| organs = SAFTA \| group = \| population = 780,000 (2021) \| gdp = \| gdp rank = \| growth = \| per capita = \| per capita rank = \| sectors = \| inflation = 7.35% (2021) \| poverty = \| gini = 37.4 (2017, World Bank) \| hdi = \| cpi = 68 out of 100 points (2023, 26th rank) \| labour = \| occupations = \| current account = −$547 million (2017 est.) In the 1970s the King placed Gross National Happiness over Gross Domestic Product. On 8 December 2023, Bhutan graduated from the UN's list of least developed countries (LDCs), making it only the 7th country to do so and the first in 3 years. ==Macro-economic trend== This is a chart of trend of gross domestic product of Bhutan at market prices by the International Monetary Fund: Bhutan's hydropower potential and its attraction for tourists are key resources. The Bhutanese Government has made some progress in expanding the nation's productive base and improving social welfare. In 2010, Bhutan became the first country in the world to ban smoking and the selling of tobacco. In order to stamp out cross-border smuggling during the pandemic, a new Tobacco Control Rules and Regulations (TCRR) 2021 allowed the import, sales and consumption of tobacco products. == Membership of economic organizations and agreements == In terms of trade, Bhutan is a member of the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC). Bhutan is also a member of the pan-Asian Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), and the Asian Development Bank. Bhutan first applied to join the WTO in 1999 and as an applicant, was quickly granted observer status Beyond that, ascension proceedings at the WTO have been much delayed and periodically put on pause, largely stemming from concerns and considerations of the Bhutanese government itself. The Bhutanese government approved ascension to the WTO in April 2023, at least partly hastened by the country's upcoming graduation from the UN-defined 'least developed country (LDC) category. Under WTO rules and processes, ascent of a country with LDC status comes with some leniency in certain requirements, more relaxed timeframes for compliance, and additional support; so, whilst the loss of LDC status, as happened in December 2023, was a reflection of Bhutan's success and development progress, it also meant much further delay in WTO ascension (that is, ascent after the loss of LDC status) would make the journey through to full WTO member status even harder. == Modern economic resources == Since the early 2020s, Bhutan has adopted cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin, as a strategic economic resource. Facing declining tourism revenue, youth unemployment (which reached 19% in 2024), and a growing brain drain, the government began mining Bitcoin using surplus hydropower during high-flow summer months. By 2023, Bhutan had sold $100 million in cryptocurrency to double civil servant salaries, leading to a drop in resignations. As of April 2025, blockchain analysts estimate Bhutan’s Bitcoin holdings at over $600 million; around 30% of its GDP. Mining is powered by the kingdom’s carbon-negative hydropower and cool climate, aligning with its environmental values. Bhutan also plans to develop Gelephu Mindfulness City, a sustainable economic hub.	[ "Ease of doing business index", "International Monetary Fund", "Mining in Bhutan", "United Nations Development Programme", "Purchasing power parity", "forestry", "Bhutan", "Banking in Bhutan", "Asia Cooperation Dialogue", "The Observatory of Economic Complexity", "List of countries by GDP (PPP)", "Least developed countries", "Blockchain analysis", "List of countries by inequality-adjusted HDI", "Primary sector of the economy", "Forestry in Bhutan", "animal husbandry", "Five-Year Plans of Bhutan", "agriculture", "Bhutanese government", "Bhutanese ngultrum", "Human Development Report", "Secondary sector of the economy", "smoking ban", "Central Intelligence Agency", "List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita", "World Bank", "South Asian Free Trade Area", "Tertiary sector of the economy", "Developing country", "Gross National Happiness", "Bitcoin", "List of countries by GDP (nominal)", "List of countries by Human Development Index", "Indian rupee", "Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation", "Bitcoin protocol", "Asian Development Bank", "subsistence farming", "Agriculture in Bhutan", "United Nations", "Corruption Perceptions Index", "Hydropower", "Fishing in Bhutan", "List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita", "migrant labour", "hydropower", "South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation", "The World Bank", "cryptocurrency", "Gelephu", "ngultrum" ]
3,589	Lhop people	The Lhop or Doya people (Dzongkha: ལྷོབ་ ་ཡང་ན་ དྲོ་ཡ) are a little-known tribe of southwest Bhutan. The Bhutanese believe them to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the country. The Lhop are found in the low valleys of Dorokha Gewog and near Phuntsholing in the Duars. The dress of the Lhop resembles the Lepcha, but they bear little similarity with the Bhutia in the North and the Toto in the west. The Doya trace their descent matrilineally, marry their cross cousins, and embalm the deceased who are then placed in a foetal position in a circular sarcophagus above the ground. They follow a blend of Tibetan Buddhism mixed with animism.	[ "Sharchop people", "Bhutan", "cross cousin", "Lepcha people", "Tibetan Buddhism", "Duars", "Dzongkha", "indigenous peoples", "Phuntsholing", "hazaras", "matrilineality", "Lhokpu language", "Toto tribe", "Bhutia", "London", "Dorokha Gewog", "Samtse District", "Buddhism in Bhutan", "School of Oriental and African Studies", "Ethnic groups in Bhutan", "animism" ]
3,604	Geography of Bosnia and Herzegovina	Bosnia and Herzegovina is located in Southeastern Europe. Situated in the western Balkans, it has a border with Croatia to the north and southwest, a border with Serbia to the east, and a border with Montenegro to the southeast. It borders the Adriatic Sea along its coastline. The most striking features of the local terrain are valleys and mountains which measure up to 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. The country's natural resources include coal, iron ore, bauxite, manganese, nickel, clay, gypsum, salt, sand, timber and hydropower. ==Regions== 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. 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. 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. In Bosnia and Herzegovina forest cover is around 43% of the total land area, equivalent to 2,187,910 hectares (ha) of forest in 2020, down from 2,210,000 hectares (ha) in 1990. For the year 2015, 74% of the forest area was reported to be under public ownership and 26% private ownership. Eastern Bosnia is heavily forested along the river Drina and 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. 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. The country has only 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. Through the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Bosnia has a right of innocent passage to the outer sea. Neum has many hotels and is an important tourism destination. ==Rivers== There are seven major rivers of Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Una in the northwest part of Bosnia flows along the northern and western border of Bosnia and Croatia and through the Bosnian city of Bihać. It is popular for rafting and adventure sports. The Sana flows through the city of Sanski Most and Prijedor and is a tributary of the river Una in the north. The Vrbas flows through the cities of Gornji Vakuf – Uskoplje, Bugojno, Jajce, Banja Luka, Srbac and reaches the river Sava in the north. The Vrbas flows through the central part of Bosnia and flows outwards to the North. The Bosna is the longest river in Bosnia and is fully contained within the country as it stretches from its source near Sarajevo to the river Sava in the north. It gave its name to the country. The Drina flows through the eastern part of Bosnia, at many places in the border between Bosnia and Serbia. The Drina flows through the cities of Foča, Goražde Višegrad and Zvornik. The Neretva is the longest river in Herzegovina, flowing from Jablanica south to the Adriatic Sea. The river is famous as it flows through the city of Mostar. 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. ==Phytogeography== 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. == Climate == Except for the easternmost provinces, the country experiences a wet Mediterranean climate. The hills and mountains are drier, colder, windier, and cloudier. \|source 2 = NOAA (sun, 1961–1990) \|date=August 2016 }} The north region has a typical continental climate.\|date=January 2011}} === Climate change === == Mining industry == 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. 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. 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. == Land use == Arable land: 19.73% Permanent crops: 2.06% Other: 78.22% (2012 est.) Irrigated land: (2003) Total renewable water resources: (2011) == Environment == Natural hazards: Destructive earthquakes Current issues: Air pollution from metallurgical plants Sites for disposing of urban waste are limited Widespread casualties, water shortages, and destruction of infrastructure because of the 1992–95 war Deforestation International agreements: Party to: Air Pollution, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Life Conservation, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Wetlands Signed, but not ratified: none == Gallery == File:NP001 nacionalni park sutjeska perucica.jpg\|Sutjeska National Park File:NP002 - 14.jpg\|Kozara National Park File:Štrbački buk 1.jpg\|Una National Park File:Drina Canyon.JPG\|Drina National Park	[ "Dinaric Alps", "Vrbas (river)", "Mostar", "World Wide Fund for Nature", "List of cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Sanski Most", "Zenica", "Europe", "Land borders", "Bosanska Krajina", "Private property", "Desertification", "Drina", "Southeastern Europe", "Srebrenica", "Neum", "Sarajevo", "Bosnian War", "Sava", "Deutscher Wetterdienst", "Environment of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Pannonian mixed forests", "Irrigated land", "Serbia", "Geography of Europe", "Illyrian deciduous forests", "Prenj", "Roman era", "Una National Park", "Bihać", "Čvrsnica", "Croatia", "The World Factbook", "Paleolithic", "United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea", "Maglić mountain", "Bosnia (region)", "Ilidža", "Japra (river)", "Neretva", "Dinaric Mountains mixed forests", "Kozara National Park", "Mediterranean Region", "Zvornik", "Posavina", "Mediterranean climate", "Montenegro", "Una (Sava)", "National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Jajce", "Ozone Layer", "Herzegovina", "Trebević", "NOAA", "ecoregion", "Hutovo Blato", "innocent passage", "Banja Luka", "Sutjeska National Park", "Balkans", "Igman", "Sana (river)", "forest cover", "Rama (Neretva)", "Tuzla", "Bjelašnica", "Boreal Kingdom", "Foča", "1984 Winter Olympics", "Jahorina", "Illyrians", "Turkish people", "Pannonian plain", "Sana River", "State ownership", "Lašva", "Vlašić (Bosnian mountain)", "Circumboreal Region", "Arable land", "Treskavica", "Adriatic Sea", "Prijedor", "Central Bosnia", "Bosna (river)", "Phytogeography" ]
3,605	Demographics of Bosnia and Herzegovina	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. == Vital statistics == Source: Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina *No data for the period 1992–1995 === Current vital statistics === ===Structure of the population=== ===Vital statistics by entity=== ====Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina==== Source: Institute for Statistics of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina =====Current vital statistics===== ====Republika Srpska==== Source: Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics =====Current vital statistics===== ====Brčko District==== Source: Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina - Statistics of the Brčko District BiH =====Current vital statistics===== ===Marriages and divorces=== ====Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina==== ====Republika Srpska==== ====Brčko District==== === Life expectancy at birth in Bosnia and Herzegovina === == Ethnic groups == 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. 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. The European Union's statistics office, Eurostat, determined that the methodology used by the Bosnian statistical agency was in line with international recommendations. 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. Image:BiH_-_Etnicki_sastav_po_opstinama_2013_1.gif\|Ethnic structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013 Image:BiH_-_Etnicki_sastav_po_opstinama_2013_2.gif\|Ethnic structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013 Image:BiH - Udeo Bosnjaka po opstinama 2013.gif\|Share of Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013 Image:BiH - Udeo Srba po opstinama 2013.gif\|Share of Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013 Image:BiH - Udeo Hrvata po opstinama 2013.gif\|Share of Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013 === Languages === 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. 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". 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. 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. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, religion is strongly linked to ethnicity. File:BosniaHerzegovina1879Census.tif\|Religious structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1879 Image:BiH_-_Verski_sastav_po_opstinama_2013_1.gif\|Religious structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013 Image:BiH_-_Verski_sastav_po_opstinama_2013_2.gif\|Religious structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013 Image:BiH - Udeo muslimana po opstinama 2013.gif\|Share of Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013 Image:BiH - Udeo pravoslavaca po opstinama 2013.gif\|Share of Orthodox Christians in Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013 Image:BiH - Udeo katolika po opstinama 2013.gif\|Share of Catholics in Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013 == Demographic statistics == The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated. ===Population=== 3,378,821 ===Age structure=== 0-14 years: 13.18% (male 261,430/female 244,242) 15-24 years: 10.83% (male 214,319/female 201,214) 25-54 years: 44.52% (male 859,509/female 848,071) 55-64 years: 15.24% (male 284,415/female 300,168) 65 years and over: 16.22% (male 249,624/female 372,594) (2020 est.) ===Median age=== Total: 43.3 years Male: 41.6 years Female: 44.8 years (2020 est.) ===Sex ratio=== At birth: 1.07 male(s)/female 0-14 years: 1.07 male(s)/female 15-24 years: 1.07 male(s)/female 25-54 years: 1.01 male(s)/female 55-64 years: 0.95 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.67 male(s)/female Total population: 0.95 male(s)/female (2020 est.) ===Infant mortality rate=== Total: 5.32 deaths/1,000 live births Male: 5.44 deaths/1,000 live births Female: 5.19 deaths/1,000 live births (2021 est.) ===Life expectancy at birth=== Total population: 77.74 years Male: 74.76 years Female: 80.93 years (2021 est.) ===HIV/AIDS=== Adult prevalence rate: less than 0.1% (2018) People living with HIV/AIDS: Less than 500 (2018) Deaths: less than 100 (2018) ===Literacy=== Definition: age 15 and over can read and write Total population: 98.5% Male: 99.5% Female: 97.5% (2015 est.)	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3,606	Politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina	The politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina are defined by a parliamentary, representative democratic framework, where the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, named by the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Presidency 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. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. The system of government established by the Dayton Agreement that ended the Bosnian war in 1995 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. 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. ==Dayton Agreement== Due to the Dayton Agreement, signed on 14 December 1995, Bosnia and Herzegovina forms an undeclared protectorate, where highest power is given to the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, named by the Peace Implementation Council. 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, and charged with conducting foreign, economic, and fiscal policy. 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. ==High Representative== 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. 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. ==Executive branch== 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. 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. 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. The two Entities have Governments that deal with internal matters not dealt with by the Council of Ministers. ==Legislative branch== The Parliamentary Assembly or Parliamentarna skupština is the main legislative body in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It consists of two chambers: the House of Peoples or Dom naroda the House of Representatives or Predstavnički dom/Zastupnički dom The Parliamentary Assembly is responsible for: enacting legislation as necessary to implement decisions of the Presidency or to carry out the responsibilities of the Assembly under the Constitution. deciding upon the sources and amounts of revenues for the operations of the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina and international obligations of Bosnia and Herzegovina. approving the budget for the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina. deciding ratify treaties and agreements. other matters as are necessary to carry out its duties of as are assigned to it by mutual agreement of the Entities. 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. ===House of Peoples=== 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". ===House of Representatives=== 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). 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. ==Political parties and elections== ===House of Representatives=== ===Election history=== National House of Representatives: elections held 12–13 September 1998: seats by party/coalition – KCD 17, HDZ-BiH 6, SDP-BiH 6, Sloga 4, SDS 4, SRS-RS 2, DNZ 1, NHI 1, RSRS 1 elections held 5 October 2002: percent of vote by party/coalition - SDA 21.9%, SDS 14.0%, SBiH 10.5%, SDP 10.4%, SNSD 9.8%, HDZ 9.5%, PDP 4.6%, others 19.3% seats by party/coalition – SDA 10, SDS 5, SBiH 6, SDP 4, SNSD 3, HDZ 5, PDP 2, others 7 House of Peoples: constituted 4 December 1998 constituted in fall 2000 constituted in January 2003 next to be constituted in 2007 Federal House of Representatives: elections held fall 1998: seats by party/coalition – KCD 68, HDZ-BiH 28, SDP-BiH 25, NHI 4, DNZ 3, DSP 2, BPS 2, HSP 2, SPRS 2, BSP 1, KC 1, BOSS 1, HSS 1 elections held 5 October 2002: seats by party/coalition – SDA 32, HDZ-BiH 16, SDP 15, SBiH 15, other 20 Federal House of Peoples: constituted November 1998 constituted December 2002 Republika Srpska National Assembly: elections held fall 1998 seats by party/coalition – SDS 19, KCD 15, SNS 12, SRS-RS 11, SPRS 10, SNSD 6, RSRS 3, SKRS 2, SDP 2, KKO 1, HDZ-BiH 1, NHI 1 elections held fall 2000 elections held 5 October 2002 seats by party/coalition – SDS 26, SNSD 19, PDP 9, SDA 6, SRS 4, SPRS 3, DNZ 3, SBiH 4, SDP 3, others 6 ==Judicial branch== ===Constitutional Court=== 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. 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. 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. 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. The Court also has appellate jurisdiction within the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. ===State Court=== 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. 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. 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. ===Human Rights Chamber=== 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). ===Entities=== 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 seven district (okrug) courts. ===High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council=== 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.	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3,607	Economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina	{{Infobox economy \| country = Bosnia and Herzegovina \| image = Sarajevo Night Skyline Bosnia & Herzegovina 2014 (15510458883).jpg \| caption = Sarajevo, the financial centre of Bosnia and Herzegovina \| currency = Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark (BAM) \| year = Calendar year \| organs = CEFTA, WTO (observer) \| group = \| population = 3,140,095 (7 April 2025, est.) \| gdp = The economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a transitional, upper middle income economy. 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). 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 a 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. 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. 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%). 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. 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). 1999: €166 million 2000: €159 million 2001: €133 million 2002: €282 million 2003: €338 million 2004: €534 million 2005: €421 million 2006: €556 million 2007: €1.628 billion 2008: €1.083 billion 2009: €434 million 2010: €359 million 2011: €313 million 2022: €730 million From 1994 to 2011, €6.4 billion were invested in the country. The top investor countries (1994–2007): ===Recent years=== ====2017==== 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, aluminium and furniture. In the same year, it mostly imported crude oil, automobiles, motor oil, coal and briquettes. 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%. On 31 December 2017, the 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. As of 31 December 2017, there were 32,292 registered companies in the country, which together had revenues of €33.572 billion that same year. In 2017, the country received €397.35 million in foreign direct investment, which equals to 2.5% of the GDP. 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. 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. ====2018==== 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. The average price of new apartments sold in the country in the first six months of 2018 is 1,639 km (€886.31) per square meter. This represents a jump of 3.5% from the previous year. 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. 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. In 2018, the total value of mergers and acquisitions in Bosnia and Herzegovina amounted to €404.6 million. 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. 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. In 2018, the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina made a profit of 8,430,875 km (€4,306,347). ====2019==== The World Bank estimates that the economy grew by 2.8% in 2019. 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. On 31 January 2019, total deposits in Bosnian banks were KM 21.9 billion (€11.20 billion), which represents 61.15% of nominal GDP. 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. 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. In the first seven months of 2019, 906,788 tourists visited the country, an 11.7% jump from the previous year. In the first six months of 2019, foreign direct investment amounted to 650.1 million KM (€332.34 million). ====2020–2022==== 2020 saw a contraction in the economy of around 4.7%, caused by the COVID-19 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%. ====2023==== As of 30 November 2023, Bosnia and Herzegovina had 1.3 million registered motor vehicles. ===Sarajevo=== 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). 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. 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. 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. In 1981, Sarajevo's GDP per capita was 133% of the Yugoslav average. In 2011, Sarajevo's GDP was estimated to be 16.76 billion US$ by the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina, comprising 37% of the total GDP of the country. ===Mostar=== Mostar's economy relies heavily on tourism, aluminium and metal industry, banking services and telecommunication sector. The city is the seat of some of the country's largest corporations. 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. 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. ===Prijedor=== 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. 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. Companies 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. 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. Agricultural sector 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. Lake Saničani, near Prijedor, is one of the biggest commercial fish-farming lakes in the southern Europe. 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. Service sector 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. ===Banja Luka=== 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. 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. In 1981 Banja Luka's GDP per capita was 97% of the Yugoslav average. \| \|width=15em\| \|valign=top\| \|width=15em\| \|valign=top\| CO2 emissions:20.95 million tons \|} ===Renewable power=== Wind and Solar The first wind farm was built in 2018. Hydro power In 2021 the country had around 2076 MW of installed hydropower capacity larger than 10 MW, with 180 MW of small hydropower units. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. and average gross salary being €891, but the overall process is still considered slow and tenuous by the populace and local as well as foreign economic analysts. ==Infrastructure== 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. As of August 2018, 200 km of the motorway has been completed. 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. 81st in Human Capital Index (2020) 88th in Quality of Nationality Index (2018) 72nd in Legatum Prosperity Index (2023) 63rd in Social Progress Index (2022) 90th in Ease of Doing Business (2020) 39th in Economic Complexity Index (2021) 92nd in Global Competitiveness Report (2019) 68th in Index of Economic Freedom (2023) 61st in Global Peace Index (2023) 110th in Corruption Perceptions Index (2022)	[ "Political corruption", "Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Mostar", "Norway", "Kraš", "Tušnica coal mine", "Josip Broz Tito", "Tax inspector", "oil refining", "Energy Community", "Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Ploče", "Ante Marković", "Ottoman Empire", "Central European Free Trade Agreement", "Banking", "automobile", "Kakanj", "Global Peace Index", "Kosovo", "humanitarian aid", "Zenica", "diaspora", "financial centre", "List of countries by inequality-adjusted Human Development Index", "Rakija", "S&P Global Ratings", "mergers and acquisitions", "Volkswagen", "grey economy", "Brain-drain", "Budapest", "former Yugoslavia", "Sarajevo City Center", "Breza coal mine", "Stanari coal mine", "gross domestic product", "tourist attraction", "Bosmal City Center", "Kakanj coal mine", "World Trade Organization", "foreign direct investment", "Global Competitiveness Report", "Sarajevo", "Energoinvest", "balance of trade", "zinc", "manganese", "e-governance", "Transparency International", "Kamengrad coal mine", "Purchasing power parity", "ArcelorMittal", "Bosnian War", "Agrokomerc", "privatization", "bauxite", "Džemal Bijedić", "Socialist Republic of Croatia", "Serbia", "BH Telecom", "ARIA Centar", "United States", "Eurostat", "Republika Srpska Securities Commission", "Lonely Planet", "Avaz Twist Tower", "Human Development Report", "Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia", "Serbian American", "Visoko", "Slovenia", "foreign trade", "European Union", "FlyBosnia", "Zenica coal mine", "List of countries by Human Development Index", "COVID-19 pandemic in Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Glencore International", "coal", "List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita", "North Macedonia", "2014 unrest in Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "United Nations Development Programme", "Value-added tax", "Al Jazeera Balkans", "know-how", "Support for East European Democracy (SEED) Act of 1989", "Banjalučka Pivara", "Croatia", "lead", "1992 Bosnian independence referendum", "Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark", "iron ore", "List of banks in Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Index of Economic Freedom", "Euro", "China", "steel", "Secondary sector of the economy", "war in Bosnia and Herzegovina", "crude oil", "furniture", "Human Capital Index", "Sarajevo Tobacco Factory", "Legatum Prosperity Index", "World Bank", "Tertiary sector of the economy", "Developing country", "Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "List of countries by GDP (nominal)", "Aluminij", "Trebević", "industry sector", "Bjelašnica Mountain", "Austria-Hungary", "Branko Milanović", "Sarajevska Pivara", "Red tape", "Banja Luka", "Tuzla Thermal Power Plant", "vehicles", "economic growth", "wood processing", "motor oil", "World Tourism Organization", "aluminium", "The Quality of Nationality Index", "Independence Day (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Banja Luka Stock Exchange", "Igman", "Paris Club", "Kongora coal mine", "2014 Bosnian general election", "International Monetary Fund", "Commercial law", "Ease of doing business index", "Kakanj Power Station", "socialism", "Šipad", "Tuzla", "capitalism", "Energopetrol", "income", "Jahorina", "List of countries by GDP (PPP)", "textiles", "inflation", "Public administration", "Primary sector of the economy", "Gacko coal mine", "tobacco products", "2010 Bosnian general election", "direct foreign investment", "World Heritage Site", "London Club", "domestic appliances", "Indirect Taxation Authority of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "European route E73", "tank", "List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita", "Ugljevik coal mine", "unemployment", "port of Ploče", "Social Progress Index", "Treskavica", "Sarajevo International Airport", "Henley Passport Index", "administrative accountability", "briquettes", "aircraft", "Telekom Srpske", "Prijedor", "Corruption Perceptions Index", "Bosnalijek", "Osijek", "car seat", "tourism", "Japan", "Aluminij Mostar", "electricity", "Luxembourg", "Economic Complexity Index", "Democracy Index" ]
3,609	Transport in Bosnia and Herzegovina	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. ==Roadways== total: 21,846 km paved: 11,425 km (4,686 km of interurban roads) unpaved: 10,421 km (2006) ===Roads=== ====International==== E65 E73 (Pan-European corridor Vc), A1 highway E661 E761 E762 ====State highways==== M-1.8 M-2 M-4 M-4.2 M-5 M-6 M-6.1 M-8 M-11 M-14 M-14.1 M-14.2 M-15 M-16 M-16.1 M-16.2 M-16.3 M-16.4 M-17 M-17.2 M-17.3 M-18 M-19 M-19.2 M-19.3 M-20 ===National and international bus services=== 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. ==Railways== Total: 1,032 km standard gauge: (2006) ===Rail links with adjacent countries=== Same gauge: Croatia - yes Serbia - yes Montenegro - no ==Waterways== Sava River (northern border) open to shipping but use is limited (2008) ===Ports and harbours=== Gradiška, Brod, Šamac, and Brčko (all inland waterway ports on the Sava none of which are fully operational), Orašje, Bosnia ==Merchant marine== none (1999 est.) ==Airports== 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. 25 (2008) ===Airports - with paved runways=== total: 7 2,438 to 3,047 m: 4 1,524 to 2,437 m: 1 under 914 m: 2 (2008) ===Airports - with unpaved runways=== total: 18 1,524 to 2,437 m: 1 914 to 1,523 m: 7 under 914 m: 10 (2008) ===Heliports=== 6 (2013)	[ "European route E65", "Orašje, Bosnia", "Road transport", "European route E661", "Sava", "Šamac, Bosnia and Herzegovina", "nextbike", "M-2 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "M-4 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "M-4.2 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Croatia", "M-16.4 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "M-14.1 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Dubrovnik", "M-14 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "A1 (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "M-14.2 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "M-17.3 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Podgorica", "M-16.3 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Brčko (town)", "Transport in Croatia", "Serbia", "M-5 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Belgrade", "M-6.1 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "M-15 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "M-17.2 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Mostar railway station", "European route E73", "European route E761", "Vienna", "M-19 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "M-1.8 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "M-11 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "standard gauge", "Prague", "Gradiška, Bosnia and Herzegovina", "M-19.2 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Brod, Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Aviation", "Rail transport", "M-20 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "M-16.1 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Transport in Montenegro", "Sarajevo International Airport", "M-17 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Zagreb", "Brno", "M-16 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Sušak, Rijeka", "Aeroput", "WP:SDNONE", "Trams in Sarajevo", "Sarajevo cable car", "M-8 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "European route E762", "M-18 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Split, Croatia", "Kingdom of Yugoslavia", "Sarajevo", "M-6 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "M-16.2 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "M-19.3 road (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Transport in Serbia" ]
3,610	Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina	{{Infobox national military \| name = Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina \| native_name = \| image = AFBIH Coat of Arms 021-001.png \| alt = \| caption = Emblem of the Armed Forces \| image2 = \| alt2 = \| caption2 = \| motto = ("Perspective") \| founded = \| current_form = \| disbanded = \| branches = Ground Forces Air Force \| headquarters = Sarajevo \| website = \| commander-in-chief = Presidency \| commander-in-chief_title = \| chief minister = \| chief minister_title = \| minister =Zukan Helez \| minister_title = Minister of Defence \| commander = Gen. Gojko Knežević \| ranked = \| reserve = 6,000 \| deployed = 64 \| amount = $220 million \| percent_GDP = 0.20% (2023) ==Defence law== 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. ==History== The AFBiH was formed from three armies of the Bosnian War period: the Bosniak Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska, and the Croat Defence Council. 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 the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and several paramilitary groups such as the Green Berets, Patriotic League, and civil defence 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 Corps was stationed in a territory. The first commander was Sefer Halilović. The Army of Republika Srpska was created on 12 May 1992. Before the VRS was formally created, there were several 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 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. The Croatian Defence Council was the main military formation of the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia during the Bosnian War. It was the first organized military force to control the Croat-populated areas, created on 8 April 1992. They ranged from men armed with shotguns assigned to village defence 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 guards brigades, mobile units manned by full-time professional soldiers. 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. , EUFOR Althea numbered around 7,000 troops. ===The Bosnian Train and Equip Program=== 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 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. === Operational Command === Overall the brigades are multinational with 45.9% Bosniaks, 33.6% Serbs, 19.8% Croats and about 0.7% of other ethnic groups (as for 2016). Operational Command, in Sarajevo 4th Infantry Brigade, in Čapljina 1st Infantry Battalion, in Livno (Croat troops) 2nd Infantry Battalion, in Bileća (Serb troops) 3rd Infantry Battalion, in Goražde (Bosniak troops) Artillery Battalion, in Mostar Reconnaissance Company, in Čapljina Signals Platoon, in Čapljina Military Police Platoon, in Čapljina 5th Infantry Brigade, in Tuzla 1st Infantry Battalion, in Zenica (Bosniak troops) 2nd Infantry Battalion, in Kiseljak (Croat troops) 3rd Infantry Battalion, in Bijeljina (Serb troops) Artillery Battalion, in Žepče Reconnaissance Company, in Tuzla Signals Platoon, in Tuzla Military Police Platoon, in Tuzla 6th Infantry Brigade, in Banja Luka 1st Infantry Battalion, in Banja Luka (Serb troops) 2nd Infantry Battalion, in Bihać (Bosniak troops) 3rd Infantry Battalion, in Orašje (Croat troops) Artillery Battalion, in Doboj Reconnaissance Company, in Banja Luka Signals Platoon, in Banja Luka Military Police Platoon, in Banja Luka Tactical Support Brigade, in Sarajevo Armored Battalion, in Tuzla Engineer Battalion, in Derventa Military Intelligence Battalion, in Sarajevo Military Police Battalion, in Sarajevo Demining Battalion, in Sarajevo Signal Battalion, in Pale CBRN Defense Company, in Tuzla Air Force and Air Defense Brigade, at Sarajevo Air Base and Banja Luka Air Base 1st Helicopter Squadron, at Banja Luka Airport 2nd Helicopter Squadron, at Sarajevo Airport Air Defense Battalion, at Sarajevo Airport Surveillance and Early Warning Battalion, at Banja Luka Airport Flight Support Battalion, at Sarajevo Airport and Banja Luka Airport ===Brigades under the Support Command control=== 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. == Uniform and insignia == 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. 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. 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. ==Equipment==	[ "Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia", "Zelene beretke", "Bosnian Ground Forces", "Mostar", "International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia", "AT4", "Doboj", "Panhard AML", "Air Force and Anti-Aircraft Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Travnik", "M-84", "Military ranks and insignia of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Russians", "Zenica", "Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "White Eagles (paramilitary)", "Army of Republika Srpska", "civil defence", "SFOR", "Talil Air Base", "Sarajevo", "F-16", "Pale, Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Livno", "Jane's Defence Weekly", "Baghdad", "Bosnian War", "Conscription", "Croat Defence Council", "NATO", "Ratko Mladić", "Selmo Cikotić", "Sefer Halilović", "Dayton Peace Agreement", "Banja Luka Airport", "Bijeljina", "Bosniaks", "Kiseljak", "Sarajevo Airport", "Zukan Helez", "Armed Forces of Serbia and Montenegro", "European Union", "Croatian Defence Council", "Bihać", "Army of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Orašje", "M101 howitzer", "EUFOR Althea", "Ministry of Defence (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "paramilitary", "MARPAT", "military", "Sifet Podžić", "M60 machine gun", "AMX-30", "F-18", "Marina Pendeš", "Territorial Defence Force of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Bileća", "Army of the Republika Srpska", "Banja Luka", "Standing Committee on Military Matters", "FR Yugoslavia", "Goražde", "Bosnian Croat", "T-55", "Tuzla", "Armored Personnel Carrier", "Čapljina", "Camp Victory", "Greek Volunteer Guard", "Office of the High Representative", "regiment", "Fallujah", "army", "Srpska dobrovoljačka garda", "Yugoslav People's Army", "MiG-21", "M60A3", "tank", "Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "M16 rifle", "Chiefs of Joint Staff of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Bosnian Serb", "Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Žepče", "Army", "Derventa", "Sarajevo International Airport", "Camp Echo (Iraq)", "Multinational force in Iraq", "Patriotic League (Bosnia and Herzegovina)", "Mirage 2000", "Implementation Force", "M113 armored personnel carrier", "UH-1H", "Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Croatian Air Force" ]
3,611	Foreign relations of Bosnia and Herzegovina	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. == Diplomatic relations == List of countries which Bosnia and Herzegovina maintains diplomatic relations with: ==EU accession== 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. ==International organizations== 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)	[ "Bosnian diaspora", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Croatia relations", "Kuala Lumpur", "International Finance Corporation", "Plješevica", "UNCTAD", "International Organization for Migration", "Washington, D.C.", "WHO", "Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe", "Southeast European Cooperative Initiative", "WIPO", "Warsaw", "Energy Community", "Foreign relations of Finland", "Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Madrid", "Knin", "Anatoly Bibilov", "International Development Association", "Igor Crnadak", "Mahathir Mohamad", "Karlovac", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–North Macedonia relations", "Hrvatska Kostajnica", "Southeast European Cooperation Process", "Central European Initiative", "South Ossetia", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Germany relations", "Budapest", "Moscow", "UNIDO", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Canada relations", "OPCW", "OIC", "Bosmal City Center", "UNMEE", "WToO", "Dayton Accords", "Sofia", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Romania relations", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–United States relations", "Split, Croatia", "Neum", "Sarajevo", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–South Korea relations", "ILO", "Canberra", "Bosnian War", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Russia relations", "Gombak", "Plitvice Lakes", "NATO", "UNESCO", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Iran relations", "Organization of American States", "Serbia", "United States", "UPU", "List of diplomatic missions of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia", "Bosnia and Herzegovina and the International Monetary Fund", "Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina, London", "Bucharest", "Drina River", "Foreign relations of Ukraine", "Council of Europe", "European Union", "Bihać", "Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe", "Zagreb", "Pelješac bridge", "International Maritime Organization", "Dayton Agreement", "Bosnia and Herzegovina – Denmark relations", "Visa requirements for Bosnia and Herzegovina citizens", "accession of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the European Union", "Foreign relations of the United Kingdom", "WTrO", "Holy See–Bosnia and Herzegovina relations", "IBRD", "IOC", "IFAD", "FAO", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–United Kingdom relations", "Croatia", "EBRD", "ITU", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–NATO relations", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Turkey relations", "Canadian dollar", "King Fahd Mosque (Sarajevo)", "IAEA", "Department of National Defence (Canada)", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Pakistan relations", "International Islamic University Malaysia", "Montenegro", "Una (Sava)", "Tbilisi", "Chicago", "Accession of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the European Union", "London", "International Organization for Standardization", "United Nations", "Group of 77", "international community", "Banja Luka", "International Criminal Court", "List of diplomatic missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Department of Health and Social Care", "The Economist", "Emmanuel Macron", "International Monetary Fund", "Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Saudi Arabia relations", "Canadian International Development Agency", "Interpol (organization)", "Member state of the European Union", "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Indonesia relations", "ICAO", "United Nations Economic Commission for Europe", "gov.uk", "Greece–Bosnia and Herzegovina Friendship Building", "Bosanska Kostajnica", "Foreign relations of Yugoslavia", "Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Ottawa", "International Court of Justice", "Riyadh", "United States dollar", "UN Trade and Development", "President of France", "Stabilisation and Association Process", "Foreign relations of Armenia", "Foreign relations of Sweden", "U.S. Agency for International Development", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–India relations", "Bank for International Settlements", "IFRCS", "Rijeka", "Non-Aligned Movement", "Reuters", "WMO", "Melbourne", "European route", "WP:SDNONE", "Ljubljana", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Spain relations", "Republika Srpska", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Serbia relations", "Vienna", "Bosnia and Herzegovina–Malaysia relations" ]
3,612	History of Botswana	The history of Botswana encompasses the region's ancient and tribal history, its colonisation as the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and the present-day Republic of Botswana. The first modern humans to inhabit Botswana were the San people, and agriculture first developed approximately 2,300 years ago. The first Bantu peoples arrived , and the first Tswana people arrived about 200 years later. The Tswana people split into various tribes over the following thousand years as migrations within the region continued, culminating in the Difaqane in the late 18th century. European contact first occurred in 1816, which led to the Christianization of the region. Facing threats from German South West Africa and the Afrikaners, the most influential Tswana chiefs negotiated the creation of a protectorate under the United Kingdom in 1885. The British divided the territory into tribal reserves for each of the major chiefs to rule, giving the chiefs more power than they had previously, but it otherwise exercised only limited direct control over the protectorate. The British government took a more active role beginning in the 1930s. Botswana supported British involvement in World War II and many fought as part of the African Auxiliary Pioneer Corps. A power struggle took place in the 1950s between the Ngwato chief Seretse Khama and his regent Tshekedi Khama. Seretse's marriage to a white woman, Ruth Williams Khama, led the British to ban him from the protectorate. He returned in 1956 with popular support, and tribes moved toward elected government as an independence movement formed. A national legislature was created in 1961, and political parties were formed. Seretse became the leader of the Bechuanaland Democratic Party, which was endorsed by the British government to lead post-independence, and it saw overwhelming support in the first election in 1965. The Republic of Botswana was granted full independence in 1966. With a strong mandate, Seretse and his party implemented liberal democracy and began developing infrastructure in what was one of the world's poorest nations. Extensive diamond deposits were discovered in 1969, causing a massive reorganisation of Botswana's economy. The Debswana mining company was created in 1978, and Botswana became the world's fastest growing economy. The HIV/AIDS pandemic became a crisis in Botswana in the 1980s, and the 1990s came with the introduction of political factionalism after the political scandal of the Kgabo Commission. The Botswana Democratic Party remained the dominant party from independence until the Umbrella for Democratic Change won the 2024 general election. == Pre-colonial history == === Prehistory === Present-day Botswana was primarily forest ten million years ago and the rivers were much larger than they are in the present, flowing into the massive paleolake, Lake Makgadikgadi. Homo erectus lived in the region during the Early Stone Age. Stone tools in present-day Botswana, such as Acheulean axes, date back to two million years ago. Hominin migration to the Kalahari Desert is estimated to have happened prior to Marine Isotope Stage 6, 186,000 years ago. Lake Makgadikgadi began to shrink approximately 50,000 years ago. The ancestors of the Khoe and San peoples—unrelated peoples who are referred to collectively as the Khoisan or Sarwa peoples—lived in present-day Botswana by approximately 40,000 to 30,000 years ago. They may have been the first humans to enter the Late Stone Age. They established themselves around rivers during drier periods of history but spread throughout the region during wetter periods. They are known to have inhabited the areas around Lake Makgadikgadi, as well as Tsodilo and ≠Gi. Other peoples such as the Nata, Shua, and Xani are believed to have arrived after the Khoe and San. Rock art dates back to approximately 30,000 years ago, and virtually all permanent water supplies were associated with early humans 20,000 years ago. More detailed study of southern Africa in the Stone Age has been limited. The various peoples of the region were hunter-gatherers who remained in small groups and engaged in trade with one another. It is believed that each groups was a collection of related families holding a specific territory, led by the eldest man of its head family. Men hunted large animals, while women gathered plants and caught small animals. The groups intermarried and practiced a dowry system, xaro. === Ancient history === Approximately 2,000 years ago, the peoples of the region brought cattle and sheep to present-day Botswana and began making pottery. Agriculture developed during this time and the peoples began settling in villages, which rose and fell as the climate and cattle raids caused livestock access to fluctuate. Among the earliest crops were pearl millet, finger millet, sorghum, Bambara groundnuts, cowpeas, and cucurbits. The first Bantu people arrived in the region between 2,000 and 1,500 years ago, and it was once believed that they had first introduced livestock to the area. The Kgalagadi people were the first of the Bantu peoples to settle in present-day Botswana, arriving . The first Tswana people (singular Motswana, plural Batswana) are estimated to have arrived c. 400 CE. These Bantu peoples brought iron and copper tools to the region and settled along permanent waterways. === Post-classical period === The Taukome people arrived in present-day Botswana by the 7th century, and their possession of glass beads indicates early connection to Indian Ocean trade. The number of livestock kept in the area increased significantly between the 8th century and the 10th century. The Tswana people organised themselves into a tribal government, called a morafe (plural merafe), each led by a chief called a kgosi (plural dikgosi). This system produced a more hierarchical government relative to others in the region. Cattle became a central part of society in the region, and ownership of cattle denoted one's status. The early history of the Tswana people remains largely unknown because little archaeological evidence has been left. Trade routes connected tribes throughout the Kalahari Desert by 900 CE, and access to the Indian Ocean trade expanded in the region over the 10th century. The Toutswe people became the predominant group in present-day Botswana during the 11th and 12th centuries as they became wealthier through ownership of cattle. Specularite mining became widespread during this period. The value of products fluctuated during this period as expanding trade with foreign nations and the discovery of gold took interest away from specularite and animal products like ivory. One tribe in Tsodilo was particularly influential in the trade of specularite until it fell at the end of the 12th century. The tribes in southeastern Botswana were far removed from these developments and remained largely unaffected. Neighbouring present-day Botswana during the 11th and 12th centuries were the people of Leopard's Kopje, who formed the Kingdom of Mapungubwe and projected influence throughout the region. Their influence declined by the 13th century, and they were replaced as the regional power by Great Zimbabwe as the gold trade became a driving factor in the region's economy. It controlled many of the tribes that existed in what is now northeastern Botswana. After the fall of Great Zimbabwe in the 15th century, several other states developed. The Kingdom of Butua, formed by the Kalanga peoples, was established on the present-day Botswana–Zimbabwe border. Migration of Tswana peoples through present-day Botswana occurred over the following centuries as they were displaced by native and colonial populations from the south. Large migrations of Kalanga and Sotho–Tswana peoples into present-day Botswana occurred during the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Kalanga peoples controlled the land between the Motloutse River and the Makgadikgadi Pan until the 18th century. The Hurutshe, Kgatla, and Kwena peoples split from the Phofu dynasty in the Transvaal region amid drought and hereditary conflicts, eventually migrating north to present-day Botswana. === Early modern period === The Tswana people had a presence throughout present-day Botswana by 1600. Some peoples of the region remained in the Late Stone Age until about this time. According to oral tradition, the pastoralist Herero and Mbanderu peoples split from the Mbunda people in the 17th century as Tswana cattle raids scattered the groups. Oral tradition also holds that the Yeyi people migrated from the upper Chobe River into the Okavango Delta in the 18th century, though contact between the Yeyi and the Khoe may have existed much longer. Different Tswana tribes were able to separate and form independently from one another as the region's primary asset, cattle, is easily transported. The western tribes were especially prone to separation because of the large distances between towns and farmlands. They were often the targets of raids by the Griqua people. The first Tswana state was formed by the Ngwaketse people in the mid-18th century. Subsequent states were formed by the Kwena people, the Ngwato people, and the Tawana people over the following decades. With these came the development of the mophato (plural mephato), a militia regiment organised by age group, among the eastern Tswana peoples in the 1750s. Two Kgatla peoples, the Kgafela people and the Tlokwa people, joined together at this time and seized control over the area surrounding Pilanesberg in present-day South Africa. They subjugated several peoples in the region and twice won conflicts against the Fokeng people. The use of mephato spread to the western Tswana peoples by the end of the century. It was never widely adopted in the south. === The Difaqane === The Difaqane, a period of conflict and displacement in southern Africa, took place during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. During this time, the Tswana people were subject to raids by many groups, including the Ndebele, the Kololo, the Ngoni, the Pedi, and the Voortrekkers. Most Tswana groups opted to retreat instead of fight. This triggered extensive migration across the region, causing the Tswana tribes to more thoroughly spread and establish a stronger presence throughout the territory of present-day Botswana. They settled primarily in the hardveld that makes up the eastern region of present-day Botswana. The Kwena and Ngwaketse peoples migrated from Transvaal to the sandveld. The first of the Kgatla peoples to settle in present-day Botswana, the Mmanaana people, migrated from South Africa in the early 19th century before settling in Moshupa and Thamaga. Only some of the northwestern Tswana peoples were spared displacement or interruption. The Kololo people attacked the northwestern Tswana peoples in 1826, forcing the Kwena and Ngwaketse from their respective territories. Sebogo, the regent of the Ngwaketse tribe, raised 4,000 men in their mephato and surrounded Dithubaruba where the Kololo were residing. Killing the warriors and the civilians, they permanently expelled the Kololo from the region. The tribes reestablished their states in the 1840s, founding several towns and villages of varying sizes. Governance was based around the kgotla, a deliberative forum in which the chief or a regional leader heard the concerns of most male citizens before making decisions. === European missionaries === European missionaries first arrived in present-day Botswana in 1816 through the London Missionary Society. This and other missionary groups worked to convert the chiefs to Christianity and to build missionary schools. The missionary Robert Moffat set his mission station on the border of present-day Botswana as a barrier against the Boers so they could not move further inward. Moffat published the first Setswana language text with a uniform orthography when he began translating Christian texts and wrote a Setswana dictionary. Both the Old and New Testaments could be read in Setswana by 1857. The 19th century Tswana people used several economic ideas that were rare in southern Africa, including credit, service contracts, and the mafisa system of the rich loaning cattle to the poor in exchange for labour. They also had a conception of private property by the mid-19th century, and both married men and married women were entitled to land rights. The men typically herded cattle while the women grew crops. Sorghum was the region's most commonly grown crop in the 19th century. Land was widely available, but droughts meant that farming was inconsistent. British traders arrived in the 1830s and engaged in transactions with the chiefs. The influx of European settlers nearby allowed the Tswana tribes to incorporate themselves into the global economy. Chief Sechele I of the Kwena people took advantage of the new trading routes, securing control of British trade for his tribe. The Scottish missionary David Livingstone arrived in Botswana in 1845, where he established the Kolobeng Mission. This was the beginning of heavier European involvement in the Tswana tribes as they established intercontinental trade routes. Westernised fashion was adopted in urban areas through the rest of the century and combined with traditional clothing. In another effort to thwart the Boers, Livingstone provided firearms to the Kwena people. Sechele was the first person who Livingstone converted to Christianity, and the chief subsequently offered to convert his head men using rhinoceros-hide whips. The Tswana peoples faced conflict from other groups in the region, peaking in the 1850s. Many Batswana, particularly the Kwena and Ngwato tribes, fought against Afrikaners and Zulu tribes in the eastern Kalahari Desert. The Kwena and the Mmanaana fought against Boers from Transvaal in 1852, defending their territory and ending the nation's westward expansion. The Batswana saw missionary groups as a means of refuge from invaders, incentivising conversion to Christianity. Sechele requested a British protectorate in 1853 to end regional conflicts, but he was denied. European visitors became more common in the mid-19th century as hunters, explorers, and traders sought profit and adventure in the region. Many wrote travel books about the area, which were some of the only non-academic publications about present-day Botswana at the time. By the 1860s, migration out of the region increased as Batswana men travelled to work in South African mines. The discovery of the Tati Goldfields triggered the first European gold rush of Southern Africa in 1868. An early mining camp established in the 1870s expanded greatly as it became a major railway hub between Cape Province and Bulawayo, becoming Botswana's first major city, Francistown. At this point in Botswana's history, the major chiefs were all Christian. A war between the Kwena and the Kgafela in 1875. By the end of the decade, chief Khama III of the Ngwato people seized control of British trade from the Kwena people. == Bechuanaland Protectorate == === Formation of the protectorate === The United Kingdom feared increasing German influence in the region, and it agreed to form the Bechuanaland Protectorate. The British wished to preserve its influence over the Tswana tribes, as they provided a connection between southern and central Africa. Tswana chiefs feared encroachment by German South West Africa and the Afrikaners, and they believed that the alternative to British control was settler colonialism by Germany. They also wished to avoid falling under the control of South Africa or mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, though the protectorate still found itself dependent on South Africa economically. The region was divided into tribal land ruled by the chiefs and crown land controlled by the United Kingdom. Eight tribes were recognised by the British upon the creation of the protectorate. The largest four were given tribal reserves: the Kwena, the Ngwaketse, the Ngwato, and the Tawana. Three smaller ones were also recognised: the Kgatla, the Tlokwa, and the Malete. The eighth, the Tshidi, were given a reserve crossing the border between the protectorate and South Africa. While members of non-Tswana minorities were allowed to participate in Tswana society and governance, they were given no tribal reserves of their own. The introduction of tribal reserves altered the nature of Tswana governance, as tribes had previously been less defined and subject to expansion or shifting. With territories divided into tribal jurisdictions, residents were no longer able to easily leave a tribe. The protectorate initially extended to the Ngwato, reaching from 22 degrees south to the Molopo River, but it was extended to 18 degrees south to reach the Chobe River in 1890. This provided the British more labourers under its jurisdiction and created a larger barrier to limit German colonisation. Other Tswana peoples lived to the south of the protectorate and were later absorbed into South Africa. The Kgafela people settled in Mochudi in 1887. This Kgatla group quickly became influential in the region and its name became synonymous with Kgatla. British soldiers led by Charles Warren arrived in 1891 to formally establish the protectorate. Its government was defined, and a commissioner was appointed as its head. The commissioner was given broad powers over the protectorate, so long as he respected previously established tribal law. Its capital was the South African city of Vryburg, meaning that the colonial rulers did not reside in the protectorate and had little direct involvement in its affairs. Instead, the high commissioner operated through two assistant commissioners, and a district commissioner facilitated contact with the various tribes. The centralisation of British rule in South Africa meant that the Bechuanaland Protectorate was economically dependent on it. The British government believed the Bechuanaland Protectorate to be only a temporary entity and expected that it would soon be absorbed by a British colony. In the meantime, it believed that a self-sufficient protectorate would cost less to maintain. For these reasons, the colonial administration imposed very little direct control of the Bechuanaland Protectorate. The chiefs benefited from these affairs and were able to empower and enrich themselves; they retained broad autonomy, but colonial backing meant that they no longer needed the consent of the tribes to maintain rule. Tribal rule became autocratic, which led to human rights abuses and discrimination against women and ethnic minorities. === Early years of the protectorate === The British planned to eventually incorporate the Bechuanaland Protectorate into the Union of South Africa. In the years after the protectorate's creation, the United Kingdom entered talks with Cecil Rhodes to absorb it into the British South Africa Company. In response, three of the most influential chiefs—Khama III of the Ngwato, Sebele I of the Kwena, and Bathoen I of the Ngwaketse—made a diplomatic trip to the United Kingdom in 1895 and convinced the government not to complete the deal. This set a precedent of chiefs interacting with the British as a unified group and enshrined these three figures as early figures in Botswana's history as a single nation. Rhodes's handling of the failed Jameson Raid discouraged the British and negotiations were postponed indefinitely. The celebration of these chiefs resulted in the publication of Three Great African Chiefs: Khamé, Sebéle and Bathoeng by the London Missionary Society the same year. This text introduced a founding myth that their three respective tribes were created by three brothers. Also in 1895, the capital was moved from Vryburg to another South African city, Mafeking, and the Ancient Ruins Company was registered to dig up prehistoric ruins in Bechuanaland and Rhodesia in search for gold. The protectorate was heavily affected by the 1890s African rinderpest epizootic, losing large portions of its livestock and wild game. The protectorate's railroad was built in 1897 as the main north–south transit line. When the United Kingdom raised the Pioneer Column to go to war with the Ndebele people, Khama III of the Ngwato assisted by sending soldiers. Botswana became a staging ground for the Jameson Raid in 1896. The Kgatla tribe was later part of the Boer War, fighting alongside the British Army. The early colonial economy of the Bechuanaland Protectorate remained much the same as the pre-colonial economy. The United Kingdom primarily used the protectorate as a supply of labour, offering high wages to Batswana who migrated south to work in mines. Taxes were also imposed, beginning with a hut tax in 1899, which was then replaced by a poll tax in 1909. A native tax was later imposed in 1919. Colonial taxes in the Bechuanaland Protectorate were higher than those in neighbouring colonies, causing mass exodus to the south, and the chiefs allowed more generous power sharing with citizens to incentivise them to stay. The United Kingdom considered integrating the protectorate into South Africa as it unified its southern African colonies, but it ultimately grouped them economically by creating the South African Customs Union, joining in 1910. Membership entitled the protectorate to only 2% of the union's revenue. By 1910, all Tswana tribes had adopted Christianity. Bechuanaland sent several hundred soldiers to assist the British Army during World War I. The London Missionary Society found itself in decline at this time, and it gradually lost influence over the protectorate. Sebele II became chief of the Kwena in 1918, succeeding his father, Sechele II. Sechele II had conflicted with the dominant London Missionary Society, permitting an Anglican presence and reinstating many traditional practices such as polygyny, rainmaking, and bogwera. Sebele II continued his father's challenge to the London Missionary Society, to the grievance of the British government. The dual government of the chiefs and the colonial administration made administration difficult, so the administration created two advisory councils to standardise these authorities. The Native Advisory Council (later the African Advisory Council) was established in 1919. This annual meeting of the chiefs and other influential people in the protectorate allowed the British government to hear from and manage the tribes collectively instead of individually. Khama III of the Ngwato refused to participate, citing weak enforcement of alcohol prohibition in southern tribe. Khama III died in 1923 and was succeeded by Sekgoma II, who served until his own death in 1926. Sekgoma's son Seretse Khama was still an infant, so Tshekedi Khama became regent. Tshekedi came to be recognised as a representative for all of the Tswana tribes. As Seretse grew, Tshekedi insisted that he be given a liberal education rather than be sent to a Rhodesian industrial school. === Development and increased British influence === In the 1920s, chief Isang Pilane of the Kgatla people oversaw the Bechuanaland Protectorate's first major water development scheme, having sixteen boreholes drilled, seven of which became successful water supplies. These became more common over the following decades as the British government took interest in expanding the protectorate's economy. By the 1930s, Isang Pilane and the Native Advisory Council privatised the boreholes, as they were not maintained under collective ownership. A severe drought occurred in the early 1930s, killing over 60% of the protectorate's cattle. The British government took a more active role in the protectorate's governance beginning in 1930. That year, it began providing direct funding to the protectorate. Charles Rey was appointed Resident Commissioner of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and he was responsible for reorganising the economy around cattle exports. An initiative to reform the protectorate toward mining and commercial agricultural development was attempted but saw push back from the chiefs. Resident Commissioner Rey came into conflict with chief Sebele II, having him exiled in 1931. Sebele II was replaced by his younger brother, Kgari. Further initiatives were attempted by the British government in 1934 to constrain the unchecked power of the chiefs following the overthrow of Sebele II. These initiatives mandated advisory councils that chiefs had to consult and required that the British government be given access to court records. Chief Bathoen II of Ngwaketse and regent Tshekedi Khama of Ngwato issued a legal challenge to these initiatives. Although the British court ruled against the challenge, the new policies were never fully implemented. Other restrictions were adopted through colonial proclamation to limit the ability of the chiefs to levy taxes and seize stray cattle. A new resident commissioner, Charles Arden-Clarke, was appointed in 1936 and worked more closely with the chiefs. === Early years of World War II === Fears of German attack in Bechuanaland grew in the lead up to World War II due to its strategic position between Britain's central and southern colonies in Africa. 11 days before war was declared, the British government warned the protectorate to be on standby, and military forces were organised. Four days after Britain declared war on Germany, Resident Commissioner Arden-Clarke held a meeting with the chiefs where they pledged full support for the war effort. The next day, the high commission issued a proclamation of emergency powers that gave it total control over public activity in the protectorate, but the chiefs were informed that they would be responsible for most enforcement and peacekeeping. The earliest years of World War II had almost no effect on the people of Bechuanaland, and many only had a vague idea that the war existed. The colonial administration shrank as large numbers of white residents enlisted in the British Army. Those who remained were focused on security planning in case southern Africa became another front in the war. Against the wishes of the chiefs, the colonial administration encouraged Batswana who wished to serve with the British Army to enlist with the South African Native Military Corps. About 700 Batswana men enlisted with the group. Maintaining the Bechuanaland Protectorate became a low priority for the United Kingdom during the Great Depression and World War II, and the protectorate received no funding from the United Kingdom during the war. The British Empire had relatively little control over Bechuanaland compared to its other territories, and British efforts to control wartime production in the protectorate were unsuccessful. The war drastically altered the protectorate's economy as it went on, introducing shortages, rationing, and higher prices. Profiteering and price gouging were common, and the colonial administration, unable to enforce price controls, resorted to gentlemen's agreements with traders. Taxes were raised and Colonial Development Fund projects were curtailed at the onset of World War II to establish financial independence from the empire. The Control of Livestock Industry Proclamation No. 1 of 1940 was passed to tax cattle, the protectorate's main industry, but it met overwhelming resistance from Batswana and the European Advisory Council. A war fund operated in Bechuanaland, and although the United Kingdom expected that donations be voluntary, chiefs invoked their authority over their tribes to enforce donations. It was replaced by a levy in 1941, but this was less popular and proved difficult to enforce. === Batswana participation in World War II === Military recruitment began in Bechuanaland in 1941. About 5,500 men were trained and sent to war within the first six months. Another 5,000 Batswana men joined the war in 1942. In total, approximately 11,000 soldiers from Bechuanaland fought alongside the British Army during the war. Over 10,000 of these served in the British Army's African Auxiliary Pioneer Corps. The chiefs traditionally had the right to conscript soldiers, and they ignored the colonial government's wishes that military service should be entirely voluntary. Regent Tshekedi Khama of Ngwato made himself unpopular by using military conscription as a tool for control, weaponising it to silence critics and political opponents. Men who wished to avoid conscription sometimes fled to South Africa or to remote areas like the Okavango Delta swamps and the Kgalagadi bush. Others used more immediate precautions, such as digging holes when recruiters visited. The chiefs wished to leverage their participation in the war for additional rights within the British Empire, and they feared that British defeat would make them subjects of Germany or South Africa, a fate they wished to avoid. The war effort was also an opportunity to reclaim Tswana men who had migrated to South Africa for mining jobs; the chiefs wished to end this practice and felt they could do so by offering military jobs. Some military pay was deferred to the families of soldiers, and limitations on exports were lifted during the war, causing an influx of money into Bechuanaland. Relative to other nations in the British Empire, the people of Beschuanaland approved of the war. Many Batswana held a sense of loyalty to the empire or felt that their interests were aligned. Some chiefs, such as Kgari Sechele II of the Kwena and Molefi Pilane of the Kgatla, personally enlisted. They served as regimental sergeant majors, the highest rank available to Batswana. Toward the end of World War II, the colonial government allowed Batswana to have business licenses and operate within the protectorate. This had previously been restricted to whites and Indians. The High Commissions Territories Corps was stationed in the Middle East from 1946 to 1949. === Independence movement === The end of World War II came with drastic social change. The chiefs came to be seen as less essential to social structure, and many gave up their universal claims over tribal cattle. Other public resources, such as land and labour, were privatised and commodified. Access to education created a class of liberal intellectuals who opposed the rule of the chiefs and began forming their own centres of power in workers' associations and civic groups. By 1946, only 2% of the population had employment outside of agriculture and services. The protectorate saw a major increase in birth rates as part of the mid-20th century baby boom in the years after World War II, accompanied by an increase in life expectancy. The colonial administration began its first development project in the protectorate, a slaughterhouse, in the 1950s. The British, still expecting to merge the protectorate into South Africa, finally scrapped this plan after the beginning of Apartheid. As efforts began to develop a new path for the protectorate's future, the protectorate was placed in a state of limbo, and no path forward was clear. One proposal was to incorporate it into the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which the United Kingdom formed under a policy of "multi-racial partnership". When the Ngwato heir Seretse Khama came of age, regent Tshekedi Khama attempted to hold on to power. Seretse married a white woman, Ruth Williams, while studying in the United Kingdom, causing scandal in the Ngwato royal family. Though the public initially opposed the marriage, Tshekedi's unpopularity shifted opinion in Seretse's favour. The issue was raised in the kgotla in 1949, and Tshekedi's rule was overwhelmingly rejected by thousands in attendance. Tshekedi and his supporters fled to the Kwena in exile. The British government was less tolerant of Seretse's marriage to a white woman. In an attempt to appease the Apartheid government of South Africa, it banished the couple from the protectorate in 1950. This provoked a burgeoning nationalist movement among Seretse's supporters in the protectorate, which fully emerged in 1952. During Seretse's absence, the United Kingdom placed the district commissioner in charge for four years before appointing Rasebolai Kgamane, a supporter of Tshekedi, as regent. The Ngwato tribe rebelled against Seretse's banishment. His supporters petitioned for his return, and riots broke out when they were denied. Seretse was eventually allowed to return in 1956. By this time, the stricter racial segregation in Apartheid South Africa dissuaded the United Kingdom from appeasing it. Throughout the ordeal of Seretse's banishment, power shifted away from the chiefdomship and toward electoral bodies. Tshekedi and Seretse made peace upon Seretse's return, and Seretse became the de facto leader of the Ngwato, though the United Kingdom forbade him from being the official chief. With British support, the Ngwato tribe developed a tribal council, of which both Seretse and Tshekedi were members. Other tribes then established similar tribal councils, which served as checks on the power of the chiefs. Some animosity remained between the two men: Tshekedi wished to retain the tribal government and the power of the chiefs, while Seretse envisioned a representative democracy and weaker chiefs. The amount of power invested in the chiefs became the most contentious issue in the burgeoning independence movement, especially among the Ngwato people and the Khama family. The Bechuanaland Protectorate Federal Party was the first political party formed in the protectorate when it was created by the Ngwato union leader Leetile Disang Raditladi in 1959. Composed primarily of elites and intellectuals, it advocated a unification of the Tswana tribes. The party failed to gain support and was short-lived. The following year, the Bechuanaland People's Party (BPP, later the Botswana People's Party) was created as a more radical party, objecting to traditional tribal government and gaining appeal among migrant workers. It was led by Motsamai Mpho, Philip Matante, and Kgalemang Morsete. The BPP, created as a Tswana counterpart to the African National Congress party of South Africa, supported immediate independence and the total abolition of chiefdom. Fearing that the BPP would undermine the existing government and ignite tensions with the Apartheid government of South Africa, the chiefs and the British government restricted its ability to meet. The protectorate's tribes collectively formed a legislative council in 1961. The Kwena people found themselves under a regent, Neale Sechele, in 1963, meaning that they had little political influence as the independence movement developed. The Bechuanaland Protectorate Development Plan 1963/1968 was drafted through a deliberative process in 1963, creating an outline for the nation's independence. As the population was politically inactive overall, the United Kingdom came to be one of the leading forces toward independence. Worrying that the BPP was too radical, the United Kingdom encouraged its preferred leader, Seretse Khama, to form a political party. Though Khama agreed with the BPP's antiracist and republican values, he opposed its dogmatic approach to politics and its acceptance of socialism. He agreed to give up his claim over the Ngwato people to serve as a politician, forming the Bechuanaland Democratic Party (BDP, later the Botswana Democratic Party) in 1962. The BDP established itself as the "party of chiefs", and it adopted ideas associated with pre-colonial tribal rule. The United Kingdom supported the BDP, understanding that it would maintain the colonial era livestock trade. By 1963, the Kgatla chief Linchwe was the only chief who opposed the BDP and had political influence, but the Kgatla people were in favour of the BDP, so he remained apolitical. A transition process began with BDP expected to rule an independent Botswana, and the colonial government worked with BDP leadership to prepare them for running a nation. A conference was held in 1963 to oversee the creation of a new constitution. Internal strife within the BPP meant that the BDP had the most influence over the process. Tshekedi Khama had died by this time, so Bathoen II became the leader of the pro-federalisation faction, believing it would keep power in the hands of the chiefs. The United Kingdom and the Batswana politicians endorsed a unitary national government because Botswana was too poor to divide its resources and because a lack of centralisation would make it vulnerable to attacks from other nations. Federalisation proved politically unviable, so a compromise was made that the chiefs would form the House of Chiefs, an advisory body within the Parliament of Botswana. The chiefs still opposed this arrangement, and in a movement led by Bathoen, the House of Chiefs passed a vote of no confidence in the new government, but its lack of political power prevented it from leveraging meaningful reform. The District Council's Act was passed as another means of limiting chiefs power by creating councils to preside over each district and town, making these elected bodies the primary local authorities. Gaborone was built in 1965 and declared the new capital. It was built on British crown land, which provided a neutral location not controlled by any one tribe. The constitution was implemented the same year. With this in effect, the United Kingdom granted the protectorate self-governance. 1965 also saw the passing of the District Councils Act that adapted the colonial role of district commissioner by tying it to newly created district councils, and it saw the establishment of the state-owned National Development Bank. Mpho split from the BPP to create the Bechuanaland Independence Party (BIP) in 1965. Led by Seretse Khama and Quett Masire, the BDP campaigned in almost every village in the protectorate leading up to the first general election. Unlike other political figures in Bechuanaland, Seretse Khama had appeal across the different tribes. The BDP was subsequently elected to lead the first government. The BPP won only three seats in the legislature, and the BIP failed to win any. After the election, the Botswana National Front (BNF) was created as a unified opposition to the BDP. Founded by Kenneth Koma, the BNF became the BDP's largest rival. The BDP chose Khama as the nation's prime minister. Unlike most inaugural political parties in Africa, the BDP was a moderate conservative party instead of a radical anti-colonial party. After its formation, the House of Chiefs delivered a vote of no confidence in the constitution in 1966, leading to a national campaign in support of the constitution that garnered enough support for the chiefs to end their efforts to challenge it. The protectorate was granted independence as the Republic of Botswana in 1966. == Republic of Botswana == === Botswana in 1966 === Independence for Botswana meant the implementation of liberal democracy, bringing about elections, human rights protections, and civil service. This allowed for a merit-based system of promotion and the creation of a technocratic bureaucracy. The nation formed a government adapted from the Westminster system, and Prime Minister Seretse Khama became President Seretse Khama. A national identity was crafted, bringing together disparate ethnic groups in a single Tswana label, with a culture based on that of the Tswana tribes. Botswana retained much of its pre-colonial tribal institutions after independence. This was an effect of both the strong centralised government associated with the Tswana tribes and the relatively limited intervention of the British government in colonial times. The deliberative nature of the nation's politics before and after independence was an exception to many other African nations that became authoritarian after independence. Instead of abolishing the chiefdom, the new government incorporated it into the legal system, giving the chiefs judicial powers through the kgotla, subject to appellate courts. A tradition of subservience to leadership, once given to the chiefs, shifted to the presidency. The government reinforced its stability by staffing its civil service with foreign experts, as opposed to other new African countries that often expelled foreign experts. This preserved a Western-style bureaucratic government with an emphasis on development. The United Kingdom continued funding Botswana for the first five years of its existence. Its peaceful, democratic status relative to other African nations meant that it received more aid from Western organisations. At the time of independence, Botswana was an extremely poor nation, more so than most others in Africa. It did not have an educated workforce, with only 40 citizens having university degrees, and there were no known natural resource supplies to support the nation. Botswana was dependent on the Apartheid regime in South Africa for access to the global community, and the majority of Botswana's labourers were migrant workers in South Africa. Botswana came into more direct conflict with Rhodesia, which caused military skirmishes until 1978. Limited British involvement meant that little development had taken place since colonisation. Literacy was at 25%, and only 10 kilometres of paved road existed. Approximately 90% of the population was in abject poverty, and most of the population were cattle farmers or subsistence farmers. As the nation achieved independence, a severe drought eliminated 30–50% of the cattle population. Approximately half of Batswana were dependent on the World Food Programme to avoid starvation. Other nations had low expectations for Botswana, and throughout Africa it was seen as an Apartheid Bantustan. This relationship with Apartheid was also a factor in Botswana's success as an independent nation: the Batswana leadership wished to avoid the same fate as South Africa should the nation fail, and the diplomatic connections formed with the West to prevent subsumption by South Africa meant that Botswana was more trusting of Western powers and willing to accept their assistance. The early leadership of Botswana was dominated by the ruling tribal families as well as a small number of highly educated public servants. Their economic and ideological similarities meant that the government remained stable without political infighting. Though Bathoen left his position as chief to pursue politics, most other chiefs accepted their reduced political power in the new government. Further activity of the chiefs was regulated by the Chieftainship Act of 1966. A lack of corruption gave the state more legitimacy and won the favour of Western allies. Unlike most newly formed African nations, much of the leadership came from the agricultural community, meaning that their interests aligned with the majority. This encouraged the new government to retain colonial-era policies that benefited cattle farmers. The Botswana Meat Commission was created to regulate the beef industry. The BDP's pan-tribal appeal and the mutual interest in establishing independence further incentivised the new government to act in the interest of the majority. Small groups of white settlers remained in the country and objected to its independence. Though they would later be crucial in Botswana's development, mineral rights were given low priority upon independence, and the tribes transferred them to the central government in 1967. === Presidency of Seretse Khama === Khama was widely popular and seen as the natural leader of all the Tswana peoples. His administration implemented policies geared toward the creation of infrastructure and public goods, particularly the paving of roads. He began the construction of schools, slaughterhouses, and boreholes that continued over the following decades. Inhabited land of both the Tswana and the San was used to construct the boreholes. Development came at the expense of commerce and production, which was limited to the funding of livestock. Considerable focus was placed on nourishing cattle and constructing slaughterhouses to stimulate the beef industry amid a draught. Public welfare programs were also established. The discovery of diamonds ensured that these programs received sufficient funding. These investments and a conservative approach to government spending prevented the Dutch disease scenario that crippled other resource-laden African countries. Education was expanded throughout the nation, and the Tswana language was standardised alongside English at the expense of other languages. Khama justified this as a means to achieve unity. Quett Masire served as Vice-President under Seretse Khama as well as Minister of Finance. He exercised control over the nation's budgeting and spending by creating a series of National Development Plans, subject to the approval of the National Assembly and the Economic Committee of the Cabinet. Iterations of these plans remained a central facet of government policy well after Khama and Masire's successors took office. In 1967, diamonds were discovered in Botswana by the South African diamond company De Beers, and operations began shortly after. Copper deposits were found in Selebi-Phikwe that year, further revealing the nation's mineral wealth. The government partnered with De Beers in 1969 to carry out larger diamond mining operations, and it was involved with a renegotiation of the Southern African Customs Union the same year to greatly improve its economic leverage in the region. A mine in Morupule began producing coal in 1973, providing the nation with a large share of its power supply. The Orapa diamond mine was opened in Orapa in 1971, and a revenue sharing agreement was finalised between the government and De Beers in 1974. Masire later confirmed that De Beers had funded his private ventures, causing speculation that the company may have received an advantageous deal in the matter. The Water Act and the Tribal Land Act were enacted in 1968, creating the Water Apportionment Board and twelve land boards, respectively. These oversaw the apportionment of water and land rights by the state rather than through the ownership of each tribe. Through this, they effectively subsumed the traditional powers of the chiefs. The Tribal Grazing Lands Policy was implemented in 1975 to prevent overgrazing, but it proved unsuccessful. In effect, it allowed wealthy citizens to claim large plots of land for cattle at the expense of less wealthy citizens. The first election after independence took place in 1969. The BDP did slightly worse relative to its 1965 performance, and Vice-President Masire lost his seat to Bathoen, requiring him to take a specially elected seat. The BPP faded in relevance as the politics of Botswana developed. The state-owned Botswana Development Corporation was founded in 1970, and the Orapa diamond mine opened in 1971. By 1973, diamonds made up 10% of Botswana's GDP, and by the end of the 1970s, mining was the largest industry in the country. The government of Botswana renegotiated its mining agreement with De Beers between 1971 and 1975, shifting the majority of earnings to the nation. As the diamond economy developed and investments were made back into the country, Botswana escaped poverty and came to be seen as a success among the other nations in post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa. These developments made Botswana the fastest growing economy in the world. The upper and middle classes saw the most benefit, increasing wealth inequality, but it also meant taxes could be lowered, which earned the support of peasants. Botswana's development and its use of foreign civil service was successful enough that the government convinced the United States to send the Peace Corps without traditional limitations on what roles the organisation can perform. With the 1970s came an increase in young locally educated Batswana, who became more influential in government. As these newcomers received similar education and began working in the same administrative culture, there was no major operational difference between the foreigner-led civil service and that run by the Batswana. The Ministry of Development Planning had briefly existed following a schism in the Ministry of Finance between traditional caretakers who had been associated with the protectorate against Masire's supporters who wished to see more aggressive development. The latter took control, and the ministries were reunified as the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning in 1970. Because of the limited number of qualified people to manage the economy, this ministry took almost full control of the government's spending and initiated the Shashe Project that called for extensive development exceeding the country's GDP. This included the establishment of a copper and nickel mining complex, which became the government's highest priority. In 1973, Seepapitso IV became the first chief to be suspended from his position in the post-colonial era. The BDP was again highly successful in the 1974 election. Minimum wages were introduced the same year. Botswana began issuing its own currency, the Botswana pula, in 1976. Bank of Botswana governor Quill Hermans pushed for financial disentanglement from South Africa and its South African rand. Despite international concerns that Botswana might not be able to maintain its own currency, Khama felt that his economic advisors were capable and trusted their decision. Within a decade of independence, Botswana was one of the wealthiest nations in the Third World. The economic transformation is referred to as Botswana's "miracle". Linchwe II, chief of the Kgatla people, reinstated the bogwera initiation rite for his tribe in 1975, aggravating the national government. Khama took a universalist approach in his administration, avoiding ethnic politics and rejecting the influence of tribal leaders in favour of civil servants. He at times asked individuals to resign if one ethnic group became too influential in the civil service. The Tswana peoples feared that dissent from the Kalanga minority could be destabilising. To addresses this, Khama incorporated educated members of the Kalanga tribe into the government, appointing many to high-ranking positions. The decision was controversial, and it spawned conspiracy theories about malevolent influence of the Kalanga. These sometimes centred on the Bakalanga Students Association, which became the Society for the Promotion of Ikalanga Language in 1980. Fear of neighbouring white-led governments in Namibia, Rhodesia, and South Africa, as well as the danger of the Angolan Civil War, led Botswana to create a national military in 1977. Prior to this, the Botswana Police Service was responsible for national security. The lack of military meant that Botswana was not susceptible to leading causes of instability in other African nations: military coups and corruption through military spending. The military saw combat the following year when Rhodesian militants attacked Leshoma, killing fifteen soldiers. In its partnership with De Beers, the government of Botswana formed the Debswana mining company in 1978, acquiring significant income for the state. Mining became the predominant industry of the nation's economy over the following decades, and Botswana became the world's fastest growing economy. Foreign involvement in the economy became a political issue at this time as outsiders collected on the nation's growth while domestic jobs developed slowly. Cattle farming, which had already been affected by a major outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 1977, lost the significance that it had previously held. === Presidency of Quett Masire === After Seretse Khama's death in 1980, Vice-President Quett Masire became the president of Botswana. Despite concerns about Khama's succession, Masire maintained the government infrastructure he helped build and preserved faith in the government. To appease Khama's Ngwato tribe and the other northern tribes, Masire appointed Khama's cousin, Lenyeletse Seretse, as vice-president. Popular opinion among the Ngwato was that Khama's son, Ian Khama, was entitled to the presidency. Upon Lenyeletse's death in 1983, Masire selected Peter Mmusi to replace him. This time he selected someone from a southern tribe, so as not to set a precedent that the president and vice-president must always be from opposite regions. Botswana was part of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference established in 1980 to create a southern African market. The nation was affected by the early 1980s recession. The Jwaneng diamond mine began operation 1982, becoming the most lucrative diamond mine in the world. The University of Botswana was created the same year when it split from the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. Legal developments in 1982, the Financial Assistance Policy and the legalisation of commercial activity by civil servants, spurred the nation's economy but also loosened regulations that would prevent corruption. As democracy and economic growth proved to be long-term trends, Botswana garnered a reputation as an "African miracle". Strong opposition to the BDP-controlled government first arose in the 1980s. Opposition parties began winning local elections, interest groups began forming, and five major anti-BDP newspapers began publication. Previously dependent on support by specific ethnic groups, the BNF gained support among the working class. By the 1984 general election, it was a competitive opposition party. A severe drought affected Botswana from 1982 to 1987, necessitating government food assistance for about 65% of rural Batswana. Masire's critics associated him with this drought as it coincided with the beginning of his presidency, suggesting that Khama had a divine mandate that Masire did not. Mid-way through the 1980s, the diamond industry reached its peak at 53% of the national GDP. By this time, the nation's economy became strong enough that citizens were no longer incentivised to opt for subsistence agriculture or migration for work in South Africa. Entrepreneurship became more widespread, particularly among former government workers who moved from the public sector to the private sector. Free secondary education was established in 1989. Trade unions and other special interest groups developed in the 1980s to influence public policy, although the government was often unwilling to acknowledge them. It responded to the burgeoning labour movement by passing heavy restrictions on unions in 1983. The decade also introduced movements for the recognition of minority ethnicities, rejecting the national Tswana identity. During the 1980s, South Africa began military incursions into Botswana to seek out South African rebels. In response to the civilian casualties, the government of Botswana increased military spending. It also tasked the military with wildlife protection and anti-poaching enforcement in response to the danger posed by armed poachers. The first case of HIV/AIDS in Botswana was diagnosed in 1985, and over the following decade the country became the most severely affected in the world. Life expectancy in Botswana would drop from 67 to 50 by 1997. A dramatic shift in Botswana's health system followed through the 1980s and 1990s; Western medicine grew more widely respected alongside traditional healing, and private hospitals were established to coexist with the government-run facilities. The early 1990s recession affected Botswana. A landmark constitutional court case brought by Unity Dow ended with a ruling in 1991 that children could inherit citizenship from their mothers as well as their fathers, which was adopted into law with the Citizenship Act of 1995. The Kgabo Commission was held in 1991 to investigate governmental land boards, and it found that ethical violations had been committed by Vice-President Peter Mmusi and BDP Secretary General Daniel Kwelagobe, both of whom were also members of the Cabinet of Botswana. Facing outrage within the government and among the public, both resigned. The fallout created two polarised factions within the party, one led by the two former cabinet members (the Big Two), and one led by their opponents (the Big Five): Festus Mogae, Bihiti Temane, Chapson Butale, Gaositwe Chiepe, and their leader Mompati Merafhe. This built on tensions that had grown between the southern leadership of the BLP and the new generation of politicians from the north. Masire chose Mogae as the new vice-president. Worried about the possibility of normalising corruption, Masire hired the deputy head of the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption (Hong Kong) to create a similar organisation in Botswana. The Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime was created in 1994, and a land board tribunal was created to hear appeals of land board decisions in 1995. The BDP's position as the dominant party received its first serious challenge in light of the Kgabo Commission. The scandal and the resulting schism in the BDP allowed the BNF to become a more competitive opposition party after the 1994 general election. With the added complication of urbanisation reducing the BDP's rural base, opposition parties held a significant minority in the National Assembly. Following Mmusi's death, Kwelagobe aligned with Ponatshego Kedikilwe, and they formed the Barata-Phathi faction of the BDP. The Big Five developed into the A-Team faction. Botswana benefited from the end of the South African Apartheid government in 1994, as the new African-led government did not restrict Botswana's growth or engage in military operations across the border. As the region stabilised, economic developments like shopping malls, property speculation, and citizen-owned tourism expanded. The Ngwaketse tribe came into conflict with the government in April 1994, when minister of local government and lands Patrick Balope accused chief Seepapitso IV of failure to fulfil his duties and ordered the chief's suspension—the second suspension of Seepapitso's rule. Seepapitso's son Leema accepted an appointment to the role, against Seepapitso's wishes. The tribe wrestled with the issue of Leema's ambiguous legitimacy and the fear that tribal culture would not longer be recognised, and the removal became a national issue. Seepapitso filed a legal challenge, and the court ruled on 22 February 1995 that while Seepapitso's removal was legal, Leema's appointment was not. With the power of appointment returned to the tribe, they refused to choose a new leader as a form of protest. The government then relented and allowed Seepapitso to be reinstated. The ritual murder of Segametsi Mogomotsi, a 14-year-old girl from Mochudi, took place in November 1994. Social unrest broke out when the suspects, who were wealthy businessmen and politicians, were released for lack of evidence. Over the following months, student-led protests and riots against the use of occult practices like ritual murder to gain wealth took place. An outbreak of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia in 1995 caused the deaths of 320,000 cattle. The Agriculture Act of 1995 expanded the process of privatising communal land. Minority tribes increasingly pushed for recognition beginning in the 1990s. The government began the removal of San people from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 1995. While it argued that the intention was to help integrate communities that were too remote, and it offered livestock to incentivise cooperation, international organisations accused the government of coercion and forced displacement to make room for mining. The first major legal effort to protect the rights of ethnic minorities came from a 1995 motion in parliament to define the constitution as tribally neutral, but it was tabled. The Kamanakao Association was formed the same year by the academic Lydia Nyati-Ramahobo to protect the rights of the Yeyi people. A series of governmental and electoral reforms were implemented in the final years of Masire's presidency. Election supervision was transferred to an independent body, the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18, postal voting was implemented, and policies were enacted to protect labour rights and gender equality. Masire wished to create a stable order of succession and to ensure that his chosen successor Vice-President Mogae became president, so he worked with the lawyer Parks Tafa to draft a constitutional amendment. This implemented automatic succession and term limits for the presidency. He then forced the amendment through on his own initiative. Reforming the nation's economy, a tentative system of tripartism was implemented to bring together government, the private sector, and labour representatives. When the party was selecting its central committee membership in 1997, the risk of factionalism grew severe enough that Masire cancelled its internal election and had the factions give him lists of names. === Presidency of Festus Mogae === Masire stepped down as president on 1 April 1998, and he was succeeded by Vice-President Festus Mogae. Mogae made the controversial decision to appoint Ian Khama, commander of the army and the son of Seretse Khama, as the next vice-president, passing his choice through by threatening to dissolve parliament. Although they were officially neutral between the factions of the BDP, Mogae and Khama were both understood to be major figures among the A-Team. 1998 saw one of many splits within the BNF opposition party. It had divided into two factions: the conservatives who held socialist beliefs and the progressives who held social democratic beliefs. Violence at the party's congress saw progressives split off into their own party, the Botswana Congress Party (BCP), which became the main opposition party until they lost most of their seats in the 1999 election. This division of the opposition, as well as the civil reforms of the previous years, allowed the BDP to regain some of the seats that it lost in 1994. Several southern members of the BCP's leadership returned to the BNF after all of the top positions were taken by northerners. To raise themselves to the level of the Tswana tribes, the Yeyi people named a paramount chief in 1999, but this went unrecognised by the Chieftainship Act. They brought the issue to the Supreme Court, which struck the relevant provision of the law as discriminatory. Mogae established a commission in 2000 to review minority tribes' representation in the House of Chiefs, which in turn caused protest from those who felt Mogae sought to undermine the power of the chiefs. The commission determined that the House of Chiefs should be retained, and it was renamed to the Setswana Ntlo ya Dikgosi. Other proposed changes were not accepted following pushback from the major Tswana tribes, particularly the Ngwato. The following year, the Kgatla-baga-Mmanaana people saw their chief Gobuamang Gobuamang II formally recognised as a minor kgosi within the Kwena territory where they reside. The Botswana–Namibia border came under dispute in 1999 when both countries claimed a territory in the Caprivi Strip. In the 2000s, Botswana invested heavily in the development of an air force. Botswana Television was established in 2000. The Tsodilo Hills became a World Heritage Site in 2001. The San people issued a legal challenge in 2002 to contest their expulsion from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, but the case was dismissed. Mosadi Seboko of the Lete people became the first female leader of a tribe in 2003. Mogae had one of the government's most prominent critics, Kenneth Good, deported in February 2005. The Three Dikgosi Monument was unveiled in 2005. Mogae considered the nation's HIV/AIDS pandemic to be the most important issue during his presidency. To combat it, he made antiretroviral treatments for HIV/AIDS freely available. === Presidency of Ian Khama === Ian Khama succeeded to the presidency at the end of Mogae's term on 1 April 2008. His style of leadership was advertised as following the "four Ds": democracy, development, dignity, and discipline. After taking office, he restructured the nation's executive in a more hierarchical manner, centralising power around the presidency. Khama placed emphasis on national security in his administration. During his tenure, the Directorate of Intelligence and Security came to be known for politically motivated espionage and arrests against his political opponents. He also appointed several former military figures in his government Botswana was less involved in the African Union during Khama's presidency, instead presenting a more Western-orientated foreign policy. The 2008 financial crisis pressured Botswana's economy, which remained dependent on diamond mines despite the government's efforts. The diamond industry ended a steady decline when it stabilised at about 39% of the nation's GDP in 2009. Regulation of chiefs was reformed in 2008 with the Bogosi Act. Khama supported devolving power to the chiefs in the name of restoring discipline and traditional morality. He issued a directive that increased the legal drinking age to 21, empowered minor tribal leaders to order floggings, created mephato groups to be vigilantes, and reintroduced corporal punishment in schools. Several newly installed chiefs endorsed this policy and implemented stricter punishments for wrongdoers. Among these was Kgafela II, chief of the Kgatla people. To enforce traditional morality among his people, he significantly increased the use of flogging for those who violated the law. Kgafela and others involved were criminally charged for misusing the punishment in 2010, and the court dismissed his claim of immunity, determining that chiefs lack sovereignty and are subject to the constitution. As the BDP chose its party leadership in 2009, Khama appointed numerous A-Team figures to party sub-committees despite the victory of the Barata-Phathi during the party's congress. When the party's secretary general Gomolemo Motswaledi consulted with lawyers to question the legality of Khama's actions, Khama had him suspended from the committee. After taking the issue to court, it was found that the incumbent president is immune from legal prosecution, and Khama suspended Motswaledi from the BDP entirely. In early 2010, Khama suspended and then expelled several other members of the Barata-Phathi faction from the BDP. This led to the BDP's first major split in March when the Barata-Phathi faction left the party to form the Botswana Movement of Democracy. The Public Service Act took effect in 2010, legalising strikes for civil servants under some circumstances. The following year, the Botswana Federation of Public Sector Unions (BOFEPUSU) led a two-month strike among the nation's civil service to demand a 16% pay, and the government responded by removing thousands of employees from their positions. The removals were overseen by Mokgweetsi Masisi, the Minister for Presidential Affairs. To oppose the government's position, BOFEPUSU facilitated a merger of major opposition parties into the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC). This new group was led by Duma Boko, who had taken charge of the BNF in 2010 and moderated its rhetoric. Khama implemented strong conservation reforms during his presidency, especially regarding hunting. While applauded internationally and forming the reputation of Botswana as a "green miracle", they were met with frustration domestically because of the unilateral top-down means they were implemented, especially from those living in the designated conservation areas. These policies included an escalation of military anti-poaching practices; anti-poaching units were equipped with automatic firearms to complement a shoot-to-kill policy against suspected poachers. The BDP retained its majority in the legislature after the following election, but for the first time it did so with only a plurality of the popular vote. Ian Khama then appointed Masisi as his vice-president. The decision was controversial because of Masisi's inexperience relative to other possible choices. According to Mogae, Masisi was chosen with the understanding that he would appoint Tshekedi Khama II as vice-president after taking the presidency himself. Botsalo Ntuane was elected Secretary General of the BDP in 2015 on a platform of anti-corruption and electoral reform. This threatened the entrenched nature of the BDP, and Ntuane found a political rival in Masisi. Khama was hostile to the press, especially toward outlets that disagreed with his administration's actions. He had two journalists charged with sedition in 2017, but the chargers were later dropped. === Presidency of Mokgweetsi Masisi === Masisi became president at the end of Khama's term on 1 April 2018. As the 2019 general election approached, Masisi developed an image to contrast himself from Khama, presenting himself as an anti-corruption figure while supporting the media and BOFEPUSU. His anti-corruption drive resulted in the arrest of Isaac Kgosi, who had led the Directorate of Intelligence and Security in Khama's administration. Masisi proceeded to reverse many of Khama's policies. Among these were the repeal of conservation policies, including a controversial hunting ban that targeted the ivory trade. He also oversaw the decriminalisation of homosexuality. As this developed, Masisi and Khama became rivals instead of allies. Khama attempted to recruit Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi as an alternative BDP candidate against Masisi, and when that failed, he founded his own party, the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF). The BDP reclaimed a majority of the popular vote in 2019, but the election was marred by government pressure and occasional raids against opposition figures. The UDC challenged the results, but they were unsuccessful. Regional trends shifted in 2019 as the BDP lost some of its support in the north while increasing its influence in the south. The election also saw the primary opposition party, the BNF, lose ground to the BCP. Like most nations, Botswana saw major economic decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the country stayed in lockdown for much of 2020 and 2021. The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant was discovered in Botswana later in 2021. Anti-Indian sentiment became widespread as the Indian community in Botswana was relatively wealthy. Khama fled to South Africa in exile in November 2021, and the government of Botswana charged him with illegal ownership of weapons soon after. === Presidency of Duma Boko === The UDC became the first opposition party in Botswana to take power following its victory in the 2024 general election, ending 58 years of rule by the BDP. In his first State of the Nation Address in November 2024, Duma Boko said that his government would push for increased investment into solar energy, medicinal cannabis and industrial hemp. He also announced engagements with Elon Musk to extend affordable internet access nationwide through Starlink. In March 2025, Botswana launched its first satellite, the BOTSAT-1, into space. Boko attended the satellite's launch, which took place at SpaceX facilities in the United States.	[ "slaughterhouse", "Ngwato", "Boer War", "Water Act (Botswana)", "Gaositwe Chiepe", "no confidence", "pearl millet", "Ngoni people", "Malete people", "crown land", "overgrazing", "High Commissions Territories Corps", "European exploration of Africa", "Tsodilo", "Bulawayo", "2024 Botswana general election", "Marine Isotope Stage 6", "Mokgweetsi Masisi", "wealth inequality", "Cabinet of Botswana", "Acheulean", "Chapson Butale", "1969 Botswana general election", "Tribal Grazing Lands Policy", "Rock art", "Charles Warren", "Starlink", "hut tax", "Botswana National Front", "Cape Province", "1984 Botswana general election", "Homo erectus", "Sechele II", "Botsalo Ntuane", "Botswana–Zimbabwe border", "travel book", "Peace Corps", "finger millet", "South African Republic", "1999 Botswana general election", "Bechuanaland Democratic Party", "Pilanesberg", "Gobuamang Gobuamang II", "subsistence farmers", "Control of Livestock Industry Proclamation No. 1 of 1940", "Mbunda people", "Kalahari Desert", "Gaborone", "Economy of Botswana", "Bechuanaland Protectorate", "Botswana Federation of Public Sector Unions", "London Missionary Society", "Chobe River", "1965 Bechuanaland general election", "Ancient Ruins Company", "ritual murder", "African Auxiliary Pioneer Corps", "Culture of Botswana", "Southern African Customs Union", "term limit", "Three Dikgosi Monument", "Seepapitso IV", "hardveld", "Timeline of Botswana", "Phofu dynasty", "SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant", "cattle raid", "gentlemen's agreement", "civil service", "Ruth Williams Khama", "Ngwato people", "Motsamai Mpho", "Pioneer Column", "Bogosi Act", "Unity Dow", "SpaceX", "Kolobeng Mission", "Outline of Botswana", "Kalanga people", "property speculation", "Botswana Congress Party", "National Development Plan (Botswana)", "Bank of Botswana", "Daniel Kwelagobe", "Lydia Nyati-Ramahobo", "2008 financial crisis", "liberal democracy", "mid-20th century baby boom", "technocratic", "Agriculture Act of 1995", "Debswana", "Gomolemo Motswaledi", "2014 Botswana general election", "University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland", "Elon Musk", "bogwera", "José Eduardo dos Santos", "Botswana Police Service", "South African rand", "Robert Moffat (missionary)", "Kgafela II", "Christianization", "Botswana pula", "Bathoen II", "World War I", "Vryburg", "political faction", "Lenyeletse Seretse", "Botswana Patriotic Front", "cannabis", "Sechele I", "Minister for Presidential Affairs (Botswana)", "Bibliography of Botswana", "poll tax", "Bihiti Temane", "Okavango Delta", "Caprivi Strip", "private property", "Citizenship Act of 1995", "Attorney General of Botswana v. Unity Dow", "Rasebolai Kgamane", "Kgalemang Morsete", "morafe", "Quett Masire", "European Advisory Council", "Quill Hermans", "hunter-gatherer", "private sector", "Colonial Development Fund", "Cucurbitaceae", "British South Africa Company", "Trade union", "African Union", "price gouging", "Voortrekker", "Bechuanaland Protectorate Federal Party", "Parks Tafa", "corporal punishment in schools", "Xani people", "Cecil Rhodes", "conscript", "Fokeng people", "History of Southern Africa", "Kololo people", "Kingdom of Butua", "Pedi people", "early 1980s recession", "World Heritage Site", "History of Africa", "dominant party", "mafisa", "Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland", "Segametsi Mogomotsi", "liberalism", "Dithubaruba", "Yeyi people", "David Livingstone", "South Africa Act 1909", "abject poverty", "1974 Botswana general election", "Sekgoma II", "Makgadikgadi Pan", "secondary education", "Botswana", "Lake Makgadikgadi", "Apartheid", "South African Customs Union", "COVID-19 pandemic in Botswana", "shopping mall", "Seretse Khama", "Kenneth Good (political scientist)", "Timeline of Gaborone", "Westminster system", "Bantustan", "1890s African rinderpest epizootic", "Nata people", "Tswana people", "Shua people", "Botswana–Namibia border", "Charles Arden-Clarke", "liberal education", "subsistence agriculture", "Sebele I", "Kgafela people", "Herero people", "German South West Africa", "Peter Mmusi", "Independent Commission Against Corruption (Hong Kong)", "African National Congress", "Geography of Botswana", "Leema", "University of Botswana", "Khoekhoe", "Toutswe people", "Mosadi Seboko", "Bathoen I", "Bechuanaland People's Party", "postal voting", "Orapa", "Thamaga", "Public welfare", "Leopard's Kopje", "Mafeking", "Chieftainship Act of 1966", "Minimum wage", "privatised", "History of Gaborone", "Constitution of Botswana", "Parliament of Botswana", "Kgabo Commission", "Indian Ocean trade", "Mmanaana people", "tripartism", "World Food Programme", "early 1990s recession", "Tshekedi Khama", "Bantu peoples", "Morupule", "Kgalagadi people", "sorghum", "regimental sergeant majors", "Elizabeth II", "Tribal Land Act", "forced displacement", "Griqua people", "Tlokwa people", "Moshupa", "Molopo River", "founding myth", "public sector", "San people", "Great Zimbabwe", "Entrepreneurship", "Khoisan", "List of Botswana-related topics", "Angolan Civil War", "dowry", "Sebogo", "Mbanderu people", "sedition", "cowpea", "Profiteering", "Leetile Disang Raditladi", "Motloutse River", "Tawana people", "Central Kalahari Game Reserve", "antiretroviral", "District Councils Act of 1965", "emergency powers", "Botswana Movement of Democracy", "Kingdom of Mapungubwe", "borehole", "Politics of Botswana", "satellite", "Northern Ndebele people", "Botswana Development Corporation", "kgosi", "Molefi Pilane", "Kenneth Koma", "Umbrella for Democratic Change", "1994 Botswana general election", "Neale Sechele", "Ngwaketse people", "Kwena people", "De Beers", "Festus Mogae", "Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime", "protectorate", "paleolake", "Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi", "George W. Bush", "Land board (Botswana)", "Native Military Corps", "Leshoma", "≠Gi", "GDP", "Isaac Kgosi", "Orapa diamond mine", "Difaqane", "Late Stone Age", "Life expectancy", "Ponatshego Kedikilwe", "kgotla", "Taukome people", "Tati Goldfields", "Demographics of Botswana", "Southern African Development Coordination Conference", "Khama III", "Ntlo ya Dikgosi", "ivory trade", "president of Botswana", "Directorate of Intelligence and Security", "Water Apportionment Board", "New Testament", "Mochudi", "Hurutshe people", "Vice-President of Botswana", "Mompati Merafhe", "Shashe Project", "Botswana Meat Commission", "Specularite", "Linchwe II", "Bechuanaland Protectorate Development Plan 1963/1968", "Anti-Indian sentiment", "Duma Boko", "Selebi-Phikwe", "Bechuanaland Independence Party", "Stone Age", "Sebele II", "HIV/AIDS in Botswana", "Bantu people", "Tswana language", "Old Testament", "Isang Pilane", "Society for the Promotion of Ikalanga Language", "2019 Botswana general election", "settler colonialism", "Tshidi people", "Botswana Defence Force", "Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park", "price control", "Dutch disease", "Kgari Sechele II", "Patrick Balope", "British Empire in World War II", "Jameson Raid", "Charles Rey", "labour rights", "contagious bovine pleuropneumonia", "Ian Khama", "English language", "Botswana Television", "Francistown", "Tshekedi Khama II", "life expectancy", "Lete people", "glass bead", "order of succession", "gender equality", "List of years in Botswana", "mophato", "National Development Bank of Botswana", "Kgatla people", "Bambara groundnut", "BOTSAT-1", "special interest group", "Boers", "Afrikaners", "Jwaneng diamond mine", "anti-corruption", "Early Stone Age", "foot-and-mouth disease", "WP:SDNONE", "COVID-19 lockdowns", "Philip Matante", "Third World" ]
3,613	Geography of Botswana	Botswana is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa, north of South Africa. Botswana occupies an area of , of which are land. Botswana has land boundaries of combined length , of which the constituent boundaries are shared with Namibia, for ; South Africa ; Zimbabwe, and Zambia, . Much of the population of Botswana is concentrated in the eastern part of the country. Sunshine totals are high all year round although winter is the sunniest period. The whole country is windy and dusty during the dry season. ==Area data== Area: Total: 581,730 km² country rank in the world: 48th Land: 566,730 km² Water: 15,000 km² Area comparative Australia comparative: approximately the size of New South Wales Canada comparative: approximately smaller than Saskatchewan United Kingdom comparative: approximately 2 times the size of the United Kingdom United States comparative: slightly less than twice the size of Arizona EU comparative: slightly larger than Metropolitan France ==Geography== 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 . The highest point is Monalanong Hill, at . The country is divided into four drainage regions, which are sometimes indistinct due to the arid nature of the climate: the Chobe River on the border with the Caprivi Strip of Namibia together with a small adjacent swampy area is part of the Zambezi basin; most of the north and central region of the country is part of the Okavango inland drainage basin; the easternmost part of the country falls into the Limpopo drainage basin; the southern and southwestern regions, which are the driest of all, are drained by the Molopo river along the South African border and the Nossob river through the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, and are technically part of the basin of the Orange River. None of these rivers normally flows as far as the Orange, however. (The last recorded confluence was in the 1880s.) Except for the Chobe, Okavango, Boteti and Limpopo rivers, most of Botswana's rivers cease to flow during the dry and early rainy seasons. In Botswana forest cover is around 27% of the total land area, equivalent to 15,254,700 hectares (ha) of forest in 2020, down from 18,803,700 hectares (ha) in 1990. In 2020, naturally regenerating forest covered 15,254,700 hectares, of the naturally regenerating forest 0% was reported to be primary forest (consisting of native tree species with no clearly visible indications of human activity) and around 11% of the forest area was found within protected areas. For the year 2015, 24% of the forest area was reported to be under public ownership and 76% private ownership. ==Climate== 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 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 . The whole country has hot summers with average temperatures around . Sunshine totals are high all year round although winter is the sunniest period. The whole country is windy and dusty during the dry season. \| source 2 = Weatherbase (records) \| date = June 2012 }} ==Natural hazards== Botswana is affected by periodic droughts, and seasonal August winds blow from the west, carrying sand and dust, which can obscure visibility. ==Environment== Current environmental issues in Botswana are overgrazing, desertification and the existence of only limited fresh water resources. 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. ==International agreements== 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. == Extreme points == This is a list of the extreme points of Botswana, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location. Northernmost point – the border with Zambia upon the Zambezi River at Chobe District Easternmost point – the tripoint with South Africa and Zimbabwe, Central District Southernmost point – Bokspits, Kgalagadi District Westernmost point – the western section of the border with Namibia* note: Botswana does not have a westernmost point as the western section is formed by the 22nd meridian of longitude east of Greenwich.	[ "forest cover", "Sir Seretse Khama Airport", "Plateaus", "Limpopo", "Orange River", "Chobe District", "South Africa", "Makgadikgadi Pans", "Shashe River", "primary forest", "climate change", "tripoint", "New South Wales", "Zambia", "Zambezi", "Central District (Botswana)", "Nxai Pan", "Kgalagadi District", "Kalahari Desert", "Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park", "Limpopo River", "Okavango Basin", "Land borders", "Nossob River", "Grazing", "Bokspits", "Saskatchewan", "Namibia", "drainage basin", "State ownership", "Chobe River", "Zimbabwe", "wetland", "Metropolitan France", "Zambezi River", "European Union", "Salt pan (geology)", "Limpopo river", "Private property", "overgrazing", "Okavango Delta", "Boteti", "WP:SDNONE", "Nwetwe Pan", "Africa", "Monalanong Hill", "Sua Pan", "Tsodilo", "Arizona", "Caprivi Strip", "Southern Africa", "Botswana", "biomass", "desertification", "Molopo River", "Mining industry of Botswana" ]
3,614	Demographics of Botswana	Demographic features of the population of Botswana include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects. 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%. ==Population== ===Census results=== ====Bechuanaland Protectorate==== 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. ===UN estimates=== According to the total population was in , 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. {{Hidden begin \|title= Population by Sex and Age Group (Census 18.III.2022): === Registered births and deaths=== Source: Vital Statistics Report 2012. ===Life expectancy at birth=== Life expectancy from 1950 to 2020 (UN World Population Prospects): ==Ethnic groups== Tswana 79%, Kalanga 11%, Basarwa 3%, Other 7% (including Kgalagadi, Indians and Whites). ==Languages== 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.) ==Religions== Christian 79.1%, Badimo 4.1%, Other 1.4% (includes the Baháʼí Faith, Hindu, Islam, Rastafari), None 15.2%, Unspecified 0.3% (2011 est.) ==Migrants== According to the United Nations, there were 110,596 international migrants in Botswana in 2019. Their most common countries of origin were as follows:	[ "population", "Tswana people", "Great Depression", "HIV", "Kgalagadi language", "White people in Botswana", "Christianity", "2011 Botswana Population and Housing Census", "Hinduism", "Islam", "Setswana", "Bechuanaland Protectorate", "Northern Ndebele language", "Shona language", "Mbukushu language", "Rastafari", "Kgalagadi people", "demography", "Ethnic group", "Infant mortality", "Second Boer War", "United Nations", "Southern African Development Community", "WP:SDNONE", "Badimo", "population density", "Baháʼí Faith", "Total fertility rate", "Indians in Botswana", "Basarwa", "Life expectancy", "Botswana", "BaKalanga", "Kalanga language", "English language", "Tshwa language" ]
3,615	Politics of Botswana	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 the Westminster system and on traditional Setswana 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) ruled as the dominant party from independence in 1966 until its defeat at the 2024 Botswana general election. Elections are considered free and fair by observers. During the country's 58-year long dominance of the BDP, political opposition was mostly fragmented and faced institutional challenges such as the first-past-the-post voting system and the lack of state-funded party funding. Thus several opposition parties existed and regularly held a small number of seats in the National Assembly for much of that period. These were mainly the Botswana National Front (BNF) and the Botswana Congress Party (BCP). The BNF-led Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) was formed in 2012 as an electoral alliance of opposition parties to consolidate the opposition vote in one political formation, the UDC was elected in 2024, thus ending the BDP's predominance. 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. The liberal Botswana Movement for Democracy was formed in 2010 to challenge what they saw as Khama's increasing authoritarian tendencies and was the BDP's first major splinter party. Khama's successor, Mokgweetsi Masisi, became president in 2018 and quickly entered into a strong political rivalry with Khama, which came to redefine the politics in Botswana over the following years. 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 and welfare programs are limited and means-based, but public services and infrastructure receive strong funding. Foreign policy in Botswana has historically emphasised multilateralism, non-alignment and realpolitik. Apartheid South Africa was the nation's primary foreign policy concern until 1994 and then instability in Zimbabwe thereafter. == History == === Pre-statehood === 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. The United Kingdom first began influencing 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. 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 one faction, the Big Two. Mompati Merafhe and his supporters—namely David Magang, Bahiti Temane, Roy Blackbeard and Chapson Butale—formed an opposing faction, the Big Five. Kwelagobe aligned with Ponatshego Kedikilwe following Mmusi's death and they renamed themselves the Barata-Phathi. 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. 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. ===Opposition's rise to power=== In the run-up to the 2024 Botswana general election, the opposition was splintered, therefore it was thought that BDP would cruise to a comfortable victory again. Despite this division, opposition UDC was able to gain an outright majority of seats in the parliament and Duma Boko was elected to the Presidency. The BDP was relegated to fourth place. Masisi peacefully conceded defeat and handed over power to the opposition. == National government == 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. The legislative body of Botswana is the National Assembly, a unicameral body consisting of 69 members. 61 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. The assembly uses a question time procedure to obtain information. 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 has been noted as the only de-facto check on the president's power. There are 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. 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 the National Assembly. 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. 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. Each district is under the jurisdiction of a district administration, led by a district commissioner. The opposition in the Botswana legislature was often been fragmented, with several parties competing with one another in addition to challenging the BDP. == Elections == 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. The independence of Botswana's elections have been the subject of scrutiny over the years. 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, which fell under the direct control of the Office of President. The creation of the IEC, as part of democratic reforms undertook in the 1990s, has since mitigated this to an extent, though questions around its independence lingered on during the remainder of one-party dominance. 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. Its landlocked territory and export-driven economy have incentivised it to maintain strong diplomatic ties with other countries, As South Africa liberalised after 1994, Botswana's primary foreign policy concern became the instability in neighbouring Zimbabwe. === Social policy === Botswana's relative wealth compared to other countries in the region has allowed for high spending on 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. Transparency International has regularly recognised Botswana as the least corrupt country in Africa,	[ "Kenneth Koma", "Umbrella for Democratic Change", "income inequality", "1994 Botswana general election", "President of Botswana", "Pluralism (political philosophy)", "High Court (Botswana)", "freedom of information laws", "Apartheid", "Motion of no confidence", "Freedom in the World", "republic", "Festus Mogae", "Gomolemo Motswaledi", "Idealism in international relations", "Botswana People's Party", "Liberalism", "international organisations", "Botswana Democratic Party", "Unicameralism", "Government of Botswana", "Seretse Khama", "Parliamentary opposition", "political base", "welfare spending", "Lobatse", "freedom of the press", "welfare state", "Centralized government", "Westminster system", "Botswana Police Service", "Barata-Phathi", "Ex officio member", "Jacob Nkate", "Magistrates' Courts", "British law", "Dithapelo Keorapetse", "Majority government", "Ponatshego Kedikilwe", "2024 Botswana general election", "Mokgweetsi Masisi", "protest", "Cabinet of Botswana", "Tswana people", "Chapson Butale", "Transparency International", "Districts of Botswana", "1969 Botswana general election", "common law", "majority", "Ntlo ya Dikgosi", "unicameral", "Political faction", "hung parliament", "nation state", "president of Botswana", "Botswana National Front", "Economic Diversification Drive", "mixed economy", "veto", "customary law", "Botswana Patriotic Front", "Financial Assistance Policy", "Vice-President of Botswana", "Peter Mmusi", "Lawrence Schlemmer", "Mompati Merafhe", "commodity economy", "Duma Boko", "Commonwealth of Nations", "1999 Botswana general election", "Bahiti Temane", "separation of powers", "public works", "Separation of powers", "Botho philosophy", "Bechuanaland People's Party", "Plurality (voting)", "Quett Masire", "Executive president", "means test", "Constitution of Botswana", "Parliament of Botswana", "2019 Botswana general election", "HIV/AIDS", "Kgabo Commission", "executive powers", "Gaborone", "Botswana Defence Force", "Roy Blackbeard", "Independent Electoral Commission (Botswana)", "realpolitik", "Bechuanaland Protectorate", "African Union", "David Magang", "strike action", "Bantu peoples", "left-wing politics", "1965 Bechuanaland general election", "High Court of Botswana", "right to strike", "Freedom House", "Member of Parliament (Botswana)", "limited government", "Wealth inequality", "Property rights (economics)", "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland", "Boko cabinet", "International Criminal Court", "1997 Botswana electoral reform referendum", "Ian Khama", "Ministry of Education and Skills Development", "Francistown", "the Crown", "Minister of Foreign Affairs (Botswana)", "Parliamentary system", "Welfare spending", "multilateralism", "National Assembly (Botswana)", "First-past-the-post voting", "first-past-the-post voting", "head of government", "Kgotla", "Gaolapelwe Ketlogetswe", "political violence", "multi-party system", "British Empire", "dominant party", "dominant-party system", "National Development Bank of Botswana", "Free and fair election", "A-Team (Botswana)", "Coat of arms of Botswana", "question time", "Non-Aligned Movement", "Roman-Dutch law", "Speaker of the National Assembly of Botswana", "Unitary state", "Court of Appeal (Botswana)", "Tebogo Tau", "Botswana Movement for Democracy", "National Assembly of Botswana", "fusion of powers", "Non-governmental organisation", "Political party funding", "mining", "WP:SDNONE", "Neoliberalism", "Botswana Congress Party", "Political group", "commander-in-chief", "National Development Plan (Botswana)", "apartheid", "head of state", "first among equals", "Minister of Lands (Botswana)", "Botswana Development Corporation", "Botswana", "Daniel Kwelagobe", "parliamentary republic", "Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and HIV/AIDS" ]
3,616	Economy of Botswana	{{Infobox economy \| country = Botswana \| year = 1 April – 31 March \| image = CBD1.jpg \| caption = Masa Square Central Business District \| currency = Pula (BWP, P) \| organs = AU, AfCFTA (signed), SADC, SACU, WTO \| group = \| population = 2,630,296 (2022) \| gdp = \| gdp rank = \| growth = \| per capita = \| inflation = 4% (2024 est.) \| poverty = \| gini = 45.5 (2016) \| hdi = \| labor = \| edbr = 87th (easy, 2020) \| unemployment = 23.4% () \| industries = diamonds, copper, nickel, salt, soda ash, potash, coal, iron ore, silver; beef processing; textiles \| exports = $8.9 billion (2022 est.) \| revenue = 5.305 billion (2017 est.) \| credit = \| reserves = $4.279 billion (2022 est.) averaging about 5% per annum over the past decade. 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. 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. As of 2020, it is rated as the third 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. 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. Although Botswana's economy is considered a model for countries in the region, its overreliance on mining and its high rate of HIV/AIDS infection (one in every three adults is seropositive) and unemployment may threaten its future success. Botswana has become the first high-burden country to be certified for achieving an important milestone on the path to eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV by the World Health Organization (WHO). ==History== 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. 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. == Trade == Botswana is crossed by the trans-African automobile route - the Cairo-Cape Town Highway and the Trans-Kalahari Corridor. 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. The main export of Botswana is diamonds. As of 2024 it is the world's second largest diamond exporter. 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. ==Mining== 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. === Diamonds and other gems === Since early 1980s, the country has been one of the world's largest producers of gem diamonds. Eight large diamond mines have opened since independence. De Beers prospectors discovered diamonds in northern Botswana in the early 1970s. Botswana produced a total of 24 million carats of diamonds from Debswana in 2022, and is the highest producer of diamonds by value in the world as of 2023. The Orapa 2000 Expansion of the existing Orapa mine was opened in 2000. 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. 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. Most of Botswana's electricity is imported from South Africa's Eskom. Debswana operates the nearby Morupule Colliery to supply coal to it. Botswana exported $3.12k worth of electricity from 2021 to 2022, all going to Zimbabwe. 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." 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. ==Tourism== Tourism is an increasingly important industry in Botswana, accounting for approximately 13.1% of GDP in 2019. However, , it was reported to be less than 10%. One of the world's unique ecosystems, the Okavango Delta, is located in Botswana. 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. 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. ==Agriculture== More than half of Botswana's population lives in rural areas and depends on subsistence crops and livestock farming. Cattle raising dominated Botswana's social and economic life before independence. 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. ==Manufacturing== 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. Manufacturing has potential growth, however, accounting for roughly 5% of the nation's gross domestic product. Over the years, there has been a notable decline in the role of the manufacturing sector in the national economy. The reason for this can be pinned to a number of factors, the main ones being lack of skills, failing to keep up with the latest technology, lack of competitiveness along with bad marketing techniques. ==Science and technology== 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 2022, Botswana's high-tech exports were worth about $38 million. ==Private sector development and foreign investment== Botswana seeks to diversify its economy away from minerals, 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. Hyundai operated a car assembly plant in Botswana from 1994 to 2000. Botswana seeks to further diversify its economy away from minerals, down from nearly half of GDP in the early 1990s. 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. 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. With its proven record of good economic governance, Botswana was ranked as Africa's third 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 in 2002. In 2001 Botswana was once again assigned "A" grade credit ratings by Moody's and Standard & Poor's. 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. 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. 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. ==Financial sector== 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. Botswana's currency, the pula, is fully convertible and is valued against a basket of currencies heavily weighted toward the South African Rand. 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. 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.	[ "Morupule Colliery", "Letlhakane diamond mine", "Cairo-Cape Town Highway", "Standard & Poor's", "Free the Children", "metal", "De Beers", "Debswana", "salt", "Tourism", "H. J. Heinz Company", "soda ash", "Southern African Power Pool", "Science and technology in Botswana", "Namibia", "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency", "petroleum", "Alexander McCall Smith", "maize", "gross domestic product", "Orapa diamond mine", "Fischer–Tropsch process", "The Amazing Race (American TV series)", "World Trade Organization", "SACU", "Chobe National Park", "nickel", "Transparency International", "Botswana pula", "Southern African Development Coordination Conference", "paper", "subsistence agriculture", "Hyundai Motor Company", "U.S. Department of State", "Tax", "Trans-Kalahari Corridor", "Coca-Cola", "Mercosur", "electrical", "African Development Bank", "The Amazing Race 7", "European Union", "mineral", "foreign-exchange reserves", "Botswana Stock Exchange", "beef", "Okavango Delta", "Botswana Meat Commission", "coal", "foreign exchange controls", "United Nations Economic Commission for Africa", "Sua Pan", "List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita", "African Continental Free Trade Agreement", "Industrial sector", "cabbage", "root", "Rand (currency)", "List of diamond mines", "Jindal Steel and Power", "common external tariff", "onion", "Botswana Federation of Trade Unions", "transport", "HIV/AIDS", "Botswana Pula", "iron ore", "Gaborone", "Khwai", "Crawling peg", "wood", "agriculture", "tubers", "Lesotho", "African Union", "Moody's", "potash", "World Bank", "Tertiary sector of the economy", "Developing country", "national trade union centre", "File:GDP Real Growth.svg", "List of countries by GDP (nominal)", "diamond", "silver", "sorghum", "vegetables", "Southern African Customs Union", "Southern African Development Community", "copper", "Trade unions in Botswana", "Lerala", "Francistown", "Mining industry of Botswana", "glass production", "Ease of doing business index", "International Monetary Fund", "Kentucky Fried Chicken", "List of countries by GNI (PPP) per capita", "Economy of Asia", "List of countries by GDP (PPP)", "textiles", "United States Department of Commerce", "The Gods Must Be Crazy", "H.J. Heinz", "Great Recession", "Child labour in Botswana", "Damtshaa diamond mine", "List of Botswana companies", "Windhoek", "tomato", "Agriculture", "List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita", "Central Kalahari Game Reserve", "Eskom", "Jwaneng diamond mine", "safari", "Reuters", "fuel", "machinery", "Education in Botswana", "Corruption Perceptions Index", "Moremi Game Reserve", "Ngamiland", "Eswatini", "tourism", "Mmamabula", "Botswana" ]
3,617	Telecommunications in Botswana	Telecommunications in Botswana include newspapers, radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet. 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. ==Radio stations== 2 state-owned national radio stations; 3 privately owned radio stations broadcast locally (2007); 101,713 (2001); 98,568 (2003). 173,327 (2006) 297,233 (2008) 297,971 (2011) 365,650 (2014). ==Telephones == Main lines in use: 160,500 lines, 134th in the world (2012); 136,900 (2006). Mobile cellular in use: 3.1 million lines, 129th in the world (2012); 120,000 users, 154th in the world (2009); 348,124 wireless broadband subscriptions, 102nd in the world; 16.6% of the population, 76th in the world. Internet hosts: 1,806 hosts (2012); Internet Service Providers: 11 ISPs (2001); 2 ISPs (1999). ADSL has been introduced in the following areas: Gaborone, Tlkokweng, Mogoditsane, Phakalane, Francistown, Lobatse, Palapye, Maun, Kasane, Selibe-Phikwe, Letlhakane, Jwaneng, and Orapa.	[ ".bw", "Media of Botswana", "The World Factbook", "List of countries by IPv4 address allocation", "Botswana Internet Exchange", "Setswana", "United States", "Gaborone", "Telephone numbers in Botswana", "ADSL", "List of countries by number of Internet hosts", "Orange S.A.", "Central Intelligence Agency", "mass media", "List of countries by number of broadband Internet subscriptions", "sport", "Botswana TV", "MTN Group", "Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority", "cellular phone", "WP:SDNONE", "Internet in Botswana", "English language", "International Telecommunication Union", "Botswana Television", "Botswana", "radio", "List of countries by number of Internet users" ]
3,618	Transport in Botswana	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. == Rail transport == 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). === Regional trains (BR Express) === 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. === Commuter/suburban trains === 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. === BR Express Sleeping & Dining Department === 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. === Stations === === Freight trains === 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. === Locomotives === Diesel locomotives As of March 2009: 8 General Electric UM 22C diesel-electric locomotive, 1982. 20 General Motors Model GT22LC-2 diesel-electric locomotive, 1986. 10 General Electric UI5C diesel-electric locomotive, 1990. 8 new gt142aces were delivered in the end of 2017. === Network === total: 888 km (since 2015) number of stations: 13 standard gauge: 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) cape gauge. === Railway links with adjacent countries === Existing South Africa (same gauge) Zimbabwe (same gauge) ==== Currently under construction ==== Zambia - being built at Kazungula Bridge in Kazungula. ==== Proposed ==== Namibia Mozambique == Road transport == === Vehicle population === Botswana had 584,000 locally registered vehicles at the end of June 2019 - more than double the number compared to 10 years prior. This equates to around 250 vehicles per 1,000 people in the country. 30,583 vehicles were registered in the first 6 months of 2019. Secondhand imports from Asia and the UK are a significant source of vehicles in Botswana. === A-roads === A-roads are highways and other major roads. === B-roads === B-roads are smaller distributor roads. === Motorways === 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: Learner drivers Slow vehicles (i.e., not capable of reaching 60 km/h on a level road) Invalid carriages (lightweight three-wheeled vehicles) Pedestrians Pedal-cycles (bicycles, etc.) Vehicles under 50cc (e.g. mopeds) Tractors Animals Rules for driving on motorways include the following: The keep-left rule applies unless overtaking No stopping at any time No reversing No hitchhiking Only vehicles that travel faster than 80 km/h may use the outside lane No driving on the hard-shoulder The general motorway speed limit is 120 km/h. === Road signs === 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. === Interchanges === ==== Existing ==== Kenneth Nkhwa Interchange at the junction of A1 / Blue Jacket Street and A3 in Francistown. Boatle Interchange in Boatle. ==== Under construction ==== 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. === Longest bridges === The Kazungula Bridge in Kazungula and the Okavango River Bridge (constructed 2022) in Mohembo are the two longest bridges. === Roadway links with adjacent countries === ==== Existing ==== Namibia by Trans-Kalahari Corridor. South Africa by A1 highway (Botswana), A2 highway (Botswana), A11 road (Botswana) and A12 highway (Botswana). Zambia by A33 road (Botswana). Zimbabwe by A1 highway (Botswana). == Mass transit by road == === Taxicabs === 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. === Minibus taxis === 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. 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. 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. === Coach bus === 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. == Water transport == === Ferries === The Kazungula Ferry was a pontoon ferry that crossed the Zambezi River between Botswana and Zambia. === Tour boats === == Aviation == 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. === International airports === Botswana has 4 international airports. Sir Seretse Khama International Airport in Gaborone. Francistown Airport in Francistown. Kasane Airport in Kasane. Maun Airport in Maun. ==== Proposed airports ==== "Mophane International Airport" is planned in Palapye Sub-District near Moremi village. == Pedestrian elevated walkways == Botswana has many pedestrian elevated walkways at different places. == Water pipelines == === Under construction === ==== North-South Carrier ==== NSC is a pipeline in Botswana that carries raw water, south for a distance of to the capital city of Gaborone. It was done in phases. However, phase 1 was completed in 2000. Phase 2 of the NSC, still under construction, will duplicate the pipeline to carry water from the Dikgatlhong Dam, which was completed in 2012. A proposed extension to deliver water from the Zambezi would add another to the total pipeline length. ==== Lesotho-Botswana Water Transport ==== 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. The scheme involves the supply of water to Gaborone from Lesotho via a pipeline. The project commenced on the 1 August 2018 and is set for completion in June 2020. === Proposed === ==== Sea water desalination project ==== The Government of Botswana intends to sign the Sea Water Desalination Project from Namibia. The project is at a tendering stage. == Border posts == Bokspits Border Post Kazungula Border Post Ramatlabama Border Post Ramokgwebana Border Post Mamuno Border Post Pandamatenga Border Post	[ "A31 road (Botswana)", "A35 road (Botswana)", "International Union of Railways", "Rail usage statistics by country", "A15 road (Botswana)", "A14 road (Botswana)", "Kazungula Bridge", "Transport in Namibia", "A2 highway (Botswana)", "A2 road (Botswana)", "A32 road (Botswana)", "A30 road (Botswana)", "bicycles", "Maun Airport", "Zambia", "Kazungula", "mopeds", "Palapye", "Serule", "Trans-Kalahari Corridor", "Kazungula Ferry", "Ramotswa", "Sir Seretse Khama International Airport", "A10 road (Botswana)", "Air Botswana", "Zambezi", "Gaborone", "pontoon (boat)", "Lesotho", "Otse", "Transport in Zimbabwe", "A20 road (Botswana)", "A33 road (Botswana)", "motorway", "Maun, Botswana", "cape gauge", "Transport in Mozambique", "Zambezi River", "A12 road (Botswana)", "Mbabane", "Lobatse", "A1 road (Botswana)", "Kasane Airport", "Johannesburg, South Africa", "Transport in South Africa", "warning sign", "Francistown Airport", "A11 road (Botswana)", "Mahalapye", "Southern African Development Community", "road signs in Botswana", "A1 highway (Botswana)", "Kasane", "Selebi-Phikwe", "Sprint Couriers", "intermodal freight", "sleeping cars", "Transport in Zambia", "A3 road (Botswana)", "Botswana", "Okavango River Bridge", "Botswana Railways", "Francistown", "List of countries by rail transport network size", "Harare, Zimbabwe", "Dikgatlhong Dam" ]
3,620	Foreign relations of Botswana	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. == Diplomatic relations == List of countries which Botswana maintains diplomatic relations with: ==Bilateral relations== ==Botswana and the Commonwealth of Nations== Botswana has been a republic in the Commonwealth of Nations since independence in 1966. ==Botswana and FOSS== Botswana has been a member of The Forum of Small States (FOSS) since the group's founding in 1992.	[ "Canberra", "Botswana–United Kingdom relations", "AIDS", "Botswana–South Africa relations", "Cape Town", "1980 Summer Olympics", "reproductive health", "Economic Partnership Agreements", "HIV", "Stockholm", "Washington, D.C.", "Voice of America", "Botswana–Russia relations", "Botswana–Kenya relations", "police", "Geneva", "Botswana–North Korea relations", "gov.uk", "good governance", "Gaborone", "republic in the Commonwealth of Nations", "List of diplomatic missions in Botswana", "Windhoek", "Bechuanaland Protectorate", "Brasília", "Otse", "Nairobi", "Government of Botswana", "South African Border War", "USAID", "List of diplomatic missions of Botswana", "Botswana Guardian", "High Commission of Botswana, London", "Botswana at the 1980 Summer Olympics", "Moscow", "Botswana–United States relations", "Reuters", "Republic of Korea", "entrepreneurship", "Centers for Disease Control", "tuberculosis", "British High Commission", "Sweden", "Peace Corps", "Harare", "Botswana–Namibia relations", "Southern African Development Community", "Botswana–China relations", "Johannesburg", "Switzerland", "Africa", "Politics of Botswana", "Self-governance", "Commonwealth of Nations", "International Criminal Court", "Kendall, New South Wales", "Botswana–Israel relations", "Mexico City", "Soviet Union", "World Trade Organization", "Botswana–Zimbabwe relations", "The Forum of Small States (FOSS)", "Botswana", "Beijing", "Facebook", "New Delhi", "Botswana–India relations", "Foreign relations of the United Kingdom", "Pretoria" ]
3,631	Geography of Brazil	The country of Brazil occupies roughly half of South America, bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Brazil covers a total area of which includes of land and of water. The highest point in Brazil is Pico da Neblina at . Brazil is bordered by the countries of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, and French Guiana. 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. ==Size and geographical location== Brazil occupies most of the eastern part of the South American continent and its geographic heartland and various islands in the Atlantic Ocean. The only countries in the world that are larger are Russia, Canada, China and the United States. == Geology, geomorphology and drainage == In contrast to the Andes, which rose to elevations of nearly in a relatively recent epoch and inverted the Amazon's direction of flow from westward to eastward, Brazil's geological formation is ancient. The Parcel de Manuel Luís Marine State Park off the coast of Maranhão protects the largest coral reef in South America. Brazil has one of the world's most extensive river systems, with eight major drainage basins, all of which drain into the Atlantic Ocean. == Rivers and lakes == 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. 7 hydrographic regions named after their dominant rivers: Amazonas Paraguai Paraná Parnaíba São Francisco Tocantins Uruguay 5 coastal Hydrographic Regions based on regional groupings of minor river basins (listed from north to south): Atlântico Nordeste Ocidental (Western North-east Atlantic) Atlântico Nordeste Oriental (Eastern North-east Atlantic) Atlântico Leste (Eastern Atlantic) Atlântico Sudeste (South-east Atlantic) Atlântico Sul (South Atlantic) 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. == Soil and vegetation == 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. 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 -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 of the Amazon are in Brazilian territory. Over this distance, the waters decline only about . 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. The major river system in the Northeast is the Rio São Francisco, which flows northeast from the south-central region. Its basin covers 7.6% of the national territory. Only 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 . 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 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. == Locations== 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 from north to south (5°16'20" N to 33°44'32" S latitude), and 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. Brazil possesses the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, located 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 from the country's shores, including those of the islands. On Brazil's east coast, the Atlantic coastline extends . In the west, in clockwise order from the south, Brazil has 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 .	[ "Tocantins (state)", "coral reef", "cerrado", "Cerrado", "biome", "rainfall", "Paraguay", "Solimões", "Southeast Region, Brazil", "France", "Arraial do Cabo", "primary forest", "Serra do Espinhaço", "fruit", "Federal District (Brazil)", "Atol das Rocas", "Florida", "Amazon basin", "Roraima", "temperate zone", "oil", "North Region, Brazil", "Japurá River", "Santa Catarina (state)", "Hot semi-arid climate", "Tocantins", "Jari River", "tropical", "Cuiabá", "per capita income", "drainage basin", "Trindade and Martim Vaz", "iron", "Paraíba", "turtle", "Private property", "Exclusive Economic Zone", "Pacaraima", "plant breeding", "São Joaquim", "physical environment", "Paraná (state)", "São Paulo", "forest fire", "Tropical climate", "Amazônia", "nickel", "Anavilhanas National Park", "Paraná River", "waterfall", "livestock", "Abrolhos Marine National Park", "conifer", "Center-West Region, Brazil", "Branco River", "lumber industry", "autonomy", "Planalto Central", "Argentina", "Fernando de Noronha", "Andes", "araucaria", "Snow", "Manaus", "Rio de Janeiro", "bauxite", "flora", "Caatinga", "Northeast Region, Brazil", "tropical zone", "desert", "Canada", "oil spill", "manganese ores", "Tropic of Capricorn", "farming", "industrialization", "Rondônia", "United States", "Satellite image", "Rio Grande do Sul", "Brasília", "biological diversity", "Smilax regelii", "Goiás", "Iquitos", "Pico da Neblina", "Chile", "Araucaria moist forests", "Rio de Janeiro (city)", "Goiânia", "Ceará", "illegal poaching", "Serra do Mar", "States of Brazil", "Xingu River", "Agriculture", "subtropical", "water pollution", "Santarém, Pará", "soy", "South American platform", "UTC-3", "pine", "Bolivia", "pau brasil", "Amazonas (Brazilian state)", "erosion", "vegetable oil", "São Paulo (state)", "Campo Grande", "Amazon region", "district", "Federal Research Division", "Oceanic climate", "species", "French Guiana", "Maranhão", "Savanna", "grass", "Brazil nut", "Mato Grosso", "river system", "Rapids", "South American", "Woody plant", "Sergipe", "vine", "uranium", "Politics", "Equatorial climate", "Porto Alegre", "sertão", "Lagoa dos Patos", "Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest", "seed", "Time in Brazil", "caatinga", "China", "Amazon River", "hectare", "São Francisco River", "forest resources", "wetland", "Library of Congress", "Administrative division", "Geology of Brazil", "Broad-leaved tree", "Paulo Afonso", "Saint Peter and Paul Rocks", "Rio de Janeiro state", "Atlantic Ocean", "fertilization", "Pernambuco", "Belo Horizonte", "Precambrian", "Paraguay River", "lagoon", "Amapá", "mangrove", "irrigation", "Russia", "Itaipu Dam", "Belém", "forest cover", "rainforest", "Tocantins River", "climatic zones", "Uruguayan savanna", "ecosystem", "Eastern Time Zone (North America)", "Río de la Plata Basin", "Guyana", "coffee", "Curitiba", "hydroelectric power", "Rio Negro (Amazon)", "Parnaiba River", "gallery forest", "Pampas", "cocoa bean", "Minas Gerais", "Savanna climate", "South America", "municipal", "Suriname", "water", "Pantanal", "São Paulo (city)", "pampa", "Mato Grosso do Sul", "Amazonas State, Brazil", "Rio de Janeiro (state)", "Madeira River", "Colombia", "semiarid", "Uruguay", "State ownership", "Peru", "Amazon Basin", "bornhardt", "swampland", "Ecuador", "equator", "Pirineus State Park", "cinnamon", "dune", "Uruguay River", "land degradation", "mahogany", "Atlantic Forest", "Alagoas", "Espírito Santo", "economic activity", "Venezuela", "Piauí", "WP:SDNONE", "caiman", "tropical forest", "Pará", "fauna", "plywood", "Bahia", "Parcel de Manuel Luís Marine State Park", "mining", "rice", "Southern Region, Brazil", "Tapajós" ]
3,633	Politics of Brazil	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. 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. 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. 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. 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 2022. Brazil was 2023 the 13th most electoral democratic country in Latin America and the Caribbean according to the V-Dem Democracy indices. ==Constitution== Brazil has had seven constitutions: Constitution of 1824 – the first Brazilian constitution, enacted by Emperor Pedro I. It was monarchic, hereditary, and highly centralized, permitting suffrage only to property-holders. Constitution of 1891 – the republic was proclaimed in 1889, but a new constitution was not promulgated until 1891. This federalist, democratic constitution was heavily influenced by the U.S. model. However, women and illiterates were not permitted to vote. Constitution of 1934 – when Getúlio Vargas came to power in 1930, he canceled the 1891 constitution and did not permit a new one until 1934. The Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932 forced Vargas to enact a new democratic constitution that permitted women's suffrage. Getúlio Vargas was indirectly elected president by the Constitutional Assembly to a four-year term, beginning in 1933. Constitution of 1937 – Getúlio Vargas suppressed a Communist uprising in 1935 and two years later (November 10, 1937) used it as a pretext to establish autocratic rule. He instituted a corporatist constitution nicknamed the Polish, (because it was said to have been inspired by a Polish constitution), written by Francisco Campos. Constitution of 1946 – in October, 1945, with World War II over, a civil-military coup ousted dictatorial Getúlio Vargas, an Assembly wrote a democratic constitution. Constitution of 1967 – after the 1964 coup d'État against João Goulart, the military dictatorship passed the Institutional Acts, a supraconstitutional law. This strongly undemocratic constitution simply incorporated these Acts. Constitution of 1988 – the current constitution, drafted in the process of redemocratization. It is marked by a reaction to the military dictatorship, guaranteeing individual rights, it is also more expansive than a typical constitution – many statutory acts in other countries are written into this constitution, like Social Security and taxes. ==Political parties and elections== 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. 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). ==Government== ===Federal government=== 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. ===States=== 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. 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. The Executive role is held by the (Governor) and his appointed (Secretaries); the Legislative role is held by the (Legislative Assembly); and the Judiciary role, by the (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. 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. ===Municipalities=== 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. 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. 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). 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. 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. 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. ===Federal District=== 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. 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. ==History== 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. ===Empire=== 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. === Old Republic (1889–1930) === In 1889, Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca declared the republic, by a coup d'état. 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". Until 1930, the Brazilian republic was formally a democracy, although the power was concentrated in the hands of powerful land owners. === Vargas years (1930–1945) === 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. === Populist years (1946–1964) === 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. ===Military dictatorship (1964–1985)=== 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. ===New Republic (1985–1990)=== 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. 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. ===Collor government (1990–1992)=== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ===Itamar government (1992–1994)=== 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. ===FHC government (1995–2003)=== 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. 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. ===Lula government (2003–2011)=== 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. 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. 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. In 2010, Lula's handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff, was elected to the Presidency. === Rousseff government (2011–2016) === In 2011, Rousseff became the first woman to be elected president of Brazil. 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%. 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". === Michel Temer government (2016–2018) === === Jair Bolsonaro government (2019–2022) === === Second Lula government (2023–present) === 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. ==== 2023 Brazilian Congress attack ==== == Political corruption == === Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash) === 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. ==Political conflicts== 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 Workers' Movement were murdered. In 2016, at least 49 people were murdered in Brazil defending the environment against companies or landowners. ==International organization participation== African Development Bank Customs Cooperation Council United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean Food and Agriculture Organization Group of 11 Group of 15 Group of 19 Group of 24 Group of 77 Inter-American Development Bank International Atomic Energy Agency International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) International Civil Aviation Organization International Chamber of Commerce International Criminal Court International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement International Development Association International Fund for Agricultural Development International Finance Corporation International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies International Hydrographic Organization International Labour Organization International Monetary Fund International Maritime Organization Inmarsat International Telecommunications Satellite Organization Interpol International Olympic Committee International Organization for Migration (observer) International Organization for Standardization International Telecommunication Union International Trade Union Confederation Latin American Economic System Asociación Latinoamericana de Integración Mercosur, Non-Aligned Movement (observer) Nuclear Suppliers Group Organization of American States Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Permanent Court of Arbitration Rio Group United Nations United Nations Conference on Trade and Development United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Union of South American Nations United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United Nations Industrial Development Organization United Nations Mission of Observers in Prevlaka United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor United Nations University Universal Postal Union World Federation of Trade Unions World Health Organization World Intellectual Property Organization World Meteorological Organization World Tourism Organization World Trade Organization	[ "Judicial power", "Avante (political party)", "Mayor", "Group of 11", "Third Way (Brazil)", "Progressistas", "Parliamentarism", "International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement", "Patriota", "International Finance Corporation", "International Hydrographic Organization", "Altamira, Brazil", "International Organization for Migration", "Federal District (Brazil)", "John VI of Portugal", "Supreme Federal Court", "republic", "Coat of arms of Brazil", "New Party (Brazil)", "International Civil Aviation Organization", "upper house", "Socialism and Liberty Party", "Group of 19", "Chamber of Deputies (Brazil)", "International Development Association", "Francisco Campos (lawyer)", "Elections in Brazil", "economy of Brazil", "Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean", "Auguste Comte", "State of Guanabara", "external debt", "Regional Federal Courts", "Central Intelligence Agency", "Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean", "Pedro II of Brazil", "Brazilian Social Democratic Party", "Party of National Mobilization", "Brazilian Labour Renewal Party", "Permanent Court of Arbitration", "Vice President of Brazil", "Judiciary of Brazil", "United Nations Mission of Observers in Prevlaka", "Union of South American Nations", "Brazilian Communist Party", "United Socialist Workers' Party", "Brazil", "recession", "Sustainability Network", "World Trade Organization", "São Paulo", "Impeachment of Fernando Collor", "Censitary suffrage", "Latin American Economic System", "central government", "President of Brazil", "Popular Unity (Brazil)", "Presidential system", "Deodoro da Fonseca", "2022 Brazilian general election", "Censorship in Brazil", "privatization", "World Intellectual Property Organization", "political party", "Rio de Janeiro", "Executive power", "UNESCO", "Federal courts of Brazil", "constitution", "Brazilian cruzeiro (1990–1993)", "Brazilian Constitution of 1824", "local government", "Brazilian Constitution of 1891", "Liberal Party (Brazil, 2006)", "hyperinflation", "International Olympic Committee", "Brazilian Socialist Party", "Christian Democracy (Brazil)", "Organization of American States", "José Sarney", "Mercosur", "International Chamber of Commerce", "Brazil Union", "National Congress Palace", "Brasília", "Communist Party of Brazil", "federation", "Juscelino Kubitschek", "Cidadania", "United Nations University", "coalition presidentialism", "African Development Bank", "International Labour Organization", "International Atomic Energy Agency", "Government-owned corporation", "Chamber of Deputies of Brazil", "Rio de Janeiro (city)", "Inter-American Development Bank", "fascism", "States of Brazil", "Fernando Henrique Cardoso", "National Justice Council", "neoliberalism", "Social Democratic Party (Brazil, 2011)", "Federal government of Brazil", "presidential system", "Rubens Ricupero", "International Maritime Organization", "Cabinet of Brazil", "Superior Court of Justice (Brazil)", "governor", "Podemos (Brazil)", "Democratic Labour Party (Brazil)", "coup d'état", "Brazilian cruzeiro real", "Brazilian real", "World Meteorological Organization", "President of the Federal Senate (Brazil)", "democracy", "Second cabinet of Lula da Silva", "International Telecommunication Union", "Legislative power", "bicameral", "Constitutionalism", "State Senator (Brazil)", "Nuclear Suppliers Group", "Separation of powers", "Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva", "Green Party (Brazil)", "Pedro I of Brazil", "interventionism (politics)", "Rodrigo Pacheco (politician)", "Federal Police of Brazil", "Luís Roberto Barroso", "National Congress of Brazil", "United Nations Industrial Development Organization", "United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor", "Customs Cooperation Council", "Arthur Lira", "Republican Party of the Social Order", "Autonomy", "Brazilian Constitution of 1934", "Federalism", "legislature", "History of the Constitution of Brazil", "United Nations Conference on Trade and Development", "Asociación Latinoamericana de Integración", "World Federation of Trade Unions", "1964 Brazilian coup d'état", "World Health Organization", "Regional Administrator", "Zélia Cardoso de Mello", "executive power", "World Bank", "President of the Chamber of Deputies (Brazil)", "V-Dem Democracy indices", "direct democracy", "Administrative division", "Câmara Municipal", "Food and Agriculture Organization", "International Fund for Agricultural Development", "Constitution of Brazil", "Municipalities of Brazil", "International Organization for Standardization", "Getúlio Vargas", "Constitutionalist Revolution", "Republicans (Brazil)", "Brazilian Labour Party (current)", "Social Christian Party (Brazil)", "Group of 77", "International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies", "International Trade Union Confederation", "Federation", "International Criminal Court", "Act (Brazil)", "United Nations", "World Tourism Organization", "mayor", "Group of 24", "United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean", "plantation", "Estado Novo (Brazil)", "Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics", "Palácio do Planalto", "Liberal Party (Brazil, 1985)", "International Monetary Fund", "Statism", "Workers' Party (Brazil)", "Brazilian Social Democracy Party", "Interpol (organization)", "inflation", "head of government", "Minas Gerais", "United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees", "Rio Group", "multi-party system", "representative democracy", "Rio de Janeiro (state)", "Solidariedade", "Satellite town", "Economist Intelligence Unit", "liberalism", "Senate of Brazil", "Group of 15", "Plano Real", "Inmarsat", "Non-Aligned Movement", "Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons", "Bicameralism", "Dilma Rousseff", "Jânio Quadros", "National Renewal Alliance Party", "Tancredo Neves", "João Goulart", "Brazilian Senate", "Geraldo Alckmin", "Workers' Cause Party", "João Figueiredo", "Brazilian Democratic Movement", "Landless Workers' Movement", "Brazilian Constitution of 1937", "WP:SDNONE", "two-party system", "Universal Postal Union", "head of state", "lower house", "Pará", "Ciro Gomes", "International Telecommunications Satellite Organization", "Brazilian Woman's Party", "Cruzado", "Democracy Index" ]
3,634	Economy of Brazil	{{Infobox economy \| country = Brazil \| image = Itaim Bibi Business District.jpg \| image_size = 310px \| caption = São Paulo, the financial capital of Brazil \| currency = Brazilian real (BRL, ) \| year = 1 January – 31 December \| organs = WTO, BRICS, MERCOSUR, G20 and others \| group = \| population = 213 million (2024) \| gdp = \| inflation = 4.83% YoY (Dec 2024) \| poverty = 24% on less than $6.85/day (2022) \| gini = 52 (2022) \| hdi = The economy of Brazil is historically the largest in Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere in nominal terms. As of 2024, the Brazilian economy is the third largest in the Americas in nominal terms, and second largest in purchasing power parity. It is an upper-middle income developing mixed economy. In 2024, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF), Brazil had the 10th largest nominal gross domestic product in the world, but the 7th largest purchasing power parity GDP in the world. Brazil is one of the ten chief industrial states in the world according to International Labour Organization. According to International Monetary Fund (IMF), Brazilian nominal GDP was US$2.331 trillion, the country has a long history of being among the largest economies in the world and the GDP per capita was US$11,178 per inhabitant. 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. 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. 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. 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. == History == 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. == Data == The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2023 (with IMF estimates for 2024–2028). Inflation below 5% is in green. == Components == 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. === Agricultural sector === 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. 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. Agribusiness contributes to Brazil's trade balance, in spite of trade barriers and subsidizing policies adopted by the developed countries. an increase of over 2 percent per year. Brazil created and expanded a complex agribusiness sector. responsible for exports of more than US$1 billion/year. ===Mining=== In the mining sector, Brazil stands out in the extraction of iron ore (where it is the world's second largest 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. 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. \|- ! style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align:left; vertical-align:top"\|Labor force \| style="background:#f0f0f0; vertical-align:top"\| 13.3% of total labor force \|- !style="text-align:left; vertical-align:top"\|GDP of sector \|style="vertical-align:top"\| 22.2% of total GDP \|} 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In the last years, the defence industry in Brazil achieved prominence with exports of more than US$1 billion per year and sales abroad of high-technology products like the transport jet Embraer C-390 Millennium, the Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano, a light attack aircraft, the 6×6 armoured personnel carrier VBTP-MR Guarani and others armaments like pistols and rifles by the company Taurus Armas. Embraer is one the world's top 100 defense contractors. === Creative Industries === 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. 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. === Tourism === 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. === Largest companies === 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: === Energy === 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.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).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. 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%; 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. 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. 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. and the 11th largest producer of solar energy in the world (16.8 TWh). 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. === Transport === 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. 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). 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). 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). The Brazilian railway network has an extension of about 30,000 kilometers. It is basically used for transporting ores. 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. 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. == Exports and imports == ===Trade statistics=== === Products === Brazil was the 25th largest exporter in the world in 2020, with 1.1% of the global total. In 2021, Brazil exported US$280.4 billion and imported US$219.4 billion, with a surplus of US$61 billion. The country's top ten export products were: Iron ore: US$42.2 billion Soy: US$37.3 billion Crude petroleum oils: US$27.4 billion Sugar: US$8.5 billion Beef: US$7.4 billion Soybean meal: US$7.2 billion Petroleum fuel oils: US$6.6 billion Manufacturing Industry: US$6.4 billion Chicken meat: US$6.3 billion Cellulose: US$6.1 billion The country also exports maize, coffee, cotton, tobacco, orange juice, footwear, airplanes, helicopters, cars, vehicle parts, gold, ethanol, semi-finished iron, among others. === Exports === The main countries to which Brazil exports in 2021 were: China: US$87.6 billion (31.28%) United States: US$31.1 billion (11.09%) Argentina: US$11.8 billion (4.24%) Netherlands: US$9.3 billion (3.32%) Chile: US$6.9 billion (2.50%) Singapore: US$5.8 billion (2.10%) Mexico: US$5.5 billion (1.98%) Germany: US$5.5 billion (1.97%) Japan: US$5.5 billion (1.97%) Spain: US$5.4 billion (1.94%) 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. 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. === Imports === The main countries from which Brazil imports in 2021 were: \|- !style="text-align:center; background:lightblue" colspan="2"\|Average GDP growth rate 1950–2029 \|- !style="text-align:left; vertical-align:top"\|1950–59 \|style="vertical-align:top"\| 7.1% \|- ! style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align:left; vertical-align:top"\|1960–69 \| style="background:#f0f0f0; vertical-align:top"\| 6.1% \|- !style="text-align:left; vertical-align:top"\|1970–79 \|style="vertical-align:top"\| 8.9% \|- ! style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align:left; vertical-align:top"\|1980–89 \| style="background:#f0f0f0; vertical-align:top"\| 3.0% \|- !style="text-align:left; vertical-align:top"\|1990–99 \|style="vertical-align:top"\| 1.7% \|- ! style="background:#f0f0f0; text-align:left; vertical-align:top"\|2000–09 \| style="background:#f0f0f0; vertical-align:top"\| 3.3% \|- !style="text-align:left; vertical-align:top"\|2010–19 \|style="vertical-align:top"\| 1.4% \|- !2020-29 \|2.3% \|- !style="text-align:center; vertical-align:top" colspan="2"\|Source: \|} === Sustainable growth === 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. The period of great economic transformation and growth occurred between 1875 and 1975. 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. Brazil's transparency rank in the international world is 75th according to Transparency International. === Control and reform === 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. 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. 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 Luís Inácio 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. === Consistent policies === 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. 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. === Mergers and acquisitions === 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. Here is a list of the largest deals where Brazilian companies took on either the role of the acquiror or the target: === Entrepreneurship === 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. 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. 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. === Credit rating === 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. === Climate change ===	[ "Itajaí", "property", "List of Latin American and Caribbean countries by GDP (nominal)", "Standard & Poor's", "phosphate", "Andes Mountains", "Amazon basin", "Port of Itajaí", "Fortaleza Airport", "Spillover (economics)", "Arab Brazilian", "Belgian Brazilian", "BRF S.A.", "pressurized water reactor", "Brazil", "Economy of São Paulo", "Importation", "nickel", "Paraná River", "motor vehicles", "Confederados", "Colonial Brazil", "Luxembourg Brazilian", "pork", "airports", "Angra dos Reis", "bauxite", "Northeast Region, Brazil", "Central-West Region, Brazil", "Boeing", "Orange Economy", "Fitch Ratings", "mixed economy", "export", "Brasília", "Global Entrepreneurship Monitor", "International Labour Organization", "Scandinavian Brazilian", "Creative industries", "Port of Rio Grande", "Latvia", "Japanese Brazilian", "São Paulo (state)", "ports", "liquidity crisis", "lithium", "Lebanese Brazilian", "lemon", "G20", "BR-101", "waterways", "Hercílio Luz International Airport", "lumber", "Porto Alegre", "fluvial", "coconut", "China", "Czech Brazilian", "Amazon River", "Moody's", "Forbes Global 2000", "World Bank", "Brazilian packaging market", "Petroleum", "guava", "credit rating", "Kilowatt-hour", "Madeira", "Iceland", "Companhia Brasileira de Distribuição", "trade barrier", "dual carriageway", "Mergers and acquisitions", "Egg as food", "Russia", "Paris Club", "aquamarine (gemstone)", "Ease of doing business index", "International Monetary Fund", "Balance (accounting)", "natural rubber", "Banco Itaú", "slave labor", "Brazilian science and technology", "Competition (companies)", "Agriculture", "cashew", "Marechal Rondon International Airport", "roads", "Plano Real", "Solar irradiance", "orange juice", "Orange (fruit)", "List of Brazilian federative units by gross domestic product", "Ultrapar", "Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento", "Telefónica", "amethyst", "Industry (economics)", "World Economic Forum", "Avenida Brigadeiro Faria Lima", "Southeast Region, Brazil", "capacity factor", "Parnaíba", "Braskem", "emerald", "papaya", "Bovespa", "Itaú Unibanco", "2014–2016 Brazilian economic recession", "railway", "Brasília International Airport", "electrical equipment", "Hannah Ritchie", "French Brazilian", "List of Latin American and Caribbean countries by GDP (PPP)", "Banco do Brasil", "biomass", "Ukrainian Brazilian", "tangerine", "Employment", "Rio de Janeiro", "commercial jet", "Portuguese Empire", "Itaúsa", "Taurus Armas", "natural resources", "Economic history of Brazil", "attack aircraft", "trade balance", "CIA World Factbook", "OECD", "wind power", "Inter-American Development Bank", "Forum for the Progress and Development of South America", "List of countries by Human Development Index", "hydroelectricity", "Portuguese people", "Armenian Brazilian", "BRICS", "List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita", "Exportation", "textile industry", "Vale S.A.", "milk", "United Nations Development Programme", "Corruption in Brazil", "mango", "vanadium", "German Brazilian", "mercantile", "iron ore", "Kingdom of Portugal", "Osasco", "Indigenous peoples of Brazil", "Developing country", "Arms industry", "BM&F Bovespa", "Austrian Brazilian", "Itaipu Dam", "Rede S.A.", "coffee", "infrastructure", "List of countries by GDP (PPP)", "Syrian Brazilian", "natural gas", "São Paulo Metro", "Minas Gerais", "Institute of Applied Economic Research", "tourmaline", "Rio de Janeiro (state)", "Pantanal", "Tucuruí Dam", "de:Brasilien", "primary products", "Swiss Brazilian", "List of busiest container ports", "List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita", "Newly industrialized country", "2015–2017 Brazilian economic crisis", "aircraft", "Pulp (paper)", "avocado", "B3 (stock exchange)", "VBTP-MR Guarani", "Dutch Brazil", "Eletrobras", "Amazon Forest", "Central Bi-Oceanic railway", "Airbus", "List of countries by inequality-adjusted HDI", "savannah", "Salgado Filho International Airport", "Embraer", "Santa Catarina (state)", "Barueri", "Intellectual property", "MERCOSUR", "nominal gross domestic product", "pineapple", "gross domestic product", "hydroelectric", "chemical industry", "Cocoa bean", "industrial sector", "Cairns Group", "Forbes magazine", "Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano", "cotton", "Port of Santos", "Transparency International", "footwear industry", "Purchasing power parity", "long steel", "paper", "graphite", "Max Roser", "South Region, Brazil", "Belo Monte Dam", "Coking coal", "Petrobras", "Foreign Policy Association", "Polish Brazilian", "photovoltaic solar", "cement", "açaí", "Three Gorges Dam", "beans", "beef", "Brazilian Jews", "Spanish Brazilian", "soy", "Gerdau", "English Brazilian", "Forbes", "Human capital", "Dutch Brazilian", "onion", "National Congress of Brazil", "Rio de Janeiro/Galeão International Airport", "Campinas", "modern slavery", "Eduardo Gomes International Airport", "Croat Brazilian", "steel", "State Capitalism", "garnet", "Tertiary sector of the economy", "Malta", "Brazil and the World Bank", "sorghum", "Cambridge University Press", "copper", "JBS S.A.", "economic growth", "topaz", "consumer durable", "Brooklin Novo", "Belo Horizonte", "gold", "Port of Paranaguá", "Primary sector of the economy", "CCR S.A.", "South America", "Salvador International Airport", "FIRJAN", "Cogna Educação", "shoes", "peanut", "Amazon Basin", "service sector", "Banco Bradesco", "G-20 major economies", "Port of São Francisco do Sul", "Financial Times", "agribusiness", "CPFL Energia", "Hungarian Brazilian", "Paraguay", "guaraná", "Bulgarian Brazilian", "common fig", "Irish Brazilian", "Agribusiness", "Port of Rio de Janeiro", "salt", "North Region, Brazil", "persimmon", "apple", "food industry", "Eletrobrás", "maize", "Scottish Brazilian", "Cielo S.A.", "Vale (mining company)", "Belém/Val-de-Cans International Airport", "World Trade Organization", "São Paulo", "Paraná (state)", "agate", "Italian Brazilian", "foreign direct investment", "São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport", "Americas", "Southern Hemisphere", "tin", "peach", "manganese", "Terrawatt-hour", "Embraer C-390 Millennium", "niobium", "Interoceanic Highway", "tantalum", "watermelon", "Mercosur", "palm oil", "Rio Grande do Sul", "Latin America", "sugarcane", "India", "digital subscriber line", "Transport in Brazil", "Avenida Paulista", "Empresa de Pesquisa Energética", "Brazilian real", "Lithuanians in Brazil", "North Macedonia", "Stone Age", "Angra Nuclear Power Plant", "Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva", "road", "China Petrochemical Corporation", "kitchenware", "Brazil nut", "Sabesp", "Azores", "titanium", "Vale (company)", "chromium", "Secondary sector of the economy", "BR-116", "melon", "G8+5", "Michel Temer", "List of countries by GDP (nominal)", "banana", "Suape Port", "Oi (telecommunications)", "tobacco", "defense contractors", "List of nuclear reactors", "grape", "vehicles", "The World Bank", "petrochemical", "Bovine spongiform encephalopathy", "List of economic crises in Brazil", "List of Brazilian states by poverty rate", "chicken meat", "sulfur", "Watt", "Belo Horizonte International Airport", "Portuguese Brazilian", "opal", "Finland", "tomato", "soybean", "Afrikaners", "List of Latin American and Caribbean countries by GDP growth", "Dilma Rousseff", "Eletronuclear", "Southern Brazil", "gypsum", "Financial centre", "List of countries by GNI (nominal) per capita", "machinery", "Recife/Guararapes–Gilberto Freyre International Airport", "Greek Brazilian", "cellulose", "Odebrecht", "Ambev", "thermoelectric", "rice", "Textiles" ]
3,635	Telecommunications in Brazil	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. == Telephone system== === Landline=== 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. National: extensive microwave radio relay system and a national satellite system with 64 earth stations. 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) Served locations: 37,355 Installed terminals: 43,626,836 In service: 33,800,370 Public terminals: 1,128,350 Density: 22,798 Phones/100 Hab ===Mobile=== 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. 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. 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. 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. The mobile market is ruled by 3 companies: Vivo, belongs to Telefônica Brasil, is the leading mobile and landline carrier in Brazil. In 1Q2023, Vivo served 98 million mobile subscribers. Claro, controlled by the Mexican América Móvil (owned by Carlos Slim), ranks second in Brazilian mobile market. In 1Q2023, Claro served 82.8 million mobile subscribers. Algar Telecom is the largest regional mobile carrier, operating in 4 states. The company's customers have national coverage through roaming agreements with the three major telcos. In 1Q2023, Algar Telecom served 4.5 million mobile subscribers. Americas II cable entered operations in September 2000, connecting Brazil (Fortaleza) to United States. ATLANTIS-2, with around 12 thousand kilometers in extension, operating since 2000, it connects Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and Natal) to Europe, Africa and South America. This is the only cable that connects South America to Africa and Europe. EMERGIA – SAM 1 cable connects all three Americas, surrounding it with a total extension of more than 25 thousand kilometers. GLOBAL CROSSING - SAC Connects all Americas, surrounding them with a total extension of more than 15 thousand kilometers. GLOBENET/360 NETWORK Another link from North America to South America. UNISUR Interconnects Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. 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. ===Satellite connections=== List of business and satellites they operate (Brazilian Geostationary Satellites) ==Television and radio== 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. ==Internet== 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.	[ "Vivo (telecommunications)", "WCDMA", "Grupo Globo", "Claro Brasil", "América Móvil", "Argentina", "Anatel", "TIM Brasil", "CDMA", "Analog device", "Northeast Region, Brazil", "Carlos Slim", "5G NR", "Bandwidth (computing)", "Amazonas 2", "Digital subscriber line", "2014 FIFA World Cup", "Star One C3", "PSTN", "South America", "LTE (telecommunication)", "North Region, Brazil", "Star One C2", "telephone", "submarine communications cable", "Advanced Mobile Phone System", "Europe", "FTTH", "Telefônica Brasil", "Telecom Italia", "Algar Telecom", "CDMA 2000", "Uruguay", "Chapter 11, Title 11, United States Code", "Brasilsat B3", "Digital AMPS", "ISDB", "WiMax", "Fortaleza", "Star One C5", "Brasilsat B2", "Gbit/s", "Oi (telecommunications)", "GSM", "Telstar 14R", "Star One C4", "Brasilsat B1", "Amazonas 1", "WP:SDNONE", "Africa", "High Speed Packet Access", "Brasilsat B4", "3G", "DSL", "List of telephone operating companies", "Telstar 14", "Americas", "Star One C1", "Prepaid mobile phone", "Cable modem" ]
3,636	Transport in Brazil	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. ==Railways== The Brazilian railway network has an extension of about . It is basically used for transporting ores. 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 of new tracks, in 64 requests for implementation of new railways. Nine new railroads had already been authorized by the Federal Government, in of new tracks. Total actual network: 29,888 km of railroad and 1,411 km of subway and light rail Sobral (13.9 km)* Belo Horizonte (28.1 km) João Pessoa (30 km)* Maceió (32.1 km)* Salvador (33 km) \| width=40 \| \| Federal District (42.4 km) Porto Alegre (43.4 km)* Fortaleza (43.6 km)* Natal (56.2 km) Recife (71 km)* Rio de Janeiro (100 km)* São Paulo (112.2 km)* \|} Note (*): Light Rail Transit, Light Metro, Tram or Subway-Surface fully or partially operated. ===Railway links with adjacent countries=== International rail links exist between Brazil and Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay. ===Tramways=== Brazil had a hundred tramway systems. Currently, there are vintage tramways operating in Belém, Campinas, Campos do Jordão, Itatinga, Rio de Janeiro and Santos. == Highways == Brazil has more than of roads, of which are paved (12,4%), and about are divided highways, 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 () or Casimiro de Abreu, in the state of Rio de Janeiro (), 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. 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 to . 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 US, 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 US and the European Union was 1% between 1995 and 2013, even though they already have a much more advanced road infrastructure than Brazil. 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. 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. ==Waterways== 50,000 km navigable (most in areas remote from industry or population) (2012) ==Pipelines== condensate/gas 62 km natural gas 11,696 km (1,165 km distribution, 4,794 km transport) liquid petroleum gas 353 km (37 km distribution, 40 km transport) crude oil 4,517 km (1,985 km distribution) refined products 5,959 km (1,165 km distribution, 4,794 km transport) === Atlantic Ocean === ===Amazon river=== Belém Manaus Santarém ===Paraguay River (international water way)=== Corumbá ==Merchant marine== 770 ships ( (or over) totaling / ships by type: (1999, 2019 and 2021 est.) such as those in Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Florianópolis, Cuiabá, Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza, Belém and Manaus, among others. 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. As of 2020, Brazil had the eighth largest passenger air market in the world. === Airports - with paved runways === total: 698 over 3,047 m: 7 2,438 to 3,047 m: 27 1,524 to 2,437 m: 179 914 to 1,523 m: 436 (2017) under 914 m: 39 (2017) === Airports - with unpaved runways === total: 3,395 1,524 to 2,437 m: 92 914 to 1,523 m: 1,619 under 914 m: 1,684 (2013) ==Main airlines == Azul Brazilian Airlines Gol Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes LATAM Brasil Voepass Linhas Aéreas == Heliports == 16 (2007) 13 (2010) 13 (2013)	[ "Port of Natal", "petroleum tanker", "List of countries by road network size", "Port of Itajaí", "Port of Santarém", "Salgado Filho International Airport", "Port of Rio de Janeiro", "Federal District Metro (Brazil)", "Port of Tubarão", "Fortaleza Airport", "Santa Catarina (state)", "Natal, Rio Grande do Norte", "Corumbá", "railway", "Brasília International Airport", "Fortaleza", "Paraíba", "Itaguaí", "Rio Grande, Rio Grande do Sul", "LNG carrier", "Brazil", "waterway", "Belém/Val-de-Cans International Airport", "heritage railway", "Paraná (state)", "Transport in Bolivia", "bulk carrier", "São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport", "Transport in Argentina", "Port of Santos", "Rio de Janeiro–Galeão International Airport", "Porto Alegre Metro", "Colón, Panama", "Natural-gas condensate", "São Paulo–Guarulhos International Airport", "Dual gauge", "Amazon Rainforest", "BRIC (economics term)", "cargo ship", "Voepass Linhas Aéreas", "Standard-gauge railway", "Brasília", "Rio Grande do Sul", "Narrow-gauge railway", "Transport in Uruguay", "Vienna Convention on Road Traffic", "navigable", "Rail transport", "Porto do Itaqui", "LATAM Brasil", "chemical tanker", "Port of Rio Grande", "Salvador Metro", "São Paulo (state)", "light rail", "container ship", "Azul Brazilian Airlines", "Maceió", "BR-101", "Port of Manaus", "Hercílio Luz International Airport", "Belo Horizonte Metro", "Rio de Janeiro/Galeão International Airport", "Ponta da Madeira", "Campinas", "Estrada de Ferro Oeste de Minas", "Eduardo Gomes International Airport", "Rail transport by country", "BR-116", "crude oil", "Rapid transit", "Suape Port", "National Association of Cargo Transportation and Logistics", "Port of Porto Alegre", "Rio de Janeiro Metro", "Hidrovia Tietê-Paraná", "Amapa Railway", "João Pessoa, Paraíba", "Gol Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes", "Broad-gauge railway", "dual carriageway", "Itatinga", "Hidrovia do Solimões-Amazonas", "off the shelf", "Belém", "Recife Metro", "Port of Antonina", "Sobral, Ceará", "Teresina", "natural gas", "Port of Paranaguá", "Rio Negro (Amazon)", "São Paulo Metro", "liquid petroleum", "Minas Gerais", "Superporto do Açu", "Belo Horizonte International Airport", "São Sebastião, São Paulo", "Rio de Janeiro (state)", "Salvador International Airport", "Marechal Rondon International Airport", "roads", "Juazeiro do Norte", "roll-on/roll-off", "Alagoas", "Port of São Francisco do Sul", "Port of Salvador", "Passenger ship", "WP:SDNONE", "Recife/Guararapes–Gilberto Freyre International Airport", "Casimiro de Abreu, Rio de Janeiro", "Port of Pecém" ]
3,637	Brazilian Armed Forces	{{Infobox national military \| name = Brazilian Armed Forces \| native_name = Forças Armadas Brasileiras \| image = Emblem of the Brazilian Armed Forces.svg \| caption = Seal of the Brazilian Armed Forces \| image2 = Bandeira do EMCFA atual.svg \| caption2 = Flag of the Joint General Staff of the Armed Forces \| branches = \| headquarters = Ministry of Defense, Brasília \| commander-in-chief = Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva \| commander-in-chief_title = Commander-in-Chief \| minister = José Múcio \| minister_title = Minister of Defence \| commander = Renato Freire \| commander_title = Chief of the Joint Staff of the Armed Forces \| amount = (2023) \| percent_GDP = 1,1% (2023) \| age = 18–45 years of age for compulsory military service for men \| conscription = 10 to 12 months \| active = 376,000 \| ranked = \| reserve = 1,340,000 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). ==Organization== The Armed Forces of Brazil are divided into 3 branches: Brazilian Army Brazilian Army Aviation Command Brazilian Navy Brazilian Marine Corps Brazilian Naval Aviation Brazilian Air Force Aerospace Operations Command The Military Police (state police) alongside the Military Firefighters Corps are described as an auxiliary and reserve force of the Army. The Brazilian Navy which is the oldest of the Brazilian Armed Forces, includes the Brazilian Marine Corps and the Brazilian Naval Aviation. ===Service obligation and manpower=== There is compulsory military service for those aged 18-45; conscript service obligation – 10 to 12 months; voluntary service is allowed from age 17-45. 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. ===Mission and challenges=== 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 However, Brazil is the only country besides China and Russia that has land borders with 10 or more nations. Moreover, Brazil has of land borders and of coastline to be patrolled and defended. Overall, the Armed Forces have to defend 8.5 million km2 (around 3.2 million sq. mi.) of land and patrol 4.4 million km2 (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. ==Military history of Brazil== 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. 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". 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. 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: ===Armed conflicts involving Brazil=== First Battle of Guararapes (1648): Decisive Portuguese victory that helped end Dutch occupation. Due to this battle, the year 1648 is considered as the year of the foundation of the Brazilian Army. Invasion of Cayenne (1809) (1809) : Was a combined military operation by an Anglo-Portuguese expeditionary force against Cayenne, capital of the French South American colony of French Guiana in 1809, during the Napoleonic Wars. Luso-Brazilian invasion (1816–1820) : Was an armed conflict between the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves and the partisans of José Artigas over the Banda Oriental (Eastern Bank), present-day Uruguay. Brazilian War of Independence (1822–1824): Series of military campaigns that had as objective to cement Brazilian sovereignty and end Portuguese resistance. Confederation of the Equator (1824) : Was a short-lived rebellion that occurred in the northeastern region of Brazil during that nation's struggle for independence from Portugal. Cisplatine War (1825–1828) : Armed conflict over an area known as Banda Oriental or "Eastern Shore" between the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and Empire of Brazil in the aftermath of the United Provinces' emancipation from Spain. Ragamuffin War (1835–1845) : Was a Republican uprising that began in southern Brazil, in the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina in 1835. The rebels, led by Generals Bento Gonçalves da Silva and Antônio de Sousa Neto with the support of the Italian fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi, surrendered to imperial forces in 1845. Platine War (1851–1852): The Brazilian Empire and its allies went to war against the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas of the Argentine Confederation. Uruguayan War (1864–1865): Brazilian intervention in Uruguay. With support from Argentina, imperial forces deposed President Atanasio Aguirre from office and instated general Venancio Flores in his place. Paraguayan War (1864–1870): Over 200,000 Brazilians fought on this conflict, Brazilian Naval Revolt (1893–1894) : Were armed mutinies promoted mainly by Admirals Custodio de Mello and Saldanha da Gama and their fleet of Brazilian Navy ships against unconstitutional staying in power of the central government in Rio de Janeiro. War of Canudos (1893–1897): The deadliest rebellion of Brazil, the insurrectionists defeated the first 3 military forces sent to quell the rebellion. ===Brazilian military coups d'état=== Although no military coups occurred during the 67 years of the Brazilian Empire, the Republican period experienced four military coups d'état in the 75 years between 1889 and 1964. Proclamation of the Republic (1889): End of the Brazilian Empire, this was the first coup d'état by the Brazilian military. ===Joint Staff of the Armed Forces=== 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. 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. 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. 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). 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. The current head of JSAF is the Admiral Renato Rodrigues de Aguiar Freire. ==Brazilian Army== 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. ===FORPRON=== 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. File:Infantryy.jpg\|Brazilian Army Infantry File:Blindados em Rosário do Sul - RS (9919079464).jpg\|Leopard 1A5 main battle tank File:Cavalaria (29242886961).jpg\|Brazilian VBTP-MR Guarani IFVs File:Cavalaria (28698748214).jpg\|EE-9 Cascavel armored reconnaissance File:Brazilian Army Iveco LMV.jpg\|Iveco LMV infantry mobility vehicle File:Cavalaria (29242889921).jpg\|Leopard 1A5 in night shooting exercise File:19 04 2022- Dia do Exército Brasileiro (52017080500).jpg\|Brazilian Army EC725 File:Ministro Jaques Wagner assiste exercício de artilharia antiaérea do Exército (20161936520).jpg\|Brazilian Flakpanzer Gepard File:Exército Brasileiro (4968751470).jpg\|Electronic Warfare trucks File:Junglee.jpg\|Jungle Warfare infantry File:Aviation Command.jpg\|Airmobile infantry with a AS565 Panther of the Aviation Command File:Paratroopers.jpg\|Brazilian Army Paratroopers File:Makunfron.jpg\|Border Battalion Soldier File:Specialforces.jpg\|Army Special Forces File:Brazilian military helicopter underway, 2012.jpg\|Brazilian UH-60 Black Hawk in the Amazon region File:Combatente da Caatinga (26700198395).jpg\|Brazilian Caatinga soldiers ==Brazilian Navy== The navy () has eight bases throughout Brazil. File:Operação "Poseidon 2021" (51474511477).jpg\|Helicopter carrier Atlântico File:Operação Poseidon (51443464716).jpg\|EC725 helicopter aboard Atlântico File:GLAM MB Piloto Caça Untitled-1 (36124829324).jpg\|Brazilian Navy A-4 Skyhawk File:Aspirantex 2020 (49488413213).jpg\|Frigate Constituição underway File:US Navy 110422-N-ZI300-115 The Brazilian navy frigate Bosisio (F 48) fires at an unmanned aerial vehicle during a drone exercise (DRONEX) with ship.jpg\|Brazilian frigates in shooting exercise File:GLAM MB IMG 4068 (28933649305).jpg\|Corvette Barroso firing missile Exocet File:Lançamento de Armas 2021 Exocet 11 (51279148576).png\|EC725 firing an Exocet missile File:ABC 3561 (26818408105).jpg\|Task Force with Bahia leading File:Aeronaves UH 15 - Super Cougar (52098235541).jpg\|Brazilian Navy squadron of EC725s in flight File:Operação Formosa 2014 (15481886779).jpg\|Brazilian Marines ASTROS system File:Operação Ágata Norte 2022 - Operação Demonstrativa em Belém (PA) (52130022414).jpg\|Brazilian Navy SOF (GRUMEC) File:Operação Formosa 2016 (30388031181).jpg\|Brazilian Marines SOF (COMANF) File:Aeronave ScanEagle em um lançador (52200554203).jpg\|Brazilian ScanEagle UAV File:Fuzileiros Navais (32669765020).jpg\|Brazilian Marines MOWAG Piranha ==Brazilian Air Force== The Brazilian Air Force (, , also known as FAB, or ) 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. File:Brazilian Saab Gripen E (cropped).jpg\|F-39E Gripen during an exercise File:22 10 2021 Solenidade Militar alusiva ao Dia do Aviador e ao Dia da Força Aérea Brasileira (51619395824).jpg\|KC-390 in formation with F-5M and F-39E File:Aeronave A-29 Super Tucano em voo sobre a Floresta Amazônica.jpg\|A-29 Super Tucano patrolling the Amazon rainforest File:Brazilian Air Force AMX air-to-air refuelling.jpg\|AMX attack aircraft File:Brazilian Gripen F-39E (cropped).jpg\|F-39E Gripen multirole fighter File:Sábado Aéreo 2014 (15101174380).jpg\|UH-60L helicopter File:R99 - RIAT 2007 (2370466415).jpg\|Brazilian Air Force E-99 AEW&C File:CRUZEX 2013 (10798689103).jpg\|Two F-5M taking off in aerial alert File:Operação Atlântico 2018 (31993852168).jpg\|Brazilian Air Force EC725 File:P3am-orion.jpg\|P-3AM Orion patrol aircraft File:Revo02.jpg\|Air Force KC-130 refuels H-36 Caracal over Rio de Janeiro File:Vant Hermes 450 da FAB no aeroporto de Cáceres (MT) (8101398607).jpg\|RQ-450 UAV File:Infantaria.jpg\|Brazilian Air Force Infantry File:Parasar.jpg\|Air Force SOF (Para-SAR) ==Brazilian aerospace command== 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. ==Troop relocation== Brazil has the need to patrol its of land borders. 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. 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. ===SGDC=== 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. 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. ===Link-BR2=== 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. ==Future==	[ "1945 Brazilian coup d'état", "Argentine Confederation", "Military branch", "Troller Veículos Especiais", "Iveco", "Cisplatine War", "War of Canudos", "Contestado War", "EC725", "Leonardo S.p.A.", "AMX International AMX", "1988 Brazilian Constitution", "Embraer", "Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB)", "Revolution of 1930", "space command", "Civilian control of the military", "José Múcio", "Santa Catarina (state)", "Washington Luís", "Electronic warfare", "Military", "Flakpanzer Gepard", "Taurus (manufacturer)", "NUCLEP", "peacekeeping", "petroleum", "Ministry of Defence (Brazil)", "Pedro II of Brazil", "Posse comitatus (common law)", "Brazil during World War I", "Giuseppe Garibaldi", "Amazon rainforest", "Brazil", "United States Armed Forces", "Platine War", "Embraer R-99", "Lockheed Martin KC-130", "Nazi Germany", "Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos", "Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano", "Brazilian frigate Constituição (F-42)", "Brazilian Army Aviation Command", "SGDC-1", "President of Brazil", "Exclusive economic zone of Brazil", "Mowag Piranha", "Paratrooper", "East Timor", "Category:Battles involving Brazil", "Indústria Naval do Ceará", "Confederation of the Equator", "Infantry", "IMBEL", "MINUSTAH", "Caatinga", "Embraer C-390 Millennium", "Brazilian Amazon", "AEL Sistemas", "Special Operations Command (Brazil)", "Agrale", "Mectron", "Iveco LMV", "Renato Rodrigues de Aguiar Freire", "Rondas Ostensivas Tobias de Aguiar", "XMobots", "Lockheed P-3 Orion", "Eurocopter EC725", "Aerospace Operations Command", "ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems", "Invasion of Cayenne (1809)", "Brasília", "Rio Grande do Sul", "G1 (website)", "List of Wars involving Brazil", "Leopard 1", "Army High Command", "Brazilian Marine Corps", "List of countries by number of military and paramilitary personnel", "GRUMEC", "Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais", "Jungle warfare", "First Battle of Guararapes", "List of wars involving Brazil", "Chile", "Brazilian Naval Aviation", "Brazil and weapons of mass destruction", "Airmobile", "Brazilian Air Force", "Brazilian Empire", "Frigate", "Helibras", "coup d'état", "History of Brazil (1889–1930)", "Routledge", "Indústria Aeronáutica Neiva", "Juan Manuel de Rosas", "general", "Bolivia", "Government of Brazil", "Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva", "Pedro I of Brazil", "Eurico Dutra", "Military of the Empire of Brazil", "Joint Staff of the Armed Forces", "Military Police (Brazil)", "NDM Bahia (G40)", "The World Factbook", "Luso-Brazilian invasion", "Brazilian Superior War School", "Atanasio Aguirre", "Venancio Flores", "Brazilian Naval Revolt", "Mineral", "Astros II", "national security", "Northrop F-5", "Avibras", "Para-SAR", "1964 Brazilian coup d'état", "SGDC-2", "Rare-earth element", "Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul", "personnel", "Brazilian army", "Eurocopter AS565 Panther", "London", "Getúlio Vargas", "Brazilian Navy", "Constitutionalist Revolution", "Saab JAS 39 Gripen", "National Defense Council (Brazil)", "Commander-in-Chief", "COMANF", "Category:Wars involving Brazil", "Brazilian Marines", "Air force ground forces and special forces", "territorial waters", "Military Firefighters Corps", "Argentina–Brazil relations", "Military Police of Rio de Janeiro State", "Triple Entente", "army general", "Condor S/A", "Haiti", "Marine life", "MAN Latin America", "Military ranks of Brazil", "SpaceNews", "Douglas A-4 Skyhawk", "Policing in Brazil", "Battalion", "Minas Gerais", "EMGEPRON", "Brazilian Blue Amazon", "Task force", "Exocet", "Rio de Janeiro (state)", "Brazilian Army", "EE-9 Cascavel", "Brazilian aircraft carrier Atlântico", "Uruguay", "Itaguaí Construções Navais", "Boeing Insitu ScanEagle", "Senate of Brazil", "Operation Torch", "Paraguayan War", "Brazilian Declaration of Independence", "João Goulart", "Espírito Santo", "Ragamuffin War", "Brazilian Space Agency", "Brazilian Army Aviation", "Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk", "Industria Aeronáutica e Serviços - IAS", "Aero Bravo", "Elbit Hermes 450", "VBTP-MR Guarani", "Odebrecht", "Dutch Brazil", "Brazilian corvette Barroso (V-34)", "Usiminas", "Uruguayan War", "National Force of Public Safety", "Military history of Brazil" ]
3,638	Foreign relations of Brazil	The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is responsible for managing the foreign relations of Brazil. Brazil has the largest economy in Latin America and is a key political and economic power 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. 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. ==Overview== 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. 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. ==Foreign policy== 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. 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. 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. 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. Lula stated Brazil's commitment to the One China principle that is the position held by the People's Republic of China and the ruling Chinese Communist Party, saying that the government of the People's Republic of China was the sole legal government representing the whole of China, including Taiwan -- as part of China. Under Lula, Brazil provided money and corporate support to Cuba. The state-controlled Brazilian oil company Petrobras studied the possibility of drilling for oil off of Cuba, while the Odebrecht construction firm headed a revamp of the Cuban port of Mariel into the island's main commercial port. Brazil's state-run Brazilian Development Bank gave $300 million to Odebrecht to build new roads, rail lines, wharves, and warehouses at Mariel. He said: "There is no risk with Chávez." 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. ===Bolsonaro administration, 2019-2022=== 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. 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. He has also said that Brazil will stay out of the ongoing China-U.S. trade war. 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." 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. Bolsonaro also praised U.S. President Donald Trump and his foreign policy, 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. 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. 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". 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. ===Lula second presidency, 2023-present=== In May 2022, Lula placed blame for Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying "This guy is as responsible as Putin for the war". Lula also repeatedly attacked NATO and the European Union as having caused the war. After Germany appealed to Lula to provide military aid to Ukraine by selling it arms, Lula refused. In December 2023, Lula said that he will invite Vladimir Putin to Brazil. In February 2024, he was visited by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In November 2023, Lula met in Riyadh with the prime minister and crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. They discussed strengthening bilateral relations, and investments in both countries. 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. In January 2020, Brazil suspended its participation in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, (Celac). 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. 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. ==United Nations politics== 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. 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. Brazil declared in 1986 the sector between 28°W to 53°W Brazilian Antarctica (Antártica Brasileira) as its Zone of Interest. It overlaps Argentine and British claims In 2004, the country submitted its claims to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) to extend its maritime continental margin. ==Foreign aid== Overseas aid has become an increasingly important tool for Brazil's foreign policy. Brazil provides aid through the Brazilian Agency of Cooperation (Abbreviation: ABC; ), 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. 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. ==Participation in international organizations== 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 == Diplomatic relations == 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. Relations with non-UN members or observers: - Brazil does not recognize Kosovo as an independent state and has announced it has no plans to do so without an agreement with Serbia. However, Brazil accepts the Kosovan passport. - Brazil does not recognize the Republic of China as it has recognized the People's Republic of China, although it has non-diplomatic relations and maintains a special office in Taiwan. Brazil also accepts the Taiwan passport. \|- \|2 \| \| \|- \|3 \| \| \|- \|4 \| \| \|- \|5 \| \| \|- \|6 \| \| \|- \|7 \| \| \|- \|8 \| \| \|- \|9 \| \| \|- \|10 \| \| \|- \|11 \| \| \|- \|— \| \| \|- \|12 \| \| \|- \|13 \| \| \|- \|14 \| \| \|- \|15 \| \| \|- \|16 \| \| \|- \|17 \| \| \|- \|18 \| \| \|- \|19 \| \| \|- \|20 \| \| \|- \|21 \| \| \|- \|22 \| \| \|- \|23 \| \| \|- \|24 \| \| \|- \|25 \| \| \|- \|26 \| \| \|- \|27 \| \| \|- \|28 \| \| \|- \|30 \| \| \|- \|31 \| \| \|- \|32 \| \| \|- \|33 \| \| \|- \|34 \| \| \|- \|35 \| \| \|- \|37 \| \| \|- \|38 \| \| \|- \|40 \| \| \|- \|41 \| \| \|- \|42 \| \| \|- \|44 \| \| \|- \|45 \| \| \|- \|46 \| \| \|- \|47 \| \| \|- \|48 \| \| \|- \|49 \| \| \|- \|51 \| \| \|- \|52 \| \| \|- \|54 \| \| \|- \|55 \| \| \|- \|— \| \| \|- \|57 \| \| \|- \|58 \| \| \|- \|60 \| \| \|- \|61 \| \| \|- \|62 \| \| \|- \|63 \| \| \|- \|64 \| \| \|- \|65 \| \| \|- \|66 \| \| \|- \|68 \| \| \|- \|69 \| \| \|- \|70 \| \| \|- \|71 \| \| \|- \|72 \| \| \|- \|73 \| \| \|- \|74 \| \| \|- \|75 \| \| \|- \|76 \| \| \|- \|77 \| \| \|- \|78 \| \| \|- \|79 \| \| \|- \|80 \| \| \|- \|81 \| \| \|- \|82 \| \| \|- \|83 \| \| \|- \|84 \| \| \|- \|86 \| \| \|- \|87 \| \| \|- \|88 \| \| \|- \|89 \| \| \|- \|90 \| \| \|- \|91 \| \| \|- \|92 \| \| \|- \|94 \| \| \|- \|95 \| \| \|- \|96 \| \| \|- \|97 \| \| \|- \|101 \| \| \|- \|102 \| \| \|- \|103 \| \| \|- \|104 \| \| \|- \|105 \| \| \|- \|106 \| \| \|- \|107 \| \| \|- \|108 \| \| \|- \|110 \| \| \|- \|111 \| \| \|- \|112 \| \| \|- \|113 \| \| \|- \|114 \| \| \|- \|115 \| \| \|- \|116 \| \| \|- \|117 \| \| \|- \|118 \| \| \|- \|119 \| \| \|- \|120 \| \| \|- \|121 \| \| \|- \|122 \| \| \|- \|123 \| \| \|- \|124 \| \| \|- \|126 \| \| \|- \|127 \| \| \|- \|128 \| \| \|- \|130 \| \| \|- \|131 \| \| \|- \|132 \| \| \|- \|133 \| \| \|- \|134 \| \| \|- \|137 \| \| \|- \|138 \| \| \|- \|145 \| \| \|- \|146 \| \| \|- \|147 \| \| \|- \|154 \| \| \|- \|157 \| \| \|- \|158 \| \| \|- \|159 \| \| \|- \|160 \| \| \|- \|161 \| \| \|- \|162 \| \| \|- \|163 \| \| \|- \|167 \| \| \|- \|168 \| \| \|- \|174 \| \| \|- \|175 \| \| \|- \|176 \| \| \|- \|177 \| \| \|- \|180 \| \| \|- \|185 \| \| \|- \|190 \| \| \|- \|192 \| \| Algeria has an embassy in Brasilia. Brazil has an embassy in Algiers. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|12 November 1975\|\|See Angola–Brazil relations Both countries established diplomatic relations on 12 November 1975 Brazil is accredited to Chad from its embassy in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Chad is accredited to Brazil from its embassy in Washington, D.C., United States. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|21 June 1968\|\|See Brazil–Democratic Republic of the Congo relations Both countries established diplomatic relations on 21 June 1968 Brazil has an embassy in Cairo. Egypt has an embassy in Brasília, a consulate-general in Rio de Janeiro, and a commercial office in São Paulo. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|9 January 1951\|\|See Brazil–Ethiopia relations Both countries established diplomatic relations on 9 January 1951 when was accredited first Minister of Ethiopia to Brazil Mr. Blatta Dawit Ogbazgy Brazil has an embassy in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia has an embassy in Brasília. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|11 January 1974\|\|Both countries established diplomatic relations on 11 January 1974 Brazil has an embassy in Libreville. Gabon has an embassy in Brasília. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|1960\|\| Ghana and Brazil share a historically close relationship. Brazil has an embassy in Accra. Ghana has an embassy in Brasília. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|4 September 1974\|\|Both countries established diplomatic relations on 4 September 1974 Brazil has an embassy in Conakry. Guinea has an embassy in Brasília. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|22 November 1974\|\|See Brazil–Guinea-Bissau relations Both countries established diplomatic relations on 22 November 1974. Brazil has an embassy in Bissau. Guinea-Bissau has an embassy in Brasília.. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|4 July 1967\|\|See Brazil–Kenya relations Both countries established diplomatic relations on 4 July 1967 Brazil is accredited to Madagascar from its embassy in Maputo, Mozambique. Madagascar is accredited to Brazil from its embassy in Washington, D.C., United States. \|- \| \|23 August 1990 \|Both countries established diplomatic relations on 23 August 1990 Bilateral relations between Nigeria and Brazil focus primarily upon trade and culture. The largest country in Latin America by size, and the largest country in Africa by population are remotely bordered across from one another by the Atlantic Ocean. Brazil and Nigeria for centuries, have enjoyed a warmly, friendly, and strong relationship on the basis of culture (many Afro-Brazilians trace their ancestry to Nigeria) and commercial trade. Brazil has an embassy in Abuja and a consulate-general in Lagos. Nigeria has an embassy in Brasília. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|1975\|\|See Brazil–São Tomé and Príncipe relations Brazil has an embassy in São Tomé. São Tomé and Príncipe is accredited to Brazil from its Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York City, United States. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|26 April 1961\|\|Both countries established diplomatic relations on 26 April 1961 Brazil has an embassy in Dakar. Senegal has an embassy in Brasília. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|31 January 1948\|\|See Brazil–South Africa relations Both countries established diplomatic relations on 31 January 1948 Brazil-South Africa relations have traditionally been close. Brazil has provided military assistance to South Africa in the form of warfare training and logistics. Bilateral relations between the countries have recently increased, as a result of Brazil's new South-South foreign policy aimed to strengthen integration between the major powers of the developing world. South Africa is part of the IBSA Dialogue Forum, alongside Brazil and India. Brazil has an embassy in Pretoria and a consulate-general in Cape Town. South Africa has an embassy in Brasília and a consulate-general in São Paulo. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|10 October 1968\|\|Both countries established diplomatic relations on 10 October 1968 After democratization, a strong integration and partnership began between the two countries. In 1985 they signed the basis for the MERCOSUL, a Regional Trade Agreement. In the field of science, the two regional giants had been rivals since the 1950s when both governments launched parallel nuclear and space programs, however, several agreements were signed since then such as the creation of the Brazilian–Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) to verify both countries' pledges to use nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes. National spaces agencies CONAE and the AEB had also begun working together since the 1990s. Brazil's decision to prevent a Royal Navy ship docking in Rio de Janeiro was seen as backing Argentina over the Falklands dispute. Also on the military side there has been greater rapprochement. In accordance with the friendship policy, both armies dissolved or moved major units previously located at their common border (for example, Argentine's 7th Jungle and 3rd Motorized Infantry Brigades). Brazilian soldiers are embedded in the Argentine peacekeeping contingent at UNFICYP in Cyprus and they are working together at MINUSTAH in Haiti and, as another example of collaboration, Argentine Navy aircraft routinely operate from the Brazilian Navy carrier NAe São Paulo. Argentina has an embassy in Brasília and maintains several consulates throughout the country. Brazil has an embassy in Buenos Aires and maintains several consulates throughout the country. In May 2023, Argentina and Brazil announced plans to continue working on the development of a mechanism allowing them to avoid using the US dollar in bilateral trade. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|\|\|See Bolivia–Brazil relations Bolivia has an embassy in Brasilia and maintains several consulates throughout the country. Brazil has an embassy in La Paz and maintains several consulates throughout the country. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|\|\|See Brazil–Canada relations Brazil-Canada relations have been cordial but relatively limited, although the relationship between the two countries has been gradually evolving over time. Brazil has an embassy in Ottawa and consulates-general in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Canada has an embassy in Brasília, and consulates-general in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|22 April 1836\|\|See Brazil–Chile relations Both countries established diplomatic relations on 22 April 1836 Chile and Brazil have acted numerous times as mediators in international conflicts, such as in the 1914 diplomatic impasse between the United States and Mexico, avoiding a possible state of war between those two countries. More recently, since the 2004 Haiti rebellion, Chile and Brazil have actively participated in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, which is led by the Brazilian Army. They are also two of the three most important economies in South America along with Argentina. Brazil has an embassy in Santiago. Chile has an embassy in Brasília and consulates-general in Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|\|\|See Brazil–Colombia relations Brazil has an embassy in Bogotá and a vice-consulate in Leticia. Colombia has an embassy in Brasilia and maintains several consulates throughout the country. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|\|\|See Brazil–Costa Rica relations Brazil has an embassy in San José. Costa Rica has an embassy in Brasilia. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|\|\|See Brazil–Cuba relations Brazilian-Cuban relations were classified as "excellent" in May 2008 following a meeting of foreign ministers. During a January 2008 state visit to Cuba by Brazilian President Lula da Silva, the Brazilian leader expressed desire for his country to be Cuba's "number one partner". Brazilian-Cuban relations have deteriorated greatly during the presidency of Brazilian rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro since 2019 .He stopped Mais Médicos (More Doctors) programme and thousands of Cuban doctors left Brazil. In November 2019, Brazil voted for the first time against an annual United Nations resolution condemning and calling for an end to Washington's economic embargo on Cuba. Brazil has an embassy in Havana. Cuba has an embassy in Brasília and a consulate-general in São Paulo. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|9 February 1981\|\| Both countries established diplomatic relations on 9 February 1981 Brazil is accredited to Dominica from its embassy in Bridgetown, Barbados. Dominica is accredited to Brazil from its embassy in Washington, D.C., United States. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|18 November 1968\|\|See Brazil–Guyana relations Both countries established diplomatic relations on 18 November 1968 Brazil–Guyana relations have traditionally been close. Brazil has provided military assistance to Guyana in the form of warfare training and logistics. Bilateral relations between the countries have recently increased, as a result of Brazil's new South-South foreign policy aimed to strengthen South American integration. Brazil has an embassy in Georgetown. Guyana has an embassy in Brasília and a consulate-general in Boa Vista. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|1928\|\|See Brazil–Haiti relations Brazil has an embassy in Port-au-Prince. Haiti has an embassy in Brasília. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|14 October 1962\|\|See Brazil–Jamaica relations Both countries established diplomatic relations on 14 October 1962 Both countries are full members of the Group of 15. Brazil has an embassy in Kingston. Jamaica has an embassy in Brasília. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|7 August 1824\|\|See Brazil–Mexico relations Brazil and Mexico have the two largest emerging economies in Latin-America and the global stage. Both nations are considered to be regional powers and highly influential within the American continent. Both nations have historically been friendly and they have both participated in and are members of several multilateral organizations such as the G20, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, Rio Group and the United Nations. Several high-level diplomatic meeting have been held by presidents of both nations to enhance bilateral relations. Brazil has an embassy in Mexico City. Mexico has an embassy in Brasilia and consulates-general in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|\|\|See Brazil–Paraguay relations Paraguay–Brazil relations have improved greatly after Brazilian President Lula's decision in 2009 to triple its payments to Paraguay for energy from a massive hydro-electric dam on their border, ending a long-running dispute. Under the accord, Brazil will pay Paraguay $360m a year for energy from the jointly-operated Itaipu plant. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called it a "historic agreement" and the deal slated as a political victory for Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo. In February 2019, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro praised the late military strongman of Paraguay, Alfredo Stroessner, calling him "a man of vision." Bolsonaro made the comments during a ceremony at the Itaipu hydroelectric dam on the countries' shared border. At his side was his close ally, Paraguayan right-wing President Mario Abdo Benitez. Brazil has an embassy in Asunción and maintains several consulates throughout the country. Paraguay has an embassy in Brasília and maintains several consulates throughout the country. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|\|\|See Brazil–Peru relations Brazil has an embassy in Lima and a consulate in Iquitos. Peru has an embassy in Brasilía and maintains several consulates throughout the country. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|25 November 1975\|\|See Brazil–Suriname relations Both countries established diplomatic relations on 25 November 1975 Brazil has an embassy in Paramaribo. Suriname has an embassy in Brasilia, and a consulate-general in Belém. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|27 July 1965\|\|See Brazil-Trinidad and Tobago relations Both countries established diplomatic relations on 27 July 1965 Brazil has an embassy in Port of Spain. Trinidad and Tobago has an embassy in Brasilia. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|26 May 1824\|\|See Brazil–United States relations Both countries established diplomatic relations on 26 May 1824 Brazil-United States relations has a long history, characterized by some moments of remarkable convergence of interests but also by sporadic and critical divergences on sensitive international issues. The United States has increasingly regarded Brazil as a significant power, especially in its role as a stabilizing force and skillful interlocutor in Latin America. As a significant political and economic power, Brazil has traditionally preferred to cooperate with the United States on specific issues rather than seeking to develop an all-encompassing, privileged relationship with the United States. Brazil has an embassy in Washington, D.C., and maintains several consulates throughout the country. United States has an embassy in Brasília and maintains several consulates throughout the country. \|--valign="top" \|\|\|1828\|\|See Brazil–Uruguay relations Brazil and Uruguay are neighboring countries that share close historical, cultural and geographical ties. The singularity of the bilateral relationship between the two countries originates from the strong historical connection - marked by important events, such as the establishment of the Colônia do Sacramento in 1680, the annexation by Brazil and the subsequent creation of the Província Cisplatina in 1815, and Uruguay's independence from Brazil in 1828. Brazil has an embassy in Montevideo and maintains several consulates throughout the country. Uruguay has an embassy in Brasília and maintains several consulates throughout the country. \|- valign="top" \|\|\|\|\|See Brazil–Venezuela relations During the Brazilian government of President Jair Bolsonaro since 2019, Brazil has cut off the relations with the current Venezuelan leftwing and disputed government of president Nicolás Maduro. Brazil downgraded its diplomatic relations with the ruling Venezuelan government. Brazil has recognised Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate President of Venezuela. Brazil has an embassy in Caracas and maintains several consulates throughout the country. Venezuela has an embassy in Brasilia and maintains several consulates throughout the country. \|} ===Asia=== ===Europe===	[ "IBSA Dialogue Forum", "International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement", "diplomatic relations", "Le Monde", "ideology", "Sergey Lavrov", "Hong Kong", "Washington, D.C.", "WHO", "Brazilian Island", "Munich", "exclusive economic zone", "Madrid", "Singapore", "South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone", "Commercial Office of Brazil to Taipei", "Brazil–Paraguay relations", "United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire", "nuclear power", "United Nations Security Council", "Kinshasa", "United Nations Mission in Liberia", "Moscow", "Montevideo", "Abstention", "Brazil–Philippines relations", "Kingston, Jamaica", "Brazil", "List of military aid to Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War", "Africa", "Brazil–Libya relations", "Jair Bolsonaro", "space technology", "Bari", "Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff", "UN General Assembly", "Porto", "Cairo", "Intelsat", "United States Congress", "Geneva", "Yaoundé", "Caracas", "Doha", "CPLP", "Brasília", "Iquitos", "International Labour Organization", "Bangladesh-Brazil relations", "International Maritime Organization", "Praia", "Fernando Lugo", "Quaraí River", "Nuclear Suppliers Group", "Islamabad", "Brazil–Israel relations", "IOC", "G20", "Brazil–Serbia relations", "São Tomé and Príncipe", "Dili", "Colonia del Sacramento", "Porto Alegre", "Cayenne", "Brazil–Holy See relations", "Brazil–Iran relations", "United Nations Conference on Trade and Development", "Catanzaro", "China", "Vilnius", "Brazil–Singapore relations", "Brazil–Italy relations", "World Bank", "Mariel, Cuba", "Brazil–Suriname relations", "Salvador (Bahia)", "Veracruz Incident", "Regional integration", "Brazil–Canada relations", "Recife", "developed countries", "Nicolás Maduro", "Santiago", "United Nations", "International Criminal Court", "World Tourism Organization", "reform of the United Nations Security Council", "Luanda", "International Monetary Fund", "Brazil–Saudi Arabia relations", "San José, Costa Rica", "Curitiba", "United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine", "Oslo", "G20 major economies", "Faro, Portugal", "Brazil–Democratic Republic of the Congo relations", "BASIC countries", "Brazil–Germany relations", "Uruguay", "UNHCR", "Group of 15", "Florence", "Beirut", "1991 Gulf War", "Brazil–Uruguay relations", "Cyprus", "Brazil–Lebanon relations", "Brazil–Timor-Leste relations", "Universal Postal Union", "Algiers", "Brazil–Malaysia relations", "New Delhi", "World Customs Organization", "Honduras", "Athens", "Mais Médicos", "Brazil–Nigeria relations", "Angola–Brazil relations", "Brazilian Antarctica", "Brazil–Spain relations", "Brazil–United Kingdom relations", "Istanbul", "Foreign policy of the first Donald Trump administration", "International Development Association", "Brazil–Ethiopia relations", "Kosovo", "Juan Guaidó", "global issues", "Bogotá", "bilateral trade", "great power", "Angola", "Brazil–São Tomé and Príncipe relations", "OPCW", "New York City", "Bangkok", "Antarctic territories", "CAF – Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean", "Doha Development Round", "Inter-American Defense Board", "anti-radiation missile", "UNASUR", "Apostolic Nunciature to Brazil", "Reform of the United Nations Security Council", "Mehr News Agency", "Latin American Economic System", "Canberra", "State of Palestine", "Jakarta", "Brazil–Georgia relations", "Rio de Janeiro", "UNESCO", "Tel Aviv", "Organization of American States", "List of diplomatic missions in Brazil", "The Hague", "Mauricio Macri", "Cisplatina", "MERCOSUL", "Brazil–Haiti relations", "Brazil–Guyana relations", "OECD", "Israeli Declaration of Independence", "African Development Bank", "Damascus", "Inter-American Development Bank", "Forum for the Progress and Development of South America", "Afro-Brazilian", "UNFICYP", "Armenian genocide", "Brazil and the United Nations", "BRICS", "Dhaka", "IBGE", "People's Republic of China", "Zürich", "Brazil–Namibia relations", "establishment of the State of Israel", "Milan", "Mumbai", "Brazil-Trinidad and Tobago relations", "Belgrade", "United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea", "diplomatic mission", "Brazil–Sweden relations", "crisis in Venezuela", "Eduardo Bolsonaro", "global warming", "Developing country", "Brazil–Taiwan relations", "Food and Agriculture Organization", "Buenos Aires Herald", "Ottawa", "Armenia–Brazil relations", "Brazil–Iraq relations", "List of diplomatic missions of Brazil", "Mario Abdo Benítez", "2004 Haiti rebellion", "Lê Đức Anh", "Group of 24", "Multilateralism", "Brazil–Ukraine relations", "Facebook", "Chengdu", "Brazil–Costa Rica relations", "Itaipu Dam", "Buenos Aires", "Hugo Chávez", "Cape Town", "Tallinn", "Brazil–Peru relations", "Haiti", "G4 nations", "WTO", "United States embargo against Cuba", "Mercosul", "Lisbon", "Brazil – European Union relations", "Mohammed bin Salman", "Brazil–Turkey relations", "O Estado de S. Paulo", "Curaçao", "Brazilian Army", "Nairobi", "Libreville", "Riyadh", "Ministry of Foreign Relations of Brazil", "Newly industrialized country", "Genoa", "foreign policy", "Brazilian Space Agency", "Brazil–Ireland relations", "Brazil–Venezuela relations", "Marseille", "Port-au-Prince", "Manila", "Rome", "Ministry of External Relations (Brazil)", "Pretoria", "Brazil–Hungary relations", "Leticia, Amazonas", "Brazil–Poland relations", "national interests", "International Hydrographic Organization", "Brazil–Egypt relations", "technological innovation", "Brazil–Finland relations", "International Organization for Migration", "Brazil–Portugal relations", "Security Council", "Bern", "Brazil–Czech Republic relations", "Denmark", "LAIA", "trade policy", "John R. Bolton", "peacekeeping", "Venice", "Volodymyr Zelenskyy", "La Paz", "U.S. Army War College", "First presidency of Donald Trump", "Brazil–Syria relations", "United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission", "developing world", "Brazil–Qatar relations", "Sofia", "G20 developing nations", "Maputo", "Cairns Group", "Brazil–Mozambique relations", "Recognition of the Armenian Genocide", "Beijing", "Vancouver", "Brazil–Kazakhstan relations", "Taiwan", "Kosovan passport", "Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization", "Tunisia", "Cristina Fernández de Kirchner", "President of Brazil", "aid", "Naples", "regional power", "Tunis", "East Timor", "unilateralism", "Manaus", "Guangzhou", "Caribbean Development Bank", "Bissau", "Organization of Ibero-American States", "Palermo", "Serbia", "Brazil–Japan relations", "Khartoum", "Petrobras", "Turin", "Aid", "Lima", "democratic government", "Pyongyang", "Abu Dhabi", "Brazil–Pakistan relations", "Brazil and weapons of mass destruction", "Albania–Brazil relations", "Zagreb", "Embassy of Brazil, London", "Bamako", "List of diplomatic missions in Israel", "Brazil–Cuba relations", "International Telecommunication Union", "Hamamatsu", "Miami", "Brazil–South Korea relations", "Brazil–France relations", "French Guiana", "Dakar", "Brazil–Bulgaria relations", "Brazilian–Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials", "Bolivia–Brazil relations", "National Congress of Brazil", "United Nations Industrial Development Organization", "world power", "United Nations Mission in Sudan", "Jewish population by country", "Australia–Brazil relations", "Brazil–Lithuania relations", "Abuja", "Emerging Powers", "United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti", "defense technology", "Arab League", "Americas Quarterly", "United Nations peacekeeping", "Argentine Navy", "Tbilisi", "Community of Latin American and Caribbean States", "sovereign wealth fund", "Austria–Brazil relations", "International Organization for Standardization", "Lagos", "Frankfurt", "Brazilian Navy", "Group of 77", "economic power", "Brazil–Cape Verde relations", "Yerevan", "Belo Horizonte", "International Search and Rescue Advisory Group", "Belém", "Brazil–India relations", "Argentina–Brazil relations", "Interpol (organization)", "bilateral relations", "Brazil–Kenya relations", "1st EU–Brazil summit", "Brazil–Romania relations", "Néstor Kirchner", "Rio Group", "Ramallah", "renewable energies", "Rotterdam", "Economic sanctions", "Brazil–United States relations", "Taipei", "Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Brazil)", "Community of Portuguese Language Countries", "Alfredo Stroessner", "Fidel Castro", "Cuba", "Non-Aligned Movement", "Tirana", "G-20 major economies", "Barcelona", "Morashá", "Export credit agency", "Tokyo", "Brazil–Norway relations", "Conakry", "International Finance Corporation", "Kuala Lumpur", "Montreal", "Trieste", "Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Uzbekistan)", "Brazil–Nicaragua relations", "prosperity", "Brazil–Colombia relations", "Brazil–Chile relations", "Warsaw", "soft power", "Overseas Development Institute", "International Civil Aviation Organization", "Brazil–Russia relations", "Brazil–China relations", "International Mobile Satellite Organization", "Andorra la Vella", "war", "Hanoi", "Prague", "Toronto", "Budapest", "2011 Syrian uprising", "Permanent Court of Arbitration", "Western Hemisphere", "Boa Vista, Roraima", "Union of South American Nations", "Kuwait City", "Shanghai", "2011 military intervention in Libya", "World Trade Organization", "São Paulo", "Astana", "Brazil–Mexico relations", "Wisconsin International Law Journal", "Baghdad", "Havana", "Saudi Arabia", "Nagoya", "Santos (São Paulo)", "United States military deployments", "Latin American Integration Association", "World Intellectual Property Organization", "Visa requirements for Brazilian citizens", "Israel Allies Caucus", "NATO", "MINUSTAH", "Reykjavík", "Kyiv", "Sydney", "Taiwan passport", "Mercosur", "Brazilian Development Bank", "Brazil–Greece relations", "Mozambique", "Chinese Communist Party", "CONAE", "Bucharest", "Algeria–Brazil relations", "European Union", "Association of Caribbean States", "International Atomic Energy Agency", "Brazil–Palestine relations", "Abidjan", "White House", "Brazil–Denmark relations", "Copenhagen", "Ankara", "line of credit", "World Meteorological Organization", "Georgetown, Guyana", "Winston Churchill", "Economy of Brazil", "United Nations Institute for Training and Research", "Stockholm", "Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva", "United Nations General Assembly", "OPANAL", "Government of Brazil", "middle power", "Asunción", "Helsinki", "developed country", "Dublin", "United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor", "Andean Community of Nations", "national security", "Bilateralism", "Brazil–North Korea relations", "State of Israel", "G8+5", "Michel Temer", "Azerbaijan–Brazil relations", "International Fund for Agricultural Development", "Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance", "Saint-Georges, French Guiana", "Brazil–Jamaica relations", "Treaty", "scholarship", "Berlin", "Benjamin Netanyahu", "Argentine Army", "Seoul", "Baku", "Trần Đức Lương", "industrial policy", "Overseas aid", "Brazil–South Africa relations", "Brazil–Guinea-Bissau relations", "multilateralism", "São Tomé", "NAe São Paulo", "Addis Ababa", "Wellington", "Guyana", "Tehran", "Brazil–Indonesia relations", "Brazil–Netherlands relations", "L'Harmattan", "Accra", "Amman", "Paramaribo", "Windhoek", "Military dictatorship", "The Observer", "Brazil–New Zealand relations", "US dollar", "Bank for International Settlements", "Uruguay River", "Dilma Rousseff", "Port of Spain", "Paris", "WP:SDNONE", "China–United States trade war", "Mexico City", "Odebrecht", "Vladimir Putin", "Vienna" ]
3,649	Geography of the British Virgin Islands	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 () (about 0.9 times the size of Washington, DC) and comprises 16 inhabited and more than 20 uninhabited islands. The islands of Tortola (), Anegada (), Virgin Gorda () and Jost van Dyke () are the largest. Maritime claims include territorial sea and a exclusive fishing zone. The lowest point of the island chain is the Caribbean Sea while the highest point is Mount Sage at above sea level and there are of coastline. Anegada is geologically distinct, being composed of carbonate reef deposits. This bank formed from tectonic forces at the boundary where the Caribbean Plate collides with the North American Plate. == Settlements== The capital of the territory and the main port of entry for yachts and cruise ships visiting the BVI is Road Town on Tortola. 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 1960s turned Spanish Town into a wealthy tourist destination. \|date=July 2012 }}	[ "forest cover", "Leeward Islands", "Exclusive economic zone", "Mount Sage", "Ocean bank", "North Atlantic Ocean", "pyroclastic rock", "Washington, DC", "Virgin Gorda", "Pleistocene", "Road Town", "North American Plate", "Caribbean Plate", "archipelago", "Jost van Dyke", "British Virgin Islands", "Laurance Rockefeller", "carbonate rock", "Virgin Islands", "Lesser Antilles", "Caribbean Sea", "tectonic", "Puerto Rico", "Spanish Town, British Virgin Islands", "United States Virgin Islands", "trade winds", "diorite", "List of Caribbean islands", "WP:SDNONE", "United Kingdom", "British Overseas Territories", "tonalite", "Anegada", "tropical savanna climate", "Tortola" ]
3,650	Demographics of the British Virgin Islands	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. ==Population== 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 is (). ===Structure of the population=== ==Vital statistics== 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. ==Ethnicity== === Historical === {\| class="wikitable sortable" !Year ! % W ! % B \|- \|1678 \|87.9 \|12.1 \|- \|1717 \|titlebar=#ddd \|left1=Ethnic groups \|right1=per cent \|float=none \|bars= }} ==Religion==	[ "population", "infant mortality", "Catholic", "Hinduism", "Islam", "urbanization", "Protestant", "fertility rate", "demographics", "British Virgin Islands", "Afro-Caribbean", "Hispanic", "Indo-Caribbean", "Ethnic group", "WP:SDNONE", "population density", "net reproduction rate", "White people", "Life expectancy" ]
3,652	Economy of the British Virgin Islands	\|imports = $275.1 million (2011 est.) \|import-goods = building materials, automobiles, foodstuffs, machinery \|import-partners = \|debt = $173.3 million (2017 est.) 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. Historically the British Virgin Islands has normally produced a Government budget surplus, but during the 2008 financial crisis 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). 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. ==Business environment== 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'. ==2017 government budget== The most recent national budget to be delivered was the 2017 budget (the Territory's fiscal year runs from 1 April to 31 March). 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. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council: In 2013, the direct contribution of travel and tourism to the Territory's GDP was US$274 million (accounting for 27.0% of total GDP), and was forecast to rise by 2.8% in 2014, and to rise by 2.7% per annum for the period 2014–2024. The total contribution of travel and tourism to GDP was US$780.8 million (76.9% of GDP) in 2013, and is forecast to rise by 3.2% in 2014, and to rise by 2.6% per annum for the period 2014–2024. In 2013, travel and tourism directly supported 3,300 jobs in the Territory (33.2% of total employment). This was expected to remain unchanged in 2014 and fall by 0.3% per annum to 3,000 jobs (29.6% of total employment) by 2024. The total contribution to employment in 2013 (which includes jobs indirectly supported by the industry), was 90.1% of total employment (8,850 jobs). This was expected to rise by 1.9% in 2014 to 9,050 jobs, but fall by 0.2% per annum to 9,000 jobs in 2024 (80.9% of total). Travel and tourism investment in 2013 was US$35.8 million, or 14.8% of total investment. This was expected to rise by 10.1% in 2014, and rise by 2.0% per annum over the next ten years to a total of US$48.2 million in 2024. 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. ==Financial services== 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. In 2017, the total value of assets held in offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands was estimated at $1.5 trillion and two-fifths of company owners were based in Hong Kong and China, according to a report by Capital Economics and commissioned by BVI Finance. 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 Within the space of a few years, hundreds of such companies had been incorporated. This eventually came to the attention of the United States government, who unilaterally revoked the Treaty in 1981. 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. Moreover, in 1988, Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca's founder Ramón Fonseca Mora advised his clients to bring their business from Panama to the British Virgin Islands. ==Agriculture== 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). ==Dollarisation== 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. ==Footnotes==	[ "2008 financial crisis", "G-20", "Offshore financial centre", "BVI Business Companies Act", "List of Latin American and Caribbean countries by GDP (nominal)", "Mossack Fonseca", "Cayman Islands", "The Observatory of Economic Complexity", "Hong Kong", "British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission", "List of countries by GDP (PPP)", "Caribbean", "Harney Westwood & Riegels", "CARICOM", "Capital Economics", "charter", "The Australian", "Manuel Noriega", "The Times", "World Travel and Tourism Council", "captive insurance", "Road Town", "cruise ship", "offshore company", "rule of law", "tax haven", "Closed-end fund", "Government budget balance", "Panama", "Sweet & Maxwell", "offshore fund", "British Virgin Islands", "List of Commonwealth of Nations countries by GDP", "United States dollar", "KPMG", "Gross domestic product", "Office of Public Sector Information", "Belonger status", "Peebles Hospital", "tax treaty", "hotel", "taxation in the British Virgin Islands", "company", "List of countries by GDP (nominal)", "primary surplus", "Financial Times", "microstate", "United States Virgin Islands", "double taxation", "Michael Riegels", "Open-end fund", "List of Latin American and Caribbean countries by GDP (PPP)", "Livestock", "tourism", "Hurricane Irma", "CIA World factbook", "yacht", "foreign direct investment", "The Economist", "offshore financial centre", "Associated Press", "Ramón Fonseca", "Taxicab", "International Business Companies Act" ]
3,653	Telecommunications in the British Virgin Islands	Country Code: +1284 International Call Prefix: 011 (outside NANP) 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. Number Format: nxx-xxxx Telephones – main lines in use: 11,700 (2002) Telephones – mobile cellular: 8,000 (2002) 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) Radio stations: AM 1, FM 5, shortwave 0 (2004) ZBVI 780 Tortola ZJKC-FM 90.9 Tortola (repeats WJKC 95.1 Christiansted, USVI) ZGLD-FM 91.7 Tortola ZCCR-FM 94.1 Todman's Peak ZWVE-FM 97.3 Tortola ZKNG-FM 100.9 Chalwell ZROD-FM 103.7 Tortola ZVCR-FM 106.9 Chalwell Television stations: 1 (ZBTV), (plus one cable company) (1997) Internet service providers (ISPs): 1 (1999) Internet country code: VG Internet hosts: 465 (2008) Internet users: 4,000 (2002) See also : British Virgin Islands ==Deregulation of the telephone market== 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. 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. 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. 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. Digicel was finally granted a licence on 17 December 2007 and started operations in the BVI on 28 November 2008.	[ "Bermuda", "Area code 284", "International Call Prefix", "Country calling code", "Digicel", "ZROD-FM", "LIME (Cable & Wireless)", "ZBTV", "British Virgin Islands", ".vg", "ZCCR-FM", "North American Numbering Plan", "Cable & Wireless plc", "deregulation", "ZBVI", "ECFS (cable system)", "Cable & Wireless (Caribbean)", "Alvin Christopher", "ZKNG-FM", "ZGLD-FM", "Courts of England and Wales", "WP:SDNONE", "Internet service provider", "ZWVE-FM", "WJKC", "ZVCR-FM" ]
3,654	Transport in the British Virgin Islands	The systems of transport in the British Virgin Islands include 113 kilometres of highway and a harbour at Road Town. == Roads == total: 200 km paved: 200 km unpaved: 0 km (2007) Despite using left-hand traffic, most vehicles are left-hand-drive, being imported from the United States. ==Ports and terminals== Road Town ==Airports== 4 (2008) ===Paved runways=== total: 2 914 to 1,523 m: 1 under 914 m: 1 (2008) ===Unpaved runways=== total: 2 914 to 1,523 m: 2 (2008) == Merchant Marine == registered in other countries: 1 (Panama) (2008)	[ "Road Town", "WP:SDNONE", "harbour", "highway", "British Virgin Islands" ]
3,658	Geography of Brunei	Brunei is a country in Southeast Asia, bordering the South China Sea and East Malaysia. Its geographical coordinates are . The country is small with a total size of . 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. Brunei shares a border with Malaysia, and has a 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 near the Pacific Ring of Fire. == Climate == 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. 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. 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. 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 (). The climatic regions of the country is as follows: Deutscher Wetterdienst (extremes, 1971–2012 and humidity, 1972–1990) \|source 2 = NOAA (sun, 1961–1990) \|date = August 2010 }} == Natural disasters == 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.Area: Total: Land: exclusive economic zone: and or to median line Elevation extremes: lowest point: South China Sea 0 m Land use: arable land: 0.76% permanent crops: 1.14% other: 98.10% (2012) Irrigated land: (2003) Total renewable water resources: Freshwater withdrawal (domestic/industrial/agricultural) total: 0.09 km3/yr (97%/0%/3%) per capital: 301.6 m3/yr (2009) Environment – current issues: seasonal smoke/haze resulting from forest fires in Indonesia Environment – international agreements: party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution	[ "forest cover", "Law of the Sea", "Deutscher Wetterdienst", "primary forest", "Belait District", "List of water sports", "Hill", "Tasek Merimbun", "Southeast Asia", "Coast", "Bandar Seri Begawan", "Winter sports", "exclusive economic zone", "Biodiversity", "humid subtropical", "Temburong District", "Malaysia", "Brunei-Malaysia Border", "Bukit Pagon", "Belait River", "monsoon winds", "Typhoon", "Humidity", "Dry season", "northeast monsoon", "Philippines", "Brunei-Muara District", "lowland", "Asia", "Pacific Ocean", "municipality", "State ownership", "Ring of Fire", "equator", "Earthquake", "Taiwan Strait", "Indonesia", "Borneo", "Hemispheres of Earth", "Natural disaster", "South China Sea", "Intertropical Convergence Zone", "coastal plain", "Brunei", "Tutong District", "Indian Ocean", "Outdoor recreation", "Wet season", "sea level", "trade winds", "East Malaysia", "World Meteorological Organisation", "WP:SDNONE", "climate", "Mountain", "Brunei Airport", "Trinidad and Tobago", "Atmospheric pressure", "tropical climate" ]
3,661	Economy of Brunei	\| edbr = 66th (easy, 2020) \| labor = \| occupations = {{plainlist\| agriculture: 4.2% industry: 62.8% services: 33% (2008 est.) It also is the ninth-largest producer of liquefied natural gas in the world. ==Macro-economic trend== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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%. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 , the total area of the stations was larger than Brunei itself. Some of the stations were sold in 2006 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. The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1983–2021 (with IMF staff estimates in 2022–2027). Inflation below 5% is in green. ==Oil and gas industry== 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 . This satisfies domestic demand for most petroleum products. 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. Brunei's oil production peaked in 1979 at over . 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 . 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ==Petrochemical industry== In the western part of the country, Liang is currently experiencing a major development with the establishment of SPARK, which is a 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. ==Halal brand== 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. 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. 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.	[ "Taiwan", "Ease of doing business index", "International Monetary Fund", "United Nations Development Programme", "Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation", "Singapore dollar", "Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership", "List of countries by GDP (PPP)", "Amedeo Development Corporation", "Asian financial crisis", "Australian Broadcasting Corporation", "Primary sector of the economy", "Australia", "Fletcher Challenge", "Methanol", "price of oil", "Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership", "Association of Southeast Asian Nations", "oil reserves", "Brunei Shell Petroleum", "Elf Aquitaine", "Brunei dollar", "Ministry of Finance and Economy (Brunei)", "Champion Oil Field", "Secondary sector of the economy", "Human Development Report", "crude oil", "methanol", "List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita", "BIMP-EAGA", "World Bank", "Tertiary sector of the economy", "Developing country", "nominal GDP", "List of countries by GDP (nominal)", "Sultan of Brunei", "Hassanal Bolkiah", "List of countries by Human Development Index", "Brunei LNG", "Brunei", "Bruneian dollar", "liquefied natural gas", "man-hour", "UNOCAL", "Royal Dutch Shell", "Petroleum", "Itochu", "Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings", "Liang, Belait", "halal", "World Bank high-income economy", "World Trade Organization", "List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita", "purchasing power parity", "petrochemical" ]
3,662	Telecommunications in Brunei	==Telecommunications== ===Telephone=== Telephone service throughout the country is excellent; international service is good to Southeast Asia, Middle East, Western Europe, and the US. Main lines in use: 122,204 (2022) Internet fixed subscriptions: 49,452 (2020) Internet users: 410,800 (2019) They aimed to provide FTTH coverage to around 85% of the population by 2017. They also split the plans which have unlimited quota into 'unlimited plans' 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. ==Television== Terrestrial TV Stations (Free to air) In some areas residents may enjoy some of the Malaysian TV channels RTB Perdana (Formerly known as RTB 1 and RTB 5) - An 17.5-hour national flagship channel of Radio Television Brunei aired news and information programs, with local and sinetron Indonesia series in 1080p HDTV. RTB Aneka (Formerly known as RTB 2 and RTB 3 HD) - A 16.5-hour second channel of Radio Television Brunei airs entertainment programmes in 1080p HDTV. RTB Sukmaindera (Formerly known as RTB 4) - A 24-hour international satellite television channel airing all of RTB programs both locally and internationally in 1080p HDTV. Pay TV (Satellite TV) 1 - Kristal Astro ==Radio== 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.	[ ".bn", "ADSL2+", "Huawei", "Kristal Astro", "Radio Television Brunei", "WP:SDNONE", "Imagine Brunei", "Internet service provider", "Telekom Brunei", "RTB Sukmaindera", "Country code", "Belait District", "Brunei", "Mobile phones", "RTB Aneka", "RTB Perdana", "FTTH" ]
3,665	Foreign relations of Brunei	Brunei maintains diplomatic relations with 170 out of 193 countries, 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. 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. ==International organizations== Brunei became a member state of the Commonwealth in 1984, ASEAN and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in 1984, the 7th member of the ASEAN-Japan Centre in 1990, 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. ==Diplomatic relations== Brunei maintains diplomatic relations with the following countries:	[ "Canberra", "ASEAN", "ASEAN-Japan Centre", "Kuala Lumpur", "Vientiane", "Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation", "Singapore dollar", "The Korea Times", "Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Uzbekistan)", "High Commission of Brunei, London", "Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership", "Visa requirements for Bruneian citizens", "Washington, D.C.", "Muslim world", "The Australian", "Muscat, Oman", "List of diplomatic missions in Brunei", "region", "Bandar Seri Begawan", "Republic of Singapore Navy", "List of diplomatic missions of Brunei", "Royal Brunei Armed Forces", "Brunei–Singapore relations", "Mohamed Bolkiah", "Gadong, Brunei", "Yangon", "Malaysia", "Doha", "Mauritanian News Agency", "gov.uk", "Bruneian diplomatic missions", "Han dynasty", "Brunei dollar", "Channel NewsAsia", "Royal Brunei Navy", "East Asia Summit", "Philippines", "Birchwood, Cheshire", "Hanoi", "Indonesia", "memorandum of understanding", "BIMP-EAGA", "Moscow", "Sultan of Brunei", "Phnom Penh", "Ottawa", "Halal", "British High Commission", "Brunei", "Warrington", "London", "Berlin", "Organisation of Islamic Cooperation", "United Nations", "Paris", "WP:SDNONE", "Seoul", "Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Brunei)", "Commonwealth of Nations", "World Trade Organization", "Bangkok", "Arab world", "Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (New Zealand)", "Tokyo", "Beijing", "Asia Times Online", "Foreign relations of the United Kingdom", "New Delhi", "British Borneo", "Islamabad" ]
3,668	Geography of Bulgaria	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 == Hydrography == 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. 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 km2, 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. 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. 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 km2 and Lake Varna has the largest volume with 165,5 million m3. There are around 2,200 reservoirs with a total volume of c. 7 billion km3. 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. == Soils == 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%). 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. !Type!!1000 ha \|- \|cinnamon \|\| 2,430 \|- \|chernozem \|\| 2,240 \|- \|grey forest \|\| 1,960 \|- \|brown forest \|\| 1,640 \|- \|meadow, alluvial and diluvial \|\| 995 \|- \|smolnitsi \|\| 595 \|- \|yellow-podzol \|\| 0.026 \|- \|salty \|\| 0.025 \|- \|mountain meadow \|\| 173 \|- \|other\|\| 1,016 \|} == Mineral resources == 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. 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, 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 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. The Bulgarian exclusive economic zone has a total size of 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 m3), Deventsi (6 billion m3), between Lovech and Etropole (est. 22 billion m3), as well as near Devetaki and Butan. 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. 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. == Biodiversity == The interaction of 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. which include some of the oldest individual 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. There are three zoogeographical regions; 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 deer, roe deer, European fallow deer, European hares, southern white-breasted hedgehogs, badgers, marbled polecats, European polecats, European pine martens, four species of oceanic dolphins, and Mediterranean monk seals. Protection, reintroductions and repopulations like those of the European bison, the Eurasian beaver, and the Eurasian lynx are intended and reported. 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, and demoiselle crane. Important conservation species are the eastern imperial eagle, the cinereous, griffon, Egyptian and the bearded vultures, the great white pelican, and the Dalmatian pelican. There are 38 reptile and the 20 amphibian species found in Bulgaria. 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. The ichthyofauna (fish) of the country has not been fully researched, but there is a rich variety of sturgeons, Black Sea shark, longnose spurdog, thornback ray, common stingray, northern pike, European eel, etc. As of 2000 there were 207 fish species. There are an estimated 27,000 species of insects and other invertebrates. 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.	[ "Kardam, Dobrich Province", "Vrashka Chuka", "Horst (geology)", "soil", "exclusive economic zone", "Lyulin Mountain", "Shumen Plateau", "Bobov Dol", "Madzharovo", "Thrace", "Belasica", "Gyueshevo", "Pazardzhik", "kaolinite", "Private property", "Aegean Sea", "Tran, Bulgaria", "Shipkovo", "World Heritage List", "Rudozem", "Eurasian lynx", "oceanic dolphin", "Ogosta Reservoir", "nickel", "nature reserve", "zinc", "Inversion (meteorology)", "Plana Mountain", "air pollution", "thornback ray", "Botev Peak", "birds", "Aegean and Western Turkey sclerophyllous and mixed forests", "Mount Musala", "Anguidae", "Sea breeze", "Natura 2000", "Mediterranean Sea", "Sofia Valley", "endemic", "Soil salinity", "geographic center of Bulgaria", "sedimentary", "water pollution", "Rose Valley, Bulgaria", "List of amphibians of Bulgaria", "Illyria", "Lake Beloslav", "Reservoirs and dams in Bulgaria", "Belasitsa", "Uzana (Bulgaria)", "Deventsi", "Elshitsa", "Varshets", "Pernik", "Cheloniidae", "St. Thomas Island", "Koprinka Reservoir", "Melnik Earth Pyramids", "Vit (river)", "Kamchiya", "Silistra", "Iskar (river)", "Pavel Banya", "Danube Bridge", "Cherven, Ruse Province", "soil type", "sub-bituminous coal", "Osogovo", "Cape Emine", "Ticha Reservoir", "Government of Bulgaria", "Hoodoo (geology)", "Etropole", "NOAA", "Struma (river)", "mineral water", "Balkan Mountains", "Balchik", "metamorphic", "Ognyanovo, Blagoevgrad Province", "Iceland", "Precambrian", "List of islands of Bulgaria", "true owl", "Varna, Bulgaria", "weathering", "Ustrem", "lizard", "wolf", "Lovech", "Senovo, Bulgaria", "magmatic rocks", "Elhovo", "Madan, Smolyan Province", "List of the highest European ultra-prominent peaks", "State ownership", "tortoise", "land use", "Tyulenovo", "Archean", "Karlovo", "great white pelican", "Swamp", "Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe", "karst", "Musala", "Provadiya River", "Sapareva Banya", "Melnik, Bulgaria", "Typhlopidae", "Balkan Peninsula", "Gigen", "Bregovo", "Liman (landform)", "Tumba Peak (Belasica)", "Logodazh", "alluvial plain", "Nestos (river)", "Strandzha Nature Park", "Seven Rila Lakes", "Veleka", "Pontic–Caspian steppe", "Balkan peninsula", "temperate", "glacial lake", "Slavyanka (mountain)", "Yantra River", "turtle", "Kulata", "Kalotina", "Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt", "geomorphological", "Lowland", "bituminous coal", "Yantra (river)", "baryte", "Elatsite mine", "Alpine zone", "UNESCO", "vascular plant", "Moesia", "Makaza", "Boreal kingdom", "Ovcha kupel", "Krumovo, Yambol Province", "Svilengrad", "Matochina", "Alpide belt", "Gulf of Burgas", "Sakar Mountain", "erosion", "Southeast Europe", "Sub-Balkan valleys", "golden jackal", "Alepu", "Lake Shabla", "deforestation", "European bison", "St. Cyricus Island", "Zlatitsa Pass", "Vlahini Lakes", "Saint Peter Island (Bulgaria)", "Devetashka cave", "Miloslavska planina", "Sandanski", "Rosa × damascena", "Todor Ikonomovo", "Butan, Bulgaria", "Manganese", "Mediterranean climate", "Rezovska", "roe deer", "red fox", "northern pike", "Dolni Dabnik", "Ilinden, Blagoevgrad Province", "Kardzhali Reservoir", "loess", "Cenozoic", "Vihren", "Arkutino", "brown bear", "ichthyofauna", "Kaolinovo", "Zlatograd", "Pirin National Park", "Vratnik Pass (Bulgaria)", "Dervent Heights", "World Heritage Site", "Devetaki", "Dolno Uyno", "Kaliakra", "Maritsa", "Lake Pomorie", "List of cities in Bulgaria", "flood", "bearded vulture", "Terrain", "common stingray", "St. Ivan Island", "cinereous vulture", "Emydidae", "List of birds of Bulgaria", "Srebarna Nature Reserve", "List of European ultra-prominent peaks", "Plovdiv", "Euxine-Colchic deciduous forests", "Kostenets (town)", "Eurasian beaver", "Tundzha", "Dolna Banya", "wild boar", "Exogeny", "sturgeon", "Dragomirovo, Veliko Tarnovo Province", "Ruse, Bulgaria", "Viskyar Mountain", "Ivaylovgrad Reservoir", "The Los Angeles Times", "Batak Reservoir", "Solnitsata", "Obrochishte", "Pancharevo", "scree", "Zlatia (region)", "Banya, Plovdiv Province", "Malko Tarnovo", "Beden, Bulgaria", "southern white-breasted hedgehog", "Burgas", "Sofia", "Rila", "Marikostinovo", "Aeolian processes", "Upper Thracian Plain", "Vacha (river)", "landslide", "molybdenum", "Milevska Planina", "Lesovo", "Colubridae", "Lacertidae", "Vitosha Nature Park", "Strandzha", "fluvial terrace", "Durankulak", "Dospat Reservoir", "fungi", "Serbia", "Thracian Plain", "Geography of Europe", "Euxinia", "Azores High", "Lom (river)", "Lake Burgas", "Ministry of Environment and Water (Bulgaria)", "Southern Dobruja", "Scincidae", "Lake Mandrensko", "Rodope montane mixed forests", "European polecat", "Marble", "Mihalkovo", "Lom, Bulgaria", "Maleshevo Mountain", "Palearctic realm", "snake", "sedimentation", "Danubian Plain (Bulgaria)", "Boidae", "Alpine climate", "Carpathian Mountains", "Aheloy (river)", "Topolnitsa River", "Velingrad", "diluvial", "Lake Atanasovsko", "Aldomirovtsi Marsh", "bn:বুলগেরিয়া", "New Europe Bridge", "graben", "Vasilashki Lakes", "Kraishte", "Paleozoic", "chernozem", "basalt", "Studen Kladenets", "non-vascular plant", "Baikushev's pine", "humid continental climate", "Sredna Gora", "Vidin", "badger", "demoiselle crane", "European fallow deer", "Volcanic eruption", "Dragoman Marsh", "Livingston Island", "List of reptiles of Bulgaria", "Testudinidae", "Gulf of Varna", "red deer", "continental climate", "Mesozoic", "Svishtov", "precipitation", "Shabla", "Ropotamo", "Gekkonidae", "Timok", "feldspar", "Tennessee", "Rhodope Mountains", "marbled polecat", "Kamchia Biosphere Reserve", "Alpine orogeny", "longnose spurdog", "Panagyurishte", "Drainage system (geomorphology)", "Cuba", "Circumboreal Region", "List of mountains in Bulgaria", "Egyptian vulture", "Rivers of Bulgaria", "rock formations in Bulgaria", "St. Anastasia Island", "Bulgarian Black Sea Coast", "Calafat", "spa town", "primary forest", "Balkan mixed forests", "Veliko Tarnovo", "alluvial soils", "Ruy Mountain", "Arda (Maritsa)", "Popovo Lake", "Pobiti Kamani", "Forest cover", "Kapitan Andreevo", "Albena", "Kostenets (village)", "fossil fuel", "List of glaciers in Europe", "Macedonia (region)", "Valley of the Thracian Kings", "Lake Srebarna", "Bulgaria", "Iskar Gorge", "Kyustendil", "anthracite", "Strezimirovtsi", "Viperidae", "Laki, Plovdiv Province", "Extreme points of Bulgaria", "Marvelous Bridges", "Central Balkan National Park", "Hisarya", "Greece", "Zavalska Planina", "spiny dogfish", "stone rivers", "Most isolated major summits of Europe", "Romania", "List of mammals of Bulgaria", "Ograzhden (mountain)", "Banderishki Lakes", "Nishava", "subtropical climate", "Sadovo", "Strelcha", "limestone", "Kazanlak", "marsh", "Dobrinishte", "white stork", "Saints Constantine and Helena, Bulgaria", "Icelandic Low", "Ruen (peak)", "European hare", "rock salt", "Proterozoic", "Chelopech", "Mediterranean monk seal", "Asarel Medet", "European Union", "Banite", "Turkey", "Maritsa Iztok Complex", "Vetovo", "sinkhole", "ponor", "eastern imperial eagle", "Cherni Vrah", "North Macedonia", "List of ecoregions in Bulgaria", "industrial mineral", "land cover", "Irano-Turanian Region", "wildcat", "Pirin", "Iskar River", "perlite", "Bankya", "Phytogeographically", "Granit oak", "Devin, Bulgaria", "Ivaylovgrad", "Voneshta Voda", "Thracian culture", "chromium", "common crane", "Rezovo River", "Momin Prohod", "hectare", "Osam", "Iskar Reservoir", "European eel", "ecoregion", "Geoemydidae", "Vitosha", "platinum", "Batova", "Bulgarian Academy of Sciences", "Kavarna", "Ogosta", "Belene", "Petrich", "Boreal Kingdom", "Vlahina", "Golden Sands", "Dobrudzha", "Stob (village)", "Black Sea", "lignite", "East European forest steppe", "Kremikovtsi", "Vacha Reservoir", "Giurgiu", "Petrohan Pass", "dune", "Belogradchik Rocks", "Dalmatian pelican", "List of protected areas of Bulgaria", "Danube", "Provadia", "gypsum", "granite", "griffon vulture", "WP:SDNONE", "rose oil", "Lake Varna", "European pine marten", "tungsten", "Southernmost glacial mass in Europe" ]
3,670	Politics of Bulgaria	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. 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 socialiststhe 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. 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 were some concerns that the proposed new Penal Code would limit freedom of the press and assembly, and as a consequence freedom of speech. Bulgaria was fully admitted to the Schengen area on January 1, 2025. == Developments since 1990 == === Parliamentary === 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 Great Recession led to massive protests and the resignation of the cabinet in early 2013, months before the end of GERB's term. In the early elections the former opposition party BSP received highest vote from the people. 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. 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. As agreed, parliamentary elections were held on 25 March 2016 to elect the 43rd National Assembly. GERB became 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. On 27 October 2024 parliamentary snap elections were held after all three attempts to form a government following the latest June 2024 elections failed. This was the country's sixth election since April 2021. This series of snap elections is the result of a political crisis affecting the country. === Presidential === 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. == Executive branch == 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. == Legislative branch == 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. == Elections == ===Parliamentary elections=== ===Presidential elections=== ===European elections=== == Judicial branch == 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. 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. The Supreme Judicial Council has charge of the self-administration and organization of the Judiciary. 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. == Administrative divisions == 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. == Other data == Political pressure groups and leaders: Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria or CITUB Confederation of Labour Podkrepa numerous regional, ethnic, and national interest groups with various agendas	[ "Bulgarian parliamentary election, 2001", "Bulgarian Communist Party", "constitution of Bulgaria", "2013–14 Bulgarian protests against the Oresharski cabinet", "National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria", "Ivaylo Kalfin", "Bulgarian parliamentary election, 1991", "Supreme Court of Cassation of Bulgaria", "Bulgarian National Front", "republic", "Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria", "Sakskoburggotski Government", "Bulgarian presidential election, 1996", "Galab Donev", "Narodno Sabranie", "July 2021 Bulgarian parliamentary election", "2016 Bulgarian presidential election", "Foreign relations of Bulgaria", "Alternative for Bulgarian Revival", "parliament", "prime Minister of Bulgaria", "Boyko Borisov", "Attack (political party)", "Oresharski Government", "Nikolai Denkov", "Volya Movement", "Human rights in Bulgaria", "IMRO – Bulgarian National Movement", "Democratic Bulgaria", "Confederation of Labour Podkrepa", "Sofia", "Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha", "Kiril Petkov", "Radical Democratic Party (Bulgaria)", "Movement for Rights and Freedoms", "Stefan Yanev (general)", "Executive power", "NATO", "Bulgarian presidential election, 2001", "unicameral", "Revival (Bulgarian political party)", "Bulgarian National Unification", "2023 Bulgarian parliamentary election", "GERB", "2021–present Bulgarian political crisis", "Bulgarian Agrarian National Union", "List of heads of state of Bulgaria", "Attorney general", "Bulgarian parliamentary election, 2009", "Zhelyu Zhelev", "Petar Stoyanov", "National Front for Salvation of Bulgaria", "2020–2021 Bulgarian protests", "Middle European Class", "Plamen Oresharski", "Bulgaria for Citizens Movement", "2021 Bulgarian general election", "European Union", "United People's Party (Bulgaria)", "One-party state", "VMRO-BND", "Bliznashki Government", "Union of Democratic Forces (Bulgaria)", "Prime Minister of Bulgaria", "Georgi Bliznashki", "Deutsche Welle", "Volt Bulgaria", "Legislative power", "Criminal code", "president of Bulgaria", "President of Bulgaria", "Bulgarian presidential election, 1992", "Bulgarian parliamentary election, 1997", "2013 Bulgarian protests against the Borisov cabinet", "Bulgarian Constitutional Assembly election, 1990", "National Assembly of Bulgaria", "June 2024 Bulgarian parliamentary election", "October 2024 Bulgarian parliamentary election", "Bulgarian parliamentary election, 2013", "We Continue the Change", "Kostov Government", "Stanishev Government", "Judiciary", "Bulgarian parliamentary election, 2005", "National Assembly (Bulgaria)", "Second Borisov Government", "Constitutional Court of Bulgaria", "GERB—SDS", "2021 Bulgarian parliamentary election", "Reload Bulgaria", "Mariya Gabriel", "Forms of government", "Freedom House", "Delyan Peevski", "Municipalities of Bulgaria", "Bulgarian presidential election, 2011", "People's Voice (Bulgaria)", "Georgi Parvanov", "Bulgarian parliamentary election, 2014", "Movement 21", "ITN (Bulgarian political party)", "Flag of Bulgaria", "Bulgarian parliamentary election, 1994", "List of ministries of Bulgaria", "US Library of Congress Federal Research Division", "New Time (Bulgarian political party)", "NDSV", "Supreme Administrative Court of Bulgaria", "Great Recession", "2022 Bulgarian parliamentary election", "2021 Bulgarian presidential election", "head of government", "Rumen Radev", "National Movement Simeon II", "Bulgarian presidential election, 2006", "Rosen Plevneliev", "multi-party system", "representative democracy", "freedom of speech", "2017 Bulgarian parliamentary election", "Democrats for Responsibility, Solidarity and Tolerance", "List of presidents of Bulgaria (1990–present)", "Reuters", "Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria", "National Movement for Stability and Progress", "List of prime ministers of Bulgaria", "List of provincial governors in Bulgaria", "Schengen area", "Provinces of Bulgaria", "parliamentary system", "Bulgarian Socialist Party", "WP:SDNONE", "Reformist Bloc", "Socialist Party of Bulgaria", "head of state", "Union of Free Democrats", "First Borisov Government", "Patriotic Front (Bulgaria)", "vote of confidence" ]
3,671	Economy of Bulgaria	{{Infobox economy \| country = Bulgaria \| image = File:Business Park Sofia view 2.jpg\|Business Park Sofia File:GBO 0954.jpg\|Trakia Economic Zone File:GoldenSands2005.JPG\|Summer Tourism Resort File:Borovets 2015.jpg\|Winter Tourism Resort File:National Bank of Bulgaria.JPG\|Bulgarian National Bank \| caption = From top to bottom, left to right: Business Park Sofia, Trakia Economic Zone, Tourism in Bulgaria, Bulgarian National Bank \| currency = Bulgarian lev (BGN) \| year = Calendar year \| organs = EU, WTO and BSEC \| group = The economy of Bulgaria functions on the principles of the free market, having a large private sector and a smaller public one. Bulgaria is a developed, 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 $107 billion (nominal, 2024 est.) average gross monthly salary of 2,310 leva (1,181 euro) (May 2024), and average net monthly salary of $2,191 (adjusted for living costs in PPP) (Q2 2024). The national currency is the lev (plural leva), pegged to the euro at 1.95583 leva for 1 euro. The lev is the strongest and most stable currency in Eastern Europe. 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. 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, richest and happiest people in Bulgaria. Varna is the third-largest city in Bulgaria and the largest city on the Black Sea in Bulgaria. 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. 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. 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. 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. ==History== During the 17th and 18th century Bulgaria had a largely undeveloped industry with agriculture, crafts, and partly trade being the only developed industry sectors. 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 declining. The Bulgarian export sector collapsed after Bulgarian independence in 1878. In the interwar period, there was considerable economic modernization in Bulgaria's agricultural sector, setting the conditions for rapid growth after World War II. These new policies resulted in impressive initial rates of economic development. 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. 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. ===Reforms of the 1990s and early 2000s=== 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. ===Rebound from the February 1997 crisis=== 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: privatization and, where appropriate, liquidation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs); liberalization of agricultural policies, including creating conditions for the development of a land market; reform of the country's social insurance programs; and reforms to strengthen contract enforcement and fight crime and corruption. 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. 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. ===Part of the European Union=== 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 70% of the EU27 average (2025), while the country's nominal GDP per capita is about 43% 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. ===Great Recession=== 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 Great Recession led to a decline in 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. 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%. ===New government and fiscal discipline=== 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 a positive upgrade that year. In January 2010 Moody's followed with an upgrade of its rating perspective from "stable" to "positive." 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 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. In 2024 Bulgaria is making final preparations to adopt the Euro and depending on the inflation rate during the year, the country has a chance of joining the Eurozone in 2025. ==Economic statistics== == Data == === Data === The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2018. Household income or consumption by percentage share: lowest 10%: 2.9% highest 10%: 25.4% (25.4) Distribution of family income - Gini index: 36.6% (2013) Industrial production growth rate: 11.3% (Third Quarter) Electricity: production: 45.7 TWh (2006) consumption: 37.4 TWh (2006) exports: 7.8 TWh (2006) imports: 0 TWh (2006) Electricity - production by source: fossil fuel: 47.8% hydro: 8.1% nuclear: 44.1% other: 0% (2001) Oil: production: 3,000 bbl/day (2005 est.) consumption: 131,400 bbl/day (2005 est.) exports: 51,000 (2005 est.) imports: 138,800 (2004 est.) proved reserves: 15 million bbl (1 January 2006) Natural gas: production: 407,000 cu m (2005 est.) consumption: 5.179 billion cu m (2005 est.) exports: 0 cu m (2005 est.) imports: 5.8 billion cu m (2005) proved reserves: 5.703 billion cu m (1 January 2006 est.) Agriculture - products: vegetables, fruits, tobacco, livestock, wine, wheat, barley, sunflowers, sugar beets Current account balance: $ -5.01 billion (2006 est.) Reserves of foreign exchange & gold: $11.78 billion (2006 est.) Exchange rates: ==Sectors== 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. ===Industry and construction=== 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. 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. Many factories producing transportation equipment 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). 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. 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). ===Energy=== 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 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. 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. was completed on 3 June 2011. 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 . 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). 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. 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. 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. === Services and tourism === 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. 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. 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. 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. In Easter of 2018 it was reported that around 90% of tourists in Varna, one of Bulgaria's largest tourism locations, came from Romania. 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. ===Agriculture, forestry, and fishing=== 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. 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. 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. ===Mining and minerals=== 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. 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 Great Recession. 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. 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. 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. the fate of Kremikovtsi steel factories has come under debate because of serious pollution in the capital, Sofia. 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. ===Infrastructure=== Bulgaria's national road network has a total length of , of which are paved. The motorways in Bulgaria, such as Trakia, Hemus, Struma and Maritsa, are being improved and elongated to a total length of as of November 2015. Railroads are a major mode of freight transportation, although highways carry a progressively larger share of freight. Sofia and Plovdiv are major air travel hubs, while Varna and Burgas are the principal maritime trade ports. 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. ===Science and technology=== 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. 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. 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. In June 2017, Bulgaria launched BulgariaSat-1, 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. 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. ==Labour== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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: access to and use of ICT systems by individuals and/or in households; use of the internet for different purposes by individuals and/or in households; ICT security; ICT competence; e-Commerce; barriers to use of ICT and the internet; perceived effects of ICT usage on individuals and/or in households.	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"lavender oil", "A1 Bulgaria", "Euro", "agriculture", "cogeneration", "oil field", "steel", "nanotechnology", "flat tax", "Secondary sector of the economy", "Struma motorway", "Gross domestic product", "Kardzhali", "List of countries by public debt", "Eurozone", "World Bank", "Tertiary sector of the economy", "World Tourism rankings", "Developing country", "Library of Congress", "nominal GDP", "Highways in Bulgaria", "List of countries by GDP (nominal)", "Food and Agriculture Organization", "market economy", "industrial economy", "château", "corporate income tax", "silver", "tobacco", "electronics", "high-speed rail", "Timeline of space travel by nationality", "grape", "copper", "World Bank high-income economy", "pig iron", "economic growth", "Telenor (Bulgaria)", "2007 enlargement of the European Union", "Bulgarian Academy of Sciences", "transport infrastructure", "aluminium", "Information and communication technologies", "Geostationary orbit", "Rousse", "Bulgarian Dreams", "Deutsche Mark", "Balkans", "Vulko Chervenkov", "Russia", "List of Bulgarian provinces by GDP", "Russia–Ukraine gas disputes", "International Monetary Fund", "Varna, Bulgaria", "Bulgarian government", "British people", "gold", "Bulgaria Sat", "Debt-to-GDP ratio", "Varna Power Plant", "public debt", "sheep milk", "Bulgarian Stock Exchange", "List of countries by GDP (PPP)", "inflation", "Vivacom", "Golden Sands", "Great Recession", "wind turbine", "List of countries by copper mine production", "Primary sector of the economy", "free market", "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia", "Hemus motorway", "major general", "Currency board", "Ruse Iztok Power Plant", "motor truck", "Proved reserves", "Blue Gene", "Silicon Valley", "computer", "standard of living", "BSEC", "raspberry", "Iraq sanctions", "tomato", "Strawberry", "public domain", "Economic Freedom of the World", "List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita", "Kremikovtsi", "deficit spending", "Dupnitsa", "Trakia Economic Zone", "Russia in the European energy sector", "Chandrayaan-1", "Thermal power station", "planned economy", "cucumber", "Tyulenovo", "Sopot", "Gini index", "machinery", "Comecon", "Karlovo", "vegetable", "combine harvester", "Bulgarian Socialist Party", "Todor Zhivkov", "Corruption Perceptions Index", "Bozhentsi", "Plovdiv", "List of countries by current account balance", "monetary union", "tourism", "rose oil", "bismuth", "European Exchange Rate Mechanism", "mining", "Dryanovo", "Eastern Bloc", "European Structural and Investment Funds", "TWh", "Bansko" ]
3,672	Telecommunications in Bulgaria	Telecommunications in Bulgaria include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet. ==Radio and television== Radio broadcast stations: AM 31, FM 63, shortwave 2 (2001). Radio broadcast hours: 525,511 (2003). Television broadcast stations: 39 (2001). Television broadcast hours: 498,091 (2003). ==Telephones== Main lines in use: 1.6 million (2015 est). Mobile cellular: 8.98 million lines (2016). Telephone system: General assessment: an extensive but antiquated telecommunications network inherited from the Soviet era; quality has improved; the Bulgaria Telecommunications Company's fixed-line monopoly terminated in 2005 when alternative fixed-line operators were given access to its network; a drop in fixed-line connections in recent years has been more than offset by a sharp increase in mobile-cellular telephone use fostered by multiple service providers; the number of cellular telephone subscriptions now exceeds the population Domestic: a fairly modern digital cable trunk line now connects switching centers in most of the regions; the others are connected by digital microwave radio relay International: country code – 359; submarine cable provides connectivity to Ukraine and Russia; a combination submarine cable and land fiber-optic system provides connectivity to Italy, Albania, and North Macedonia; satellite earth stations – 3 (1 Intersputnik in the Atlantic Ocean region, 2 Intelsat in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean regions) (2007). ==Internet== Top-level domains: .bg and .бг (proposed, Cyrillic). Internet users: 4.1 million users (2016) 3.9 million users, 72nd in the world; 55.1% of the population, 74th in the world (2012); 3.4 million users, 63rd in the world (2009); Wireless broadband: 2.8 million, 55th in the world; 40.3% of the population, 41st in the world (2012). Internet hosts: 976,277 hosts, 47th in the world (2012);	[ "Top-level domain", "The World Factbook", "List of countries by IPv4 address allocation", "Intelsat", "FM broadcasting", "Mobile phone", "Ukraine", "Albania", "United States", "List of countries by number of Internet hosts", "Bulgaria", "List of internet service providers in Bulgaria", "Italy", "Central Intelligence Agency", "Internet Society – Bulgaria", "List of countries by number of broadband Internet subscriptions", "Intersputnik", ".bg", "WP:SDNONE", "International Telecommunication Union", "Amplitude modulation", "North Macedonia", "List of countries by number of Internet users", ".бг", "Russia" ]
3,673	Transport in Bulgaria	Transport in Bulgaria is dominated by road transport. As of 2024, the country had 879 kilometers of highways and another 117 km under construction. The total length of the network is almost 40,000 km, divided nearly in half between the national and the municipal road network. In addition, there are 57,000 km of streets. With 74.4% of the railway network electrified, Bulgaria ranks fifth in Europe and among the first in the world. The Sofia Metro has four lines as of 2023. Air traffic has been growing since the 2000s, which was facilitated by the modernisation of airports, 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. There are four international airports — Vasil Levski Sofia Airport, Burgas Airport, Varna Airport and Plovdiv Airport, while the total number of airports is 111. Ports along the Danube and the Black Sea are the most important concerning Bulgaria's water transport system. The two largest ones are the Port of Varna and the Port of Burgas. == Air transport == 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, In 2011 passenger traffic at Bulgaria's three major airports – Sofia, Varna and Burgas – 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. 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, Vasil Levski Sofia Airport and Burgas Airport, had a runway longer than 3,000 meters, and there were four heliports. == Railways == 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. There are upgrading projects underway. After the completion of the Plovdiv – Dimitrovgrad high-speed line on July 1, 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. 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. and 21.3 million passengers in 2019. === Sofia Metro === In 1998 the first six kilometres of an often-interrupted 52 km standard gauge subway project (the Sofia Metro) opened in Sofia. 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. == Road transport == Bulgaria has nearly 40,000 kilometers of roads, of which 19,968 km form the national road network and another 19,500 km are part of the municipal network. Over 98% of all national roads are paved. Roads have overtaken the railroads as the chief mode of freight transportation. 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 major cities, such as Sofia, Plovdiv, Burgas, Varna and Ruse. 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. === Motorways and expressways === Trakia motorway – Sofia – Plovdiv – Stara Zagora – Yambol – Karnobat – Burgas (completed) Hemus motorway – Sofia – Yablanitsa – Shumen – Varna (Yablanitsa to Shumen remaining) Struma motorway – Sofia – Pernik – Blagoevgrad – Kulata (Greece) (under construction) Maritsa motorway – Chirpan to Kapitan Andreevo (Turkey) (completed) Cherno More motorway – Varna to Burgas (planned) Europe motorway – Sofia – Kalotina (Serbia) (under construction) Veliko Tarnovo–Ruse motorway Veliko Tarnovo – Rousse (Romania) (planned) === Major roads === I-1 road I-2 road I-3 road I-4 road I-5 road I-6 road I-7 road I-8 road I-9 road Sofia Ring Road ===Long-distance public transport=== 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. There are numerous international destinations to a number of European countries, as well as Turkey. Share taxis called marshrutka operate in Sofia, and in the countryside between smaller settlements. == Waterways == 470 km (2006) along the 2,300 km long Pan-European corridor VII along the Danube River. Other smaller rivers, as Kamchiya and Ropotamo, are navigable only for recreational uses. == Pipelines == In 2005, Bulgaria had 2,425 kilometers of natural gas pipelines, 339 kilometers of oil pipelines, and 156 kilometers of pipelines for refined products. === Sea ports === Sea ports Ahtopol, Balchik, Burgas, Nesebar, Pomorie, Sozopol, Tsarevo, Varna Container terminals The major and largest ports with international significance are Varna and Burgas. Yacht ports ships by type: bulk carrier: 31 ships grouped by volume of 24,000 – 13,000 DWT, 35,000 – 25,000 DWT and 43,000 – 36,000 DWT == Urban transport == 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.	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3,674	Bulgarian Armed Forces	The Bulgarian Army (), also called Bulgarian Armed Forces, 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). 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. 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. ==History of the Bulgarian Army== === 19th Century === 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. ===Serbo-Bulgarian war=== 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. 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 to 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. ===First Balkan War=== Instability in the Balkan region in the early 1900s quickly became a precursor 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. 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. 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, The Bulgarian field army consisted of nine infantry divisions, one cavalry division and 1,116 artillery units. 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. 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. ===Second Balkan War=== 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. 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. ===First World War=== 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. 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. 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. ===The army between the World Wars=== 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. ===World War II=== 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. 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. 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. ===Cold War era=== 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. 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, several 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. === From 1990 === With the collapse of the Warsaw Pact & the end of the Cold War, Bulgaria could no longer support a vast military. A rapid reduction in personnel & 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 & bomber aircraft, 100 trainer aircraft, more than 40 combat & 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 & spare part shortages and the disbandment of many capable units led to an overall drop in combat readiness, morale & discipline. 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 & 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 numbered around 33,150 soldiers, 73 aircraft, 2234 vehicles, including 531 tanks, and 29 naval assets. ==Organization== === Defence Staff === 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. Supreme officer rank assignments in the Bulgarian Army and other militarised services Established by Executive Order of the President No. 85 / 28.02.2012, most recent amendment published in the State Gazette Issue 96 from December 2, 2022: Ministry of Defence Chief of Defence – General / Admiral Deputy Chief of Defence – Lieutenant-General / Vice-Admiral Deputy Chief of Defence – Lieutenant-General / Vice-Admiral (until October 1, 2014, Major-General / Rear-Admiral) Defense Staff Director of the Defence Staff – Major-General / Rear-Admiral (established on May 6, 2018, the de facto Chief of Staff of the BAF) Director, "Operations and Training" Directorate – Brigade General / Flotilla Admiral Director, "Logistics" Directorate – Brigade General / Flotilla Admiral Director, "Strategical Planning" Directorate – Brigade General / Flotilla Admiral Director, "Communication and Information Systems" Directorate – Brigade General / Flotilla Admiral Director, "Defence Policy and Planning" Directorate (established on January 1, 2019) – Brigade General / Flotilla Admiral Joint Forces Command Commander, Joint Forces Command – Major-General / Rear-Admiral (until August 31, 2021, Lieutenant-General / Vice-Admiral) Deputy Commander, Joint Forces Command – Brigade General / Flotilla Admiral (until August 31, 2021, Major-General / Rear-Admiral) Chief of Staff, Joint Forces Command – Brigade General / Flotilla Admiral Land Forces Commander, Land Forces – Major-General Deputy Commander, Land Forces – Brigade General Chief of Staff, Land Forces – Brigade General Commander, 2nd Mechanised Brigade – Brigade General Commander, 61st Mechanised Brigade – Brigade General Air Forces Commander, Air Forces – Major-General Deputy Commander, Air Forces – Brigade General Commander, 3rd Air Base – Brigade General Commander, 24th Air Base – Brigade General Navy Commander, Naval Forces – Rear-Admiral Deputy Commander, Naval Forces – Flotilla Admiral Commander, Combat and Support Ships Fltilla – Flotilla Admiral Joint Special Forces Command Commander, Joint Special Forces Command – Major-General Logistics Support Command (established on September 1, 2021) Commander, Logistics Support Command – Brigade General Communications and Information Support and Cyber-Defence Command (established on September 1, 2021, on the basis of the Stationary Communications and Information System) Commander, Communications and Information Support and Cyber-Defence Command – Brigade General Military Police Service, directly subordinated to the Minister of Defense Director, Military Police Service – Brigade General / Flotilla Admiral Military Intelligence Service, directly subordinated to the Minister of Defense Director, Military Intelligence Service – Brigade General / Flotilla Admiral or civil servant equal in rank Military education institutions, directly subordinated to the Minister of Defense Chief of the "Georgi Stoykov Rakovski" Military Academy – Major-General / Rear-Admiral Chief of the Military Medical Academy and the Armed Forces Medical Service – Major-General / Rear-Admiral Chief of the "Vasil Levski" National Military University – Brigade General Chief of the "Georgi Benkovski" Higher Air Force School (re-established on January 1, 2020) – Brigade General Chief of the "Nikola Yonkov Vaptsarov" Higher Naval School – Flotilla Admiral Other positions at the Ministry of Defense Military Advisor on Military Security Matters to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the President of the Republic of Bulgaria – Major-General / Rear-Admiral Military Representative of the Chief of Defense at the NATO Military Committee and at the EU Military Committee – Lieutenant-General / Vice-Admiral Director of the Cooperation and Regional Security Directorate at the NATO Military Committee – Major-General / Rear-Admiral National Military Representative at the NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe – Major-General / Rear-Admiral Deputy Commander of the NATO Rapid Deployable Corps – Greece (Thessaloniki) – Major-General / Rear-Admiral Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Multinational Corps Southeast – Sibiu, Romania – Brigade General 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. National Intelligence Service With the transformation of the National Intelligence Service into the State Agency for Intelligence the positions of Director, National Intelligence Service (Major-General / Rear-Admiral) and deputy director, National Intelligence Service (Brigade General / Flotilla Admiral) were stricken from the list of supreme officer assignments through Executive Order of the President No.58/22.03.2016. The newly established positions are the civilian assignments of chairman and Deputy-Chairman of the State Agency for Intelligence. National Close Protection Service Director, National Close Protection Service - Major-General / Rear-Admiral Deputy Director, National Close Protection Service - Brigade General / Flotilla Admiral 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. === Ministry of Defence === Ministry of Defence The organisation of the Ministry of Defence includes: Minister of Defence 3 Deputy-Ministers of Defence Political Cabinet Permanent Secretary of Defence (the highest-ranking civil servant of the Ministry) Inspectorate General Administration "Administration and Information Support" Directorate "Public Relations and Protocol" Directorate "Finances" Directorate Specialised Administration "Defence Infrastructure" Main Directorate "Defence Policy and Planning" Directorate "Planning, Programming and Budgeting" Directorate "Defence Legal Activities" Directorate "Defence Human Resources Management" Directorate "Defence Public Orders" Directorate "Armament Policy" Directorate "Social Policy and Military-Patriotic Upbringing" Directorate "Security of Information" Directorate "Internal Audit" Directorate "Financial Control and Check of Material Accountability" Unit Civil servant in charge of personal data protection Chief of Defence (the highest-ranking officer, the only four-star rank on active duty) Deputy-Chief of Defence (Lieutenant-General / Vice-Admiral) Deputy-Chief of Defence (Lieutenant-General / Vice-Admiral) Director of the Defence Staff (Major-General / Rear-Admiral, the Defence Staff is the successor of the General Staff and thus the Director is the Chief of Staff of the Bulgarian Army) "Operations and Training" Directorate "Logistics" Directorate "Strategical Planning" Directorate "Communication and Information Systems" Directorate "Defence Policy and Planning" Directorate Command Sergeant-Major of the Bulgarian Army ==== Structures directly subordinated to the Ministry of Defence ==== Structures directly subordinated to the Ministry of Defence include: Defence Intelligence Service, Sofia (commanded by a Major-General/ Rear-Admiral) Director Directorate Information Division Analysis Division Resources Supply Division Military Police Service, Sofia (commanded by a Brigade General / Flotilla Admiral) Military Police Command Military Police Operational Company (MRAV Sand Cat) Regional Military Police Service Sofia Regional Military Police Service Plovdiv Regional Military Police Service Pleven Regional Military Police Service Varna Regional Military Police Service Sliven Military Police Service Logistics and Training Centre, Sofia Military Geographical Service MGS Headquarters Geographical Information Support Centre Geodesic Observatory (GPS Observatory) Military Geographical Centre Information Security Unit Financial Comptroller National Guards Unit, Sofia (commanded by a Colonel) Headquarters 1st Guards Battalion 2nd Mixed Guards Battalion National Guards Unit Representative Military Band Armed Forces Representative Dance Company Guardsmen Training Centre Logistics Support Company Military Medical Academy, Sofia (commanded by a Major-General / Rear-Admiral) Chief of the MMA, Chief of the MATH - Sofia and General Surgeon of the Bulgarian Armed Forces Deputy Chief for Diagnostics and Medical Treatment Activities Deputy Chief for Education and Scientific Activities Deputy Chief for Medical Support of Military Units and Overseas Military Missions Multiprofile Active Treatment Hospital - Sofia Multiprofile Active Treatment Hospital (informally known as the Naval Hospital)- Varna Multiprofile Active Treatment Hospital - Plovdiv Multiprofile Active Treatment Hospital - Sliven Multiprofile Active Treatment Hospital - Pleven Follow-up Long-term Treatment and Rehabilitation Hospital "Saint George the Victorious" - Pomorie Follow-up Long-term Treatment and Rehabilitation Hospital "Caleroya" - Hisar Follow-up Long-term Treatment and Rehabilitation Hospital - Bankya Military Medical Quick Reaction Force (expeditionary disaster and crisis relief unit) Psychological Health and Prevention Centre Scientific and Application Centre for Military Medical Expertise and Aviation and Seaborne Medicine Scientific and Application Centre for Military Epidemiology and Hygiene Military Academy "Georgi Stoykov Rakovski", Sofia (commanded by a Major-General / Rear-Admiral) Command Commandant of the Military Academy Deputy Chief for Study and Scientific Activities Deputy Chief for Administrative Activities and Logistics Administrative Units Personnel and Administrative Support Department Logistics Department Study and Scientific Activities Department Financial Department Library and Publishing Activities Sector Public Relations, International Activities and Protocol Sector Training Units National Security and Defence College Command Staff College Peacekeeping Operations and Computer Simulations Sector Foreign Languages Studies Department Perspective Defence Research Institute National Military University "Vasil Levski", Veliko Tarnovo (commanded by a Brigade General) Combined Arms Education Department, Veliko Tarnovo Artillery and Communication Systems Education Department, Shumen NCO School, Veliko Tarnovo Foreign Languages and Computer Systems Education Department, Shumen Higher Air Force School "Georgi Benkovski", Dolna Mitropoliya (commanded by a Brigade General, temporarily a faculty of the NMU, reinstated on January 20, 2020) Higher Naval School "Nikola Yonkov Vaptsarov", Varna (commanded by a Flotilla Admiral) Chief of the Higher Naval Officer School Deputy Chief for Administration and Logistics Deputy Chief for Studies and Science Activities Navigation Department Engineering Department Post-Graduate Qualification Department Professional Petty Officers College Defence Institute "Prof. Tsvetan Lazarov", Sofia The Defence Institute is the research and development administration of the MoD. It includes the: Administration and Financial Management Department Military Standardisation, Quality and Certification Department Armament, Equipment and Materials Development Department Armament, Equipment and Materials Testing and Control Department C4I Systems Development Department Central Artillery Technical Evaluation Proving Ground, Stara Zagora Central Office of Military District, Sofia Commandment Service of the Ministry of Defence, Sofia The Commandment Service is an institution in charge of real estate management, transportation, library services, documentation publishing and communications support for the central administration of the MoD, transportation support to the immediate MoD personnel, classified information, cryptographic and perimeter security for the MoD administration buildings. Director Deputy Director Chief Legal Advisor Financial Comptroller Administrative Department Financial Department Business Department Transportation Support Department Support Department CIS Support Department Technical Centre for Armed Forces Information Security Executive Agency for the Military Clubs and Recreational Activities, Sofia National Museum of Military History, Sofia === Joint Forces Command === 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 planning and execution of military operation was transferred from the respective armed service commands to a joint organisation. 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. 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 No. 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: Military Command Centre Operational Intelligence Information Center Centre for Radiological, Chemical, Biological and Ecological Environment Monitoring and Control Mobile Communication and Information System Operational Archive of the Bulgarian Army Joint Forces Training Range "Novo Selo" National Military Study Complex "Charalitsa" Support and Maintenance Group of the JFC 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. Land Forces Command Naval Forces Command Air Forces Command Under the previous structure they were subordinated to the JFC. The logistics units of the JFC were re-arranged into the newly formed Logistical Support Command (Командване за логистична поддръжка (КЛП)): Logistical Support Command, Sofia Logistics Brigade Brigade Headquarters 1st Transport Battalion, Sofia 2nd Transport Battalion, Burgas Central Supply Base, Negushevo repair and maintenance bases depots, storage facilities and technical inspection units Movement Control Headquarters 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. 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)). Communications and Information Support and Cyber-Defence Command, Sofia Communications and Information Centre Government Communications Support Centre, Operational Centres Engineering and CIS recovery Centre Stationary Communications Network === Joint Special Operations Command === 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. Joint Special Operations Command, Plovdiv Command Staff and Command Battalion 68th Special Forces Group (designated in honour of the former 68th Training Para-Recon Base, Plovdiv) 86th Special Forces Group (designated in honour of the former 86th Training Para-Recon Base, Musachevo) 1st Special Forces Group (Newest Special Operations Group, Stationed in Bankya) 3rd Special Forces Group Training and Combat Support Center Logistics Support Battalion Medical Point ===Personnel and education=== 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. 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. 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: Vasil Levski National Military University Rakovski Defence and Staff College Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy Military Medical Academy – a mixed military academy/hospital institution ===Training=== 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. 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. 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. ===Budget=== 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. ==Land Forces== 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. 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. ===National guard unit=== 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. 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. ===Statistics and equipment=== 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. ==Navy== 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. 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. 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. The Bulgarian Navy is centered in two main bases – in Varna and in Burgas. ==Air Force== 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 March 2009. In 2006 the Bulgarian government signed a contract with Alenia Aeronautica for the delivery of five C-27J Spartan transport aircraft 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 helicopters for the Bulgarian Navy arrived in 2016. 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. 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. ===Aircraft inventory=== With the exception of the Navy's small helicopter fleet, the Air Force are responsible for all military aircraft in Bulgaria. The Air Force's inventory numbers Program for investments in defence until 2032. It is supposed to introduce new technologies in the Bulgarian Armed Forces and make up for 30 years of lack of modernization and new equipment. The program includes acquisitions of: New Armored vehicles for mechanized battalions in the Land Forces.( Already done in the form of the Stryker vehicles ordered in December 2023) New AESA 3D radars for the Bulgarian Air Force.(Process almost done as of April 2024) New coastal Anti-ship missiles for the Bulgarian Navy. Communication and Information systems for divisional headquarters of multinational divisional command. New Medium to Long range Surface-to-air missiles for the Bulgarian Air Force. New air defence systems for a mechanized brigade for the Bulgarian Land Forces.(SHORAD) New Multiple launch rocket system with increased mobility for the Bulgarian Land Forces.(HIMARS) New 155 mm Self-propelled howitzers for the Bulgarian Land Forces Unmanned combat aerial vehicles for the Bulgarian Air Force New Attack helicopters for the Bulgarian Air Force. New Minehunters for the Bulgarian Navy. Development of abilities to overcome dry and water obstacles. New Multipurpose corvettes/ missile boats for the Bulgarian Navy	[ "Operation Unified Protector", "Bulgaria and weapons of mass destruction", "Militsiya", "Brigadier general", "Treaty of Craiova", "Knyaz", "Bulgarian Communist Party", "Steyr AUG", "2S1 Gvozdika", "UNMOT", "United States Air Force", "Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe", "Attack helicopter", "Chataldja", "Operation Atalanta", "St. George's Day", "SA-13 Gopher", "SA-6 Gainful", "EUFOR", "3D radar", "Second Balkan War", "Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine", "Kingdom of Serbia", "National Guards Unit of Bulgaria", "Ottoman Empire", "First World War", "HK416", "155 mm caliber", "Short range air defense", "Kosovo", "An-26", "Main battle tank", "Macedonia (region)", "SA-8 Gecko", "NATO Training Mission – Iraq", "Red Army", "68th Special Forces Brigade (Bulgaria)", "TEREM", "Bulgaria", "Krali Marko defensive line", "Bulgaria during World War I", "Cold War", "Thrace", "Bulair", "Panzer III", "Bulgarian Rocket Forces", "Minehunter", "Iraq War", "Bulgarian Land Forces", "Artillery", "SA-10 Grumble", "Koren range", "Rosen Zhelyazkov", "C-27J Spartan", "Bogdan Filov", "Aegean Sea", "Alexander I of Bulgaria", "Surface-to-air missile", "Russo-Turkish War, 1877–78", "brigade", "AT-4 Spigot", "Burgas", "UNMEE", "2011 military intervention in Libya", "Sofia", "Eleftherios Venizelos", "Nazi Germany", "Rila", "M1117 armored security vehicle", "AT-3 Sagger", "Ferdinand of Bulgaria", "State Agency for National Security", "Warsaw Pact", "Operation Barbarossa", "defensive line", "Panzer IV", "AT-6 Spiral", "Arsenal AD", "Austro-Hungarian Empire", "Balkan League", "Emil Eftimov", "Stabilisation Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Timok Rebellion", "SA-16 Gimlet", "Serbo-Bulgarian War", "MANPADS", "NATO", "frigate", "Chief of the Defence (Bulgaria)", "BTR-60", "UNTAC", "Self-propelled artillery", "Dodecanese", "Infantry fighting vehicle", "UNMIK", "non-aggression pact", "Soviet Army", "Radko Dimitriev", "Nova Zagora", "North Vietnam", "SU-100", "Vasil Levski", "Bulgarian Navy", "Bulgarian Air Force", "Mi-24", "SIGINT", "Wielingen class frigate", "Second Army (Bulgaria)", "Southern Dobruja", "Nikola Yonkov Vaptsarov", "Bucharest", "OTR-21 Tochka", "Military history of Bulgaria during World War II", "MP5", "Kingdom of Bulgaria", "War in Afghanistan (2001–14)", "Il-2", "Gorna Malina", "Eurocopter Cougar", "Georgi Vazov", "War of the Stray Dog", "Battle of Slivnitsa", "Su-25", "Vasil Kutinchev", "BM-21", "UNIFIL", "knyaz", "Kosovo Force", "opalchentsi", "Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe", "European Union Monitoring Mission in Georgia", "Anti-ship missile", "T-72", "Stiliyan Kovachev", "Prime Minister of Bulgaria", "Tarnovo Constitution", "Edirne", "Bulgarian unification", "Routledge", "Greco-Turkish War (1897)", "Kirk Kilisse", "western Thrace", "French army", "Second Vienna Award", "Tripartite Pact", "Soviet Black Sea Fleet", "Armoured Personnel Carrier", "BMP-23", "P-15 Termit", "Minister of Defence (Bulgaria)", "UNMIL", "president of Bulgaria", "President of Bulgaria", "Battle of the Red Wall", "discipline", "Operation Active Endeavour", "An-24", "First Battle of Çatalca", "German Empire", "SS-23", "Pirin", "Stryker", "Cyber Defence", "BRDM-2", "Pirot", "Bankya", "Vasil Levski National Military University", "Plasan Sand Cat", "AT-7 Saxhorn", "Osprey Publishing", "Muammar Gaddafi", "Medieval Bulgarian Army", "Fatherland Front (Bulgaria)", "Eastern Rumelia", "Georgi Stoykov Rakovski", "UNOMA", "M142 HIMARS", "Nikola Ivanov", "Constantinople", "crisis management", "Albanians", "Battle of Doiran (1917)", "T-34-85", "Vidin", "National Assembly (Bulgaria)", "Operation Ocean Shield", "February Revolution", "SA-18 Grouse", "sovereignty", "Central Powers", "Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Foreign Policy (magazine)", "Battle of Doiran (1918)", "BMP-1", "Gowind class corvette", "SCUD", "Prague Spring", "List of modern equipment of the Bulgarian 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"Third Army (Bulgaria)", "Boris III", "Lovech", "Black Sea", "Active electronically scanned array", "Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878)", "FROG-7", "patron saint", "Milan Obrenović IV", "Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia", "Battle of Kirk Kelesse", "Georgi Benkovski", "SA-14 Gremlin", "Unmanned combat aerial vehicle", "First Army (Bulgaria)", "Yambol", "Anti-tank missile", "VMZ Sopot", "Vladimir Vazov", "Adrianople", "Bulgarian People's Army", "Multinational Corps Southeast", "demining", "Fall of Communism", "Liberation of Bulgaria", "Balkan Wars", "Danube", "United States diplomatic cables leak", "Vasil Radoslavov", "MiG-29", "AK-74", "conscription", "corvette", "Iaşi", "Bombing of Sofia in World War II", "Todor Zhivkov", "Nicaraguan Revolution", "commander-in-chief", "Sea of Marmara", "Plovdiv", "Italo-Turkish War", "Nikolai Tsonev", "Defense industry of Bulgaria", "Zveno", "Eastern Bloc", "missile boat", "MP 40", "Tundzha", "Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" ]
3,677	Geography of Burkina Faso	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, 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. ==Area== Burkina Faso has a total area of , of which is land and water. Comparatively, it is slightly larger than New Zealand and Colorado. Its borders total : Benin , Ivory Coast , Ghana , Mali , Niger , and Togo . It has no coastline or maritime claims. === Extreme points === 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. Northernmost point – unnamed location on the border with Mali, Sahel Region Easternmost point – unnamed location on the border with Benin immediately south of the Burkina Faso-Benin-Niger tripoint, Est Region Southernmost point – unnamed location on the border with Ivory Coast immediately south of the village of Kpuere, Sud-Ouest Region Westernmost point – the tripoint with Mali and Ivory Coast, Cascades Region ==Terrain== 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 . The massif is bordered by sheer cliffs up to high. The average altitude of Burkina Faso is and the difference between the highest and lowest terrain is no greater than . Burkina Faso is therefore a relatively flat country. Its elevation extremes are a lowest point at the Mouhoun (Black Volta) River () and highest point at Tena Kourou (). ==Administrative divisions== The country is divided into 13 administrative regions. These regions encompass 45 provinces and 351 departments. ==Hydrography== 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. 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. ==Climate== 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 of rainfall per year and has high temperatures, . 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 of rain each year and has cooler average temperatures. ==Resources and environment== 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 km2 were irrigated. Its total renewable water resources as of 2011 were 12.5 m3, with a total freshwater withdrawal of 0.72 km3/yr (46% domestic, 3% industrial, 51% agricultural; this amounts to a per-capita withdrawal of 54.99 m3/yr. In Burkina Faso forest cover is around 23% of the total land area, equivalent to 6,216,400 hectares (ha) of forest in 2020, down from 7,716,600 hectares (ha) in 1990. In 2020, naturally regenerating forest covered 6,039,300 hectares (ha) and planted forest covered 177,100 hectares (ha). Of the naturally regenerating forest 0% was reported to be primary forest (consisting of native tree species with no clearly visible indications of human activity) and around 16% of the forest area was found within protected areas. For the year 2015, 100% of the forest area was reported to be under public ownership. 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. 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. 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.	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3,678	Demographics of Burkina Faso	Burkina Faso's 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. Most of Burkina Faso's population is concentrated in the south and center of the country, with a population density sometimes exceeding . 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. 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. ==Population== 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. 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. ==Vital statistics== 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. ===Demographic and Health Surveys=== Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR): Fertility data as of 2013 (DHS Program): ===Life expectancy at birth=== total population: 63.44 years male: 61.63 years female: 65.31 years (2022 est.) Total population: 63.06 years Male: 61.28 years Female: 64.89 years (2021 est.) ==Ethnic groups== Mossi 53.7%, Fulani (Peuhl) 6.8%, Gurunsi 5.9%, Bissa 5.4%, Gurma 5.2%, Bobo 3.4%, Senufo 2.2%, Bissa 1.5%, Lobi 1.5%, Tuareg/Bella 0.1%, other 12.8%, foreign 0.7% (2021 est.) ==Languages== French(official), native African languages belonging to Sudanic family spoken by 90% of the population ==Religion== Islam 61.5%, Roman Catholic 23.3%, Traditional/Animist 7.8%, Protestant 6.5%, Other/No Answer 0.2%, None 0.7% (2010 est.)	[ "Mossi people", "Centre Region, Burkina Faso", "Gur people", "Est Region (Burkina Faso)", "Traditional African religion", "Animism", "French language", "Islam in Burkina Faso", "Centre-Est Region", "Sahel Region", "Sud-Ouest Region (Burkina Faso)", "Islam", "Ivory Coast", "Protestant", "Hauts-Bassins Region", "fertility rate", "Our World in Data", "Centre-Nord Region", "Mogho Naba", "Mandé", "Burkina Faso", "Centre-Sud Region", "Ouagadougou", "Ghana", "Infant mortality", "University of Ouagadougou", "Plateau-Central Region", "United Nations", "African languages", "Roman Catholic", "WP:SDNONE", "Bobo-Dioulasso", "Cascades Region", "Centre-Ouest Region", "Sudanic languages", "net reproduction rate", "Total fertility rate", "Boucle du Mouhoun Region", "Life expectancy", "Nord Region (Burkina Faso)", "Polytechnic University of Bobo-Dioulasso" ]
3,679	Politics of Burkina Faso	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.” 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. ==Political history== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ==Government== ===Executive branch=== \|President \|Ibrahim Traoré \|Military \|30 September 2022 \|- \|Prime Minister \|Apollinaire Joachim Kyélem de Tambèla \|None \|21 October 2022 \|} 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 () 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 seven to five 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. ====Council of Ministers==== The Burkinabe Council of Ministers nominated on 5 March 2022 included prime minister Albert Ouédraogo and 25 ministers. ===Legislative branch=== 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. The National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale) has 111 members, named Deputies, and are elected for a five-year term by proportional representation. 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. 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. 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. 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. ==Political parties and elections== 2020 Burkinabé general election ==Political pressure groups== 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 ==Administrative divisions== Burkina Faso is divided into 13 regions and 45 provinces: Regions: Boucle du Mouhoun, Cascades, Centre, Centre-Est, Centre-Nord, Centre-Ouest, Centre-Sud, Est, Hauts-Bassins, Nord, Plateau-Central, Sahel, Sud-Ouest Provinces: Balé, Bam, Banwa, Bazega, Bougouriba, Boulgou, Boulkiemde, Comoé, Ganzourgou, Gnagna, Gourma, Houet, Ioba, Kadiogo, Kenedougou, Komondjari, Kompienga, Kossi, Koulpelogo, Kouritenga, Kourweogo, Leraba, Loroum, Mouhoun, Namentenga, Nahouri, Nayala, Noumbiel, Oubritenga, Oudalan, Passore, Poni, Sanguie, Sanmatenga, Séno, Sissili, Soum, Sourou, Tapoa, Tuy, Yagha, Yatenga, Ziro, Zondoma, Zoundweogo ==International organization participation== 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. ==International relationships== The ambassador of Burkina Faso to Canada is Juliette Bonkoungou. The ambassador of Burkina Faso to Mexico is Jonathan Hodgson. 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.	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3,680	Economy of Burkina Faso	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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ==Macro-economic trend== 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. 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. 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%. 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. 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. 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. ==Agriculture== Burkina Faso produced in 2018: 1.9 million tons of sorghum; 1.7 million tons of maize; 1.1 million tons of millet; 630 thousand tons of cowpea (3rd largest producer in the world, preceded only by Niger and Nigeria); 490 thousand tons of sugar cane; 482 thousand tons of cotton; 329 thousand tons of peanut; 253 thousand tons of sesame seed (8th largest producer in the world); 240 thousand tons of vegetable; 160 thousand tons of rice; 103 thousand tons of cashew nuts (12th largest producer in the world); In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products. ===External trade=== 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. ==Child labour==	[ "Standard & Poor's", "List of countries by inequality-adjusted HDI", "soil", "Service sector", "sesame seed", "financial centre", "factory", "cereal", "pearl millet", "sesame", "Burkina Faso", "Sahara", "Ouagadougou", "maize", "textile", "Gold", "Mossi Plateau", "World Trade Organization", "livestock", "cotton", "Agriculture in Burkina Faso", "manganese", "Natural sector", "Purchasing power parity", "agricultural", "subsistence agriculture", "food processing", "CFA Franc", "export", "non-bank financial institution", "ore", "Human Development Report", "List of companies based in Burkina Faso", "Shea nut", "mineral", "List of countries by Human Development Index", "sesame seeds", "List of banks in Burkina Faso", "Community of Sahel–Saharan States", "cashew nuts", "United Nations Economic Commission for Africa", "List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita", "cigarettes", "African Continental Free Trade Agreement", "erosion", "Industrial sector", "soap", "United Nations Development Programme", "The World Factbook", "structural adjustment program", "Banfora", "macroeconomics", "agriculture", "beverages", "African Union", "World Bank", "List of countries by GDP (nominal)", "sorghum", "Ease of doing business index", "International Monetary Fund", "gold", "sugar cane", "infrastructure", "List of countries by GDP (PPP)", "textiles", "cowpea", "water resources", "peanut", "List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita", "U.S. Department of Labor", "Koudougou", "tariffs", "poverty", "man-hour", "natural resource", "vegetable", "millet", "Bobo-Dioulasso", "Least Developed Countries", "rice" ]
3,681	Telecommunications in Burkina Faso	Telecommunications in Burkina Faso include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet. 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. 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. ==Regulation and control== The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and of the press, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. state-owned radio runs a national and regional network; substantial number of privately owned radio stations; transmissions of several international broadcasters available in Ouagadougou (2007). Television stations: 14 digital channels, 2 of them are state-owned by the broadcaster Radio Télévision du Burkina (2019). ==Telephones== Calling code: +226 Main lines: 141,400 lines in use (2012); ==Early Development of the Mobile Market== 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, 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. 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. 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. On 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. According to the website of the Communication Regulator of Burkina Faso, 178,100 users, 144th in the world (2009); Wireless broadband: Unknown (2012). Internet hosts: 1,795, 164th in the world (2012); Internet Service Providers: 1 ISP (1999). 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. 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. 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. 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. ===Internet censorship and surveillance=== 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. 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. 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.	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3,682	Transport in Burkina Faso	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. == Highways == In 2002, there were a total of of highway in Burkina Faso, of which are paved. 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 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. ==Air transport== There are international airports at Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso and numerous smaller airfields. In 2004, the number of airports totaled 23, only two 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. 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. 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. == Railways == 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. All of the railways in the country are of . Only Ivory Coast is connected to Burkina Faso by rail. 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. 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. 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. === Stations served === The following towns of Burkina Faso are served by the country's railways: Banfora Bobo-Dioulasso Koudougou Ouagadougou - national capital Kaya - terminus	[ "International Water Management Institute", "cartels", "Boankra", "highway", "Niger", "Ivory Coast", "Transport in Ivory Coast", "2010–11 Ivorian crisis", "Banfora", "Pô", "Sitarail", "Burkina Faso", "West Africa", "Koudougou", "World Bank", "Mali", "break-of-gauge", "railway", "Ouagadougou", "AfricaRail", "Ghana", "Togo", "Abidjan", "West Africa Regional Rail Integration", "Air Burkina", "Ouagadougou-Donsin Airport", "WP:SDNONE", "Bobo-Dioulasso", "Kaya, Burkina Faso", "The World Bank", "Dori, Burkina Faso", "Kumasi" ]
3,683	Burkina Faso Armed Forces	{{Infobox national military \| name = Burkina Faso Armed Forces \| image = \| caption = Coat of arms of Burkina Faso \| native_name = \| headquarters = Ouagadougou \| commander-in-chief = Captain Ibrahim Traoré \| commander-in-chief_title = Commander-in-chief \| minister = Colonel Kassoum Coulibaly \| minister_title = Minister of Defense and Veteran Affairs \| commander = Colonel-Major Célestin Simporé \| commander_title = Chief of General Staff \| website = \| deployed = \| amount = $450 million (2019) \| percent_GDP = 2.2% (2019) \| founded = \| current_form = 1985 \| disbanded = \| branches = Burkina Faso Ground ForceAir Force of Burkina FasoNational GendarmeriePeople's Militia \| manpower_age = \| active = 15,500 (Army 10,000, Air 500, Gendarmerie 5,000; 2023) 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. 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. In a coup attempt on January 24, 2022, mutinying soldiers arrested President Roch Kabore following gunfire. On April 20, 2023, the 3rd Battalion of the Rapid Intervention Brigade committed the Karma massacre, rounding up and executing between 60 and 156 civilians, including women and children. ==Ground forces== 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. 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. 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). 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. There is a multi-national training camp in Loumbila Department, staffed by Czech and Polish instructors. ===Equipment=== ==Air Force== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ===Aircraft===	[ "Beech Aircraft", "Regiment of Presidential Security", "Mil Mi-17", "January 2022 Burkina Faso coup d'état", "France", "Attack helicopter", "Air Tractor", "Ivory Coast", "Diamond DA62", "Kassoum Coulibaly", "Aermacchi SF.260", "Reconnaissance aircraft", "Bell UH-1 Iroquois variants", "Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative", "Air Tractor AT-802", "Burkina Faso", "Mil Mi-8", "Max Holste Broussard", "Loumbila Department", "Ouagadougou", "Military ranks of Burkina Faso", "Aérospatiale Alouette III", "Beechcraft King Air", "National Gendarmerie (Burkina Faso)", "Brazil", "Piper PA-34 Seneca", "Kaya, Burkina Faso", "EADS CASA C-295", "Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano", "Sierra Leone Civil War", "Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo", "Douglas C-47", "Islamist insurgency in Burkina Faso", "Taiwan", "Spain", "Sangoulé Lamizana", "Blaise Compaoré", "September 2022 Burkina Faso coup d'état", "Diamond DA42", "French Air Force", "Tenkodogo", "United States", "Helicopter", "2015 Burkinabe coup d'état", "Ibrahim Traoré", "Turkey", "Agacher Strip War", "Beechcraft Super King Air", "Unmanned aerial vehicle", "Apex Aircraft", "Mil Mi-24", "2014 Burkina Faso uprising", "Mil Mi-4", "Maurice Yaméogo", "Trainer aircraft", "Karma massacre", "Thomas Sankara", "Eurocopter AS350 Écureuil", "navy", "Mil Mi-35", "Republic of Upper Volta", "Surveillance aircraft", "Aero Commander 500 family", "Utility helicopter", "List of heads of state of Burkina Faso", "Hawker Siddeley HS 748", "Humbert Tétras", "Russia", "Military aircraft", "Libyan Air Force", "U.S. Department of Defense", "Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21", "Liaison aircraft", "Air Force", "1966 Upper Voltan coup d'état", "Insurgency in the Maghreb (2002–present)", "List of Mil Mi-24 variants", "Pô", "Bell UH-1 Iroquois", "First Ivorian Civil War", "Unmanned combat aerial vehicle", "Migratory locust", "Mil Mi-26", "Army", "2014 Burkinabe uprising", "Austria", "Military transport aircraft", "Bayraktar TB2", "The New York Times", "Saye Zerbo", "People's Militia (Burkina Faso)", "Aérospatiale N 262", "International Institute for Strategic Studies", "2011 Burkinabé protests", "Baykar Bayraktar Akıncı" ]
3,684	Foreign relations of Burkina Faso	Burkina Faso has good relations with the European Union, African and certain Asian countries. 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. 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. Nineteen provinces of Burkina Faso are joined with contiguous areas of Mali and Niger under the Liptako–Gourma Authority, a regional economic organization. As of 7/6/24, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have turned away from the West African bloc ECOWAS to pursue their own confederation of junta states, which they claim is to create a "community of sovereign peoples far from the control of foreign powers. A community of peace, solidarity, prosperity based on our African values." 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). ==Diplomatic relations== List of countries which Burkina Faso maintains diplomatic relations with: ==Bilateral relations==	[ "Liptako–Gourma Authority", "Ivory Coast", "Burkina Faso–Sweden Friendship Association", "Benin", "Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court", "Denmark", "Burkina Faso", "Food for Peace", "Ouagadougou", "democratization", "British High Commission", "Charles Taylor (Liberian politician)", "List of current ambassadors of Burkina Faso", "Burkina Faso–Iran relations", "World Trade Organization", "Millennium Challenge Corporation", "Burkina Faso–India relations", "60th Anniversary Additional Commemorative Non-Aligned Meeting", "Samuel Doe", "Belgium", "Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union", "Blaise Compaoré", "Niger", "Tel Aviv", "Palermo", "Timeline of diplomatic relations of the Republic of China", "Catholic Relief Services", "Burkina Faso–United States relations", "Helsingborgs Dagblad", "Landlocked developing countries", "French Upper Volta", "Burkina Faso–Sweden relations", "Ghana", "Togo", "Wic News", "Blaise Compaore", "Napoli", "Copenhagen", "Ankara", "Bamako", "Agency for International Development", "Félix Houphouët-Boigny", "The London Gazette", "Norstedts Förlag", "Foreign relations of the United Kingdom", "Stockholm", "Milan", "Libya", "Federal Research Division", "Thomas Sankara", "Dakar", "Burkina Faso–France relations", "Burkina Faso–China relations", "Republic of Upper Volta", "Senegal", "National Patriotic Front of Liberia", "African Union", "Tuareg people", "Burkina Faso–Russia relations", "Brussels", "Library of Congress", "Nigeria", "London", "List of diplomatic missions in Burkina Faso", "Burkina Faso-United States relations", "International Criminal Court", "Burkina Faso–Libya relations", "ECOWAS", "Foreign relations of Cyprus", "Helsingborg", "Jerry Rawlings", "Burkina Faso–North Korea relations", "Burkina Faso–Turkey relations", "List of diplomatic missions of Burkina Faso", "Accra", "Burkina Faso–Spain relations", "River blindness", "Organisation internationale de la Francophonie", "Rotterdam", "public domain", "Burkina Faso–Denmark relations", "Mali", "Florence", "Burkina Faso–Ghana relations", "Paris", "WP:SDNONE", "Rome", "Sahel" ]
3,695	Geography of Burundi	Burundi is located in East Africa, to the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, at the coordinates . ==Physical geography== Burundi occupies an area equal to in size, of which is land. The country has of land border: of which is shared with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with Rwanda and 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. ===Terrain=== 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. The lowest point in the country is at Lake Tanganyika, at , with the highest point being on Mount Heha, at . Natural hazards are posed in Burundi by flooding and lands. === Forests === In Burundi forest cover is around 11% of the total land area, equivalent to 279,640 hectares (ha) of forest in 2020, up from 276,480 hectares (ha) in 1990. In 2020, naturally regenerating forest covered 166,670 hectares (ha) and planted forest covered 112,970 hectares (ha). Of the naturally regenerating forest 23% was reported to be primary forest (consisting of native tree species with no clearly visible indications of human activity) and around 41% of the forest area was found within protected areas. For the year 2015, 100% of the forest area was reported to be under public ownership. ===Natural resources=== 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 of land that is irrigated. The table below describes land use in Burundi. == Climate == 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. ==Environment== ===Current issues=== In Burundi, soil erosion poses a significant challenge, exacerbated by overgrazing and the expansion of agriculture into marginal lands. This problem is compounded by other environmental issues such as deforestation, driven by the uncontrolled cutting of trees for fuel, and habitat loss, which severely threatens wildlife populations. The cumulative effect of these issues not only degrades the environment but also undermines the agricultural productivity that is crucial for the country's economy and food security. The "Adapting to Climate Change in the Lake Victoria Basin" project, initiated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and funded by the Adaptation Fund, addresses these interconnected concerns. By promoting nature-based solutions like reforestation and the construction of terraces, the project helps stabilize the soil and improve water retention, which mitigates the impact of soil erosion. Additionally, the introduction of sustainable practices such as the eco-friendly fish-drying kiln helps reduce the dependence on wood for fuel, thereby curbing deforestation. This comprehensive approach not only aims to enhance environmental resilience but also supports sustainable development by preserving natural habitats and promoting the sustainable use of resources, thereby securing the livelihoods of local communities against the backdrop of climate change. ===International agreements=== 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. == Extreme points == This is a list of the extreme points of Burundi, the points that are farther north, south, east or west than any other location. Northernmost point – Muyinga Province; unnamed location on the border with Rwanda immediately south of the Rwandan town of Mbuye Easternmost point – Cankuzo Province; unnamed location on the border with Tanzania immediately northwest of Mburi hill Southernmost point – Makamba Province; unnamed location on the border with Tanzania immediately north of the Tanzanian town of Mwenene, Westernmost point – Cibitoke Province; unnamed location on the border the Democratic Republic of the Congo immediately east of the Congolese town of Kamanyola	[ "Marginal land", "forest cover", "Muyinga Province", "dry season", "Cibitoke Province", "peat", "vanadium", "Congo–Nile Divide", "deforestation", "primary forest", "limestone", "World Wide Fund for Nature", "climate change", "Cankuzo Province", "uranium", "niobium", "kaolin", "Prentice Hall", "Copernicus Publications", "Mbuye", "Lake Tanganyika", "tantalum", "International Food Policy Research Institute", "Biodiversity", "Makamba Province", "cobalt", "Democratic Republic of the Congo", "Endangered species", "reforestation", "soil erosion", "Tanzania", "Rwanda", "Central Zambezian miombo woodlands", "Burundi", "Hydrology and Earth System Sciences", "Nile", "State ownership", "Ruvyironza River", "flood", "Kamanyola", "food security", "United Nations Environment Programme", "The Adaptation Fund", "Mburi hill", "Congo River", "Hazardous waste", "Climate change", "overgrazing", "drought", "Wet season", "Desertification", "Mwenene", "WP:SDNONE", "Africa", "platinum", "Ruvubu", "plain", "nickel", "tungsten", "Mount Heha", "tin", "Tropical rainforest climate" ]
3,696	Demographics of Burundi	Demographic features of the population of Burundi include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects. 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. ==Population== According to , 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. . Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2015) (Unrevised data.): Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2020):}} \|} Source: UN DESA, World Population Prospects, 2022 ===Demographic and Health Surveys=== Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR): Fertility data as of 2010 (DHS Program): ==Languages== Kirundi (official) only: 29.7%, French (official) only: 0.3%, Kirundi and French: 8.4%, Kurundi, French and English: 2.4%, Swahili only: 0.2%, other language combinations: 2%, unspecified: 56.9% (2008 est.) NOTE: Data represents only languages read and written by people 10 years of age or older; spoken Kirundi is nearly universal. ==Religion== Roman Catholic 62.1%, Protestant 23.9% (includes Adventist 2.3% and other Protestant 21.6%), Islam 2.5%, Other 3.6%, Unspecified 7.9% (2008 est.)	[ "population", "Bujumbura Mairie Province", "French language", "Swahili language", "farm", "Great Lakes Twa", "Hutu", "Adventism", "Protestant", "fertility rate", "agriculture", "White Africans of European ancestry", "Burundi", "Bantu peoples", "Sahara", "demography", "Ethnic group", "Tutsi", "Kirundi", "Asian Africans", "Islam in Burundi", "Roman Catholic", "population density", "Africa", "UN DESA", "ethnic group", "net reproduction rate", "pt:Burundi", "pasture", "Twa people", "Pygmy peoples" ]
3,697	Politics of Burundi	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. ==Political landscape after the civil war== 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. Incumbent president Évariste Ndayishimiye took office on 18 June 2020, ten days after the death of Nkurunziza. 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. 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. 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. ==Executive branch== \|President \|Évariste Ndayishimiye \|CNDD-FDD \|18 June 2020 \|- \|Vice-president \|Prosper Bazombanza \|UPRONA \|23 June 2020 \|- \|Prime Minister \|Gervais Ndirakobuca \|CNDD-FDD \|08 September 2022 \|} 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. ==Legislative branch== 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. ==Political parties and elections== ==Administrative divisions== 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. ==International relations== 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.	[ "Muyinga Province", "International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement", "International Finance Corporation", "UNCTAD", "Cibitoke Province", "Cankuzo Province", "WHO", "WIPO", "Hutu", "Uganda", "republic", "International Development Association", "National Assembly of Burundi", "Senate (Burundi)", "Ministers of the Burundian Government", "Facilitator", "Burundi", "Bururi Province", "Mwaro Province", "Rumonge Province", "OAU", "Kirundo Province", "UNIDO", "Kayanza Province", "multi-party", "OPCW", "WToO", "2005 Burundian presidential election", "Arusha", "Peacebuilding", "Godefroid Niyombare", "ILO", "IMF", "Prime Minister of Burundi", "Executive power", "Rulers and heads of state of Burundi", "UNESCO", "Evariste Ndayishimiye", "Ngozi Province", "Prosper Bazombanza", "Senate of Burundi", "Makamba Province", "Intelsat", "Gitega Province", "Domitien Ndayizeye", "UPU", "Gervais Ndirakobuca", "National Council for the Defense of Democracy – Forces for the Defense of Democracy", "President of Burundi", "CEEAC", "Union for National Progress", "Zaire", "presidential system", "United Nations Economic Commission for Africa", "democracy", "Legislative power", "two-round system", "WTrO", "Muramvya Province", "IBRD", "Nelson Mandela", "Bujumbura Mairie Province", "IOC", "IFAD", "FAO", "Vice-President of Burundi", "Pierre Buyoya", "ITU", "National Assembly (Burundi)", "Julius Nyerere", "Burundian Civil War", "Évariste Ndayishimiye", "Forms of government", "Pierre Nkurunziza", "Rutana Province", "Group of 77", "Interpol", "Ruyigi Province", "Parliament of Burundi", "1996 Burundian coup d'état", "head of government", "ICAO", "CEPGL", "multi-party system", "representative democracy", "Port Management Association of Eastern and Southern Africa", "Rwanda", "proportional representation", "UN", "Bubanza Province", "Non-Aligned Movement", "IFRCS", "WMO", "2015 Burundian unrest", "Karuzi Province", "Bujumbura Rural Province", "Vice-president of Burundi", "2020 Burundian general election", "Democratic Republic of Congo", "AfDB", "head of state", "Burundi Civil War" ]
3,698	Economy of Burundi	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. Although Burundi is potentially self-sufficient in food production, issues such as 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. ==Agriculture== Burundi produced in 2022: 2.6 million tons of cassava; 1.3 million tons of banana; 808 thousand tons of sweet potato; 507 thousand tons of vegetables; 499 thousand tons of beans; 355 thousand tons of potato; 280 thousand tons of maize; 188 thousand tons of sugar cane; 130 thousand tons of fruit; 127 thousand tons of rice; 94 thousand tons of taro; 89 thousand tons of palm oil; 50 thousand tons of tea; In addition to smaller productions of other agricultural products, like sorghum (25 thousand tons) and coffee (17 thousand tons). ==Industry== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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." == Energy == Burundi is one of the least electrified countries in the world, only about 10% of the country's population has access to electricity. In 2022, the country produced a total of 565 GWh of electricity, 50% of which was generated via fossil fuels while the other 50% was generated via renewables. Oil is the main fossil fuel in use, while the renewable energy is sourced primarily from hydropower and to a much lesser degree from solar energy as well as bioenergy. This domestic production however does not fulfil Burundi's demand and it imports sizeable amount of energy from neighbouring countries. The opening of the Rusumo Hydroelectric Power Station in 2023 was a boon to the country as Burundi receives 27 MW of electricity generated in it. The power station combined with improved transmission cables allowed Burundi to provide the capital city of Gitega with a more reliable and consistent power supply. At the same time it allowed the government to decommission the old oil-fired power station that supplied the city before and save over two million USD in costs. This project was a part of a wider international aid-assisted initiative in Burundi to pursue low-carbon electrification and improving access to electricity across the country. == Macro-economic trend == The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2024.	[ "fruit", "Least developed countries", "List of countries by inequality-adjusted HDI", "Lake Tanganyika", "List of companies based in Burundi", "Landlocked country", "fertility rate", "tea", "Renewable energy", "solar energy", "internally displaced person", "United Nations Security Council", "Burundi", "petroleum", "maize", "embargo", "gross domestic product", "Structural adjustment", "World Trade Organization", "hydropower", "nickel", "bioenergy", "cotton", "Purchasing power parity", "manioc", "food processing", "cassava", "United States", "palm oil", "CIA World Factbook", "Human Development Report", "sweet potato", "1000000000 (number)", "African Development Bank", "European Union", "blanket", "Service (economics)", "List of countries by Human Development Index", "Civil disorder", "construction", "beans", "tapioca", "beef", "Fossil fuel", "Hide (skin)", "United Nations Economic Commission for Africa", "African Continental Free Trade Agreement", "Industrial sector", "soap", "milk", "United Nations Development Programme", "Global Hunger Index", "potato", "Pierre Buyoya", "sugar", "agriculture", "African Union", "Foreign Policy", "subsistence economy", "World Bank", "Rusumo Hydroelectric Power Station", "Burundian franc", "banana", "Petroleum", "Gitega", "sorghum", "vegetables", "United Nations", "copper", "International Monetary Fund", "taro", "sugar cane", "coffee", "1996 Burundian coup d'état", "soil erosion", "shoes", "population growth rate", "Human overpopulation", "Subsistence agriculture", "rice" ]
3,699	Communications in Burundi	Communications in Burundi include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, the Internet, and the postal service in Burundi. ==Radio and television== Radio is the main source of information for many Burundians. Radio stations: La Radiodiffusion et Television Nationale de Burundi (RTNB), the state-controlled broadcaster operates the only national radio network, broadcasting in Kirundi, Swahili, French, and English; No AM radio stations, four FM stations, and one shortwave station (2001). Telephone system: In 2011, system described as sparse open-wire, radiotelephone communications, and low-capacity microwave radio relays; telephone density one of the lowest in the world; fixed-line connections stand at well less than 1 per 100 persons; mobile-cellular usage is increasing but remains at roughly 20 per 100 persons; 65,000 users, 167th in the world (2008); Wireless broadband: Unknown (2012). ===Internet censorship and surveillance=== 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.	[ "Economy of Burundi", "List of international call prefixes", "radiotelephone", "Radio broadcasting", "Television set", "French language", "Communications satellite", "BeTV (Burundi)", "The World Factbook", "top-level domain", "Swahili language", "List of countries by IPv4 address allocation", "Intelsat", "Burundi National Radio and Television", "treason", "e-mail", ".bi", "United States", "freedom of speech", "Media of Burundi", "censorship", "List of countries by number of Internet hosts", "Burundi", "Radio France Internationale", "Central Intelligence Agency", "microwave radio relay", "hate speech", "Régie Nationale des Postes", "Contempt", "Calling code", "List of countries by number of broadband Internet subscriptions", "freedom of the press", "Bujumbura", "Mugongo-Manga", "Indian Ocean", "BBC World Service", "self-censorship", "Kirundi", "Voice of America", "WP:SDNONE", "Libel", "English language", "International Telecommunication Union", "public order", "chat rooms", "Receiver (radio)", "List of countries by number of Internet users", "Television broadcasting" ]
3,700	Transport in Burundi	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. 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. == Roads == Roads total 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. As of May 2015, MV Mwongozo, a passenger and cargo ferry, connects Bujumbura with Kigoma in Tanzania. == Airports and air services == 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. 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. == Railways == Burundi does not possess any railway infrastructure, although there are proposals to connect Burundi to its neighbours via railway. 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 , although TAZARA and other neighbouring countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) use the gauge, leading to some potential difficulties. 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. Additionally, Burundi has been added to a planned railway project to connect Tanzania and Rwanda. In January 2022, the governments of Burundi and Tanzania announced the planned construction of an electrified standard gauge railway, which will link the two countries. The line is known as the Tanzania–Burundi Standard Gauge Railway. === 2013 === 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.	[ "Ethiopian Airlines", "Brussels Airlines", "Kenya Airways", "railhead", "TAZARA", "Kigali International Airport", "Standard Gauge", "Zambia", "Mombassa", "Lake Tanganyika", "Democratic Republic of the Congo", "Standard-gauge railway", "Tanzania", "China", "Rwanda", "Bujumbura International Airport", "Wu Guanzheng", "Chinese Communist Party", "Tanzania–Burundi Standard Gauge Railway", "Burundi", "flydubai", "Isaka", "runway", "Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination Authority", "railway", "East African Railway Master Plan", "RwandAir", "WP:SDNONE", "Rwanda Patriotic Front", "port", "Port of Bujumbura", "MV Mwongozo", "List of airports in Burundi", "Kigali", "Kigoma", "Kasese" ]
3,701	Burundi National Defence Force	The Burundi National Defence Force (French: Force de Défense Nationale du Burundi; FDNB) is the military of Burundi. A general staff commands the armed forces, consisting of a joint staff; a training staff, and a logistics staff. Naval and aviation commands exist, as well as specialised units. ==History== ===Independence and early history (1962–1993)=== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ===The Civil War and aftermath=== In 1993, Hutu President Melchior Ndadaye was elected in the 1 June presidential election and was sworn in on 10 July. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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." The 121e Régiment de Parachutistes were mentioned in French news articles as one of the units that supported the attempted coup in 2015. 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. In 2015/16, Laurent Touchard wrote that the BNDF included ten two-battalion infantry brigades. (Touchard 2016) == Structure == 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). 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. As of 2024 the Burundian ground forces consist of two armored battalions, seven infantry battalions, one artillery battalion, one air defense battalion, and one engineer battalion. The navy included several patrol boats. ==Equipment== === Small arms === ===Anti-tank weapons=== ===Scout cars=== ===Armored personnel carriers=== ===Reconnaissance=== ===Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected=== ===Artillery=== ===Air defence systems=== ===Aircraft inventory=== The Burundi Army's air unit operates 12 helicopters.	[ "Aérospatiale Gazelle", "United States Department of State", "France", "French language", "Panhard AML", "Force Publique", "Attack helicopter", "Hutu", "republic", "5.56x45mm", "Rocket-propelled grenade", "Kivu conflict", "1993 Burundian coup d'état attempt", "Military junta", "PKM machine gun", "Burundi", "Defense Visual Information Distribution Service", "African socialism", "ZU-23-2", "Ntare V of Burundi", "Scout car", "2015 Burundian coup d'état attempt", "Jean Bikomagu", "Institute for Security Studies", "Aérospatiale Alouette III", "Squad automatic weapon", "Prime Niyongabo", "AK-47", "RPK", "Godefroid Niyombare", "7.62×39mm", "genocide", "Armored personnel carrier", "MANPADS", "July 1966 Burundian coup d'état", "Ruanda-Urundi", "M23 campaign (2022–present)", "Gitega Province", "Recoilless rifle", "Jean-Baptiste Bagaza", "Casspir", "1965 Burundian coup d'état attempt", "Bazooka", "Rocket artillery", "General Purpose Machine Gun", "Anti-aircraft gun", "Assault rifle", "National Council for the Defense of Democracy – Forces for the Defense of Democracy", "Melchior Ndadaye", "President of Burundi", "WZ-551", "Union for National Progress", "Tutsi", "François Ngeze", "BTR-40", "Minister of National Defence (Burundi)", "Mortar (weapon)", "Sylvie Kinigi", "United States Marine Corps", "Military ranks of Burundi", "Mil Mi-24", "Routledge", "BTR-80", "Burundian unrest", "Chief of the Defence Staff (Burundi)", "Ikiza", "Cougar (MRAP)", "BRDM-2", "Walid (armored personnel carrier)", "coup d’etat", "RG-33", "1993 Burundian presidential election", "12.7×108mm", "82-BM-37", "Field artillery", "7.62×54mm", "China", "Arusha Accords (Burundi)", "Vektor R4", "Panhard M3", "SPAAG", "9K32 Strela-2", "Burundian legislative election, 2005", "RL-83 Blindicide", "Utility helicopter", "DShK", "Burundian Civil War", "Évariste Ndayishimiye", "Pistol Mitralieră model 1963/1965", "Thomas Ndabemeye", "Autocannon", "Pierre Nkurunziza", "League of Nations mandate", "Mwambutsa IV of Burundi", "Burundian constitutional referendum, 2005", "RPG-7", "MRAP", "Howitzer", "Multiple rocket launcher", "gendarmerie", "MILAN", "Belgian Congo", "Heavy machine gun", "Michel Micombero", "SAGE Publishing", "BM-21 Grad", "ZPU-4", "military dictatorship", "122 mm howitzer 2A18 (D-30)", "RG-31 Nyala", "IISS", "Second Congo War", "Somalia", "November 1966 Burundian coup d'état", "Bob Krueger", "Anti-tank missile", "African Union Mission in Somalia", "Kamina", "Amphibious vehicle", "Reuters", "Somali Civil War", "Bujumbura", "Mortier 120mm Rayé Tracté Modèle F1", "37 mm automatic air defense gun M1939 (61-K)", "Anti-tank warfare", "Armored car (military)", "Shorland armoured car", "International Institute for Strategic Studies", "First Congo War", "M20 recoilless rifle" ]
3,702	Foreign relations of Burundi	Burundi's relations with its neighbours have often been affected by security concerns. During the Burundian Civil War, hundreds of thousands of Burundian refugees have at various times crossed to neighboring Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 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. 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. ==Diplomatic relations== List of countries which Burundi maintains diplomatic relations with: ==Bilateral relations== === Africa === === Asia === === Europe === ==Pacific==	[ "IMF", "IBRD", "Rabat", "Addis Ababa", "Minister of Finance", "Nyamko Sabuni", "Embassy of Burundi, London", "Kenya", "Washington, D.C.", "Lusaka", "Burundi–Tanzania relations", "List of diplomatic missions in Burundi", "Cairo", "Burundi–Russia relations", "Australia", "Burundi–China relations", "Uganda", "List of diplomatic missions of Burundi", "refugee", "Geneva", "Democratic Republic of the Congo", "Economic Community of Central African States", "Burundi–India relations", "Doha", "gov.uk", "Tanzania", "Rwanda", "Organisation internationale de la Francophonie", "Nairobi", "Minister for Integration and Gender Equality", "African Union", "UN Trade and Development", "Burundi", "Abuja", "Burundi–North Korea relations", "Burundian Civil War", "Kinshasa", "African Development Bank", "African Economic Community", "Brussels", "Francophonie", "Burundi-United States relations", "Nicosia", "Pierre Nkurunziza", "Kampala", "Bujumbura", "London", "Dar es Salaam", "United Nations", "Ankara", "Seoul", "Kenya–Burundi relations", "World Trade Organization", "Foreign relations of Poland", "Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo", "Beijing", "Foreign relations of the United Kingdom", "New Delhi", "Pretoria" ]
3,705	Bosporus	The Bosporus or Bosphorus Strait ( ; , colloquially ) is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Istanbul, Turkey. The Bosporus connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and forms one of the continental boundaries between Asia and Europe. It also divides Turkey by separating Asia Minor from Thrace. It is the world's narrowest strait used for international navigation. 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. The Bosporus Strait and the Dardanelles Strait at the opposite end of the Sea of Marmara are together known as the Turkish Straits. 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. == Name == The name of the strait comes from the Ancient Greek (), which was folk-etymologised as , i.e. "cattle strait" (like "Ox-ford"), from the genitive of 'ox, cattle' + '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). Io supposedly went ashore near Chrysopolis (present-day Üsküdar), which was named 'the Cow'. The same site was also known as Damalis (), 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 translating to 'heifer'). 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 , giving rise to the French , the Spanish , the Italian and the Russian . The 12th-century Greek scholar John Tzetzes calls it (after Damalis), but he also reports that in popular usage the strait was known as during his day, the name of the most ancient northern harbour of Constantinople. In English, the preferred spelling tends to be Bosphorus. 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 , , and (), respectively. Other names used by Herodotus to refer to the strait include Chalcedonian Bosporus (, [], Herodotus 4.87), or Mysian Bosporus (). The term eventually came to be used as the common noun , meaning "a strait", and was also formerly applied to the Hellespont in Classical Greek by Aeschylus and Sophocles. ===Boğaziçi=== Boğaziçi consists of those parts of Istanbul and overlapping administrative districts with a view of the Bosphorus. It is considered more particularly to consist of those parts of Istanbul that are situated north of the Golden Horn (Haliç), starting with the district of Beşiktaş on the European side of the Bosphorus. Thus it includes, from south to north, along the European shore, Beşiktaş, Ortaköy, Arnavutköy, Bebek, Rumelihisarı, Baltalimanı, Emirgan, İstinye, Yeniköy, Tarabya, Kireçburnu, Büyükdere and Sarıyer; and, along the Asian shore, Beylerbeyi, Çengelköy, Vaniköy, Kandilli, Anadolu Hisarı, Kanlıca and Beykoz. == Geography == 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. 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. The island became a walled garden and then a water sports centre, before it was given to the Galatasaray Sports Club, hence its name. However, in the 2010s it was completely overbuilt with nightclubs and the government had these torn down in 2017. It reopened exclusively to the Galatasaray club members in the summer of 2022. === Formation === 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 BC (revised to 6800 BC 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. Many geologists, however, claim that the strait is much older, even if relatively young on a geologic timescale. === Present morphology === 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 long, with a width of at the northern entrance and at the southern entrance. Its maximum width is between Umuryeri and Büyükdere Limanı, and minimum width is between Kandilli Point and Aşiyan. The depth of the Bosporus varies from in midstream with an average of . The deepest point is between Kandilli and Bebek, at . The shallowest locations are off Kadıköy İnciburnu at and off Aşiyan Point at . The southbound flow of water is 16 000 m3/s (fresh water at the surface) and the northbound flow is 11 000 m3/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. 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. === Newer explorations === 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,}} The central tenet of the Black Sea deluge hypothesis is that as the ocean rose 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. 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). 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. === Villages === 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. == Human history == 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. === Ancient Greek, Persian, Roman and Byzantine eras (pre-1453) === F cartographer [[Cristoforo Buondelmonti. This is the oldest surviving map of the city, and the only surviving map that predates the Turkish conquest of 1453. The Bosporus is visible along the right-hand side of the map, wrapping vertically around the historic city.]] 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. In an attempt to subdue the Scythian horsemen who roamed across the north of the Black Sea, the Persian King Darius I the Great () 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. The Byzantines called the Bosporus "Stenon" and used the following major toponyms in the area: on the European side: Bosporios Akra Argyropolis St. Mamas St. Phokas Hestiai or Michaelion Phoneus Anaplous or Sosthenion on the Asian side: Hieron tower Eirenaion Anthemiou Sophianai Bithynian Chrysopolis 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. === Ottoman era (1453–1922) === 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. 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. 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. 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. ==== Summer Embassies ==== 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. === Turkish republican era (1923–present) === 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. [ (Bosphorus Bridge), the first to be built across the Bosporus, completed in 1973]] === Maritime === 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. 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 . 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. In 2011, the Turkish Government started to discuss creating a man-made canal roughly 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. In 2022 the dues levied by Turkey for freight ships increased 500% to US$4 per ton, the first change since 1983. 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. === Land bridges === Two suspension bridges and a cable-stayed bridge cross the Bosporus. The first of these, the 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 long, and was completed in 1988 about 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 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. Approximately of the tunnel runs under the strait, at a depth of about . An undersea water supply tunnel with a length of , The Eurasia Tunnel is a 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. Up to four submarine fibre optics lines (MedNautilus and possibly others) approach Istanbul, coming from the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles. == Strategic importance == [, sailing through the Bosporus]] 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. 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. 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. == Sightseeing == 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). 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. 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. Tourist cruises are available from various points along the Bosporus, including Ortaköy. The prices vary considerably, and some feature music and dining. == Architecture == [-era waterfront houses (yalıs) on the Bosporus]] 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. 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. 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). === Egyptian legacy === 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.	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3,708	Brussels	Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, 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. It is a part of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community, and is separate from the Flemish Region (Flanders), within which it forms an enclave, and the Walloon Region (Wallonia), located less than to the south. 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. Brussels is the most densely populated region in Belgium, and although it has the highest GDP per capita, The Brussels Region covers and has a population of over 1.2 million. Its five times larger metropolitan area 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, known as the Flemish Diamond, as well as the province of Walloon Brabant, in total home to over 5 million people. As Belgium's economic capital and a top financial centre in 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 Europe's geographic, economic and cultural crossroads. 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. Historically Dutch-speaking, Brussels saw a language shift to French from the late 19th century. Since its creation in 1989, the Brussels-Capital Region has been officially bilingual in French and Dutch, although French is the majority language and lingua franca. Brussels is also increasingly becoming multilingual. English is spoken widely and many migrants and expatriates speak other languages as well. 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. ==Toponymy== ===Etymology=== The most common theory of the origin of the name Brussels is that it derives from the Old Dutch , or , meaning ( / ) and ( / / ) or . Saint Vindicianus, the Bishop of Cambrai, made the first recorded reference to the place 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 possibly Celtic or Old Frankish. ===Pronunciation=== In French, is pronounced (the x is pronounced , as in English, and the final s is silent) and in Dutch, is pronounced . Inhabitants of Brussels are known in French as (pronounced ) and in Dutch as (pronounced ). In the Brabantian dialect of Brussels (known as Brusselian, and also sometimes referred to as Marols or Marollien), they are called Brusseleers or Brusseleirs. The pronunciation in French only dates from the 18th century, but this modification did not affect the traditional Brussels usage. In France, the pronunciations and (for ) are often heard, but are rather rare in Belgium. ==History== ===Early history=== 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. 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 Charles, Duke 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 Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor, appointed the same Charles 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. ===Middle Ages=== Lambert I, Count of Louvain, 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 the Flemish cities of Bruges and Ghent, and Cologne in the Kingdom of Germany, 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 reduced risk of floods. As the town grew to a population of around 30,000, the surrounding marshes were drained to allow for further expansion. 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. In the early 13th century, the first walls of Brussels were built and after this, the city grew significantly. Around this time, work began on what is now the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula (1225), replacing an older Romanesque church. To let the city expand, a second set of walls was erected between 1356 and 1383. Traces of these walls can still be seen; the Small Ring, a series of boulevards bounding the historical city centre, follows their former course. ===Early modern=== In the 14th century, the marriage between heiress Margaret III, Countess of Flanders, and Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, produced a new Duke of Brabant of the House of Valois, namely Anthony, 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. 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. 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. During the War of the Spanish Succession in 1708, Brussels again sustained a French attack, which it repelled. 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 chef-lieu 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. ===Late modern=== 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. 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. 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, today's Royal Museum for Central Africa, in the suburb of Tervuren, was connected to the capital by the construction of an grand alley. 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, among others, were known for their designs, many of which survive today. 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. ===Contemporary=== 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. 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. 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. ==Geography== ===Location and topography=== Brussels lies in the north-central part of Belgium, about from the Belgian coast and about from Belgium's southern tip. It is located in the heartland of the Brabantian Plateau, about south of Antwerp (Flanders), and north of Charleroi (Wallonia). Its average elevation is 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 above sea level. Contrary to popular belief, the highest point (at ) is not near the / in Forest, but at the / in the Sonian Forest. ===Climate=== 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. ==Brussels as a capital== 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. 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 (, ), 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. The City of Brussels is also the capital of both the French Community of Belgium and so do the Parliament of the French Community and the Government of the French Community. ==Municipalities== \|width=20\| \|valign=top\| \|} The 19 municipalities (, ) 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. Unlike most of the municipalities in Belgium, the ones now located in the Brussels-Capital Region were not merged with others during mergers occurring in 1964, 1970, and 1975. These comprise the northern bulge in the municipality. To the south-east is a strip of land along the Avenue Louise/Louizalaan that, in addition to the Bois de la Cambre/Ter Kamerenbos, was annexed from Ixelles in 1864. Part of the (ULB)'s Solbosch campus is also part of the City of Brussels, partially accounting for the bulge in the south-eastern end. The largest municipality in area and population is the City of Brussels, covering 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 , but still has the highest population density in the region, with . Watermael-Boitsfort has the lowest population density in the region, with . 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. In the 2010s, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean gained international attention as the base for Islamist terrorists who carried out attacks in both Paris and Brussels. File:Town hall of Anderlecht (DSC 2233).jpg\|Anderlecht File:Auderghem CH2.jpg\|Auderghem (Oudergem) File:SintAgathaBerchemMC7229.jpg\|Berchem-Sainte-Agathe (Sint-Agatha-Berchem) File:Brussels, townhall oeg2043-00090 foto3 2015-06-07 08.38.jpg\|City of Brussels File:Town hall of Etterbeek (DSC 2183).jpg\|Etterbeek File:EvereTownHall.jpg\|Evere File:MaisonCommunaleForest.jpg\|Forest (Vorst) File:Ganshoren town hall.jpg\|Ganshoren File:Town Hall Ixelles 1.jpg\|Ixelles (Elsene) File:Jette voormalig gemeentehuis 27-04-2013.jpg\|Jette File:Maison communale Koekelberg.jpg\|Koekelberg File:Gemeentehuis St Jans Molenbeek.jpg\|Molenbeek-Saint-Jean (Sint-Jans-Molenbeek) File:StGillesTownHall.jpg\|Saint-Gilles (Sint-Gillis) File:Town hall of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode.01.jpg\|Saint-Josse-ten-Noode (Sint-Joost-ten-Node) File:Hôtel communal de Schaerbeek (2) - 2264-0007-0.jpg\|Schaerbeek (Schaarbeek) File:3557uccleTownHall.jpg\|Uccle (Ukkel) File:WatermaelBoitsfortTownHall.jpg\|Watermael-Boitsfort (Watermaal-Bosvoorde) File:Town hall of Woluwe-Saint-Lambert during golden hour (DSC 2171).jpg\|Woluwe-Saint-Lambert (Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe) File:Mais.Comm.W-S-P.01.JPG\|Woluwe-Saint-Pierre (Sint-Pieters-Woluwe) ==Brussels-Capital Region== ===Political status=== 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. 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. ===Institutions=== 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 (, ), which have equal status as a national legislative act. 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. ===Agglomeration of Brussels=== 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. 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. After the creation of the Brussels-Capital Region, the Brussels Agglomeration was never formally abolished, although it no longer has a purpose. ==French and Flemish communities== The French Community and the Flemish Community exercise their powers in Brussels through two community-specific public authorities: the French Community Commission ( or COCOF) and the Flemish Community Commission ( 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. The French Community Commission also has 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. ===Common Community Commission=== A bi-communitarian public authority, the Common Community Commission (, COCOM, , 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. ==Brussels and the European Union== 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. However, the European presence has contributed significantly to the importance of Brussels as an international centre. 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 () 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. In 2009, there were an estimated 286 lobbying consultancies known to work in Brussels. Finally, Brussels has more than 1,400 NGOs. ===North Atlantic Treaty Organization=== 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). , the alliance consists of 32 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. A new €750 million headquarters building begun in 2010 and was completed in 2017. ===Eurocontrol=== 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. ==Demographics== ===Population=== 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. 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 (, ) or Greater Brussels (, ), 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. 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. 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, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, 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. Since the second half of the 20th century, Brussels has been 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). ===Languages=== Brussels was historically Dutch-speaking, using the Brabantian dialect, but since the 19th century French has become the predominant language of the city. The main cause of this transition was the rapid assimilation of the local Flemish population, 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 to such an extent that after 1880, 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. 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 one of the most controversial topics in Belgian politics. Since its creation in 1989, the Brussels-Capital Region has been legally bilingual, with both French and Dutch having official status, as is the administration of the 19 municipalities. 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. 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); 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. (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, 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. As guaranteed by Belgian law, recognised religions and non-religious philosophical organisations (, ) 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. 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 and the former seat of the Islamic and Cultural Centre of Belgium. 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. {\| class="wikitable" \|- ! Regions of Belgium Very little medieval architecture is preserved in Brussels. Buildings from that period are mostly found in the historical centre (called the ), Saint Géry/Sint-Goriks and / 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. 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 /. 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. 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. 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 van Eetvelde (1898), Hôtel Solvay (1900) 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. File:Victor Horta Hotel Tassel.JPG\|Hôtel Tassel by Victor Horta (1893) File:Tassel House stairway-00.JPG\|Stairway in the Hôtel Tassel File:Hôtel Ciamberlani (DSCF7523).jpg\|Hôtel Albert Ciamberlani by Paul Hankar (1897) File:Old England facade, Brussels (DSCF7544).jpg\|Former Old England department store by Paul Saintenoy (1899) File:Maison Saint-Cyr (DSCF7558).jpg\|Saint-Cyr House by Gustave Strauven (1903) File:Maison Cauchie-445.jpg\|Cauchie House by Paul Cauchie (1905) File:Maison Cauchie sgraffitopaneel.jpg\|Sgraffito panel in the Cauchie House File:20120923 Brussels PalaisStoclet Hoffmann DSC06725 PtrQs.jpg\|Stoclet Palace by Josef Hoffmann (1911) 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 (also known as the Radio House) 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). The Atomium is a symbolic 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. 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 . Along the North–South connection, is the State Administrative Centre, an administrative complex in the International Style. The postmodern buildings of the Espace Léopold complete the picture. 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. ==Culture== ===Visual arts and museums=== 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 works by the surrealist artist 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. 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). 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. ===Performing arts venues and festivals=== 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. Its main hub is the Kaaitheater, but performances and artworks are also hosted in around 30 venues 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 Centre 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. ===Other cultural events and festivals=== Many events are organised or hosted in Brussels throughout the year. In addition, many festivals animate the Brussels scene. 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 / and in Brussels Park, ending with a fireworks display in the evening. 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 Midi 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. ===Folklore=== Brussels' identity owes much to its rich folklore and traditions, among the liveliest in the country. The Ommegang, a folkloric costumed procession, commemorating the Joyous Entry of Emperor Charles V and his son Philip II in the city in 1549, takes place every year in July. The colourful parade includes floats, traditional processional giants, such as Saint Michael and Saint Gudula, and scores of folkloric groups, either on foot or on horseback, dressed in medieval garb. The parade ends in a pageant on the Grand-Place. Since 2019, it has been recognised as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. The Meyboom, an even-older folk tradition of Brussels (1308), celebrating the "May tree"—in fact, a corruption of the Dutch word, meaning tree of joy—takes place paradoxically on 9 August. After parading a young beech in the city, it is planted in a joyful spirit with lots of music, Brusseleir songs, and processional giants. It has also been recognised as an expression of intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO, as part of the bi-national inscription "Processional giants and dragons in Belgium and France". The celebration is reminiscent of the town's long-standing (folkloric) feud with Leuven, which dates back to the Middle Ages. Saint Verhaegen (often shortened to St V), a folkloric student procession, celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the (ULB) and the (VUB), is held on 20 November. Since 2019, it has also been listed as intangible cultural heritage of the Brussels-Capital Region. Another good introduction to the Brusseleir local dialect and way of life can be obtained at the Royal Theatre Toone, a folkloric theatre of marionettes, located a stone's throw away from the Grand-Place. Finally, two famous folkloric plays, Le Mariage de Mademoiselle Beulemans by Frantz Fonson and Fernand Wicheler, and Bossemans et Coppenolle by Joris d'Hanswyck and Paul Van Stalle, are still the subject of regular revivals. ==Cuisine== 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. Owing to Brussels' cosmopolitan population, almost every national cuisine in the world can be found there. 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 (literally "tea salons"). Also widespread are brasseries, which usually offer a variety of beers and typical national dishes. 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. 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. 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. ==Shopping== 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 / 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. In Ixelles, the / and the Namur Gate area offer a blend of luxury shops, fast food restaurants and entertainment venues, and the /, in the mainly-Congolese Matongé district, offers a 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. There are shopping centres outside the inner ring: Basilix, Woluwe Shopping Center, Westland Shopping Center, and Docks Bruxsel, which opened in October 2017. The nearby Sablon/Zavel area is home to many of Brussels' antique dealers. The Midi Market around Brussels-South station and the / is reputed to be one of the largest markets in Europe. ==Sports== Sport in Brussels is under the responsibility of the Communities. The (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 (formerly called BLOSO). 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. ===Football=== 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. 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. ===Cycling=== 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. ==Economy== 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. 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 , the unemployment among residents of Brussels is 20.4%. 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. 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. ==Media== 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. As English is spoken widely, ==Education== ===Tertiary education=== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ===Primary and secondary education=== 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 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. ===Libraries=== 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. 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. 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). ===Science and technology=== 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. 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. ===Healthcare=== 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. 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. ==Transport== 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. 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. ===Air=== 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, east of the capital, which can be accessed by highway (A201), train, taxi and bus. Brussels National Airport has its own railway station. This station is located in the underground (level -1) of the airport terminal building itself. The secondary airport is Brussels South Charleroi Airport, located in Gosselies, a part of the city of Charleroi (Wallonia), some 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. ===Water=== 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 /, 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 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. 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. 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 per year. ===Train=== The Brussels-Capital Region has three main train stations: Brussels-South, Brussels-Central and Brussels-North, which are also the busiest of the country. by Thalys and InterCity connections; to Amsterdam, Paris, and Cologne by Thalys; and to Cologne and Frankfurt by the German ICE. 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. The City of Brussels has minor railway stations at Bockstael, Brussels-Chapel, Brussels-Congress, 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. ===Public transport=== 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. ====Metro, trams and buses==== 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 . , 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, as well as with Flemish De Lijn and Walloon TEC bus stops. A comprehensive bus and tram network covers the region. , the Brussels tram system consists of 17 tram lines (three of which – lines T4, T7 and T10 – 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 , 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. ====Ticketing==== 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. 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. ====Other public transport==== 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, though it ceased operating in the city in 2020. ===Road network=== In medieval times, Brussels stood at the intersection of routes running north–south (the modern /) and east–west (/–/–/). 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. In 2012, Brussels had the most congested traffic in Europe and North America, according to US traffic information platform INRIX. 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 Reims), N6 (S to Maubeuge), N7 (SW to Lille), N8 (W to Koksijde) and N9 (NW to Ostend). Usually named /, 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. The city centre, sometimes known as the Pentagon, is surrounded by an inner ring road, the Small 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. On the eastern side of the region, the R21 or Greater 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. ==Security and emergency services== ===Police=== 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): 5339 Brussels Capital Ixelles: the City of Brussels and Ixelles 5340 Brussels West: Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, Ganshoren, Jette, Koekelberg and Molenbeek-Saint-Jean 5341 South: Anderlecht, Forest and Saint-Gilles 5342 Uccle/Watermael-Boitsfort/Auderghem: Auderghem, Uccle and Watermael-Boitsfort 5343 Montgomery: Etterbeek, Woluwe-Saint-Lambert and Woluwe-Saint-Pierre 5344 Polbruno: Evere, Saint-Josse-ten-Noode and Schaerbeek ===Fire department=== 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). ==Parks and green spaces== 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. 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. , 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'. File:Brussels Park in summer 2007 1.JPG\|Brussels Park File:Brussels, Jardin du Mont des Arts foto5 2015-06-07 14.01.jpg\|Mont des Arts/Kunstberg File:Brussels Cinquantenaire R04.jpg\|Parc du Cinquantenaire/Jubelpark File:Brusel, Bois de la Cambre, jezero.jpg\|Bois de la Cambre/Ter Kamerenbos File:Ixelles Ponds.JPG\|Ixelles Ponds File:Parc de Forest - 20080325.JPG\|Forest Park File:Autumn light in the Sonian Forest.jpg\|Sonian Forest ==Notable people== ==Twin towns – sister cities== Brussels is twinned with the following cities: Atlanta, United States Beijing, China Berlin, Germany Breda, Netherlands Casablanca, Morocco Kinshasa, Congo Kyiv, Ukraine Macao, China Madrid, Spain Ljubljana, Slovenia Prague, Czech Republic Washington, D.C., United States	[ "Meiser railway station", "Ixelles Ponds", "Wemmel", "Flemish painting", "Belgium national rugby union team", "Hôtel Solvay", "N3 road (Belgium)", "Flower Carpet (Brussels)", "French language", "world's fair", "Eastern Orthodox Church", "Mechelen", "Museums of the Far East", "Washington, D.C.", "Léon Spilliaert", "Planetarium (Belgium)", "Brussels-West station", "co-cathedral", "standing stones", "Madrid", "Neder-Over-Heembeek", "Brussels Periphery", "Breda", "French cuisine", "Brussels premetro", "Postmodern architecture", "Belgian Constitutional Court", "Art Nouveau in Brussels", "Flemish people", "Joseph Poelaert", "Pentagon (Brussels)", "Kinshasa", "Burgundian Netherlands", "performing arts", "Sub-Saharan Africa", "Gosselies", "Saint-Louis University, Brussels", "La Monnaie", "Zinneke Parade", "French fries", "elevation", "Road bicycle racing", "National Orchestra of Belgium", "French Community Commission", "Dukes of Brabant", "United Kingdom of the Netherlands", "Africa", "Moroccans in Belgium", "Lambert I, Count of Louvain", "Royal Park Theatre", "Battle of Nancy", "European School", "Université Libre de Bruxelles", "Agency for Care and Health (Flanders)", "N2 road (Belgium)", "first walls of Brussels", "Royal Greenhouses of Laeken", "European Heritage Days", "Coudenberg Palace", "social mobility", "Namur Gate", "County of Brussels", "Institute for the Encouragement of Scientific Research and Innovation of Brussels", "Flemish Diamond", "Flandersnews.be", "Forest park, Brussels", "Constant Vanden Stock Stadium", "Belgian Constitution", "public broadcaster", "Institutions of the European Union", "nail bomb", "Fortifications of Brussels", "Belgian cuisine", "Flemish Parliament", "Jean d'Osta", "Place des Martyrs, Brussels", "Global Financial Centres Index", "Royal Observatory of Belgium", "Melsbroek Air Base", "Medieval pageant", "Dyle (department)", "Kingdom of Germany", "National Bank of Belgium", "Evere railway station", "symbol", "Free University of Brussels (1834–1969)", "Espace Léopold", "Royal Museum for Central Africa", "émigré", "Nine Years' War", "Paul Delvaux", "Museum of the City of Brussels", "Place Eugène Flagey", "Port of Brussels", "Brussels-Chapel railway station", "H&M", "Haren-South railway station", "Small Ring, Brussels", "Macao", "Bourgeois of Brussels", "TEC (transport)", "Laeken", "multilingual", "2016 Brussels bombings", "Michelin Guide", "Université libre de Bruxelles", "Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Brussels", "Groen (political party)", "megalith", "Brussels Philharmonic", "Saint Mary's Royal Church", "Reims", "Léon Daudet", "Leopold II of Belgium", "Brussels metropolitan area", "Spirou et Fantasio", "Austrian Netherlands", "Neoclassical architecture", "Godiva Chocolatier", "Expo 58", "Riffian people", "Vooruit (political party)", "Ixelles", "Watermael-Boitsfort / Watermaal-Bosvoorde", "Jette", "decree", "Communards", "Saint Michael", "Palace of Charles of Lorraine", "Royal Palace of Laeken", "Karl Marx", "beech", "Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor", "late antiquity", "Parliament of the French Community", "World Trade Center (Brussels)", "classic cycle races", "Brussels Metro line 5", "mayor of the City of Brussels", "R.S.C. Anderlecht", "Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences", "German occupation of Belgium during World War I", "La Libre Belgique", "Brussels–Scheldt Maritime Canal", "London", "North–South connection", "Paul Verlaine", "sea level", "Treaty of Amsterdam", "Bruxelles-Ville", "Katholieke Universiteit Leuven", "Paul Cauchie", "suicide bombers", "Eclecticism in architecture", "Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula", "national library", "Great Mosque of Brussels", "Modern architecture", "landmark", "moules frites", "N8 road (Belgium)", "chocolatier", "Belgian independence", "German-speaking Community", "Cubitus", "Kraainem", "Zaventem", "Georges Boulanger", "medieval architecture", "Emperor Charles V", "Prime Minister of Belgium", "La Monnaie/De Munt", "Dutch spelling", "National Fund for Scientific Research", "Belgian Comic Strip Center", "Heysel Plateau", "Walloon Brabant", "Schaerbeek / Schaarbeek", "Sonian Forest", "Egmont Palace", "Anthony van Dyck", "Strépy-Bracquegnies", "Midi Fair", "Forest-East railway station", "Ancienne Belgique", "Margaret III, Countess of Flanders", "René Magritte", "European route E40", "Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe", "ISO 3166-2:BE", "Telenet (Belgium)", "National Railway Company of Belgium", "bistro", "Le Flagey", "Brussels Marathon", "Bruzz", "Ljubljana", "Gothic architecture", "Congress of Vienna", "Botanical Garden of Brussels", "Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor", "Law Courts of Brussels", "The Adventures of Tintin", "Palace of Coudenberg", "List of Brussels Metro stations", "Atlanta", "Islamist terrorists", "Brussels trams", "World Customs Organization", "UNESCO World Heritage Site", "List of railway stations in Belgium", "brasserie", "Brussels tram route 7", "Diamond League", "Holy Roman Empire", "Thalys", "Casablanca", "Blake and Mortimer", "Saint Gudula", "Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity", "Merode station", "Church of Our Lady of Laeken", "Koekelberg", "federal regions of Belgium", "Woluwe-Saint-Lambert / Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe", "Primary school", "House of Valois", "Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta", "Forest Town Hall", "Western Roman Empire", "public transport", "List of urban areas in the European Union", "craft", "Pan-European identity", "The Brussels Times", "Le Botanique", "Wezembeek-Oppem", "iron", "Cirque Royal", "Paul Saintenoy", "Saint-Josse-ten-Noode / Sint-Joost-ten-Node", "Arthur Rimbaud", "Brussels-Congress railway station", "Simonis metro station", "Uccle-Calevoet railway station", "Forest National", "Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles", "N1 road (Belgium)", "Academy Palace", "Lille", "Euronews", "Scheldt", "De Morgen", "New York City", "spontaneously fermented", "Basilica of Koekelberg", "non-religious", "university hospitals", "praline (Belgian chocolate)", "Paris Bourse", "Saint-Gilles / Sint-Gillis", "Constitutional Court of Belgium", "Bloso", "Etterbeek railway station", "Habsburg Netherlands", "Royal Theatre Toone", "Atomium", "NGO", "coffee houses", "air traffic control", "Schaerbeek railway station", "conurbation", "Brussels Regional Investment Company", "Mont des Arts", "Postal code", "GeoTLD", "Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine", "expatriate", "Couleur Café Festival", "BTNG-RBHC", "unit cell", "UNESCO", "Protestants", "Berchem-Sainte-Agathe / Sint-Agatha-Berchem", "Parti Socialiste (Belgium)", "military alliance", "20 km of Brussels", "World War I", "Flanders", "Low Countries", "Brussels sprout", "Victor Hugo", "Berbers", "Brussels-Central", "List of municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region", "Metropolitan Museum of Art", "Central Boulevards of Brussels", "Royal Palace of Brussels", "Brussels Expo", "Rogier Tower", "Amsterdam", "Intergovernmental organization", "Brabant Road", "European route E19", "Dutch language", "Open Vld", "Walloon Region", "Seven Noble Houses of Brussels", "Mail", "Protestantism", "Fétis", "Villa Empain", "Métro Léger de Charleroi", "Processional giants and dragons in Belgium and France", "Belgian Federal Science Policy Office", "Cauchie House", "Cologne", "London boroughs", "Brussels-South station", "Brussels School of International Studies", "Belgian Senate", "Art Deco in Brussels", "The Bulletin (Brussels weekly)", "maquette", "Common Community Commission", "Hamlet (place)", "List of largest church buildings in the world", "de facto", "Old Dutch", "Brussels International Exposition (1910)", "Muslim", "List of sovereign states", "Henry van de Velde", "Le Mariage de Mademoiselle Beulemans", "Schaerbeek", "Capital city", "flea market", "King Baudouin Stadium", "International school", "Iris Festival", "Lisbon Stock Exchange", "Bordet railway station", "embassies", "Université catholique de Louvain", "Secretary of state", "language border", "international politics", "Belgian National Day", "comic strip", "Schuman station", "Ixelles / Elsene", "King of the Belgians", "yeast", "Luxembourg City", "2017 Brussels summit", "Victor Horta", "Proximus", "Centre for Fine Arts", "Saint-Job railway station", "Municipalities of Belgium", "Royal Museums of Art and History", "Maison du Peuple, Brussels", "Dutch-speaking", "Brussels Park", "BEL20", "Saint-Gilles, Belgium", "Crossing Club de Schaerbeek", "Historia (newspaper)", "VTM (TV channel)", "demonym", "urban music", "Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company", "Belgian people", "Brussels Metro line 2", "de jure", "Politico", "Bossemans et Coppenolle", "French orthography", "Brusselisation", "peri-urbanisation", "cathedral", "professional", "Lower Lotharingia", "Saint-Josse-ten-Noode", "infrastructure", "Habsburg Empire", "British School of Brussels", "Tomberg metro station", "Guards Armoured Division", "surrealist", "World Heritage Site", "fire station", "Belgian Pro League", "Brussels International Exposition (1935)", "newspaper", "Boondael railway station", "science park", "Belgian Federal Parliament", "Brussels Airport", "Euro 2000", "Coudenberg", "Brussels tram route 4", "Belgian endive", "lobbying", "Koninklijk Conservatorium (Brussel)", "Six Days of Brussels", "Maubeuge", "European Council", "Union des Francophones", "Saint-Géry Island", "Antwerp", "Meyboom", "Berchem-Sainte-Agathe", "Court of Cassation (Belgium)", "List of diplomatic missions to NATO", "Hôtel Albert Ciamberlani", "North America", "Steenokkerzeel", "friteries", "antique", "Treaty of Utrecht", "political refugees", "Sint-Genesius-Rode", "Gustave Strauven", "Middle Ages", "Hainaut (province)", "Flemish Brabant", "International Style", "Airbus", "Habsburg", "Cinquantenaire", "Frankish Empire", "trade union", "France", "RTBF", "South Tower (Brussels)", "November 2015 Paris attacks", "EU institutions", "Köppen climate classification", "Madou Tower", "Paul Hankar", "biotechnology", "Western Europe", "Arcade du Cinquantenaire", "crystal", "Brussels tapestry", "Uccle", "Brussels-South railway station", "boarding school", "Europe", "cycling race", "History of rail transport in Belgium", "Solvay Conference", "Moensberg railway station", "2021 Brussels summit", "Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie", "Forest-South railway station", "Zara (retailer)", "Forest / Vorst", "BeTV (Belgium)", "Brussels International Exposition (1897)", "Randstad", "Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor", "naturalised", "military hospital", "Netherlands", "Eurostar", "Rachid Madrane", "Eurocontrol", "fr:Brussels Summer Festival", "Government of the Brussels-Capital Region", "Bruges", "bpost", "List of museums in Brussels", "European Schools", "Gaston (comics)", "federal district", "Beijing", "Industrial Revolution", "Anna Boch", "Jette railway station", "Charleroi", "Pierre-Joseph Proudhon", "Philip the Bold", "Place de la Bourse, Brussels", "interwar era", "Ecolo", "Palace of the Count of Flanders", "Congress Column", "Palais 12", "Languages of Belgium", "shared bicycle", "Islam in Belgium", "Metonymy", "Amsterdam Stock Exchange", "Berchem-Sainte-Agathe railway station", "Auderghem / Oudergem", "Sculpture in Brussels", "Proximus Towers", "War of the Austrian Succession", "European Commission", "Sablon, Brussels", "Northern Quarter (Brussels)", "Siege of Brussels", "Sgraffito", "Wallonia", "global city", "Roman Empire", "ISIL", "neo-Gothic", "Bois de la Cambre/Ter Kamerenbos", "ghetto", "Community bicycle program", "Charles the Bold", "Stoclet Palace", "ADEPS", "GDP per capita", "Seventeen Provinces", "yellow iris", "E411", "firefighter", "Council of Ministers (Belgium)", "Louis XIV", "World Confederation of Labour", "Belgian comics", "Napoleon", "La Muette de Portici", "United Kingdom", "German occupation of Belgium during World War II", "Monarchy of Belgium", "Belgian French", "Flemish Community Commission", "atheists", "Secondary school", "Church of St. James on Coudenberg", "Canal inclined plane", "municipalities with language facilities", "Blue Banana", "Francisation of Brussels", "avant-garde", "Anglicanism", "Council of the European Union", "Flemish Government", "Brussels Regional Express Network", "Eastern Europe", "Finance Tower", "Peter Paul Rubens", "Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region", "Union Saint-Gilloise", "Molenbeek-Saint-Jean / Sint-Jans-Molenbeek", "Royal Military Academy (Belgium)", "Brussels-Luxembourg railway station", "Nazi ghost train", "Flemish Community", "Palace of Justice (Brussels)", "Brussels Ring", "Haussmann's renovation of Paris", "Brussels International Exposition of 1935", "Francization", "Place du Jeu de Balle", "relic", "mosque", "Société Générale de Belgique", "Hôtel Tassel", "Woluwe", "Senne (river)", "Ronquières inclined plane", "Philip II of Spain", "Maastricht", "Manneken Pis", "Rudi Vervoort", "Uccle-Stalle railway station", "cafés", "Beer in Belgium", "List of Belgian provinces by Human Development Index", "Primark", "De Standaard", "Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History", "Tertiary sector of the economy", "Africa Palace", "France 2", "Brussels waffle", "Bombardment of Brussels (1695)", "Evere", "Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics", "Flamboyant", "lambic", "Central European Time", "Europa building", "C&A", "Frankfurt", "Marsupilami", "City of Brussels", "arrondissement of Halle-Vilvoorde", "Josef Hoffmann", "INRIX", "Battle of Waterloo", "Atlantic Ocean", "Kaaitheater", "terrorism", "Anderlecht", "Jules Anspach", "human science", "Philip the Handsome", "central business district", "railway station", "Gudula", "Second walls of Brussels", "Joyous Entry", "Guilds of Brussels", "List of tallest structures in Belgium", "Saint Vindicianus", "Intangible Cultural Heritage", "Vrije Universiteit Brussel", "Flemish Region", "Belgian provinces", "Grand Prix Eddy Merckx", "news agency", "Koksijde", "Brabantine Gothic", "Rogier van der Weyden", "Brussels Cycling Classic", "International School of Brussels", "Classical music", "Etterbeek", "governor of Brussels-Capital", "Royal Crypt (Belgium)", "Rwanda", "shopping", "fire service", "Lucky Luke", "Walloons", "Chocolatier Neuhaus", "European Network of Information Centres for the Performing Arts", "Erasme/Erasmus metro station", "Old Frankish", "Hôtel van Eetvelde", "libraries", "Strasbourg", "Council of State (Belgium)", "Brussels ISIL terror cell", "Duchy of Brabant", "Brussels Metro", "Belgian overseas colonies", "Brussels-North railway station", "Transport in Brussels", "2018 Brussels summit", "Romanesque architecture", "Church of St. John the Baptist, Molenbeek", "Luxembourg", "Ghent", "miniature park", "Maalbeek/Maelbeek metro station", "Palace of the Nation", "Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering and Urban Planning", "Catholic Church", "Horta Museum", "NATO Headquarters", "Brandmark", "East Flanders", "International Confederation of Free Trade Unions", "Saint Verhaegen", "Meir, Antwerp", "Prefectures in France", "cupola", "William I of the Netherlands", "Brussels Agreement (2013)", "lingua franca", "Forest, Belgium", "Diplomacy", "Islam", "Sablon (Brussels)", "Iguanodon", "Treaty of Brussels", "Belgian waffle", "BELvue Museum", "track and field", "Intercity Express", "40th G7 summit", "Province of Brabant", "martyr", "commuter", "civil servant", "Leopold I of Belgium", "Belgian politics", "stock market index", "Burundi", "Kriek", "Fast food restaurant", "Prague", "Musical Instrument Museum, Brussels", "Molenbeek-Saint-Jean", "rapid transit", "universities", "welfare spending", "Maalbeek", "Avenue Louise/Louizalaan", "Leuven", "Kunstenfestivaldesarts", "federalism", "restaurant", "World music", "La Libre", "Belgian Academy Council of Applied Sciences", "Watermael railway station", "GDP", "Brussels Metro line 6", "jazz", "1972 UEFA European Football Championship", "Grand-Place", "First walls of Brussels", "Belgium national football team", "Orange Belgium", "De Lijn", "Brussels South Charleroi Airport", "parish church", "Woluwe-Saint-Pierre", "Leonidas (chocolate maker)", "N4 road (Belgium)", "Moorsel", "Mini-Europe", "Belgium", "Belga (news agency)", "health care", "mural", "NATO", "County of Flanders", "stock exchange", "Mary of Burgundy", "New Scientist", "Villo!", "Belgian chocolate", "Palais de Justice, Brussels", "Watermael-Boitsfort", "Kyiv", "Benelux", "Brussels–Charleroi Canal", "Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries", "Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium", "Democratic Republic of the Congo", "Infrabel", "Demographics of Brussels", "oceanic climate", "Cultural assimilation", "Drogenbos", "urban renewal", "Minister-President of the Brussels-Capital Region", "airspace", "Louis XIV style", "business", "Flagey Building", "List of universities in Belgium", "Tour & Taxis", "Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium", "European Union", "Metropolitan areas in Belgium", "Turkey", "Gustaf Wappers", "Royal Quarter", "neo-Byzantine", "NATO headquarters", "Théâtre Royal des Galeries", "African fashion", "Multinational corporation", "Ostend", "marionette", "Court of Audit of Belgium", "Jacob Jordaens", "André Waterkeyn", "Geert van Istendael", "health hazard", "Uccle / Ukkel", "impressionist", "Bremen", "Antwerp Pre-metro", "Woluwe-Saint-Pierre / Sint-Pieters-Woluwe", "Boitsfort railway station", "Stone Age", "Royal Meteorological Institute", "RWDM47", "light rail", "Brabantic", "Boule et Bill", "dolmen", "Brussels Metro line 1", "1985 European Cup Final", "sister city", "Avenue de Tervueren", "Ordinance (Belgium)", "Belgian Revolution", "Royal Belgian Mint", "Place Royale, Brussels", "HDI", "Parliament of the French Community of Belgium", "Old England (department store)", "Marollen", "Brussels Regional Parliament", "Magritte Museum", "Woluwe-Saint-Lambert", "NATO summit", "Bockstael railway station", "Statbel", "Brussels buses", "Brussels' Comic Book Route", "King of Spain", "Brussels and the European Union", "Channel Tunnel", "Southern Europe", "arrondissement of Leuven", "Belgian monarchs", "Auderghem", "Tervuren", "Cantillon Brewery", "Cambrai", "Rue Neuve (Brussels)", "Royal Library of Belgium", "European Parliament", "Halle Gate", "Robert Campin", "Linkebeek", "Berlin", "Pieter Bruegel the Elder", "Brussels Central Station", "Government of the French Community", "World War II", "Minor Basilica", "Côte d'Or (chocolate)", "Pharmaceutical industry", "Saint-Cyr House", "intangible cultural heritage", "Ommegang of Brussels", "Assault on Brussels (1708)", "The Smurfs", "Greater ring (Brussels)", ".brussels", "Festival of Europe", "orbital motorway", "Standard language", "Anthony, Duke of Brabant", "Baroque architecture", "Haren railway station (Brussels)", "Euronext", "Blanching (horticulture)", "by-law", "Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde", "Memorial Van Damme", "N5 road (Belgium)", "Brabant (province)", "guildhall", "Brussels Town Hall", "Les XX", "Celtic languages", "bronze", "Euronext Brussels", "War of the Spanish Succession", "Brussels Stock Exchange", "Archdiocese of Mechelen–Brussels", "street art", "Maypole", "Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber", "mussels", "Second World War", "French-speaking Community", "Aachen", "Berlaymont building", "Heysel Stadium", "European Capital of Culture", "agnostics", "enclave", "Royal White Star Bruxelles", "Leopold Park", "COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium", "North Atlantic Treaty Organization", "Judaism", "Rhine-Ruhr", "lace", "Brabantian dialect", "international organisation", "UCLouvain Bruxelles Woluwe", "Ganshoren", "List of largest church buildings", "Central European Summer Time", "French Community of Belgium", "Church of St. Augustine, Forest", "ambulance", "Magritte Award", "Jazz Station", "Michel de Ghelderode", "Queen Elisabeth Competition", "Arrondissements of Paris", "Henry Van de Velde", "Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium", "Paris", "Haren, Belgium", "provinces of Belgium", "RTL-TVI", "fossil", "Brusselian dialect", "commuters", "European Trade Union Confederation", "DéFI", "Gaugericus", "Cinquantenaire Arcade", "Duke of Burgundy", "dinosaur", "covering of the Senne", "Le Soir" ]
3,710	Be	BE or be may refer to: ==Linguistics== Be (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet be (interjection), in several languages Be languages or Ong Be, a pair of languages of northern Hainan province, China Belarusian language, ISO 639-1 code: be Black English, or African-American Vernacular English, an English dialect British English, abbr. BE, usually used in contrast to AE (American English) To be, the English copular verb ==Music== ===Albums=== Be (Beady Eye album), 2013 Be (Casiopea album), 1998 Be (Common album), 2005 BE (Pain of Salvation album), 2004 BE (Original Stage Production), a 2005 live album by Pain of Salvation Be (BTS album), 2020 ===Songs=== "Be" (Neil Diamond song), a 1973 single "Be", a song by Jessica Simpson from In This Skin "Be", a song by Lenny Kravitz from Let Love Rule "Be", a song by Slade from Whatever Happened to Slade ==Organisations== Be Inc., a former US software company (1990–2001) and developer of the Be Operating System (BeOS) Be Unlimited, a former UK Internet service provider (2003–2014) Badminton Europe, the governing body of badminton in Europe British Eventing, the British governing body for the equestrian sport of eventing BearingPoint (former stock ticker symbol BE) or Left Bloc, a Portuguese political party Bob Evans Restaurants, an American restaurant chain ==Places== Bè, a neighborhood in Togo Belgium (ISO 3166-1 and FIPS 10-4 country code: BE) Berlin, a state of Germany Bermuda (World Meteorological Organization territory code: BE) Canton of Bern, a canton of Switzerland ==Science and technology== Base excess (BE), excess or deficit in the amount of base in the blood Beryllium, symbol Be, a chemical element ===Computing=== .be, the country code top-level domain for Belgium Backup Exec, backup and recovery software from Veritas Software Big-endian, a system that stores the most significant byte of a word at the smallest memory address BeOS, an operating system by Be ===Physics=== Baumé scale (°Bé), a density scale Be star, in astronomy, a B-type star Bejan number (Be), in thermodynamics and fluid mechanics ==Transportation== BE Be Electric, Electric Car Manufacturing Company Baltimore and Eastern Railroad Company (B&E), US Beriev (design office prefix: Be), a Russian aircraft manufacturer Blue Engines (prefix: BE), the rocket engines from Blue Origin BE, then IATA code of Flybe (2022–2023), former English airline BE, then IATA code of Flybe (1979–2020), former English airline BE, then IATA code of British European Airways (1946–1974), former British airline ==Other uses== Bé (footballer), Portuguese footballer Bachelor of Engineering, an academic degree Bahá'í Era, in timekeeping Buddhist Era, in timekeeping	[ "Flybe (2022–2023)", "Copula (linguistics)", "Be (Beady Eye album)", "Belgium", "British Eventing", "Belarusian language", "Be star", "Blue Origin", "B (disambiguation)", "Bermuda", "Bob Evans Restaurants", "Bay (disambiguation)", "Be (Casiopea album)", "Bahá'í Era", "Be Unlimited", "Big-endian", "BearingPoint", "BE (Original Stage Production)", "Let Love Rule (Lenny Kravitz album)", "Be (interjection)", "Base excess", "BE (Pain of Salvation album)", "Bloco de Esquerda", "Be (Cyrillic)", "Beriev", "Bachelor of Engineering", "Be (Common album)", "Badminton Europe", "Bè", "Be (BTS album)", "In This Skin", "Canton of Bern", "Bé (footballer)", "Bebe (disambiguation)", "BBE (disambiguation)", "Berlin", "British English", "Baumé scale", "Beryllium", "Be Inc.", "BeOS", "British European Airways", "Be (Neil Diamond song)", "Whatever Happened to Slade", "African-American Vernacular English", "Bee (disambiguation)", "Be languages", "Flybe (1979–2020)", ".be", "Bejan number", "Baltimore and Eastern Railroad Company", "Buddhist Era", "Backup Exec" ]
3,711	Bell (disambiguation)	A bell is a percussion instrument, usually cup-shaped. Bell may also refer to: ==Sound and music== Bell (wind instrument), a part of a wind instrument Bell cymbal, a type of cymbal, tending to be thick and uniformly so, and small Bell effect, a musical technique Cymbal bell, the most central part of a cymbal ==Signals== Bell, a signal from an engine order telegraph, a communications device used on a ship or submarine Alarm bell, used to alert people of a fire or burglary detected or, as part of a traditional alarm clock, to awaken or remind Church bell, indicating when to go to church Doorbell, a signaling device to alert residents to visitors Division bell, used in a parliament to call members to a vote Last call bell, a signal that a bar is closing soon School bell, a signal used for transitions during a school day Ship's bell, a signal for marking time on a ship ==People== Bell (surname), a list of people with the surname Bell Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922), inventor of the telephone Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943-), astrophysicist who discovered pulsars John Stewart Bell (1928–1990), originator of Bell's theorem in quantum physics bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins, 1952–2021), American author, academic, and activist Bell (singer), Swedish singer and songwriter ==Places== === Australia === Bell, New South Wales Bell, Queensland, a town in the Western Downs Region ===Canada=== Bell Island (Newfoundland and Labrador) Bell Peninsula, Nunavut Bell River (Quebec) ===Germany=== Bell, Mayen-Koblenz, Germany, a municipality Bell, Rhein-Hunsrück, Germany, a municipality ===United States=== Bell, California Bell, Florida Bell, Illinois Bell, Oklahoma Bell, Wisconsin Bell Canyon, California Bell City, Missouri Bell County, Kentucky Bell County, Texas Bell Township, Pennsylvania (disambiguation) ===Other places=== Bell (crater), a crater on the Moon Bell, South Africa Bell Creek (disambiguation) ==Businesses== ===Telecommunications=== Bell Canada, a Canadian telecommunications company Bell Labs, a research & development organization founded by AT&T, now owned by Nokia Bell System, the organization that provided telephone service in the United States until 1984 Bell Telephone Company, founded in 1877 by the family of Alexander Graham Bell ===Other businesses=== Bell Aircraft, a former American aircraft manufacturer Bell Textron, formerly Bell Helicopter Bell ID, a Dutch software company Bell Inn, Enfield, London, England Bell Records, a record label Bell Sports, a helmet manufacturer Bell (St. Paul's Churchyard), a historical bookseller in London Bell's Brewery, based in Michigan, U.S. Bell's whisky, a brand of Scotch ==Science and technology== Bell, the body of a jellyfish Bell character, in computing, a device control code Bell number, in mathematics Bell polynomials, in mathematics Bell state, in quantum information science Diving bell, a cable-suspended underwater airtight chamber ==Transportation== Bell station (disambiguation) SS Empire Bell, a ship USS Bell, the name of two U.S. Navy ships Bell (cyclecar), made in 1920 Bell maneuver, a version of the tailslide in aerobatics ==Other uses== Bell (fictional currency), in the game Animal Crossing Bell (typeface)	[ "Belle (disambiguation)", "Bell, Queensland", "Justice Bell (disambiguation)", "Bell (singer)", "Bell Peninsula", "Bell, Oklahoma", "tailslide", "USS Bell", "Bell Lake (disambiguation)", "Bell (typeface)", "Bell Aircraft", "Bell Canada", "Bell's whisky", "Division bell", "Bell Inn, Enfield", "Bell, New South Wales", "Glockenspiel (disambiguation)", "SS Empire Bell", "Bell (instrument)", "The Bells (disambiguation)", "Bell, Mayen-Koblenz", "Bell cymbal", "Bell Creek (disambiguation)", "Bell City, Missouri", "Bell, Florida", "Bell, South Africa", "Bell effect", "Bell County, Kentucky", "Bell, California", "bell", "Bell station (disambiguation)", "Bell (crater)", "bell hooks", "jellyfish", "Jocelyn Bell Burnell", "Cymbal bell", "Bell System", "The Bell (disambiguation)", "engine order telegraph", "Bell state", "Alexander Graham Bell", "Bell ID", "Bell character", "Bell (fictional currency)", "Church bell", "Bell's Brewery", "Bell polynomials", "Bell Textron", "Bell Canyon", "Bell (surname)", "Bell Labs", "Bell, Book & Candle (disambiguation)", "Bell High School (disambiguation)", "Bell (St. Paul's Churchyard)", "Bell Sports", "Bell House (disambiguation)", "Bell River (Quebec)", "Diving bell", "Bell (wind instrument)", "Bell Records", "Bell Township, Pennsylvania (disambiguation)", "Last call bell", "alarm clock", "Bell County, Texas", "Bell Island (Newfoundland and Labrador)", "John Stewart Bell", "Bell Telephone Company", "Ship's bell", "Bell, Wisconsin", "Old Bell (disambiguation)", "Bells (disambiguation)", "Doorbell", "Bell, Illinois", "School bell", "Bel (disambiguation)", "Bell pepper", "Bell (cyclecar)", "Bell number", "Alexander Graham Bell honors and tributes", "Bell, Rhein-Hunsrück" ]
3,712	Bell Labs	Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as Bell Labs, is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several laboratories in the United States and around the world. As a former subsidiary of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), Bell Labs and its researchers have been 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, throughout the 20th century. Eleven Nobel Prizes and five Turing Awards have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories. Bell Labs had its origin in the complex corporate organization of the Bell System telephone conglomerate. The laboratory began operating in the late 19th century as the Western Electric Engineering Department, located at 463 West Street in New York City. After years of advancing telecommunication innovations, the 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. In the 1960s, laboratory and company headquarters were moved to Murray Hill, New Jersey. Its alumni during this time include a plethora of world-renowned scientists and engineers. With the breakup of the Bell System, Bell Labs became a subsidiary of AT&T Technologies in 1984, which resulted in a drastic decline in its funding. In 1996, AT&T spun off AT&T Technologies, which was renamed to Lucent Technologies, using the Murray Hill site for headquarters. Bell Laboratories was split with AT&T retaining parts as AT&T Laboratories. In 2006, Lucent merged with French telecommunication company Alcatel to form Alcatel-Lucent, which was acquired by Nokia in 2016. ==Origin and historical locations== === Bell's personal research after the telephone === In 1880, when the French government awarded Alexander Graham Bell the Volta Prize of 50,000francs for the invention of the telephone (equivalent to about US$10,000 at the time, or about $ 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. 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. 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. ===Early antecedent=== 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. Bell Telephone Company, the first telephone company, was formed a year later. It later became a part of the American Bell Telephone Company. In 1884, the American Bell Telephone Company created the Mechanical Department from the Electrical and Patent Department formed a year earlier. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company and its own subsidiary company took control of American Bell and the Bell System by 1899. 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. ===Formal organization and location changes=== 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. During the early 20th century, several historically significant laboratories were established. In 1915, the first radio transmissions were made from a shack in Montauk, Long Island. That same year, tests were performed on the first transoceanic radio telephone at a house in Arlington County, Virginia. 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. 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 space was expanded with a new building occupying about one quarter of a city block. The first chairman of the board of directors was John J. Carty, AT&T's vice president, and the first president was Frank B. Jewett, The operations were directed by E. B. Craft, executive vice-president, and formerly chief engineer at Western Electric. In the early 1920s, a few outdoor facilities and radio communications development facilities were developed. 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, 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 added from a nearby property. In 1928, a 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 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 . This added land increased the facility for radio transmission studies. 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. 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. 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). 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. Bell's Holmdel research and development lab, a structure set on , 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. ===Building Complex Location (code) information, past and present=== Chester (CH) – North Road, Chester Township, New Jersey (began 1930, outdoor test site for small size telephone pole preservation, timber-related equipment, cable laying mechanism for the first undersea voice cable, research for loop transmission, Lucent Technologies donated land for park) Crawford Hill (HOH) – Crawfords Corner Road, Holmdel, NJ (built 1930s, currently as exhibit and building sold, horn antenna used for "Big Bang" theory) Red Hill (HR) – located at exit 114 on the Garden State Parkway (480 Red Hill Rd, Middletown, NJ), the building that formerly housed hundreds of Bell Labs researchers is now in use by Memorial Sloan Kettering Holmdel (HO) – 101 Crawfords Corner, Holmdel, NJ (built 1959–1962, older structures in the 1920s, currently as private building called Bell Works, discovered extraterrestrial radio emissions, undersea cable research, satellite transmissions systems Telstar 3 and 4); provided office space for ~8000 workers in the 1980s (reaching a peak of ~9000 in 1982); prized glass building with hollow interior designed by Eero Saarinen; a 3-legged white water tower built to resemble a transistor marks the long entrance drive to this facility. Indian Hill (IH) – 2000 Naperville Road, Naperville, IL (built 1966, currently Nokia, developed switching technology and systems) Indian Hill New (IHN) – 1960 Lucent Lane, Naperville, IL (built in 2000 by Lucent Technologies for growth of the Indian Hill Bell Labs complex. The steel and glass designed, building with 900 parking places, was sold by Nokia for $4.8 million in April 2023. The buyer, Franklin Partners, purchased the site for warehousing but decisions were made to demolish the building for future approved planning. The pedestrian bridge to Indian Hill building was demolished as a separated company. The conference room and lobby scenes of the building were filmed in July 2010, during Alcatel-Lucent ownership, for the Ron Howard film, The Dilemma.) Indian Hill Park (IHP) – 200 Park Pl, Naperville, IL (Leased facility until Lucent Technologies consolidation to Indian Hill location.) Indian Hill South (IX) – Naperville, IL (Leased facility until Lucent Technologies consolidation to Indian Hill location.) Indian Hill West (IW) – Naperville, IL (Leased facility until Lucent Technologies consolidation to Indian Hill location.) Murray Hill (MH) – 600 Mountain Ave, Murray Hill, NJ (built 1941–1945, currently Nokia, developed transistor, UNIX operating system and C programming language, anechoic chamber, several building sections demolished) Network Software Center (NSC and/or NW) – 2500-2600 Warrenville Rd, Lisle, IL (Built in mid 1970s. Owned property under AT&T Bell Labs, then Lucent Technologies constructed an additional building in 2000s. During Alcatel-Lucent consolidation to Indian Hill location, the buildings were placed for sale and sold to Navistar in 2010.) Short Hills (HL) – 101–103 JFK Parkway, Short Hills, NJ (Various departments such as Accounts Payable, IT Purchasing, HR Personnel, Payroll, Telecom, and the Government group, and Unix Administration Systems Computer Center. Buildings exist without the overhead walkway between the two buildings and two different companies are located from banking and business analytics.) Summit (SF) – 190 River Road, Summit, NJ (building was part of the UNIX Software Operations and became UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. In December 1991, USL combined with Novell. Location is a banking company.) West St ( ) – 463 West Street, New York, NY (built 1898, 1925 until December 1966 as Bell Labs headquarters, experimental talking movies, wave nature of matter, radar) Whippany (WH) – 67 Whippany Road, Whippany, NJ (built 1920s, demolished and portion building as Bayer, performed military research and development, research and development in radar, in guidance for the Nike missile, and in underwater sound, Telstar 1, wireless technologies) Madison – Madison, NJ Merrimack Valley – North Andover, MA Murray Hill – Murray Hill, NJ Raritan River Center – Piscataway, NJ Reading – Reading, PA Union – Union, NJ Warren Service Center – Warren, NJ Whippany – Whippany, NJ ===List of Bell Labs (2024)=== Nokia Bell Lab's 2024 website pictured 10 labs, located in: Antwerp – (Copernicuslaan 50, 2018 Antwerp, Belgium) Budapest – (Skypark 8A, Bókay János utca 36–42, 1083, Budapest, Hungary) Cambridge – (Broers Building, 21 J.J. Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 0FA, United Kingdom) Espoo – (Karaportti 3 FI-02610, Espoo, Finland) Munich – (Werinherstrasse 91 81541, Munich, Germany) Murray Hill – (600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974-0636) (Global Headquarters) Oulu – (Kaapelitie 4, 90620 Oulu, Finland) Paris – (12 rue Jean Bart, 91300 Massy) Paris-Saclay, Nozay, France Shanghai – (No.388 Ningqiao Road, Pudong Jinqiao, Shanghai 201206 China Stuttgart – (Magirusstraße 8, 70469 Stuttgart, Germany) Also listed as research locations without additional information was Sunnyvale, California, US and Tampere, Finland. The Naperville, Illinois Bell Labs location near Chicago was considered the Chicago Innovation Center and hosted Nokia's second annual Algorithm World event in 2022. ==Discoveries and developments== 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. ===1920s=== 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. In 1926, the laboratories invented an early synchronous-sound motion picture system, in competition with Fox Movietone and DeForest Phonofilm. 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-Nyquist 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. 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. ===1930s=== 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. In 1931 and 1932, the labs made experimental high fidelity, long playing, and even stereophonic recordings of the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski. In 1933, stereo signals were transmitted live from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. 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. ===1940s=== 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. 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. 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 (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. 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 went much further. 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. ====Calculators==== Model I: A complex number calculator, completed in 1939 and put into operation in 1940, for doing calculations of complex numbers. Model II: Relay Computer / Relay Interpolator, September 1943, for interpolating data points of flight profiles (needed for performance testing of a gun director). This model introduced error detection (self checking). Model III: Ballistic Computer, June 1944, for calculations of ballistic trajectories. Model IV: Error Detector Mark II, March 1945, an improved ballistic computer. Model V: General-purpose electromechanical computer, of which two were built, July 1946 and February 1947 Model VI: 1949, an enhanced Model V. ===1950s=== 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. In 1952, William Gardner Pfann revealed the method of zone melting, which enabled semiconductor purification and level doping. In 1953, Maurice Karnaugh developed the Karnaugh map, used for managing of Boolean algebraic expressions. In January 1954, Bell Labs built one of the first completely transistorized computer machines, 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 to 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. In 1954, the first modern solar cell was invented at Bell Laboratories. In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick discovered semiconductor surface passivation by silicon dioxide. 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. 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. In 1957 Frosch and Derick, using masking and predeposition, were able to manufacture silicon dioxide field effect transistors; the first planar transistors, in which drain and source were adjacent at the same surface. They showed that silicon dioxide insulated, protected silicon wafers and prevented dopants from diffusing into the wafer. In 1958, a technical paper by Arthur Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes first described the laser. Following Frosch and Derick research, Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng proposed a silicon MOS transistor in 1959 and successfully demonstrated a working MOS device with their Bell Labs team in 1960. Their team included E. E. LaBate and E. I. Povilonis who fabricated the device; M. O. Thurston, L. A. D’Asaro, and J. R. Ligenza who developed the diffusion processes, and H. K. Gummel and R. Lindner who characterized the device. K. E. Daburlos and H. J. Patterson of Bell Laboratories continued on the work of C. Frosch and L. Derick, and developed a process similar to Hoerni’s planar process about the same time. J.R. Ligenza and W.G. Spitzer studied the mechanism of thermally grown oxides, fabricated a high quality Si/SiO2 stack and published their results in 1960. ===1960s=== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In 1964, the carbon dioxide laser was invented by Kumar Patel and the discovery/operation of the Nd:YAG laser was demonstrated by Joseph 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. 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. In 1966, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a key technology in wireless services, was developed and patented by R. W. Chang. In December 1966, the New York City site was sold and became the Westbeth Artists Community complex. 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. 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. 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. ===1970s=== The 1970s and 1980s saw more and more computer-related inventions at the Bell Laboratories as part of the personal computing revolution. 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. 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. In 1970, A. Michael Noll invented a tactile, force-feedback system, coupled with interactive stereoscopic computer display. 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. 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. In 1976, optical fiber systems were first tested in Georgia. 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. 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 Avaya. ===1980s=== 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. In 1980, the TDMA digital cellular telephone technology was patented. In late 1981, the Bell Labs Research organization internal use of a terminal called Jerq led to the Blit 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. 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, 336 people have received the honor. 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. 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. 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. The National Medal of Technology was awarded to Bell Labs, the first corporation to achieve this honor in February 1985. 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". 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. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (2018) for his work involving optical tweezers and their application to biological systems. In the mid-1980s, the Transmission System 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. 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. 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. 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. ===1990s=== Bell Labs' John Mayo received the National Medal of Technology in 1990. 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. 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. The scientist, W. Lincoln Hawkins in 1992 received the National Medal of Technology for work done at Bell Labs. 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. Amos Joel in 1993 received the National Medal of Technology. 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. 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. In November 1997, Lucent planned a Bell Laboratories location at Yokosuka Research Park in Yokosuka, Japan for developing a third generation Wideband Code Division Multiple Access cellular system (W-CDMA.) In 1997, the smallest then-practical transistor (60 nanometers, 182 atoms wide) was built. In 1998, the first optical router was invented. Rudolph Kazarinov and Federico Capasso received the optoelectronics Rank Prize on December 8, 1998. 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." In 2005, Jeong H. Kim, former President of Lucent's Optical Network Group, returned from academia to become the President of Bell Laboratories. 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. 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. 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. As of July 2008, however, only four scientists remained in physics research, according to a report by the scientific journal Nature. 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. 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). 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. ===2010s=== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Antero Taivalsaari became a Bell Labs Fellow in 2016 for his specific work. In 2017, Dragan Samardzija was awarded the Bell Labs Fellow. In 2018, Arthur Ashkin shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on "the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems" 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. 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. 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. ==Nobel Prize, Turing Award, IEEE Medal of Honor== Eleven Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories. 1937: Clinton J. Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter. 1956: John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William Shockley received the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the first transistors. 1977: Philip W. Anderson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing an improved understanding of the electronic structure of glass and magnetic materials. 1978: Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. Penzias and Wilson were cited for their discovering cosmic microwave background radiation, a nearly uniform glow that fills the Universe in the microwave band of the radio spectrum. 1997: Steven Chu shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. 1998: Horst Störmer, Robert Laughlin, and Daniel Tsui, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering and explaining the fractional quantum Hall effect. 2009: Willard S. Boyle, George E. Smith shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Charles K. Kao. Boyle and Smith were cited for inventing charge-coupled device (CCD) semiconductor imaging sensors. 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. 2018: Arthur Ashkin shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on "the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems" which he began at Bell Labs. 2024: John Hopfield shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in artificial networks for machine learning. The Turing Award has been won five times by Bell Labs researchers. 1968: Richard Hamming for his work on numerical methods, automatic coding systems, and error-detecting and error-correcting codes. 1983: Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie for their work on operating system theory, and for developing Unix. with John Hopcroft, for fundamental achievements in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures. 2018: Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio shared the Turing Award with Geoffrey Hinton for their work in Deep Learning. 2020: Alfred Aho and Jeffrey Ullman shared the Turing Award for their work on Compilers. 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. 1926 Greenleaf Whittier Pickard For his contributions as to crystal detectors, coil antennas, wave propagation and atmospheric disturbances. 1936 G A Campbell For his contributions to the theory of electrical network. 1940 Lloyd Espenschied For his accomplishments as an engineer, as an inventor, as a pioneer in the development of radio telephony, and for his effective contributions to the progress of international radio coordination. 1946 Ralph Hartley For his early work on oscillating circuits employing triode tubes and likewise for his early recognition and clear exposition of the fundamental relationship between the total amount of information which may be transmitted over a transmission system of limited band-width and the time required. 1949 Ralph Brown For his extensive contributions to the field of radio and for his leadership in Institute affairs 1955 Harald T. Friis For his outstanding technical contributions in the expansion of the useful spectrum of radio frequencies, and for the inspiration and leadership he has given to young engineers. 1960 Harry Nyquist For fundamental contributions to a quantitative understanding of thermal noise, data transmission and negative feedback. 1963 George C. Southworth (with John H. Hammond, Jr.) For pioneering contributions to microwave radio physics, to radio astronomy, and to waveguide transmission. 1966 Claude Shannon For his development of a mathematical theory of communication which unified and significantly advanced the state of the art. 1967 Charles H. Townes For his significant contributions in the field of quantum electronics which have led to the maser and the laser. 1971 John Bardeen For his profound contributions to the understanding of the conductivity of solids, to the invention of the transistor, and to the microscopic theory of superconductivity 1973 Rudolf Kompfner For a major contribution to world-wide communication through the conception of the traveling wave tube embodying a new principle of amplification. 1975 John R. Pierce For his pioneering concrete proposals and the realization of satellite communication experiments, and for contributions in theory and design of traveling wave tubes and in electron beam optics essential to this success. 1977 H. Earle Vaughan For his vision, technical contributions and leadership in the development of the first high-capacity pulse-code-modulation time-division telephone switching system. 1980 William Shockley For the invention of the junction transistor, the analog and the junction field-effect transistor, and the theory underlying their operation. 1981 Sidney Darlington For fundamental contributions to filtering and signal processing leading to chirp radar. 1982 John Wilder Tukey For his contributions to the spectral analysis of random processes and the fast Fourier transform algorithm. 1989 C. Kumar N. Patel For fundamental contributions to quantum electronics, including the carbon dioxide laser and the spin-flip Raman laser. 1992 Amos E. Joel Jr. For fundamental contributions to and leadership in telecommunications switching systems. 1994 Alfred Y. Cho For seminal contributions to the development of molecular beam epitaxy. 2001 Herwig Kogelnik For fundamental contributions to the science and technology of lasers and optoelectronics, and for leadership in research and development of photonics and lightwave communication systems. 2005 James L. Flanagan For sustained leadership and outstanding contributions in speech technology. ==Emmy Awards, Grammy Award, and Academy Award== The Emmy Award has been won five times by Bell Labs: one under Lucent Technologies, one under Alcatel-Lucent, and three under Nokia. 1997: Primetime Engineering Emmy Award for "work on digital television as part of the HDTV Grand Alliance." 2013: Technology and Engineering Emmy for its "Pioneering Work in Implementation and Deployment of Network DVR" 2016: Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for the pioneering invention and deployment of fiber-optic cable. 2020: Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for the CCD (charge-coupled device) was crucial in the development of television, allowing images to be captured digitally for recording transmission. 2021: Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for the "ISO Base Media File Format standardization, in which our multimedia research unit has played a major role." The inventions of fiber-optics and research done in digital television and media File Format were under former AT&T Bell Labs ownership. The Grammy Award has been won once by Bell Labs under Alcatel-Lucent. 2006: Technical Grammy Award for outstanding technical contributions to the recording field. The Academy Award has been won once by E. C. Wente and Bell Labs. 1937: Scientific or Technical Award (Class II) for their multi-cellular high-frequency horn and receiver. ==Publications== 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. 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. 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. 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). Essentially all of the landmark work done by Bell Labs is memorialized in one or more corresponding monographs. Examples include: Monograph 1598 – Shannon, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, 1948 (reprinted from BSTJ). Monograph 1659 – Bardeen and Brattain, Physical Principles Involved in Transistor Action, 1949 (reprinted from BSTJ). Monograph 1757 – Hamming, Error Detecting and Error Correcting Codes, 1950 (reprinted from BSTJ). Monograph 3289 – Pierce, Transoceanic Communications by Means of Satellite, 1959 (reprinted from Proc. I.R.E.). Monograph 3345 – Schawlow & Townes, Infrared and Optical Masers, 1958 (reprinted from Physical Review). ==Presidents==	[ "Charles Hard Townes", "Freehold Borough, New Jersey", "S (programming language)", "Lloyd Espenschied", "Washington, D.C.", "Tampere, Finland", "Richard D. Gitlin", "Nike Zeus", "The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood", "Brian Kernighan", "Robert Tarjan", "Alexander Melville Bell", "Arlington County, Virginia", "Karl Jansky", "Louis Brus", "Subsidiary", "Lucent Technologies", "Columbus, Ohio", "SNOBOL", "MUSIC-N", "Arun Netravali", "information theory", "Clinton Davisson", "DNA machine", "Gulfport, Mississippi", "Number Five Crossbar Switching System", "Philadelphia", "Whippany, New Jersey", "Alcatel", "Cambridge", "Memorial Sloan Kettering", "cosmic microwave background", "Philadelphia Orchestra", "Ken Knowlton", "Bell Laboratories Building (Manhattan)", "cipher", "Frank B. Jewett", "John Hopfield", "Optical IP Switching", "TWX Magazine", "Holmdel Horn Antenna", "Oulu, Finland", "KQED-FM", "John J. Carty", "Nyquist stability criterion", "fiber-optic cable", "James L. Flanagan", "W-CDMA", "Bayer", "Hamming code", "communications satellite", "French Third Republic", "Johns Hopkins University Press", "gas laser", "Emmy Award", "Alexander Graham Bell", "Robert C. Prim", "photovoltaic cell", "Rolf Seebach", "solid-state physics", "Ken Thompson", "Eero Saarinen", "Dennis Ritchie", "Broadband", "Shortwave bands", "local exchange carrier", "Dye laser", "Federal government of the United States", "Telstar", "William Oliver Baker", "Six Sigma", "Bell Labs Technical Journal", "Budapest, Hungary", "Naperville, Illinois", "Concurrent computing", "Max Mathews", "Technische Universität Berlin", "Bell Labs Holmdel Complex", "Inferno (operating system)", "Nokia Bell Labs", "Avaya", "Information and communications technology", "Oliver Buckley", "Model V", "Allentown, Pennsylvania", "electronic music", "Tel Aviv, Israel", "electret microphone", "5ESS Switch", "repeater", "Silicon dioxide", "direct distance dialing", "Rob Pike", "The New York Times", "cosmic microwave background radiation", "32-bit", "Frank Baldwin Jewett", "transistor", "Bellmac 32", "The Dilemma", "molecular beam epitaxy", "Gerhard Sessler", "William Gardner Pfann", "transatlantic communications cable", "binary code", "Richard Hamming", "Deal Test Site", "Springer Science & Business Media", "Radiodrum", "Maurice Karnaugh", "Alfred Cho", "RISC", "Wollensak", "Sidney Darlington", "PARC (company)", "Alfred Aho", "John H. Hammond, Jr.", "H. Earle Vaughan", "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation", "TAT-1", "New York City", "Industrial laboratory", "Harold Stephen Black", "AT&T Technologies", "John Bardeen", "vocoder", "AMPL", "Gilbert Vernam", "Arthur Ashkin", "Daniel Tsui", "List of Bell Labs alumni", "Mervin Kelly", "Source Code Control System", "Paris-Saclay", "4ESS switch", "Encyclopædia Britannica", "Experiments in Art and Technology", "American Telephone and Telegraph Company", "Chichester Bell", "Alcatel-Lucent", "Programming language", "anechoic chamber", "Robert Fourer", "planar process", "Walter Houser Brattain", "Red Bank, New Jersey", "Espoo, Finland", "Neptune Township, New Jersey", "complex number calculator", "laser cooling", "point-contact transistor", "Lincroft, New Jersey", "Russell Ohl", "Narendra Karmarkar", "Gallium Arsenide", "Lisle, Illinois", "Blit (computer terminal)", "YouTube", "carbon dioxide laser", "Leopold Stokowski", "solid-state electronics", "Philip W. Anderson", "George Paget Thomson", "Constellation shaping", "Grammy Award", "Erwin Tomash", "Aaron Marcus", "Herwig Kogelnik", "Wall Street Journal", "Organic electronics", "Homer Dudley", "PBX/IPBX", "Bjarne Stroustrup", "Charles K. Kao", "Sound film", "French franc", "Volta Prize", "solar cells", "Telcordia Technologies", "Bell Telephone Laboratories", "TRADIC", "Erna Schneider Hoover", "Greenleaf Whittier Pickard", "Ralph Brown", "transistor–transistor logic", "Charles Sumner Tainter", "Western Electric", "Harry Nyquist", "AT&T Corp.", "wire spring relay", "Bell Laboratories Record", "New Jersey", "Murray Hill, New Jersey", "American Bell Telephone Company", "Project Nike", "Willard Boyle", "Jeong H. Kim", "W. Edwards Deming", "Academy Award", "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers", "Dr. William R. Bennett Jr.", "personal computing", "Yoshua Bengio", "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", "microwave radio relay", "Harald T. Friis", "John Bertrand Johnson", "Westminster, Colorado", "material science", "History of cryptography", "Navistar", "Ali Javan", "TAT-8", "germanium", "Arthur Schawlow", "Daniel C. Tsui", "Nd:YAG laser", "Kondo effect", "Eric Betzig", "Time-division multiple access", "Robert B. Laughlin", "fractional quantum Hall effect", "Volta Laboratory and Bureau", "Wired (magazine)", "Jeffrey Ullman", "United States", "Oxford University Press", "Holmdel Township, New Jersey", "The Electrochemical Society", "Mendham Township, New Jersey", "John Hopcroft", "Robert Woodrow Wilson", "Alfred Y. Cho", "Turing Award", "Marc Rochkind", "software patent", "Hanover Township, New Jersey", "High speed photography", "Bellcore", "James Brown Fisk", "SIGSALY", "complex number", "Telstar 1", "Deal, New Jersey", "Joseph Kruskal", "Karnaugh map", "Phoenixville, Pennsylvania", "Gardiner Hubbard", "one-time pad", "C (programming language)", "Peter Shor", "Mohamed Atalla", "George C. Southworth", "dark matter", "modem", "Munich, Germany", "Rudolf Kompfner", "Speech synthesis", "Sunnyvale, California", "Breinigsville, Pennsylvania", "fiber-optic communication", "New Jersey Institute of Technology", "Herbert E. Ives", "Cornell University", "optical networking", "invention of the telephone", "Marcus Weldon", "Kumar Patel", "error detection and correction", "Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory", "John Sullivan Mayo", "Horst Ludwig Störmer", "Montauk, Long Island", "SONET", "Gerard Foschini", "Kwajalein", "Limon, Colorado", "Federico Capasso", "nanometer", "History of mobile phones", "control chart", "Alan Turing", "Limbo (programming language)", "Antwerp, Belgium", "Robert Laughlin", "Peter Weinberger", "National Medal of Technology", "Universe", "solar cell", "1ESS switch", "AT&T Corporation", "research and development", "George Stibitz", "Walter H. Brattain", "Walter A. Shewhart", "Middletown Township, New Jersey", "Gleick, James", "G A Campbell", "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems", "Ralph Hartley", "Boolean algebra (logic)", "galaxy", "George D. Edwards", "Princeton, New Jersey", "terahertz time-domain spectroscopy", "Reading, Pennsylvania", "Phonofilm", "electron diffraction", "AT&T Labs", "Steven Chu", "William Shockley", "Modification of Final Judgment", "UNIX", "C++", "Dawon Kahng", "telecommunication", "optical fiber", "Amos E. Joel Jr.", "Yokosuka", "Plan 9 from Bell Labs", "Shanghai", "Harold F. Dodge", "iconectiv", "National Historic Landmark", "Carl Frosch", "Yokosuka Research Park", "Piscataway, New Jersey", "Voder", "Stuttgart, Germany", "John R. Pierce", "North Andover, Massachusetts", "charge-coupled device", "Computer History Museum", "thermal noise", "George E. Smith", "CACI", "Simplified Message Desk Interface", "quantum cascade laser", "AT&T Laboratories", "Horst Störmer", "Secretary of Commerce", "Movietone sound system", "Network Architecture", "Georgia (U.S. state)", "Stereophonic sound", "breakup of the Bell System", "Myriam Sarachik", "digital subscriber line", "Nobel Prize", "greedy algorithm", "Westbeth Artists Community", "Bell System", "AWK", "Karmarkar's algorithm", "telephone exchange", "Herbert Hoover", "Yann LeCun", "Bell System Technical Journal", "IEEE Medal of Honor", "B (programming language)", "Nokia", "orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing", "Claude Shannon", "Indianapolis", "John Wilder Tukey", "lithography", "Unix", "Summit, New Jersey", "Oryx/Pecos", "The Idea Factory", "A. Michael Noll", "Arno A. Penzias", "Allies of World War II", "New Brunswick, New Jersey", "Charles H. Townes", "World War II", "Bell Labs Record", "Chester Township, New Jersey", "Physics World", "radio astronomy", "Cliffwood, New Jersey", "worse is better", "Ian Munro Ross", "Illinois", "Willard S. Boyle", "statistical process control", "Crawford Hill", "Mary N. Torrey", "Geoffrey Hinton", "laser", "AT&T", "C. Kumar N. Patel", "BEFLIX", "Schön scandal", "Joseph Mauborgne", "Technical University of Munich", "Nobel Prize for Physics", "Aberdeen Township, New Jersey", "network planning and design", "common-channel signaling", "Long Branch, New Jersey", "microprocessor", "James West (inventor)", "BELLMAC-8", "zone melting" ]
3,713	Bjarne Stroustrup	Bjarne Stroustrup (; ; born 30 December 1950) is a Danish computer scientist, known for the development of the C++ programming language. He led the Large-scale Programming Research department at Bell Labs, served as a professor of computer science at Texas A&M University, and spent over a decade at Morgan Stanley while also being a visiting professor at Columbia University. Since 2022 he has been a full professor at Columbia. == Early life and education == Stroustrup was born in Aarhus, Denmark. His family was working class, and he attended local schools. 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. 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. ==Career and research== 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. 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. 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. 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. As of July 2022, Stroustrup is a full professor of computer science at Columbia University. ===C++=== 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. The key language-technical areas of contribution of C++ are: A static type system with equal support for built-in types and user-defined types (that requires control of the construction, destruction, copying, and movement of objects; and operator overloading). Value and reference semantics. Systematic and general resource management (RAII): constructors, destructor, and exceptions relying on them. Support for efficient object-oriented programming: based on the Simula model with statically checked interfaces, multiple inheritance, and efficient implementation based on virtual function tables. Support for flexible and efficient generic programming: templates with specialization and concepts. Support for compile-time programming: template metaprogramming and compile-time evaluated functions ("constexpr functions"). Direct use of machine and operating system resources. Concurrency support through libraries (where necessary, implemented using intrinsics). 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. 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). ===Awards and honors=== Selected honors Stroustrup has been a noble doctor at ITMO University since 2013. Honorary Professor in Object Oriented Programming Languages, Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus. 2010. ===Publications=== Stroustrup has written or co-written a number of publications, including the books: A Tour of C++ (1st, 2nd and 3rd edition) Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ The C++ Programming Language (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition) The Design and Evolution of C++ The Annotated C++ Reference Manual. In all, these books have been translated into 21 languages. More than 100 academic articles, including: Thriving in a crowded and changing world	[ "Addison-Wesley Professional", "Texas A&M University", "Dr. Dobb's Journal", "John Scott Medal", "Aarhus University", "multiple inheritance", "Aarhus", "Computer History Museum", "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers", "University of Cambridge", "Kristen Nygaard", "template metaprogramming", "Resource acquisition is initialization", "Addison-Wesley Publishing Company", "ACM Fellow", "C (programming language)", "National Academy of Engineering", "NAE Member", "distributed computing", "Denmark", "computer science", "Cand.scient.", "PhD", "Aarhus, Denmark", "Computer Pioneer Award", "computer scientist", "IET Faraday Medal", "operator overloading", "Virtual method table", "Morgan Stanley", "Doctor of Philosophy", "Dahl–Nygaard Prize", "full professor", "David Wheeler (computer scientist)", "Faraday Medal", "The C++ Programming Language", "Bell Labs", "William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement", "C++", "Columbia University", "IEEE Computer Society", "working class", "Simula", "AT&T Bell Labs", "Grace Murray Hopper Award", "generic programming", "Churchill College, Cambridge", "ITMO University", "Charles Stark Draper Prize", "object-oriented programming", "Association for Computing Machinery", "visiting professor", "IEEE Fellow", "Computer Science", "Murray Hill, New Jersey", "Fellow", "mathematics" ]
3,717	Brain	The brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for special senses such as vision, hearing, and olfaction. Being the most specialized organ, it is responsible for receiving information from the sensory nervous system, processing those information (thought, cognition, and intelligence) and the coordination of motor control (muscle activity and endocrine system). 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. 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 cytoplasmic processes known as dendrites and axons. Axons 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. 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. 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. 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. == Structure == 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. === Cellular structure === The brains of all species are composed primarily of two broad classes of brain 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. In humans, the cerebral cortex contains approximately 14–16 billion neurons, 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. 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. 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. and cnidarians (which have a diffuse nervous system consisting of a nerve net), 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, such as vertebrates, it is a large and very complex organ. 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. === Invertebrates === 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. 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. There are several invertebrate species whose brains have been studied intensively because they have properties that make them convenient for experimental work: Fruit flies (Drosophila), because of the large array of techniques available for studying their genetics, have been a natural subject for studying the role of genes in brain development. In spite of the large evolutionary distance between insects and mammals, many aspects of Drosophila neurogenetics have been shown to be relevant to humans. The first biological clock genes, for example, were identified by examining Drosophila mutants that showed disrupted daily activity cycles. A search in the genomes of vertebrates revealed a set of analogous genes, which were found to play similar roles in the mouse biological clock—and therefore almost certainly in the human biological clock as well. Studies done on Drosophila, also show that most neuropil regions of the brain are continuously reorganized throughout life in response to specific living conditions. The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, like Drosophila, has been studied largely because of its importance in genetics. In the early 1970s, Sydney Brenner chose it as a model organism for studying the way that genes control development. One of the advantages of working with this worm is that the body plan is very stereotyped: the nervous system of the hermaphrodite contains exactly 302 neurons, always in the same places, making identical synaptic connections in every worm. Brenner's team sliced worms into thousands of ultrathin sections and photographed each one under an electron microscope, then visually matched fibers from section to section, to map out every neuron and synapse in the entire body. The complete neuronal wiring diagram of C.elegans – its connectome was achieved. Nothing approaching this level of detail is available for any other organism, and the information gained has enabled a multitude of studies that would otherwise have not been possible. The sea slug Aplysia californica was chosen by Nobel Prize-winning neurophysiologist Eric Kandel as a model for studying the cellular basis of learning and memory, because of the simplicity and accessibility of its nervous system, and it has been examined in hundreds of experiments. === Vertebrates === The first vertebrates appeared over 500 million years ago (Mya) during the Cambrian period, and may have resembled the modern jawless fish (hagfish and lamprey) in form. Jawed vertebrates appeared by 445 Mya, tetrapods by 350 Mya, amniotes by 310 Mya and mammaliaforms by 200 Mya (approximately). Each vertebrate clade has an equally long evolutionary history, but the brains of modern fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds 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 structures, but many are rudimentary in the hagfish, whereas in mammals the foremost part (forebrain, especially the telencephalon) is greatly developed and expanded. Brains are most commonly compared in terms of their mass. The relationship between brain size, body size and other variables has been studied across a wide range of vertebrate species. As a rule of thumb, brain size increases with body size, but not in a simple linear proportion. In general, smaller animals tend to have proportionally 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, who have to implement various hunting strategies against the ever changing anti-predator adaptations, tend to have larger brains relative to body size than their prey. 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 vesicular swellings at the front end of the neural tube; these swellings eventually become the forebrain (prosencephalon), midbrain (mesencephalon) and hindbrain (rhombencephalon), respectively. At the earliest stages of brain development, the three areas are roughly equal in size. In many aquatic/semiaquatic vertebrates such as fish and amphibians, the three parts remain similar in size in adults, but in terrestrial tetrapods such as mammals, the forebrain becomes much larger than the other parts, the hindbrain develops a bulky dorsal extension known as the cerebellum, and the midbrain becomes very small as a result. (though at the same time blocking antibodies and some drugs, thereby presenting special challenges in treatment of diseases of the brain). As a result of the osmotic restriction by the blood-brain barrier, the metabolites within the brain are cleared mostly by bulk flow of the cerebrospinal fluid within the glymphatic system instead of via venules like other parts of the body. Neuroanatomists usually divide the vertebrate brain into six main subregions: the telencephalon (the cerebral hemispheres), diencephalon (thalamus and hypothalamus), mesencephalon (midbrain), cerebellum, pons and medulla oblongata, with the midbrain, pons and medulla often collectively called the brainstem. Each of these areas has a complex internal structure. Some parts, such as the cerebral cortex and the cerebellar cortex, are folded into convoluted gyri and sulci in order to maximize surface area within the available intracranial space. Other parts, such as the thalamus and hypothalamus, consist of many small clusters of nuclei known as "ganglia". Thousands of distinguishable areas can be identified within the vertebrate brain based on fine distinctions of neural structure, chemistry, and connectivity. These distortions can make it difficult to match brain components from one species with those of another species. Here is a list of some of the most important vertebrate brain components, along with a brief description of their functions as currently understood: The medulla, along with the spinal cord, contains many small nuclei involved in a wide variety of sensory and involuntary motor functions such as vomiting, heart rate and digestive processes. The hypothalamus is a small region at the base of the forebrain, whose complexity and importance belies its size. It is composed of numerous small nuclei, each with distinct connections and neurochemistry. The hypothalamus is engaged in additional involuntary or partially voluntary acts such as sleep and wake cycles, eating and drinking, and the release of some hormones. The thalamus is a collection of nuclei with diverse functions: some are involved in relaying information to and from the cerebral hemispheres, while others are involved in motivation. The subthalamic area (zona incerta) seems to contain action-generating systems for several types of "consummatory" behaviors such as eating, drinking, defecation, and copulation. The cerebellum modulates the outputs of other brain systems, whether motor-related or thought related, to make them certain and precise. Removal of the cerebellum does not prevent an animal from doing anything in particular, but it makes actions hesitant and clumsy. This precision is not built-in but learned by trial and error. The muscle coordination learned while riding a bicycle is an example of a type of neural plasticity that may take place largely within the cerebellum. The optic tectum allows actions to be directed toward points in space, most commonly in response to visual input. In mammals, it is usually referred to as the superior colliculus, and its best-studied function is to direct eye movements. It also directs reaching movements and other object-directed actions. It receives strong visual inputs, but also inputs from other senses that are useful in directing actions, such as auditory input in owls and input from the thermosensitive pit organs in snakes. In some primitive fishes, such as lampreys, this region is the largest part of the brain. The superior colliculus is part of the midbrain. The pallium is a layer of grey matter that lies on the surface of the forebrain and is the most complex and most recent evolutionary development of the brain as an organ. In reptiles and mammals, it is called the cerebral cortex. Multiple functions involve the pallium, including smell and spatial memory. In mammals, where it becomes so large as to dominate the brain, it takes over functions from many other brain areas. In many mammals, the cerebral cortex consists of folded bulges called gyri that create deep furrows or fissures called sulci. The folds increase the surface area of the cortex and therefore increase the amount of gray matter and the amount of information that can be stored and processed. The hippocampus, strictly speaking, is found only in mammals. However, the area it derives from, the medial pallium, has counterparts in all vertebrates. There is evidence that this part of the brain is involved in complex events such as spatial memory and navigation in fishes, birds, reptiles, and mammals. The basal ganglia are a group of interconnected structures in the forebrain. The primary function of the basal ganglia appears to be action selection: they send inhibitory signals to all parts of the brain that can generate motor behaviors, and in the right circumstances can release the inhibition, so that the action-generating systems are able to execute their actions. Reward and punishment exert their most important neural effects by altering connections within the basal ganglia. The olfactory bulb is a special structure that processes olfactory sensory signals and sends its output to the olfactory part of the pallium. It is a major brain component in many vertebrates, but is greatly reduced in humans and other primates (whose senses are dominated by information acquired by sight rather than smell). ==== Reptiles ==== Modern reptiles and mammals diverged from a common ancestor around 320 million years ago. The number of extant reptiles far exceeds the number of mammalian species, with 11,733 recognized species of reptiles compared to 5,884 extant mammals. Along with the species diversity, reptiles have diverged in terms of external morphology, from limbless to tetrapod gliders to armored chelonians, reflecting adaptive radiation to a diverse array of environments. Morphological differences are reflected in the nervous system phenotype, such as: absence of lateral motor column neurons in snakes, which innervate limb muscles controlling limb movements; absence of motor neurons that innervate trunk muscles in tortoises; presence of innervation from the trigeminal nerve to pit organs responsible to infrared detection in snakes. For instance, crocodilians have the largest brain volume to body weight proportion, followed by turtles, lizards, and snakes. Reptiles vary in the investment in different brain sections. Crocodilians have the largest telencephalon, while snakes have the smallest. Turtles have the largest diencephalon per body weight whereas crocodilians have the smallest. On the other hand, lizards have the largest mesencephalon. Vertebrates share the highest levels of similarities during embryological development, controlled by conserved transcription factors and signaling centers, including gene expression, morphological and cell type differentiation. In fact, high levels of transcriptional factors can be found in all areas of the brain in reptiles and mammals, with shared neuronal clusters enlightening brain evolution. Elaborated brains are characterized by migrated neuronal cell bodies away from the periventricular matrix, region of neuronal development, forming organized nuclear groups. 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. In placentals, there is a wide nerve tract connecting the cerebral hemispheres called the corpus callosum. ===== Primates ===== 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. 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. == Development == 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. 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. There has long been debate about whether the qualities of mind, personality, and intelligence can be attributed to heredity or to upbringing. Although many details remain to be settled, neuroscience shows that both factors are important. Genes determine both the general form of the brain and how it reacts to experience, but experience is required to refine the matrix of synaptic connections, resulting in greatly increased complexity. The presence or absence of experience is critical at key periods of development. Additionally, the quantity and quality of experience are important. For example, animals raised in enriched environments demonstrate thick cerebral cortices, indicating a high density of synaptic connections, compared to animals with restricted levels of stimulation. == Physiology == 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. 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. 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. === Electrical activity === 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. 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), lactate, acetate, and possibly amino acids. == Function == 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. === Perception === 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. Each sensory system begins with specialized receptor cells, \|- ! scope=row style="text-align:left" \| Oculomotor nuclei \| style="background: tan" \| Midbrain \|\| style="background:#ffdead" \| Contains motor neurons that directly activate the eye muscles \|- ! scope=row style="text-align:left" \| Cerebellum \| style="background: tan" \| Hindbrain \|\| style="background:#ffdead" \| Calibrates precision and timing of movements \|- ! scope=row style="text-align:left" \| Motor cortex \| style="background: tan" \| Frontal lobe \|\| style="background:#ffdead" \| Direct cortical activation of spinal motor circuits \|- ! scope=row style="text-align:left" \| Premotor cortex \| style="background: tan" \| Frontal lobe \|\| style="background:#ffdead" \| Groups elementary movements into coordinated patterns \|- ! scope=row style="text-align:left" \| Prefrontal cortex \| style="background: tan" \| Frontal lobe \|\| style="background:#ffdead" \| Planning and other executive functions \|} === Sleep === 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. === Motivation === 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. 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. === Learning and memory === 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. Neuroscientists currently distinguish several types of learning and memory that are implemented by the brain in distinct ways: Working memory is the ability of the brain to maintain a temporary representation of information about the task that an animal is currently engaged in. This sort of dynamic memory is thought to be mediated by the formation of cell assemblies—groups of activated neurons that maintain their activity by constantly stimulating one another. Episodic memory is the ability to remember the details of specific events. This sort of memory can last for a lifetime. Much evidence implicates the hippocampus in playing a crucial role: people with severe damage to the hippocampus sometimes show amnesia, that is, inability to form new long-lasting episodic memories. Semantic memory is the ability to learn facts and relationships. This sort of memory is probably stored largely in the cerebral cortex, mediated by changes in connections between cells that represent specific types of information. Instrumental learning is the ability for rewards and punishments to modify behavior. It is implemented by a network of brain areas centered on the basal ganglia. Motor learning is the ability to refine patterns of body movement by practicing, or more generally by repetition. A number of brain areas are involved, including the premotor cortex, basal ganglia, and especially the cerebellum, which functions as a large memory bank for microadjustments of the parameters of movement. == Research == The field of neuroscience encompasses all approaches that seek to understand the brain and the rest of the nervous system. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Recent years have seen increasing applications of genetic and genomic techniques to the study of the brain In doing so, they annotated 28 cell types to evaluate expression and chromatin variation across gene families and drug targets. They identified about half a million cell type–specific regulatory elements and about 1.5 million single-cell expression quantitative trait loci (i.e., genomic variants with strong statistical associations with changes in gene expression within specific cell types), which were then used to build cell-type regulatory networks (the study also describes cell-to-cell communication networks). These networks were found to manifest cellular changes in aging and neuropsychiatric disorders. As part of the same investigation, a machine learning model was designed to accurately impute single-cell expression (this model prioritized ~250 disease-risk genes and drug targets with associated cell types). === History === 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. 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: 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". 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. 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: 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. 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. Theorists have worked to understand these response patterns by constructing mathematical models of neurons and neural networks, which can be simulated using computers. 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. 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. 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. 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. == Society and culture == === As food === Animal brains are used as food in numerous cuisines. === In rituals === Some archaeological evidence suggests that the mourning rituals of European Neanderthals also involved the consumption of the brain. 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.	[ "centralize", "Golgi's method", "mind", "primate", "smooth muscle", "Eric Kandel", "Cambrian period", "Rapid eye movement sleep", "thought", "Neuroanatomy", "Shark", "digital computer", "cerebral hemispheres", "Claude Bernard", "learning", "Aristotle", "second messenger system", "BDNF", "Oculomotor nucleus", "Nervous system", "exponentiation", "sulcus (neuroanatomy)", "information theory", "mya (unit)", "chemistry", "Fore (people)", "glutamic acid", "bats", "neurotrophic factors", "endothelial cell", "Working memory", "premotor cortex", "bulk flow", "Caenorhabditis elegans", "hypothalamus", "prion", "Neuroglia", "multisensory integration", "cerebellum", "milieu intérieur", "autonomic nervous system", "ventral nerve cord", "nerve net", "antibody", "thermostat", "dura mater", "vertebrate", "mental disorder", "Motor learning", "epilepsy", "Aquatic locomotion", "Neanderthal", "hippocampus", "Motor cortex", "Brain health and pollution", "Prefrontal cortex", "axon", "memory", "philosophy", "Premotor cortex", "Skate (fish)", "segmentation (biology)", "superior colliculus", "brain disease", "Sydney Brenner", "cognition", "fixation (histology)", "Decade of the Brain", "sponge", "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B", "phenotype", "putamen", "On the Sacred Disease", "membrane potential", "squid", "reptile", "fMRI", "pons", "nicotine", "Norepinephrine", "grey matter", "rule of thumb", "cytoplasmic process", "Brain positron emission tomography", "Armenia", "cnidaria", "arthropod", "Non-rapid eye movement sleep", "primary motor cortex", "Common chimpanzee", "metabolite", "multielectrode array", "Aging brain", "substantia nigra", "Episodic memory", "Galen", "motor control", "biological membrane", "staining", "pit organ", "Bernard Katz", "cellular differentiation", "attention", "cerebrum", "neuroplasticity", "neural plate", "pyramidal cell", "slow wave sleep", "executive function", "Sulcus (neuroanatomy)", "walking", "evolutionary arms race", "binocular disparity", "meninges", "cephalization", "semiaquatic", "Kuru (disease)", "nervous system", "Physiologically", "embryonic development", "medical imaging", "gene", "corpus callosum", "connectome", "intracranial space", "anti-predator adaptation", "cocaine", "diencephalon", "Central nervous system disease", "olfaction", "Functional imaging", "arachnoid mater", "negative feedback", "GABA", "perfusion", "neocortex", "neurotransmitter", "amniote", "skull", "myelin", "physical activity", "supraesophageal ganglion", "Cerebral arteries", "DNA", "brain size", "Hippocrates", "mammaliaform", "jawless fish", "Antidepressant", "Ancient Greek", "norepinephrine", "immunostaining", "Papua New Guinea", "BBC Radio 4", "neocerebellum", "Beta wave", "hindbrain", "computational neuroscience", "working memory", "endocrine system", "leech", "lamprey", "neural tube", "The Computer and the Brain", "Alcohol (drug)", "stem cell", "arachnid", "retinohypothalamic tract", "Cryogenian", "Functional magnetic resonance imaging", "Supplementary motor area", "action selection", "Brain–computer interface", "model organism", "bilaterians", "animal", "Pallium (neuroanatomy)", "glymphatic system", "In Our Time (radio series)", "breathing", "Magnetoception", "ganglia", "Horse", "Nervous system network models", "hair cell", "bilateral symmetry", "brain parenchyma", "neuroimaging", "Visual perception", "Receptor (biochemistry)", "electroencephalography", "head", "suprachiasmatic nucleus", "Science (journal)", "Areni-1 cave complex", "zona incerta", "Tim Bliss", "Ontogeny", "adult", "Brain Research Reviews", "swallowing", "Santiago Ramón y Cajal", "spatial memory", "pia mater", "central pattern generator", "toxin", "Cerebellum", "executive functions", "Electroreception", "venule", "echinoderm", "Conserved sequence", "genomics", "John von Neumann", "Predator", "gamma wave", "tunicate", "brain damage", "long-term potentiation", "basal ganglia", "dentate gyrus", "Torsten Wiesel", "Outline of neuroscience", "Neurological disorder", "ear", "surface area", "dopamine", "sensory nervous system", "globus pallidus", "human", "pallium (neuroanatomy)", "cerebrospinal fluid", "cell–cell interaction", "Brain damage", "amygdala", "Europe", "Semantic memory", "rhombencephalon", "delta wave", "Turtle", "supplementary motor area", "visual perception", "gyri", "Gut–brain axis", "Anterior horn of spinal cord", "neurology", "immortality", "neuropil", "Rhesus macaque", "Dog", "proprioception", "Cognitive science", "David H. Hubel", "Charles Scott Sherrington", "gamma-aminobutyric acid", "neuroglia", "nervous tissue", "metencephalon", "muscle", "cerebral cortex", "foresight (psychology)", "computer science", "growth cone", "pyramidal tract", "hermaphrodite", "human brain", "Dale's principle", "artificial intelligence", "dream", "neurovascular unit", "bilateria", "terrestrial animal", "nematode", "List of neuroscience databases", "circadian rhythm", "motivation", "chimpanzee", "Operant conditioning", "acetylcholine", "Near infrared spectroscopy", "myelinated", "organ (biology)", "osmotic", "pituitary gland", "serotonin", "retina", "myelencephalon", "fish", "Infrared sensing in snakes", "natural environment", "fatty acid", "epileptic seizure", "Motor system", "evolution", "somatic nervous system", "cannabinoids", "Caprylic acid", "Psychology", "power law", "Journal of Neurophysiology", "photoreceptor cell", "crustacean", "genetic engineering", "body plan", "amino acid", "Staining", "reticular formation", "homeostasis", "tardigrade", "dorsal nerve cord", "action potential", "clock gene", "Camillo Golgi", "midbrain", "cochlea", "information", "prosencephalon", "neurogenesis", "hunting strategies", "Computational neurogenetic modeling", "Bottlenose dolphin", "receptor (biochemistry)", "Heptanoic acid", "Democritus", "vertebral column", "teleostei", "arteriole", "central nervous system", "segmental ganglia", "Stimulus modality", "Basal ganglia", "Embryology", "connective tissue", "eye", "hagfish", "bird", "prefrontal cortex", "Jawed vertebrate", "placental", "telencephalon", "thalamus", "extracellular", "pathogen", "ganglion", "Calcium", "psychoactive drug", "lactic acid", "Terje Lømo", "clade", "Multisensory integration", "Rat", "Environmental enrichment (neural)", "beef brain", "Andrew Huxley", "ketone bodies", "mammal", "encephalization quotient", "transcription factor", "Cre-Lox recombination", "cybernetics", "olfactory bulb", "optic lobe (arthropod)", "teleost", "Computational neuroscience", "reward system", "acetate", "histology", "brain vesicle", "blood–brain barrier", "ectoderm", "synapse", "rat", "archaeology", "red nucleus", "Luigi Galvani", "Nature versus nurture", "amnesia", "neuron", "hormone", "gyrus", "rostral (anatomical term)", "subthalamic nucleus", "brainstem", "General anaesthetic", "neurogenetics", "Batoidea", "Mollusca", "tetrapod", "fluoxetine", "medulla oblongata", "René Descartes", "invertebrate", "white matter", "biological computer", "hearing", "aquatic animal", "mass", "Optogenetics", "sensory system", "Elephant", "optic nerves", "brain cell", "Neurotransmitter", "Slender glass lizard", "mesencephalon", "subarachnoid space", "amphibian", "genetics", "spinal cord", "chlorpromazine", "raphe nuclei", "motor neuron", "special senses", "cephalopod", "Hippocratic Corpus", "Soma (biology)", "optic chiasm", "alpha wave", "psychiatry", "Developmental signaling center", "synaptic plasticity", "locus coeruleus", "Human Brain Project", "forebrain", "heroin", "neurophysiology", "Alan Lloyd Hodgkin", "neural groove", "Action potential", "dorsal (anatomy)", "glucose", "magnetoencephalography", "Hebbian theory", "dendrite", "intelligence", "Draco (lizard)", "Aplysia", "reflex", "Serotonin" ]
3,719	Byzantium	Byzantium () or Byzantion () 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 Eastern Roman Empire, which also became known by the former name of the city as 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. ==Etymology== 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, Byzántios, plural Byzántioi (, ; adjective the same) referred to Byzantion's inhabitants, also used as an ethnonym for the people of the city and as a family name. 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. 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 (), had ceased to exist. 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. 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. The city was taken by the Persian Empire at the time of the Scythian campaign (513 BC) of Emperor 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. 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. 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. After the war, Byzantium lost its city status and free city privileges, but Caracalla persuaded Severus to restore these rights. In appreciation, the Byzantines named Caracalla an archon of their city. 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"). 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. == Emblem == 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). 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. 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. 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. 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. ==People== Homerus, tragedian, lived in the early 3rd century BC Philo, engineer, lived Epigenes of Byzantium, astrologer, lived in the 3rd–2nd century BC Aristophanes of Byzantium, a scholar who flourished in Alexandria, 3rd–2nd century BC Myro, a Hellenistic female poet	[ "Perinthus", "Athens", "Eastern Roman Empire", "wikisource:Natural History (Rackham, Jones, & Eichholz)/Book 4", "Pliny the Elder", "Istanbul", "synecdoche", "Lygos", "Ottoman Empire", "Photius", "bezant", "Byzas", "Chalcedon", "Athenian military", "Thrace", "Ancient Greece", "Cassius Dio", "star and crescent", "Philo of Byzantium", "Obverse and reverse", "Aegean Sea", "Darius I", "Timeline of Istanbul history", "Nike (mythology)", "Byzantine coinage", "ethnonym", "Alexander the Great", "Hesychius of Miletus", "Lysimachus", "Eusebius", "Ancient Libya", "Hellenistic civilization", "throne", "Romanization of Greek", "Natural History (Pliny)", "Pescennius Niger", "European Scythian campaign of Darius I", "eastern Roman Empire", "Sparta", "Suda", "trident", "Roman Empire", "Mediterranean Sea", "Classical Athens", "Skudra", "Constantine I (emperor)", "Turkey", "Ankara", "Eustathius of Thessalonica", "Moero", "Ottoman Turks", "New Rome", "Latin Empire", "Cilicia", "Fall of Constantinople", "Byzantine Empire", "Sarayburnu", "Marmara Region", "Polis", "Megara", "Justinian I", "Peloponnesian War", "Constantinople", "Fatih", "exergue", "Mithradates VI Eupator", "Achaemenid Empire", "Hieronymus Wolf", "Aristophanes of Byzantium", "Epigenes of Byzantium", "Anglicisation of names", "late antiquity", "Philip II of Macedon", "Stephanus of Byzantium", "Alexandria", "Culture of ancient Rome", "Kingdom of Pontus", "Herodotus", "Septimius Severus", "Constantine the Great", "Names of Constantinople", "Dram (unit)", "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea", "Hellespont", "Athena", "Caracalla", "Silver", "meteor", "Basileus", "Black Sea", "Hecate", "wreath", "Roman emperor", "Fatih, Istanbul", "Greeks", "Thracian", "Sestos", "Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht", "Horns of Ammon", "Ellipsis (linguistics)", "Faustus of Byzantium", "Artemis", "Hellenistic", "classical antiquity", "Thracian language", "Homerus of Byzantium", "Middle Ages" ]
3,721	Biotic	Biotics describe living or once living components of a community; for example organisms, such as animals and plants. Biotic may refer to: Life, the condition of living organisms Biology, the study of life Biotic material, which is derived from living organisms Biotic components in ecology Biotic potential, an organism's reproductive capacity Biotic community, all the interacting organisms living together in a specific habitat Biotic energy, a vital force theorized by biochemist Benjamin Moore Biotic Baking Brigade, an unofficial group of pie-throwing activists	[ "Biotic material", "Biotic potential", "Biology", "Life", "Biotic component", "Antibiotics", "Prebiotic (nutrition)", "Abiotic", "Probiotic", "Biotic energy", "Biotic Baking Brigade", "Synbiotics", "Biotic community" ]
3,722	Berlin Wall	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. 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 (, ). Conversely, West Berlin's 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. 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 deadly force associated with 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 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, and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the Wall over the next few weeks. 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. 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. 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 of highly educated people, which came to be known as the "Brain Drain". 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. 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. 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" (). As West Germany's economy grew, and its standard of living steadily improved, many East Germans wanted to move to West Germany. ===Emigration westward in the early 1950s=== 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. ==Erection of the inner German border== 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. 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." 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. 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. the border in Berlin remained considerably more accessible because it was administered by all four occupying powers. On 11 December 1957, East Germany introduced a new passport law that reduced the overall number of refugees leaving Eastern Germany. The Berlin sector border was essentially a "loophole" through which Eastern Bloc citizens could still escape. ===Brain drain=== The emigrants tended to be young and well-educated, leading to the "brain drain" feared by officials in East Germany. 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. 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. 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. ==Start of the construction (1961)== On 15 June 1961, First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party and GDR State Council chairman Walter Ulbricht stated in an international press conference, (No one has the intention of erecting a wall!). It was the first time the colloquial term (wall) had been used in this context. 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. 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 , in a wooded area to the north of East Berlin. There, Ulbricht signed the order to close the border and erect a wall. The date of 13 August became commonly referred to as Barbed Wire Sunday in Germany. and the Lenné Triangle that is now much of the Potsdamer Platz development. 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. ===Immediate effects=== 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 () 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 to their advantage in any way to leave there that monument to communist failure." The East German government claimed that the Wall was an "anti-fascist protective rampart" () 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. ===Secondary response=== 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." 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. 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 long, and covered from Marienborn to Berlin in full battle gear. East German police watched from beside trees next to the autobahn all the way along. 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: despite 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. ==Structure and adjacent areas== ===Layout and modifications=== The Berlin Wall was more than long. In June 1962, a second, parallel fence, also known as a "hinterland" wall (inner wall), was built some 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; Wire fence and concrete block wall (1961) Improved wire fence (1962–1965) Improved concrete wall (1965–1975) (Border Wall 75) (1975–1989) The "fourth-generation Wall", known officially as "" (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 high and 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. 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. 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 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. ===Surrounding municipalities=== 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: Oberhavel: Mühlenbecker Land (partially), Glienicke/Nordbahn, Hohen Neuendorf, Hennigsdorf Havelland: Schönwalde-Glien, Falkensee, Dallgow-Döberitz Potsdam (urban district) Potsdam-Mittelmark: Stahnsdorf, Kleinmachnow, Teltow Teltow-Fläming: Großbeeren, Blankenfelde-Mahlow Dahme-Spreewald: Schönefeld (partially) ==Official crossings and usage== 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. 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, and 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). 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. 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. ===Crossing=== 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. Visits of relatives for important family matters People who had to travel to the West for professional reasons (for example, artists, truck drivers, musicians, writers, etc.) 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 number 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. Prior official figures listed 98 as being killed. 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: 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. 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. 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. 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 German 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. 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. 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." ==Concerts by Western artists and growing anti-Wall sentiment== ===David Bowie, 1987=== 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, ===Bruce Springsteen, 1988=== 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. ===David Hasselhoff, 1989=== 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. ==Comments by politicians== 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: 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. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher commented in 1982: 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: 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. ==Fall == 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 parliamentary 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. 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 Pan-European 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. 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 ("We want out!"). Then protestors began to chant ("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. The longtime leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker, resigned on 18 October 1989 and was replaced by Egon Krenz that day. 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. 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". He repeated that it was immediate in an interview with American journalist Tom Brokaw. 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." 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. 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. 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". ==Legacy== File:Berlin wall 1.jpg\|Remains of the Wall adjacent to the Topography of Terror, August 2007 File:Checkpoint Charlie Memorial.JPG\|A memorial of over a thousand crosses and a segment of the Wall for those who died trying to cross. The memorial stood for ten months from 2004 to 2005. File:BERLINER MAUER 1961–1989 plaque.jpg\|alt=A "BERLINER MAUER 1961–1989" plaque near Checkpoint Charlie signifying where the Wall stood\|A plaque near Checkpoint Charlie signifying where the Wall stood File:Fort Gordon's Berlin Wall Display.JPG\|Display of two sections of the Wall and a "You are leaving" sign at Fort Eisenhower, Georgia, US File:Berlin Wall from the East.jpg\|The Berlin Wall from the East Berlin side, 1967 File:Berlin wall-1.jpg\|A sign reading "Until we see each other again in the capital of the GDR" File:Berlin wall-3.jpg\|Czech hedgehog anti-tank obstacles and the Wall File:Berlin Wall Exhibition 2014-1.jpg\|An exhibition dedicated to the 25th anniversary to the Berlin Wall destruction was located at Potsdamer Platz Arkaden. File:Hole in berlin wall.jpg\|A hole in the Berlin wall, 2019 Little is left of the Wall at its original site, which was destroyed almost in its entirety. Three long sections are still standing: an 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 , 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. The former leadership in the Schlesischen Busch in the vicinity of the Puschkinallee—the listed, twelve-meter high watchtower stands in a piece of the wall strip, which has been turned into a park, near the Lohmühleninsel. The former "Kieler Eck" (Kiel Corner) on Kieler Strasse in Mitte, close to the Berlin-Spandau Schifffahrtskanal—the tower is protected as a historic monument and now surrounded on three sides by new buildings. It houses a memorial site named after the Wallopfer Günter Litfin, who was shot at Humboldthafen in August 1961. The memorial site, which is run by the initiative of his brother Jürgen Liftin, can be viewed after registration. The former management office at Nieder Neuendorf, in the district of Hennigsdorf of the same name—here is the permanent exhibition on the history of the border installations between the two German states. The former management station at Bergfelde, today the district of Hohen Neuendorf—The tower is located in an already reforested area of the border strip and is used together with surrounding terrain as a nature protection tower by the Deutschen Waldjugend. The only one of the much slimmer observation towers (BT-11) in the Erna-Berger-Strasse also in Mitte—however, was moved by a few meters for construction work and is no longer in the original location; There is an exhibition about the wall in the area of the Potsdamer Platz in planning. 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. 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 . It is part of the initiative by the Berlin Senate since 11 October 2001. ===Cultural differences=== 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. 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. ===Wall segments around the world=== Not all segments of the Wall were ground up as the Wall was being torn down. Many segments have been given to various institutions around 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. ===50th anniversary commemoration=== 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. ===Polling=== A small minority still support the wall or even support rebuilding the wall back up. In 2008 a poll found that 11% of participants from the former West Berlin and 12% form the former East Berlin said it would be better if the wall was still in place. A November 2009 poll found that 12% of Germans said the wall should be rebuilt. The poll also found that in the former West German states support was at 12% and in the former East German states it was 13%. A September 2009 poll found 15% of Germans supported a wall, while in the west it was 16% and in the east it was at 10%. A 2010 poll from Emnid for Bild, found that 24% of West Germans and 23% of East Germans wished for the wall still being in place. A 2019 poll from Berliner Zeitung on the 30th anniversary, found that 8% of Berliners supported the idea if the wall was still standing, The overwhelming majority of Berliners at 87% however supported the fall of the wall. The poll also found that 28% of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and 16% of Free Democratic Party (FDP) supporters supported bringing back the wall. A 2019 Yougov poll found that 13% of Germans wanted the wall back, in the West support was at 14% and in the East it was 13%. A 2019 poll from Forsa found 35% of Berliners thought the construction of the Wall was not so wrong with supporters of the Left Party at 74%. ==Related media== ===Documentaries=== Documentary films specifically about the Berlin Wall include: The Tunnel (December 1962), an NBC News Special documentary film. The Road to the Wall (1962), a documentary film. Something to Do with the Wall (1991), a documentary about the fall of the Berlin Wall by Ross McElwee and Marilyn Levine, originally conceived as a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of its construction. Rabbit à la Berlin (2009), a documentary film, directed by Bartek Konopka, told from the point of view of a group of wild rabbits that inhabited the zone between the two walls. The American Sector (2020), a documentary by Courtney Stephens and Pacho Velez that tracks down the wall segments located in the U.S. ===Feature films=== Fictional films featuring the Berlin Wall have included: Escape from East Berlin (1962), American-West German film inspired by story of 29 East Germans that tunneled under the wall The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), a Cold War classic set on both sides of The Wall, from the eponymous book by John le Carré, directed by Martin Ritt. The Boy and the Ball and the Hole in the Wall (1965), Spanish-Mexican co-production. Funeral in Berlin (1966), a spy movie starring Michael Caine, directed by Guy Hamilton. Casino Royale (1967), a film featuring a segment centred on a house apparently bisected by the Wall. The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz (1968), a Cold War spy farce about an Olympic athlete who defects, directed by George Marshall. Berlin Tunnel 21 (1981), a made-for-TV movie about a former American officer leading an attempt to build a tunnel underneath The Wall as a rescue route. Night Crossing (1982), a British-American drama film starring John Hurt, Jane Alexander, and Beau Bridges, based on the true story of the Strelzyk and Wetzel families, who on 16 September 1979, attempted to escape from East Germany to West Germany in a homemade hot air balloon, during the days of the Inner German border-era. The Innocent (1993), a film about the joint CIA/MI6 operation to build a tunnel under East Berlin in the 1950s, directed by John Schlesinger. Sonnenallee (1999), a German comedy film about life in East Berlin in the late 1970s, directed by Leander Haußmann. The Tunnel (2001), a dramatization of a collaborative tunnel under the Wall, filmed by Roland Suso Richter. Good Bye Lenin! (2003), film set during German unification that depicts the fall of the Wall through archive footage Open The Wall (2014), featuring a dramatized story of the East-German border guard who was the first to let East Berliners cross the border to West Berlin on 9 November 1989. Bridge of Spies (2015), featuring a dramatized subplot about Frederic Pryor, in which an American economics graduate student visits his German girlfriend in East Berlin just as the Berlin Wall is being built. He tries to bring her back into West Berlin but is stopped by Stasi agents and arrested as a spy. ===Literature=== Some novels specifically about the Berlin Wall include: John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), classic Cold War spy fiction. Len Deighton, Berlin Game (1983), classic Cold War spy fiction T.H.E. Hill, The Day Before the Berlin Wall: Could We Have Stopped It? – An Alternate History of Cold War Espionage, 2010 – based on a legend told in Berlin in the 1970s. John Marks' The Wall (1999) in which an American spy defects to the East just hours before the Wall falls. Marcia Preston's West of the Wall (2007, published as Trudy's Promise in North America), in which the heroine, left behind in East Berlin, waits for news of her husband after he makes his escape over the Berlin Wall. Peter Schneider's The Wall Jumper, (1984; German: Der Mauerspringer, 1982), the Wall plays a central role in this novel set in Berlin of the 1980s. ===Music=== Music related to the Berlin Wall includes: Stationary Traveller (1984), a concept album by Camel that takes the theme of families and friends split up by the building of the Berlin Wall. "West of the Wall", a 1962 top 40 hit by Toni Fisher, which tells the tale of two lovers separated by the newly built Berlin Wall. "Holidays in the Sun", a song by the English punk rock band Sex Pistols which prominently mentions the Wall, specifically singer Johnny Rotten's fantasy of digging a tunnel under it. David Bowie's "Heroes" (1977), inspired by the image of a couple kissing at the Berlin Wall (in reality, the couple was his producer Tony Visconti and backup singer Antonia Maaß). The song (which, along with the album of the same name, was recorded in Berlin), makes lyrical references to the kissing couple, and to the "Wall of Shame" ("the shame was on the other side"). Upon Bowie's death, the Federal Foreign Office paid homage to Bowie on Twitter:see also above "" (1984), a song by the Dutch pop band , about the differences between East and West Berlin during the period of the Berlin Wall. "Chippin' Away" (1990), a song by Tom Fedora, performed by Crosby, Stills & Nash on the Berlin Wall, which appeared on Graham Nash's solo album Innocent Eyes (1986). "Berliners", a song by Roy Harper from his 1990 album Once (lyrics include "They built a wall, boys, it stayed up for thirty years"). The song uses a BBC news broadcast describing the fall of the wall. "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," a rock opera whose genderqueer protagonist Hedwig Robinson was born in East Berlin and later, living in the United States, describes herself as "the new Berlin Wall" standing between "East and West, slavery and freedom, man and woman, top and bottom." As a result, she says, people are moved to "decorate" her with "blood, graffiti and spit." (1998) The music video for Liza Fox's song "Free" (2013) contains video clips of the fall of the Berlin Wall. ===Visual art=== Artworks related to the Berlin Wall include: In 1982, the West-German artist created about 500 artworks along the former border strip around West Berlin as part of his work series Border Injuries. On one of his actions he tore down a large part of the Wall, installed a prepared foil of 3x2m in it, and finished the painting there before the border soldiers on patrol could detect him. This performance was recorded on video. His actions are well-documented both in newspapers from that time and in recent scientific publications. The Day the Wall Came Down, 1996 and 1998 sculptures by Veryl Goodnight, which depict five horses leaping over actual pieces of the Berlin Wall. ===Games=== Video games related to the Berlin Wall include: The Berlin Wall (1991), a video game. Ostalgie: The Berlin Wall (2018), video game by Kremlingames, where the player, playing as the leader of the GDR from 1989 to 1991, can take down the Berlin Wall themselves or as a result of events in the game, or keep the wall intact as long as the country exists.	[ "Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik", "Peace lines", "Universal Newsreel", "Willy Brandt", "Soviet Empire", "Riccardo Ehrman", "Poland", "German reunification", "Holidays in the Sun (song)", "Soviet occupation zone of Germany", "Egon Krenz", "Checkpoint Alpha", "Tom Brokaw", "Certificate of authenticity", "Oberhavel", "List of Berlin Wall segments", "Trunk (car)", "Old states of Germany", "Schönwalde-Glien", "Warsaw Pact", "heute", "Otto von Habsburg", "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", "Yuri Andropov", "Steinstücken", "Tony Visconti", "Canada", "New Zealand", "Northern Germany", "Eastern Bloc emigration and defection", "Vyacheslav Molotov", "Hungarian People's Republic", "Helmstedt", "Glass Spider Tour", "East German Mark", "Alexandra Hildebrandt", "Oder-Neisse line", "Angela Merkel", "John Hurt", "Wall of Shame", "The Road to the Wall", "Potsdamer Platz", "Berlin Game", "democracy", "rock opera", "Nikita Khrushchev", "President of the United States", "Brandenburg Gate", "Ogg", "University of Marburg", "David Childs (academic)", "Peaceful Revolution", "Berlin airlift", "Open The Wall (film)", "Rathaus Schöneberg", "Len Deighton", "Heinz Schäfer", "Schönefeld", "Keith Haring", "Federal Foreign Office", "West Berlin", "satellite state", "Crosby, Stills & Nash", "David Bowie", "Innocent Eyes (Graham Nash album)", "John le Carré", "Berlin outer ring", "Berlin Crisis of 1961", "spring-gun", "Blankenfelde-Mahlow", "Peter Schneider (writer)", "Free Democratic Party (Germany)", "Bernauer Strasse", "History of Berlin", "Australia", "Lyndon B. Johnson", "Winfried Freudenberg", "Dissolution of the Soviet Union", "Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata", "standard of living", "Hanns Joachim Friedrichs", "Falkensee", "Berlin S-Bahn", "Emigration from the Eastern Bloc", "Republikflucht", "John F. Kennedy", "Peter Fechter", "Michael Caine", "Business Insider", "Oberbaumbrücke", "The New York Times", "History of the Berlin S-Bahn", "1989 Polish parliamentary election", "Friedrichshain", "Eastern Bloc", "The Day the Wall Came Down", "Princeton University Press", "ghost station", "Martin Ritt", "Communism", "Chris Gueffroy", "proxy war", "General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union", "E Street Band", "Socialist Unity Party of Germany", "Walter Ulbricht", "Centre for Contemporary History", "ZDF", "armored personnel carrier", "propaganda", "James Reston", "Potsdam Agreement", "Hyannis Port, Massachusetts", "Chicago Tribune", "Jane Alexander", "Ich bin ein Berliner", "Los Angeles Times", "Casino Royale (1967 film)", "inner German border", "Polish People's Republic", "Soviet Union", "Marshall Plan", "East Berlin", "Escape from East Berlin", "liberalization", "George Marshall (director)", "freedom of movement", "Thomas Mignone", "Stationary Traveller", "The Daily Telegraph", "civis Romanus sum", "Encyclopaedia Britannica", "New Frontier", "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (film)", "Hennigsdorf", "The Left (Germany)", "Rabbit à la Berlin", "Hungary", "ARD (broadcaster)", "Berlin Airlift", "bed of nails", "National Security Agency", "Alternative for Germany", "Havelland (district)", "Ossi and Wessi", "The Wall – Live in Berlin", "Fall of the Berlin Wall", "Satellite state", "graffiti", "exclave", "bunker", "David Hackworth", "Roland Suso Richter", "Forsa Institute", "Teltow", "Thierry Noir", "Teltow-Fläming", "The Guardian", "MI6", "Stasi", "Forces Françaises à Berlin", "Hohen Neuendorf", "Harald Jäger", "The Berlin Wall (video game)", "Deutsche Mark", "Conrad Schumann", "de jure", "ultralight aviation", "social market economy", "East Germany", "Checkpoint Charlie", "natural gas", "Berlin Infantry Brigade", "Revolutions of 1989", "East German uprising of 1953", "Wolfgang Engels", "David Hasselhoff", "Separation barrier", "watchtower", "Once (Roy Harper album)", "Austria", "Ronald Reagan", "Topography of Terror", "Glienicke/Nordbahn", "Roy Harper (singer)", "Funeral in Berlin (film)", "Dean Rusk", "East German mark", "David Hasselhoff Museum", "France", "Bornholmer Straße border crossing", "Guy Hamilton", "The Innocent (1993 film)", "Klaus Wowereit", "hot air balloon", "Frederic Pryor", "Johnny Rotten", "Barbed Wire Sunday", "Kathrin Schmidt", "Cold War", "end of World War II in Europe", "Bruce Springsteen", "Exclaves of West Berlin in East Germany", "John Schlesinger", "no man's land", "Good Bye Lenin!", "loophole", "Party", "Brill Publishers", "fence", "Western world", "BBC", "eBay", "military liaison missions", "Potsdam-Mittelmark", "communist regime", "Liza Fox", "Chapel of Reconciliation", "National People's Army", "Dallgow-Döberitz", "New states of Germany", "United States", "Berlin Wall graffiti art", "Allied Control Council", "Oxford University Press", "punk rock", "Vienna summit", "Spree (river)", "Veryl Goodnight", "Nationale Volksarmee", "9 November 1989", "Kiel", "Schießbefehl", "The Week", "Flickr", "Begrüßungsgeld", "Camel (band)", "Gestapo", "Lohmühleninsel", "Antonia Maaß", "Alexanderplatz demonstration", "Luisenstadt Canal", "The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz", "Kleinmachnow", "Günter Schabowski", "Beau Bridges", "Potsdam", "Southern Germany", "Berlin Friedrichstraße station", "Stahnsdorf", "Cambridge University Press", "Erich Honecker", "guard tower", "Iron Curtain", "Dahme-Spreewald", "Communist Party of the Soviet Union", "capital city", "Bundesautobahn 2", "West Germany", "Kennedy Compound", "Monday demonstrations in East Germany", "Green Line (Lebanon)", "Time (magazine)", "barbed wire", "Spiegel Online", "Berlin Brigade", "Vox (website)", "Western Bloc", "East Side Gallery", "Graham Nash", "Pan-European Picnic", "Margaret Thatcher", "Günter Litfin", "CIA", "Travel visa", "USA Today", "Berlin Blockade", "Royal Air Force", "Humboldthafen", "spy fiction", "border checkpoint", "Berliner Zeitung", "Fort Eisenhower", "Joseph Stalin", "Wessi", "Christian Wulff", "The Tunnel (1962 film)", "Mikhail Pervukhin", "Combat Groups of the Working Class", "Ziesar", "Ida Siekmann", "Pantheon Books", "Fascist (insult)", "BBC News", "Budapest", "MarketWatch", "Mitte (locality)", "Czech hedgehog", "Marienborn", "Four Power Agreement on Berlin", "Removal of Hungary's border fence with Austria", "autobahn", "Mikhail Gorbachev", "Adobe Flash", "Berlin U-Bahn", "NATO", "Tal der Ahnungslosen", "The Tunnel (2001 film)", "Benelux", "Portugal", "Human capital flight", "Telegraph Media Group", "Tunnel 57", "Korean Demilitarized Zone", "Tempelhof International Airport", "Georgia (U.S. state)", "\"Heroes\" (David Bowie song)", "Military Demarcation Line", "Sex Pistols", "Sonnenallee", "Ostalgie", "Deutsche Welle", "Brandenburg", "Sovietization", "Bridge of Spies (film)", "Unternehmen Reisebüro", "Free German Youth", "Mary Elise Sarotte", "Deborah Kennedy (artist)", "Death of David Bowie", "aerostat", "List of walls", "Geert Mak", "Friedrichstraße", "Operation Gold", "Night Crossing", "In Europa (TV program)", "East Germany balloon escape", "Tagesthemen", "Allies of World War II", "Berlin", "Hedwig and the Angry Inch (musical)", "Lucius D. Clay", "State Council of East Germany", "West of the Wall", "Berlin Potsdamer Bahnhof", "Czechoslovakia", "RAF Gatow", "History (American TV channel)", "Checkpoint Charlie Museum", "World Freedom Day (United States)", "British Pathe", "Griebnitzsee", "Zlin Z 42", "Großbeeren", "Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia", "Toni Fisher", "Ross McElwee", "Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem", "Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg", "Flash Video", "Checkpoint Bravo", "\"Heroes\" (David Bowie album)", "18th Infantry Regiment (United States)", "Comecon", "Leander Haußmann", "Wirtschaftswunder", "Mühlenbecker Land", "Bild", "Inner German border" ]
3,727	Bass (sound)	Bass ( ) (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. ==Musical role== 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. ===Rhythm section === 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. ==Kinds of bass harmony== 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. 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.). "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." ==Instruments== 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. Examples grouped by general form and playing technique include: Double bass from the viol or violin family (usually the instrument referred to as a "bass" in European classical music and jazz. Sometimes called a "string bass" to differentiate it from a "brass bass" or "bass horn", or an "upright bass" to differentiate it from a "bass guitar") Bass guitar and acoustic bass guitar, instruments shaped, constructed and held (or worn) like guitars, that play in the bass range. The electric bass guitar is usually the instrument referred to as a "bass" in pop and rock music. A bass horn, such as a tuba, serpent, and sousaphone from the wind family and low-tuned versions of specific types of brass and woodwind instruments, such as bassoon, bass clarinet, bass trombone and bass saxophone, etc. (less common usage) Keyboard bass, a keyboard alternative to the bass guitar or double bass (e.g. the Fender Rhodes piano bass in the 1960s or 13-note MIDI keyboard controllers in the 2000s) Washtub bass, a simple folk instrument 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. ===Keyboards=== Keyboard bass Pedal keyboard ===Percussion=== ====Unpitched==== Bass drum ====Pitched==== Timpani ===Stringed=== Double bass Bass guitar Washtub bass Cello ===Wind=== ==== Woodwind ==== Bass recorder Bass oboe Bassoon Contrabassoon Bass saxophone Contrabass saxophone Subcontrabass saxophone Bass clarinet Contrabass clarinet Contrabass flute ====Brass==== Tuba Subcontrabass tuba Bass trombone Euphonium Baritone Horn ==Music shows and dances== 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. 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 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. 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". Sound system crews hold 'sound clash' competitions, where each sound system is set up and then the two crews try to outdo each other. ==Movies== 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 in theaters. Other films to use the effect include Midway in 1976 and Rollercoaster in 1977.	[ "Washtub bass", "Richard Long (sound designer)", "double bass", "Larry Levan", "Keyboard bass", "Contrabass flute", "Subcontrabass tuba", "musical ensemble", "Contrabass clarinet", "Tuba", "European classical music", "Harvard University Press", "Bass clarinet", "bass horn", "Reel-to-reel audio tape recording", "Contrabass saxophone", "frequency", "orchestra", "sousaphone", "Contrabassoon", "Timpani", "Julian Henriques", "Figured bass", "range (music)", "musician", "chord progression", "New York City", "jazz", "Subcontrabass saxophone", "Alex Rosner", "melody", "rhythm guitar", "Serpent (instrument)", "rock music", "rhythm section", "Pedal keyboard", "Baroque music", "musical instrument classification", "Fender Rhodes", "Bass recorder", "Pitch (music)", "phonograph record", "bassline", "Stone Love Movement", "Bass drum", "Bass trombone", "sound clash", "harpsichord", "piano", "bass saxophone", "discotheque", "drum kit", "Double bass", "Euphonium", "pitch (music)", "Bass clef", "middle C", "Subharmonic synthesizer", "tenor", "Cello", "Earthquake (1974 film)", "Rollercoaster (1977 film)", "Treble (sound)", "Warehouse (nightclub)", "string quartet", "dancehall", "Baritone Horn", "Bassoon", "Bass guitar", "harmony", "viol", "Bass oboe", "The Loft (New York City)", "house music", "David Mancuso", "Sensurround", "cello", "rhythm", "chord (music)", "Midway (1976 film)", "Bass saxophone", "disco", "classical music", "counterpoint", "bass clarinet", "bassoon", "bassist", "keyboard instrument", "Audio Engineering Society", "reggae", "sound system (Jamaican)", "Electronic Musician", "acoustic bass guitar", "Hammond organ", "Sound pressure", "Trombone", "popular music", "DJ", "pipe organ", "Basso continuo", "musical instrument", "Paradise Garage", "tuba", "Percussion instrument", "Sub bass", "violoncello" ]
3,728	UK bass	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, Future 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. 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. ==Origins== 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." In the United Kingdom, bass music has had major mainstream success since the late 2000s and early 2010s, with artists such as James Blake, 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.	[ "list of electronic music record labels", "Miami bass", "bass (music)", "Sub.FM", "UK funky", "ambient music", "Skream", "James Blake (musician)", "Internet radio", "contemporary R&B", "Spin (magazine)", "intelligent dance music", "Bassline (music genre)", "Future garage", "post-dubstep", "Sbtrkt", "Sophie (musician)", "Rinse FM", "Contemporary R&B", "2-step garage", "Resident Advisor", "future garage", "Electronic musical instrument", "house music", "dance music", "Mount Kimbie", "Zomby", "BBC News", "Hip hop music", "The Guardian", "club music", "The Independent", "The Daily Gamecock", "Electro (music)", "rhythm", "Benga (musician)", "Grime (music genre)", "United Kingdom", "Dubstep", "Burial (musician)", "techno", "Dynamix II", "Rustie", "Pitchfork (website)", "House music", "XLR8R", "electronic dance music", "rave", "dubstep", "sub-bass" ]
3,729	Burning glass	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. ==History== 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). 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. 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. 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. 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. 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." 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 27 March 1814. ==Use== === War: since the legend of Archimedes === 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. 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. === Domestic use: primitive fire making === 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. === Religion: sacred fire === In various religions settings, a burning glass is used to set off some sort of sacred fire. 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. 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. === Sports: lighting the Olympic torch === 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. === Popular culture: verification attempts === There have been several real-world tests to evaluate the validity of the legend of Archimedes described above 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. 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. 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.	[ "Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections", "Focus (optics)", "Pliny the Elder", "Warring States Period", "Olympic torch", "Mercury(II) oxide", "Mercury (element)", "Étienne-Gaspard Robert", "Olympia, Greece", "Islamic world", "MythBusters (2010 season)", "Song dynasty", "Ibn al-Haytham", "concave mirror", "solar energy", "pinhole camera", "Pope Zachary", "Syracuse, Sicily", "Isis (journal)", "Aristotle", "Athanasius Kircher", "Massachusetts Institute of Technology", "MythBusters (2006 season)", "Vitalian (general)", "French Revolution", "Aristophanes", "William Bates (physician)", "Archimedes", "Cambodia", "MythBusters", "Easter Fire", "Fresnel lens", "Book of Optics", "Joseph Priestley", "Ibn Sahl (mathematician)", "Christendom", "Routledge", "Baku (brahmin)", "Fire worship", "Phlogiston theory", "Roman Republic", "agarwood", "Michael Faraday", "Roman Pontifical", "King Sihanouk", "cauterize", "Biconvex lens", "Diocles (mathematician)", "Vestal Virgins", "Constantinople", "Olympic Games", "Shen Kuo", "Royal Navy", "Keck Observatory", "camera obscura", "Mohist", "solar furnace", "Roman Navy", "Solar furnace", "Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon", "Visby lenses", "Giambattista della Porta", "Nimrud lens", "Hellenistic Greek", "Plutarch", "Royal Palace of Cambodia", "Humphry Davy", "Parabolic reflector", "Easter vigil", "Pyreliophorus", "The Clouds", "Gaspar Schott", "Combustion", "lighthouse", "Antoine Lavoisier", "Leonardo da Vinci", "Mozi (book)", "Roger Bacon", "Saint Boniface", "cremation", "Marcus Claudius Marcellus", "Anthemius of Tralles", "Dream Pool Essays" ]
3,730	Battle of Adrianople (disambiguation)	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). Battle of Adrianople may also refer to: Battle of Adrianople (324), a battle in which Constantine the Great defeated Licinius in a Roman civil war Siege of Adrianople (378), an unsuccessful siege by the Goths following the Battle of Adrianople Battle of Adrianople (718), a battle between an alliance of Bulgarians and Byzantines against the Umayyad Caliphate, during the Siege of Constantinople (717–718) Battle of Adrianople (813), a successful Bulgarian siege of the Byzantine city Battle of Adrianople (914), a battle between Bulgarians and Byzantines Battle of Adrianople (972), a battle between Byzantines and Kievan Rus' led by Sviatoslav I of Kiev Battle of Adrianople (1003), a battle between Bulgarians and Byzantines Battle of Adrianople (1094), part of the revolt of Constantine Diogenes (pretender) and his Cuman allies Battle of Adrianople (1205), part of the Fourth Crusade, in which the Bulgarians defeated the Crusaders Battle of Adrianople (1226), part of the revolt of Theodore Komnenos Doukas Battle of Adrianople (1254), in which the Byzantines defeated the Bulgarians Battle of Adrianople (1305), a battle between the Byzantines and the Catalan Company Battle of Adrianople (1355), a battle between the Byzantines and the Serbs led by Stefan Dušan Battle of Adrianople (1365), in which the Ottoman Empire took the city from the Byzantine Empire Battle of Adrianople (1829), in which the Russians seized the city from the Ottoman Empire Siege of Adrianople (1912–1913), in which the Serbs and Bulgarians took the city from the Ottomans in the First Balkan War Siege of Adrianople (1913)	[ "Kievan Rus'", "Battle of Adrianople (972)", "Battle of Adrianople (718)", "Battle of Adrianople (1829)", "Siege of Adrianople (1913)", "Constantine Diogenes (pretender)", "Catalan Company", "Siege of Adrianople (1912–1913)", "Theodore Komnenos Doukas", "Battle of Adrianople (1003)", "Battle of Adrianople", "Battle of Adrianople (324)", "Siege of Constantinople (717–718)", "Battle of Adrianople (1355)", "Adrianople", "Stefan Dušan", "Battle of Adrianople (1365)", "Battle of Tzirallum", "Battle of Adrianople (1094)", "Siege of Adrianople (378)", "Sviatoslav I of Kiev", "Battle of Adrianople (1226)", "Battle of Adrianople (1205)", "Battle of Adrianople (813)", "Battle of Adrianople (1254)", "Battle of Adrianople (914)", "Battle of Adrianople (1305)" ]
3,731	Beacon	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. 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. == For navigation == 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. In the United States, a series of beacons were constructed across the country in the 1920s and 1930s to help guide pilots delivering air mail. They were placed about 25 miles apart from each other, and included large concrete arrows with accompanying lights to illuminate them. 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. == For defensive communications (historical) == 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In Sweden and Finland, these beacons, known as vårdkasar or böte, formed an extensive coastal warning system from the Late Iron Age and through the Middle Ages. Beacons were strategically placed on high ground for visibility, constructed from tar-rich wood to ensure bright flames. They were mentioned in medieval laws like Upplandslagen and described by Swedish writer Olaus Magnus in 1555 as tools for mobilising armed defenders during crises. 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. 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. === Ceremonial Use === In later centuries, advancements in technology, such as the telegraph, rendered beacon systems obsolete for rapid communication. The use of such beacons transitioned from practical communication to symbolic and ceremonial roles, where the lighting of beacons was repurposed to mark significant national events. Beacons were lit across the United Kingdom to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee in 2022, and to commemorate events such as the 70th anniversary of VE Day, and the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in 2024. ==Military use (20th–21st century)== === Infrared marker=== 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.). Passive markers include IR patches, which reflect infrared light, and chemlights. The earliest such beacons were often IR chemlights taped to helmets. 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. 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. 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. == Other uses == 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. 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. 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. 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. === In fiction === 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. 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. === In publishing === 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. === In retail === Beacons are sometimes used in retail to send digital coupons or invitations to customers passing by. ==Types== === Infrared beacon === 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). 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. === Sonar beacon === 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.	[ "Scottish border", "high fantasy", "Milestone", "Night-vision device", "Abbasid Caliphate", "Hillfort", "tar", "column of Trajan", "robotics", "Combat Identification", "Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II", "aerodrome beacon", "aircraft marshalling", "Gondor", "navigational aid", "Aerodrome beacon", "air mail", "Marquess of Shen (King Ping's grandfather)", "Great Palace of Constantinople", "headlamp", "Wrecking (shipwreck)", "Emergency position-indicating radiobeacon station", "Strobe beacon", "flashtube", "Day beacon", "Lantern", "Kilometric point", "Automotive lamp types", "Telegraphy", "Manuel I Komnenos", "Weather beacon", "optical telegraph", "Combat helmet", "Elizabethan England", "Frame (networking)", "Michael III", "navigation", "Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria", "J. R. R. Tolkien", "Victory in Europe Day", "iBeacon", "indoor positioning system", "Lighthouse of Alexandria", "chemlight", "Geodetic datum", "Identification friend or foe", "Web beacon", "Lefkada", "Olaus Magnus", "Namsan", "Colour Me English", "Corcyra", "Leo the Mathematician", "Hume Castle", "light-emitting diode", "weather beacon", "Byzantine beacon system", "relay league", "Leading lights", "Theophilos (emperor)", "Emergency vehicle", "beach", "Troy", "Belfalas", "Byzantine Empire", "Brecon Beacons", "New Beacon Books", "Trail blazing", "Peloponnese", "Upplandslagen", "Peloponnesian War", "Warning light (disambiguation)", "Constantinople", "Spanish Armada", "Trojan War", "radio beacon", "radio beacons", "Belisha beacon", "Han dynasty", "Clytemnestra", "Beacon Status", "Wales", "King You of Zhou", "Signal", "Crown of Castile", "Anatolia", "Great Wall", "Seoul", "The Lord of the Rings", "Infrared", "Transponder", "Oresteia", "Thucydides", "radar", "Rohan (Middle-earth)", "information", "Time ball", "Aeschylus", "The Return of the King", "phryctoriae", "Polaris", "The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium", "Argos, Peloponnese", "shoal", "Normandy landings", "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King", "lighthouse", "Electric beacon", "The Beacon (magazine)", "Arab–Byzantine wars", "radio direction finder", "Peter Jackson", "Telegraph", "Emergency locator beacon", "Beacon mode service", "Warning beacons of Gondor", "Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom", "Granada" ]
3,733	Bhangra (music)	Bhangra () is a type of non-traditional music of Punjab originating from the Punjab region. Over the years, bhangra has evolved and gained popularity not only in South Asia but also around the world. It has become a significant part of the cultural identity of the Punjabi diaspora in countries like Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. 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. ==Origins== 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 1970s 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. ===Differences from folk music=== 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. ==United Kingdom== ===1970s=== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Bhangra boy band, the Sahotas, were composed of five brothers from Wolverhampton. Their music is a fusion of bhangra, rock and dance. Heera, formed by Bhupinder Bhindi and fronted by Kumar and Dhami, was one of the most popular bands of the 1980s. 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". 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. 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. 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). ===Folk backlash=== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ===2000s remixes=== 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. Some South Asian DJs, especially in America, have mixed Punjabi folk music with house, reggae, and hip-hop to add a different flavour to Punjabi folk. These remixes continued to gain popularity as the 1990s came to an end. 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. ==Canada and the United States== 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. 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. 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. ==Lyrics== 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. Notable bhangra or Punjabi lyricists include Harbans Jandu who wrote "Giddhian Di Rani". ==Instruments== 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. 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. ==Cultural impact and resurgence of Punjabi folk music in the West== 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. 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. ==Derivatives== ===Bhangragga=== 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.	[ "Guru Nanak Dev University", "Hans Raj Hans", "mandolin", "Kamal Heer", "Udham Singh", "veena", "Multitone records", "Kuldeep Manak", "Oriental Star Agencies", "Pras", "Mundian To Bach Ke", "Hussainpur", "Pump organ", "Lal Chand Yamla Jatt", "Jazzy B", "Missy Elliott", "Harbhajan Mann", "Sahotas", "Multitone Records", "Bhujhangy Group", "Malkit Singh", "Pepsi", "Sarbjit Cheema", "violin", "List of bhangra artists", "gesture", "Bombay Talkie (band)", "riddim", "Kuldip Manak", "Jalandhar", "fiddle", "Asian Underground", "pop music", "sitar", "Bhagat Singh", "Folk music of Punjab", "B21 (band)", "remix", "folkhop", "contemporary R&B", "Canada", "Surinder Shinda", "Birmingham", "Punjab region", "bhangramuffin", "United States", "Wolverhampton", "Dumb and Dumber", "Jay-Z", "Heera Group UK", "Punjabi language", "Sardool Sikander", "Stars Dance", "guitar", "tabla", "United Kingdom", "Bhangra (dance)", "Swami (band)", "Apache Indian (musician)", "The Fugees", "dhadd", "Indian English", "zither", "Dhol", "Boom Shack-A-Lak", "Selena Gomez", "Social alienation", "Music of the United Kingdom", "Jamaican Patois", "racism", "Tom-tom drum", "dancehall", "damru", "Get Ur Freak On", "Bass guitar", "Snare drum", "sarangi", "YouTube", "James Brown", "dhol", "Sony", "Daler Mehndi", "tumbi", "Punjab", "Chamkila", "Panjabi MC", "Manmohan Waris", "Channi Singh", "Dupatta", "flute", "ragga", "youth culture", "wikt:raggamuffin", "music", "Music of Punjab", "Sukhshinder Shinda", "Time (magazine)", "Australia", "Apna Sangeet", "dholak", "Come & Get It (Selena Gomez song)", "reggae", "Southall", "Tunak Tunak Tun", "percussion instrument", "Lyallpur Khalsa College", "Alaap (band)", "Instagram", "Talvin Singh", "Jat people", "Diljit Dosanjh", "Amritsar", "Hip hop music", "Minority group", "Bally Sagoo", "British Asian", "dholki", "Punjabi culture", "Harbans Jandu" ]
3,735	Beastie Boys	The Beastie Boys were an American hip hop and rap rock group formed in New York City in 1979. They were composed of Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz (vocals, guitar), Adam "MCA" Yauch (vocals, bass), and Michael "Mike D" Diamond (vocals, drums). The 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 mid-1981, Yauch replaced him on bass and the resulting band was named the Beastie Boys. Berry left shortly thereafter and was replaced by Horovitz. After achieving local success with the 1983 comedy hip hop single "Cooky Puss", the 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). The 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 the Beastie Boys disbanded. The remaining members have released several retrospective works, including a book, a documentary, and a career-spanning compilation album. == History == === 1979–1983: Formation and early years === Prior to forming the Beastie Boys, Michael Diamond was part of a number of bands such as the Walden Jazz Band, and BAN. The Beastie Boys formed in 1979 as the Young Aborigines. In 1981, when the Young Aborigines bassist Jeremy Shatan left New York City for the summer, the remaining members Diamond, John Berry and Kate Schellenbach began to perform with Adam Yauch. In a 2007 interview with Charlie Rose, Yauch recalled that it was Berry who suggested the name the 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 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, the Beastie Boys recorded the 7-inch EP Polly Wog Stew at 171A studios, an early recorded example of New York hardcore. On November 13, 1982, the 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 the 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 the 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. 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, the Beastie Boys threatened to sue them over the use of the song, and the airline immediately paid them $40,000 in royalties. === 1984–1987: Def Jam years and Licensed to Ill === 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 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". 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). During 1985, the group was the supporting act of the Virgin Tour, Madonna's first concert series. On July 22, 1986, the Beastie Boys opened for John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols band Public Image Ltd., They headlined 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 Billboards 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. 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. 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. ===1988–1989: Move to Capitol Records and Paul's Boutique=== In 1988, the 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 had already done and were owed money for, the Beastie Boys left Def Jam and signed with Capitol Records. 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, but later attracted acclaim; Rolling Stone ranked it number 156 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It also made it onto the Apple Music 100 Best Albums list at number 48. ===1990–1996: Check Your Head and Ill Communication=== 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. 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 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. The Beastie Boys also published Grand Royal Magazine, which ran for six issues between 1993 and 1997, the first issue 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 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". Ill Communication, released in 1994, saw the Beastie Boys' return to the top of the charts when the album debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 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. The 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 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. In 1995, the popularity of the 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. The Beastie Boys toured South America and Southeast Asia for the first time. The band also released Aglio e Olio (Italian for "Garlic and Oil"), 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. In 1992, the 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, the 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 the Beastie Boys summary judgment. 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. The 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 time that a band had won awards in both rap and alternative categories. 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". The 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. the band made live downloads of their performances available for their fans, but were temporarily thwarted when Capitol Records removed them from its website. The 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. The 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, In 2000, the 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. 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. In October 2001, after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Beastie Boys organized and headlined the New Yorkers Against Violence Concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom. ===2002–2008: To the 5 Boroughs and The Mix-Up=== 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, the Beastie Boys' first Taiwan appearance. The Beastie Boys also headlined the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Their single, "Ch-Check It Out", debuted on The O.C. in the season 1 episode "The Vegas", which aired April 28, 2004. 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, 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. The band stated in mid-2006 that they were writing material for their next album and would be producing it themselves. 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: 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). The 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". 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. The tentative title for the record was Tadlock's Glasses, of which Yauch explained the inspiration behind the title: {{blockquote\|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. (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". 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 was the last live performance by the Beastie Boys as a trio. The group would have toured the UK later in the year in support of the new record. Speaking to Drowned in Sound, the Beastie Boys revealed that Part 2 was done. Mike D also hinted it may be released via unusual means: 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 another headlining spot for the first night of the All Points West Festival in Jersey City, New Jersey. In late October 2010, the 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: 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. On April 22, the 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. 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. ===2012–present: Deaths of Yauch and Berry, and disbandment=== On May 4, 2012, Yauch died from cancer at the age of 47. Mike D told Rolling Stone that the Beastie Boys had recorded new music in late 2011, but did not say if these recordings would be released. He also said that the 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. The 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 and played guitar on the first EP. The first Beastie Boys show took place at Berry's loft. They were awarded $1.7 million in damages and $668,000 for legal fees. 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, 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. == Activism == 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. ==Musical style and influences== Originally a hardcore punk band, the 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. and punk rap. ==Legacy, influence and cultural impact== 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. The Beastie Boys are influential in the hip hop and rock music scenes, with artists such as Eminem, Rage Against the Machine, Hed PE, , Sublime, and Blur citing them as an influence. In the 2022 book What's That Sound?: An Introduction to Rock Music and Its History, music journalists Andrew Flory and John Covach surmised "perhaps the Beastie Boys will prove to be the Elvises of rap—the inevitable white catalysts necessary for exploding black music innovations into Anglo ears." The 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 the 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. The Beastie Boys have many high-profile longtime fans, including Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president Dana White, who has a bass guitar signed by all three members and a copy of Beastie Boys Book in his office. 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!" In 2020, Spin ranked the Beastie Boys as the 12th-most influential artist of the previous 35 years. ==Tributes== 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 the result of a grassroots campaign started in 2013 by historian LeRoy McCarthy. The renaming was voted down when first proposed in 2014, but it passed on July 14, 2022. The square was renamed on September 9, 2023, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of hip hop. ==Legal issues== In 2003, the 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, the 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: ==Members== Members Mike D – vocals, drums (1981–2012) Kate Schellenbach – drums, percussion, backing vocals (1981–1984) John Berry – guitars (1981–1982; died 2016) MCA – vocals, bass (1981–2012; his death) Ad-Rock – vocals, guitars (1982–2012) Touring musicians DJ Double R (Rick Rubin) – disc jockey (1984–1985) Sam Sever – disc jockey (1986) Doctor Dré – disc jockey (1986) DJ Hurricane – disc jockey, backing vocals (1986–1997) Eric Bobo – percussion, drums (1992–1996) Money Mark (Mark Ramos-Nishita) – keyboards, vocals (1992–2012) Amery "AWOL" Smith – drums, backing vocals, percussion (1992–1998) Alfredo Ortiz – drums, percussion (1996–2012) Mix Master Mike – disc jockey, backing vocals (1998–2012) ===Timeline=== ImageSize = width:800 height:auto barincrement:20 PlotArea = left:120 bottom:100 top:10 right:20 Alignbars = justify DateFormat = mm/dd/yyyy Period = from:07/01/1978 till:05/04/2012 ScaleMajor = increment:4 start:1979 ScaleMinor = increment:1 start:1979 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal format:yyyy Legend = orientation:vertical position:bottom columns:3 Colors= id:band value:yellow legend:Band id:vocals value:red legend:Vocals id:guitar value:green legend:Guitars id:bass value:blue legend:Bass id:drums value:orange legend:Drums id:perc value:claret legend:Percussion id:bvocals value:pink legend:Backing_vocals id:studio value:black legend:Studio_release id:EP value:gray(0.6) legend:Other_release id:bars value:gray(0.95) BackgroundColors = bars:bars LineData= layer:back at:11/15/1986 color:studio at:07/25/1989 color:studio at:04/21/1992 color:studio at:05/23/1994 color:studio at:07/14/1998 color:studio at:06/15/2004 color:studio at:06/27/2007 color:studio at:05/03/2011 color:studio at:07/20/1982 color:ep at:01/01/1994 color:ep at:05/23/1995 color:ep at:11/13/1995 color:ep at:08/24/1999 color:ep at:12/23/2008 color:ep BarData= bar:Young text:"The Young Aborigines" bar:Beasties text:"Beastie Boys" bar:Mike text:"Mike D" bar:John text:"John Berry" bar:Ad-Rock text:"Ad-Rock" bar:Jeremy text:"Jeremy Shatan" bar:MCA text:"MCA" bar:Kate text:"Kate Schellenbach" PlotData = width:11 bar:Young from:07/01/1978 till:07/01/1981 color:band bar:Beasties from:07/01/1981 till:end color:band bar:MCA from:05/01/1981 till:end color:bass width:11 bar:MCA from:05/01/1981 till:06/01/1984 color:guitar width:7 bar:MCA from:05/01/1981 till:06/01/1984 color:bvocals width:3 bar:MCA from:06/01/1984 till:end color:vocals width:3 bar:Jeremy from:07/01/1978 till:05/01/1981 color:bass bar:John from:07/01/1978 till:06/01/1982 color:guitar bar:Ad-Rock from:06/01/1982 till:end color:guitar width:11 bar:Ad-Rock from:06/01/1982 till:06/01/1984 color:bvocals width:3 bar:Ad-Rock from:06/01/1984 till:end color:vocals width:3 bar:Mike from:07/01/1978 till:06/01/1984 color:vocals width:11 bar:Mike from:06/01/1984 till:end color:vocals width:3 bar:Mike from:07/01/1978 till:06/01/1984 color:perc width:3 bar:Mike from:06/01/1984 till:end color:drums width:11 bar:Kate from:07/01/1978 till:06/01/1984 color:drums bar:Kate from:07/01/1978 till:06/01/1984 color:perc width:7 bar:Kate from:07/01/1978 till:06/01/1984 color:bvocals width:3 ====Touring Members Timeline==== ImageSize = width:800 height:auto barincrement:20 PlotArea = left:120 bottom:100 top:10 right:20 Alignbars = justify DateFormat = mm/dd/yyyy Period = from:07/01/1978 till:05/04/2012 ScaleMajor = increment:3 start:1979 ScaleMinor = increment:1 start:1979 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal format:yyyy Legend = orientation:vertical position:bottom columns:3 Colors= id:vocals value:red legend:Vocals id:drums value:orange legend:Drums id:perc value:claret legend:Percussion id:DJ value:lavender legend:DJ id:keys value:purple legend:Keyboards id:bvocals value:pink legend:Backing_vocals id:studio value:black legend:Studio_release id:EP value:gray(0.6) legend:Other_release id:bars value:gray(0.95) BackgroundColors = bars:bars LineData= layer:back at:11/15/1986 color:studio at:07/25/1989 color:studio at:04/21/1992 color:studio at:05/23/1994 color:studio at:07/14/1998 color:studio at:06/15/2004 color:studio at:06/27/2007 color:studio at:05/03/2011 color:studio at:07/20/1982 color:ep at:01/01/1994 color:ep at:05/23/1995 color:ep at:11/13/1995 color:ep at:08/24/1999 color:ep at:12/23/2008 color:ep BarData= bar:AWOL text:"AWOL" bar:Alfredo text:"Alfredo Ortiz" bar:Eric text:"Eric Bobo" bar:Double text:"DJ Double R" bar:Dré text:"Doctor Dré" bar:Hurricane text:"DJ Hurricane" bar:Mix text:"Mix Master Mike" bar:Mark text:"Money Mark" PlotData = width:11 bar:AWOL from:01/01/1994 till:12/31/1995 color:drums bar:AWOL from:01/01/1994 till:12/31/1995 color:perc width:3 bar:Alfredo from:01/01/1996 till:05/04/2012 color:drums bar:Alfredo from:01/01/1996 till:05/04/2012 color:perc width:3 bar:Eric from:01/01/1992 till:01/01/1996 color:perc bar:Eric from:01/01/1992 till:01/01/1996 color:drums width:3 bar:Mark from:01/01/1992 till:05/04/2012 color:keys bar:Mark from:01/01/1992 till:05/04/2012 color:vocals width:3 bar:Double from:02/01/1984 till:12/31/1985 color:DJ bar:Dré from:01/01/1986 till:09/01/1986 color:DJ bar:Hurricane from:09/01/1986 till:12/31/1997 color:DJ bar:Hurricane from:09/01/1986 till:12/31/1997 color:bvocals width:3 bar:Mix from:01/01/1998 till:05/04/2012 color:DJ bar:Mix from:01/01/1998 till:05/04/2012 color:bvocals width:3 ==Discography== Studio albums Licensed to Ill (1986) Paul's Boutique (1989) Check Your Head (1992) Ill Communication (1994) Hello Nasty (1998) To the 5 Boroughs (2004) The Mix-Up (2007) Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (2011) ==Tours== The Virgin Tour (1985) (supporting Madonna) Raising Hell Tour (1986) (supporting Run-D.M.C.) Licensed to Ill Tour (1987) (with Public Enemy) Together Forever Tour (1987) (with Run-D.M.C.) Check Your Head Tour (1992) (with Cypress Hill, Rollins Band, Firehose, and Basehead) Lollapolooza (1994) Ill Communication Tour (1994–1995) In the Round Tour (1998–1999) (with A Tribe Called Quest and Money Mark) To the 5 Boroughs Tour (2004) The Mix-Up Tour (2007–2008) ==Awards and nominations== Grammy Awards \|- \|1992 \|Check Your Head \|Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group \| \|- \|1995 \|"Sabotage" \|Best Hard Rock Performance \| \|- \|Rowspan="2"\|1999 \|"Intergalactic" \|Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group \| \|- \|Hello Nasty \|Best Alternative Music Album \| \|- \|2001 \|"Alive" \|Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group \| \|- \|rowspan="2"\|2005 \|"Ch-Check It Out" \|Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group \| \|- \|To The 5 Boroughs \|Best Rap Album \| \|- \|rowspan="2"\|2008 \|"Off the Grid" \|Best Pop Instrumental Performance \| \|- \|The Mix-Up \|Best Contemporary Instrumental Album \| \|- \|2010 \|"Too Many Rappers" (featuring Nas) \|Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group \| \|} MTV Video Music Awards \|- \|rowspan="5"\|1994 \|rowspan="5"\|"Sabotage" \|Video of the Year \| \|- \|Best Group Video \| \|- \|Breakthrough Video \| \|- \|Best Direction (Director: Spike Jonze) \| \|- \|Viewer's Choice \| \|- \|1998 \|Beastie Boys \|Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award \| \|- \|1999 \|"Intergalactic" \|Best Hip-Hop Video \| \|- \|2009 \|"Sabotage" \|Best Video (That Should Have Won a Moonman) \| \|- \|rowspan="2"\|2011 \|rowspan="2"\|"Make Some Noise" \|Video of the Year \| \|- \|Best Direction (Director: Adam Yauch) \| \|} MTV Europe Music Awards \|- \|1994 \|Beastie Boys \|Best Group \| \|- \|rowspan="4"\|1998 \|"Intergalactic" \|Best Video \| \|- \|Hello Nasty \|Best Album \| \|- \|rowspan="2"\|Beastie Boys \|Best Group \| \|- \|Best Hip-Hop \| \|- \|1999 \|Beastie Boys \|Best Hip-Hop \| \|- \|rowspan="2"\|2004 \|rowspan="2"\|Beastie Boys \|Best Group \| \|- \|Best Hip-Hop \| \|- \|2011 \|"Make Some Noise" \|Best Video \| \|} MTV Video Music Awards Japan \|- \|2005 \|"Ch-Check It Out" \|Best Hip-Hop Video \| \|- \|2009 \|Beastie Boys \|MTV Street Icon Award \| \|} == Filmography == Beastie (1982) Krush Groove (1985) Tougher Than Leather (1988) Futurama episode "Hell Is Other Robots" (1999) Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! (2006) Fight for Your Right Revisited (2011) Beastie Boys Story (2020)	[ "MTV", "MTV Video Music Award", "RhythmOne Group", "Q-Tip (rapper)", "Billboard 200", "Kenya", "black music", "XXL (magazine)", "Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool", "Too Many Rappers", "nu metal", "rap", "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)", "1999 MTV Europe Music Awards", "MTV Video Music Award – Breakthrough Video", "Ch-Check It Out", "Record Store Day", "Billboard (magazine)", "All Points West Festival", "MTV Europe Music Award for Best Album", "Hammerstein Ballroom", "Mike Judge", "No Sleep till Brooklyn", "Hot Sauce Committee Part Two", "1994 MTV Video Music Awards", "Comedy hip-hop", "Golden Gate Park", "Make Some Noise (Beastie Boys song)", "Reverb (non-profit)", "Def Jam Recordings", "Atwater Village, California", "protest song", "The Virgin Tour", "Rick Rubin", "Rage Against the Machine", "Limp Bizkit", "Mike Mills", "7-inch", "Russell Simmons", "47th Annual Grammy Awards", "NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital", "MTV Video Music Award for Best Hip-Hop Video", "Sampling (music)", "Kid Rock", "James Newton", "China", "Run-D.M.C.", "Bruce Lee", "Rap rock", "No Alternative", "MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year", "Beavis and Butt-Head", "Gym Class Heroes", "Isle of Wight", "Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival", "Ben Stiller", "Apple TV+", "MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction", "Bell & Howell", "Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win", "R.E.M.", "Lollapalooza", "Electric Picnic", "Chuck D", "Nepal", "Hell Is Other Robots", "Run-DMC", "Public Image Ltd.", "Hip hop music", "Shambala (Beastie Boys song)", "spyware", "The In Sound from Way Out! (Beastie Boys album)", "the Young and the Useless", "Charlie Rose", "Dutton Adult", "Sublime (band)", "hardcore punk", "Joe Louis Arena", "Hip-hop", "Volkswagen", "the Virgin Tour", "A Tribe Called Quest", "Merseyside Police", "New York City", "Murphy's Law (band)", "Money Mark", "Whodini", "MTV Video Music Award – Viewer's Choice", "Perrey and Kingsley", "Rat Cage Records", "Sure Shot", "Hello Nasty", "Sly and the Family Stone", "50th Annual Grammy Awards", "Jersey City, New Jersey", "MTV Europe Music Awards", "Tibetan Freedom Concert", "Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group", "Columbus, Georgia", "In a World Gone Mad", "Trude Heller's", "DJ Hurricane", "Aglio e Olio (EP)", "Music recording sales certification", "MoveOn.org", "idiomag", "Polly Wog Stew", "Misfits (band)", "Rock Hard (song)", "2004 MTV Europe Music Awards", "MTV Video Music Award for Best Group Video", "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame", "backronym", "Elvis Presley", "Oscilloscope Laboratories", "The Latch Brothers", "1999 MTV Video Music Awards", "52nd Annual Grammy Awards", "funk", "modern rock", "Grammy Award", "Paul's Boutique", "Eminem", "Macrovision CDS-200", "The O.C.", "2011 MTV Video Music Awards", "Urban Dance Squad", "Billboard Hot 100", "37th Annual Grammy Awards", "John Berry (Beastie Boys)", "Michael Stipe", "Bad Brains", "2011 MTV Europe Music Awards", "Allstate Arena", "electro music", "Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance", "British Airways", "Apple Music 100 Best Albums", "2003 invasion of Iraq", "2009 MTV Video Music Awards Japan", "Public Enemy (group)", "Blur (band)", "Osheaga Festival", "Dead Kennedys", "2009 MTV Video Music Awards", "Ill Communication", "New York City Council", "September 11, 2001 attacks", "Beastie Boys Anthology: The Sounds of Science", "VH1", "Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!", "Paul Revere (song)", "Capitol Records", "G-Son Studios", "Rolling Stone", "1998 MTV Europe Music Awards", "hip hop music", "Pass the Mic", "MTV Europe Music Award for Best Group", "In Search of Manny", "Eric \"Bobo\" Correa", "Sónar", "Spin Magazine", "Live Earth concert, London", "Basehead", "Firehose (band)", "Woodstock 99", "punk rap", "Luscious Jackson", "New York (magazine)", "punk rock", "AllMusic", "The In Sound from Way Out! (Perrey and Kingsley album)", "Simply Mortified", "Mix Master Mike", "Black Thought", "Alive (Beastie Boys song)", "Intergalactic (song)", "Complex (magazine)", "Max's Kansas City", "New York hardcore", "Mario Caldato, Jr.", "sampling (music)", "Beastie Boys Story", "Spike Jonze", "Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award", "Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival", "Sabotage (Beastie Boys song)", "Live Earth", "Travie", "Ad-Rock", "CBGB", "Live (band)", "The Wall Street Journal", "The Village Voice", "Dust Brothers", "Something's Got to Give (song)", "While We're Young (film)", "John Lydon", "star vehicle", "royalties", "MTV.com", "Lower East Side", "Pitchfork (website)", "Carvel (restaurant)", "Licensed to Ill", "Win Without War", "UK Singles Chart", "Southside Festival", "MTV Video Music Awards Japan", "Kate Schellenbach", "mullet (haircut)", "Open'er Festival", "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", "To the 5 Boroughs", "Kamikaze (Eminem album)", "Madonna", "Beastie Boys Music", "frontotemporal dementia", "alternative hip hop", "Live Aid", "Nas", "Wembley Stadium", "Ultimate Fighting Championship", "USA Today", "NME", "Tibetan people", "LL Cool J", "Alternative Songs", "Madison Square Garden", "Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album", "Check Your Head", "Sean Lennon", "T La Rock", "Tougher Than Leather (film)", "Montreal", "Human rights in Tibet", "2005 MTV Video Music Awards Japan", "1998 MTV Video Music Awards", "Reagan Youth", "Some Old Bullshit", "Q (magazine)", "MTV Europe Music Award for Best Hip-Hop", "Columbia Records", "Berzerk (song)", "43rd Annual Grammy Awards", "Cooky Puss", "BBC News", "rap rock", "Grand Royal", "MTV Europe Music Award for Best Video", "Walden School (New York City)", "Rollins Band", "EMI Records", "jazz", "BS 2000", "Fishbone", "Adam Dubin", "Ben Lee", "Tibet", "Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album", "Hurricane Festival", "Alternative hip-hop", "Jazzy Jay", "Bard College", "Fight for Your Right Revisited", "14th Dalai Lama", "Latin music", "Adam Yauch", "Alfredo Ortiz", "Modern Rock Tracks", "alternative hip-hop", "Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time", "The A.V. Club", "U2", "1994 MTV Europe Music Awards", "Sex Pistols", "34th Annual Grammy Awards", "Manhattan", "Release Magazine", "Country Mike's Greatest Hits", "Hed PE", "41st Annual Grammy Awards", "Timex Social Club", "Monster Energy", "Grammy Award for Best Rap Album", "Doctor Dré", "prank call", "Billboard.com", "Anglo", "Spin (magazine)", "So What'cha Want", "Tanzania", "the Smashing Pumpkins", "The Mix-Up", "Roskilde Festival", "Milarepa Fund", "Mike D", "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", "parotid gland", "Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance", "Bestival", "Dana White", "Oxford English Dictionary", "Bolex", "George Clinton (funk musician)", "Separated shoulder", "Ric Menello", "Lollapolooza", "Kareem Abdul-Jabbar", "Busta Rhymes", "Passion Pit", "Best Pop Instrumental Album", "Seth Rogen", "She's on It", "Krush Groove", "Santigold", "Drowned in Sound", "About.com", "Red Hot Organization", "MTV Video Music Award Japan for Best Hip-Hop Video", "Futurama", "New York University", "1998 United States embassy bombings", "Beastie Boys discography" ]
3,736	British Isles	The British Isles are an archipelago 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 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 geographically 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. The oldest rocks are 2.7 billion years old and are found in Ireland, Wales and the north-west 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 , and was not inhabited until after 8000 BC. Great Britain became an island by 7000 BC with the flooding of Doggerland. The Gaels (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. 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. ==Etymology== The earliest known references to the islands as a group appeared in the writings of seafarers from the ancient Greek colony of Massalia. have survived. In the 1st century BC, Diodorus Siculus has Prettanikē nēsos, "the British Island", and Prettanoi, "the Britons", describes Julius Caesar as having "advanced the Roman Empire as far as the British Isles" (), and remarks on the region "about the British Isles" (). According to Philip Freeman in 2001, "it seems reasonable, especially at this early point in classical knowledge of the Irish, for Diodorus or his sources to think of all inhabitants of the Brettanic Isles as Brettanoi". 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. According to A. L. F. Rivet and Colin Smith in 1979 "the earliest instance of the name which is textually known to us" is in The Histories of Polybius, who referred to them . According to Rivet and Smith, this name encompassed "Britain with Ireland". 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. 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). According to Philip Freeman in 2001, Ptolemy "is the only ancient writer to use the name "Little Britain" for Ireland, though in doing so he is well within the tradition of earlier authors who pair a smaller Ireland with a larger Britain as the two Brettanic Isles". In the second book of Ptolemy's Geography (), the second and third chapters are respectively titled in and . In Arabic geography and cartography in the medieval Islamic world, the British Isles are known as or . Arabic geographies, including the of al-Battānī, mention the British Isles as twelve islands. John Skelton's English translation of Diodorus Siculus's , written in the middle 1480s, mentions the British Isles as . Thomas Twyne's English translation of Dionysius Periegetes's , published in 1572, mentions the British Isles as . The earliest citation of the phrase in the Oxford English Dictionary is in a work by John Dee dated 1577. 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 British Isles is the most widely accepted term for the archipelago. 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 north-western half of Ireland and Scotland. Further collisions caused the Variscan orogeny in the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, forming the hills of Munster, south-west England, and southern Wales. Over the last 500 million years the land that forms the islands has drifted north-west from around 30°S, crossing the equator around 370 million years ago to reach its present northern latitude. 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. 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 . Ireland is to the west and covers . but has the third highest population behind Great Britain and Ireland. 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 . The Scottish Highlands in the northern part of Great Britain are mountainous, with Ben Nevis being the highest point on the islands at . There are a number of major rivers within the British Isles. The longest is the Shannon in Ireland at . The river Severn at is the longest in Great Britain. ===Climate=== 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 north-west Europe. The North Atlantic Drift ("Gulf Stream"), which flows from the Gulf of Mexico, brings with it significant moisture and raises temperatures 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. ==Flora and fauna== 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 north-western 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. 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. 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. 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. Domestic animals include the Connemara pony, Shetland pony, English Mastiff, Irish Wolfhound and many varieties of cattle and sheep. ==Demographics== 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. 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. 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. ===Urban areas=== ==History== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ==Politics== 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. 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. 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. 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". 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. 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. ===British–Irish Council=== 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 () 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). 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. ==Culture== 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. 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. 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. ==Transport== 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 among the top-20 busiest international air routes 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. 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 , would be by far the longest in the world, and would cost an estimated £15 billion (€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).	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G. A. Pocock", "Extreme points of the British Isles", "Inner Hebrides", "Ireland national rugby union team", "The Guardian", "Diodorus Siculus", "roe deer", "red fox", "Swansea", "parliament of the United Kingdom", "Aberdeen", "Hiberno-Norman", "Union of the Crowns", "Irish diaspora", "Foras na Gaeilge", "Thomas Twyne", "British Isles naming dispute", "Perseus Project", "Britannia", "Norman language", "Longman", "Happisburgh", "Marcian of Heraclea", "States of Guernsey", "Brittany", "red grouse", "Greater Dublin Area", "County Antrim", "continental shelf", "NASA", "Calluna vulgaris", "River Shannon", "British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference", "Jersey Legal Information Board", "Jersey", "A. L. F. Rivet", "Countries of the United Kingdom", "Anglo-Saxon mission", "States of Jersey", "Hebrides", "European rabbit", "Marseille", "fauna", "Geography (Ptolemy)", "The Histories (Polybius)", "Open Library", "Britons (historical)", "Sunderland", "English Channel", "Henrie Bynneman", "Channel Islands", "Irish Sign Language", "British Irish Council", "Common Travel Area", "France", "Cant (language)", "The Times", "grey seal", "Scotland national rugby union team", "The Institute of Engineers of Ireland", "Royal Geographical Society", "terrane", "Ora maritima", "Southend-on-Sea", "Köppen climate classification", "Anglo-Irish Treaty", "Aldershot", "Northern Isles", "Harvard University Press", "Denmark", "Northern Ireland Executive", "Irish nationalist", "European elk", "President of Ireland", "Lough Neagh", "Great Famine (Ireland)", "Normandy", "Acts of Union 1707", "Wild boar", "Western European Summer Time", "United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020", "association football", "West Yorkshire Urban Area", "Cork (city)", "Outer Hebrides", "Dublin City University", "flora", "University of Texas Press", "John Dee", "List of French monarchs", "British Sign Language", "North Atlantic Current", "revolutionary republic", "Language family", "Avalonia", "Irish Wolfhound", "Henry II of England", "North Atlantic drift", "History of water polo", "European polecat", "RNLI", "Esox", "United Kingdom", "woodpigeon", "Norman invasion of Ireland", "England", "Kitāb az-Zīj", "Jèrriais", "English Civil War", "river Severn", "al-Battānī", "Hen Ogledd", "Smithsonian (magazine)", "Insular Celtic languages", "John Skelton (poet)", "Geography", "Edinburgh", "Northern Ireland Assembly", "Royal National Lifeboat Institution", "Battle of Aughrim", "Wales", "Ministry of Justice (United Kingdom)", "Pound Sterling", "Devensian", "Atlantic Ocean", "Battle of the Boyne", "forest cover", "Samaritans (charity)", "1798 Rebellion", "climate of the British Isles", "English Mastiff", "Wexford", "Quaternary glaciation", "Scottish Gaelic", "Sheffield", "Guernésiais", "Loch Lomond", "Eurasian badger", "Gaelic Ireland", "Glasgow", "equator", "Portsea Island", "Cardiff", "Kingdom of Ireland", "bowls", "Jessica Kingsley Publishers", "Unionism in Ireland", "European mainland", "Islamic Quarterly", "Nottingham", "Barnsley", "British Summer Time", "Viking", "Pytheas", "common pheasant", "Blackpool", "Cornwall", "British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly", "red-legged partridge", "Hiberno-Scottish mission", "Schengen Area", "War of the Three Kingdoms", "partition of Ireland", "Angevin Empire", "archipelago", "Kerry slug", "vassal", "Greater Glasgow", "Medway", "Ryder Cup", "Scottish Parliament", "BBC News", "Consociationalism", "Devolution", "Shetland", "European hedgehog", "Picts", "List of the British Isles by area", "Laudabiliter", "Ulster", "croquet", "British Islands", "Late Middle Ages", "Kingdom of England", "Diarmait Mac Murchada", "King of France", "Reading, Berkshire", "English law", "golden age", "Irish Examiner", "house sparrow", "Government of Ireland", "Anglesey", "European Single Market", "stoat", "European beaver", "European hare", "Stoke-on-Trent", "Lord of Ireland", "European otter", "European Union", "High Court of Tynwald", "Avienius", "Fall of Rome", "Squalidae", "Commonwealth of Nations", "Galloway", "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", "UK Parliament", "Scottish Highlands", "Northampton", "Niall Blaney", "Polybius", "Mercury Music Prize", "Dublin", "Highland Clearances", "Llandovery epoch", "Euro", "Parliament of the United Kingdom", "geography and cartography in the medieval Islamic world", "parliamentary democracies", "Channel Tunnel", "List of busiest passenger flight routes", "Orogeny", "Goidelic", "Orkney", "Bristol", "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland", "England national rugby union team", "Low-pressure area", "Oxford English Dictionary", "modern languages", "English language", "Protestant Ascendancy", "Arabic", "Irish Travellers", "Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)", "Ben Nevis", "Birkenhead", "Westerlies", "Leicester", "Celtic languages", "pitch and putt", "Oireachtas", "Loch Morar", "the Open Championship", "ice bridge", "BBC Bitesize", "British and Irish Lions", "Crown Dependencies", "Irish War of Independence", "Fishguard", "British monarch", "common blackbird", "Munster", "Shelta", "Indo-European languages", "Ireland", "Western European Time", "Waterford", "United Rugby Championship" ]
3,738	Basque language	Basque ( ; ) is a language spoken by Basques and other residents of the Basque Country, a region that straddles the westernmost Pyrenees in adjacent parts of northern Spain and southwestern France. Basque is classified as a language isolate (unrelated to any other known languages) and the only language isolate in Europe. The Basques are indigenous to and primarily inhabit the Basque Country. The Basque language is spoken by 806,000 Basques in all territories. Of these, 93.7% (756,000) are in the Spanish area of the Basque Country and the remaining 6.3% (50,000) are in the French portion. 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. 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. Basque is the only surviving Paleo-European language 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. == Names of the language == In Basque, the name of the language is officially (alongside various dialect forms). In French, the language is normally called , though has become common in recent times. Spanish has a greater variety of names for the language. Today, it is most commonly referred to as , , or . Both terms, and , are inherited from the Latin ethnonym , which in turn goes back to the Greek term (), an ethnonym used by Strabo in his (23 CE, Book III). The Spanish term , derived from Latin , 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 —essentially penalising the use of Arabic, Hebrew, or Basque in marketplaces with a fine of 30 sols (the equivalent of 30 sheep). == History and classification == Although the Basque language is geographically surrounded by Romance languages, it is a language isolate that is unrelated to them or to any other living language. Most scholars believe Basque to be the last remaining descendant of one of the pre-Indo-European languages of prehistoric Europe. Others find this theory unlikely. Latin inscriptions in preserve a number of words with cognates in the reconstructed proto-Basque language, for instance, the personal names and ( and 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 the Basque Country. While those six factors influenced the revitalisation process, the extensive development and use of language technologies is also considered a significant additional factor. === Hypotheses concerning Basque's connections to other languages === Many linguists have tried to link Basque with other languages, but no hypothesis has gained mainstream acceptance. Apart from pseudoscientific comparisons, the appearance of long-range linguistics gave rise to several attempts to connect Basque with geographically very distant language families such as Georgian. Historical work on Basque is challenging since written material and documentation has only been 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: Ligurian substrate: this hypothesis, proposed in the 19th century by d'Arbois de Jubainville, J. Pokorny, P. Kretschmer and several other linguists, encompasses the Basco-Iberian hypothesis. Iberian: another ancient language once spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, shows several similarities with Aquitanian and Basque. However, not enough evidence exists to distinguish geographical connections from linguistic ones. Iberian itself remains unclassified. Eduardo Orduña Aznar claims to have established correspondences between Basque and Iberian numerals and noun case markers. Vasconic substratum hypothesis: this proposal, made by the German linguist Theo Vennemann, claims that enough toponymical evidence exists to conclude that Basque is the only survivor of a larger family that once extended throughout most of western Europe, and has also left its mark in modern Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. Georgian: linking Basque to the Kartvelian languages is now widely discredited. The hypothesis was inspired by the existence of the ancient Kingdom of Iberia in the Caucasus and some similarities in societal practices and agriculture between the two populations. Historical comparisons are difficult due to the dearth of historical material for Basque and several of the Kartvelian languages. Typological similarities have been proposed for some of the phonological characteristics and most importantly for some of the details of the ergative constructions, but these alone cannot prove historical relatedness between languages since such characteristics are found in other languages across the world, even if not in Indo-European. According to J. P. Mallory, the hypothesis was also inspired by a Basque place-name ending in -dze which is common in Kartvelian. The hypothesis suggested that Basque and Georgian were remnants of a pre-Indo-European group. Northeast Caucasian languages, such as Chechen, are seen by some linguists as more likely candidates for a very distant connection. Dené–Caucasian: based on the possible Caucasian link, some linguists, for example John Bengtson and Merritt Ruhlen, have proposed including Basque in the Dené–Caucasian superfamily of languages, but this proposed superfamily includes languages from North America and Eurasia, and its existence is highly controversial. and Juliette Blevins, who has identified potential phonological correspondences between Proto-Basque and Proto-Indo-European. Such hypotheses are rejected by most reviewers, both including scholars adhering to the mainstream view of Basque as a language isolate (Gorrochategui, Lakarra), as well as proponents of wide-range genetic relations (Bengtson). == Geographic distribution == 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. === Official status === 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. 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. 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 (), 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. === Demographics === The 2021 sociolinguistic survey of all Basque-speaking territories showed that, of all people aged 16 and above: \|22.3% \|24.1% \|9.5% \| - \|- \| 1996 \| 27.0% ( 1.3%) \| 32.0% ( 1.9%) \| 11.7% ( 0.6%) \| 21.4% ( 1.1%) \|- \| 2016 \| 28.4% ( 1.4%) \| 33.9% ( 1.9%) \| 12.9% ( 1.2%) \| 20.5% ( 0.9%) \|- \| 2021 === Dialects === 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. Modern Basque dialectology distinguishes five dialects: Biscayan or "Western" Gipuzkoan or "Central" Upper Navarrese Navarro-Lapurdian Souletin (Zuberoan) 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. === Influence on other languages === 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. Although a number of words of alleged Basque origin in the Spanish language are circulated (e.g. 'anchovies', 'dashing, gallant, spirited', 'puppy', etc.), most of these have more easily explicable Romance etymologies or not particularly convincing derivations from Basque. The lack of initial in Gascon could arguably be due to a Basque influence but this issue is under-researched. and the Asturian Xíriga. 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. ==== Basque pidgins ==== 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. == Phonology == === Vowels === The Basque language features five vowels: , , , and (the same that are found in Spanish, Asturian and Aragonese). In the Zuberoan dialect, extra phonemes are featured: the close front rounded vowel , graphically represented as ; a set of contrasting nasal vowels. There is no distinctive vowel length in Basque, although vowels can be lengthened for emphasis. The mid vowels and are raised before nasal consonants. Basque has an a-Elision Rule, according to which the vowel is elided before any following vowel. This does not prevent the existence of diphthongs with present. There are six diphthongs in Basque, all falling and with or as the second element. === Consonants === In syllable-final position, all plosives are devoiced and are spelled accordingly in Standard Basque. When between vowels, and often when after or , the voiced plosives , , and , are pronounced as the corresponding fricatives , , and . Basque has a distinction between laminal and apical articulation for the alveolar fricatives and affricates. With the laminal alveolar fricative , the friction occurs across the blade of the tongue, the tongue tip pointing toward the lower teeth. This is the usual in most European languages. It is written with an orthographic . By contrast, the voiceless apicoalveolar fricative is written ; the tip of the tongue points toward the upper teeth and friction occurs at the tip (apex). For example, (singular, respectful) is distinguished from . The affricate counterparts are written and . So, is distinguished from ; is distinguished from . In the westernmost parts of the Basque country, only the apical and the alveolar affricate are used. Basque also features postalveolar sibilants (, written , and , written ). The letter has a variety of realisations according to the regional dialect: , 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. The letter 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. Unless they are recent loanwords (e.g. , , ... ), words may not have initial . In older loans, initial r- took a prosthetic vowel, resulting in err- ( , ), more rarely irr- (for example , ) and arr- (for example ). Basque does not have in syllable final position, and syllable-final assimilates to the place of articulation of following plosives. As a result, is pronounced like , and is realized as . ==== Palatalization ==== 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, and become the palatal nasal and the palatal lateral respectively after the vowel and before another vowel. An exception is the loanword 'lily'. The same palatalization occurs after the semivowel 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, and can be palatalized even in the absence of a following vowel. After palatalization, the semivowel is usually absorbed by the palatal consonant. This can be seen in older spellings, such as instead of modern 'degree'. That said, the modern orthography for Standard Basque ignores automatic palatalization. In certain regions of Gipuzkoa and Biscay, intervocalic is often palatalized after and especially . It may become indistinguishable from the affricate , spelled , so 'father' may sound like it were spelled or . This type of palatalization is far from general, and is often viewed as substandard. In Goizueta Basque, there are a few examples of being palatalized after , and optional palatalization of . For example, 'seedbed' becomes , and 'lamb' can be . 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, 'man' becomes 'little fellow', 'crazy, insane' becomes 'silly, foolish', and 'lamb' becomes 'lambkin, young lamb'. In words without sibilants, , , , and can become palatalized. This palatalization is indicated in writing with a double consonant, except in the case of palatalized which is written . Thus, 'drop' becomes 'droplet', and 'grey' becomes 'grey and pretty, greyish'. 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 , and dd does not exist. Likewise, in Goizueta Basque, tt is a voiceless palatal stop and the corresponding voiced palatal stop, , is absent except as an allophone of . In Goizueta Basque, is sometimes the result of an affectionate palatalization of . Palatalization of the rhotics is rare and only occurs in the eastern dialects. When palatalized, the rhotics become the palatal lateral . Likewise, palatalization of velars, resulting in tt or tx, is quite rare. A few common words, such as 'dog', pronounced , 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: 'big dog'. === Sandhi === 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 is a strong tendency for it to become voiced. === Stress and pitch === 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. (, absolutive case) vs. (, absolutive case; an adoption from Spanish ); (, ergative case) vs. (, ergative case) vs. ( or , absolutive case). 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. 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 (, 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 () as (– – ´ –), instead of as (– ´ – `). === Morphophonology === The combining forms of nominals in final vary across the regions of the Basque Country. The can stay unchanged, be lowered to an , or it can be lost. Loss is most common in the east, while lowering is most common in the west. For instance, , , has the combining forms and , as in , , and , , whereas , , has the combining form , as in , . Michelena suggests that the lowering to is generalised from cases of Romance borrowings in Basque that retained Romance stem alternations, such as , with combining form , borrowed from Romance canto, canta-. == Grammar == 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. 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. Consider the phrase: is the agent (transitive subject), so it is marked with the ergative case ending -k (with an epenthetic -e-). has an -ak ending, which marks plural object (plural absolutive, direct object case). The verb is , in which is a kind of gerund ("buying") and the auxiliary means "he/she (does) them for me". This can be split like this: di- is used in the present tense when the verb has a subject (ergative), a direct object (absolutive), and an indirect object, and the object is him/her/it/them. -zki- means the absolutive (in this case the newspapers) is plural; if it were singular there would be no infix; and -t or -da- means "to me/for me" (indirect object). in this instance there is no suffix after -t. A zero suffix in this position indicates that the ergative (the subject) is third person singular (he/she/it). The auxiliary verb is composed as di-zki-da-zue and means 'you pl. (do) them for me' di- indicates that the main verb is transitive and in the present tense -zki- indicates that the direct object is plural -da- indicates that the indirect object is me (to me/for me; -t becomes -da- when not final) -zue indicates that the subject is you (plural) The pronoun '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. in 'you (pl.) are buying the newspapers for me'. However, the pronouns are almost always dropped, e.g. in 'you (pl.) are buying the newspapers for me'. The pronouns are used only to show emphasis: 'it is you (pl.) who buys the newspapers for me', or 'it is me for whom you buy the newspapers'. 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 (absolutive) paradigm and possibly a (absolutive–dative) paradigm, as in the sentence (). 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 (absolutive–ergative) paradigm and possibly a (absolutive–dative–ergative) paradigm. This last is exemplified by above. In each paradigm, each constituent noun can take on any of eight persons, five singular and three plural, with the exception of in which the absolutive can only be third person singular or plural. The most ubiquitous auxiliary, , can be used in any of these paradigms, depending on the nature of the main verb. 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. (, ; , , , , , ) 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. 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. Within a verb phrase, the periphrastic verb comes first, followed by the auxiliary. 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: [Basque speaker], [the Basque speaker, a Basque speaker], [Basque speakers, the Basque speakers], and [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. The common noun is declined as follows: The proper name (Michael) is declined as follows: Within a noun phrase, modifying adjectives follow the noun. As an example of a Basque noun phrase, is morphologically analysed as follows by Agirre et al. Basic word order in 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 or , but in both cases the question tag immediately precedes the verb . This rule is so important in Basque that, even in grammatical descriptions of Basque in other languages, the Basque word is used. In negative sentences, the order changes. Since the negative particle 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: , , in the negative becomes , in which () is separated from its auxiliary and placed at the end. == Vocabulary == 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: (, from ), (, from , ), (, from ), (, from ). == Writing system == Basque is written using the Latin script including and sometimes and . Basque does not use for native words, but the Basque alphabet (established by Euskaltzaindia) does include them for loanwords: ⟨Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ee, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Ññ, Oo, Pp, Qq, Rr, Ss, Tt, Uu, Vv, Ww, Xx, Yy, Zz⟩ The phonetically meaningful digraphs are treated as pairs of letters. All letters and digraphs represent unique phonemes. The main exception is when precedes and , which in most dialects palatalises their sounds into and , even if these are not written. Hence, can also be written without changing the sound, whereas the proper name requires the mute to break the palatalisation of the . 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 , silent for them. In Sabino Arana's (1865–1903) alphabet, digraphs and were replaced with and , respectively. 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. === Number system used by millers === 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. As with the Basque system of counting in general, it is vigesimal (base 20). Although it is in theory capable of indicating numbers above 100, most recorded examples do not go above 100. Fractions are relatively common, especially . 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. == Examples == === Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights === === === == Language video gallery == File:WIKITONGUES- Jon speaking Basque.webm\|A Basque speaker File:WIKITONGUES- Txeli speaking Basque.webm\|A Basque speaker, recorded in the Basque Country, Spain File:WIKITONGUES- Iñaki speaking Basque.webm\|A Basque speaker, recorded during Wikimania 2019	[ "intransitive verb", "Universidad de Deusto", "Languages of France", "Garonne", "eu:Joseba Sarrionandia", "Journal of Basque Studies in America", "Pyrénées-Atlantiques", "France", "French language", "MIT Press", "Basques", "loanword", "Basque nationalism", "rr (digraph)", "fall of the Western Roman Empire", "ñ", "Basque Country (historical territory)", "plural", "diphthong", "direct object", "Northeast Caucasian languages", "genitive case", "Lateral consonant", "recursion", "unclassified language", "Language shift", "semivowel", "Europe", "Dené–Caucasian languages", "Lower Navarre", "Old Castile", "Aquitanian language", "nomadic", "Enkarterri", "Vasconic substratum hypothesis", "Pyrenees", "Spanish phonology", "Southern Basque Country", "Soule", "Biscay", "Basque dialects", "Ligurian language (ancient)", "Prosody (linguistics)", "Diario de Navarra", "List of Basques", "Prolative", "phoneme", "Francoist Spain", "Partitive", "Iberian language", "Final-obstruent devoicing", "Grammatical aspect", "Basque Country (autonomous community)", "absolutive case", "Universidad Complutense de Madrid", "Caucasus", "Voicelessness", "Rhotic consonant", "Nasal consonant", "Strabo", "Juliette Blevins", "wikt:Appendix:Basque Swadesh list", "Asturians", "ethnonym", "Ojacastro", "Spain", "origin of the Basques", "Asturian language", "Vitoria-Gasteiz", "Yuri Zytsar", "Asturias", "subject–object–verb", "Chechen language", "Gulf of Saint Lawrence", "Late Basquisation", "Alavese dialect", "transitive verb", "polypersonal agreement", "prehistoric Europe", "Navarre", "palatalization (sound change)", "Paleo-European language", "Algonquian–Basque pidgin", "Koldo Zuazo", "Hispania", "Louis Lucien Bonaparte", "Sabino Arana", "pre-Indo-European languages", "Tartessian language", "La Rioja (Spain)", "José Ignacio Hualde", "orthography", "solidus (coin)", "gacería", "ĺ", "late Basquisation", "Dental consonant", "Apical consonant", "cognate", "Northeastern Iberian script", "agglutinative language", "Latin script", "Kalderash", "List of ideophones in Basque", "word order", "Ergative case", "Bizkaia", "Basque Braille", "Gallia Aquitania", "voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant", "Open vowel", "bilingualism", "Language isolate", "Xíriga", "Glottal consonant", "pidgin", "auxiliary verb", "ü", "Origin of the Basques", "Dative", "Geographica", "Directive case", "Voiceless alveolar affricate", "Labourd", "Pierre Lafitte Ithurralde", "J. 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3,740	Björn Ulvaeus	Björn Kristian Ulvaeus (; 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. == Early life == Björn Kristian Ulvaeus was born in Gothenburg on 25 April 1945. At aged 6, 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 did military service. == Career == === Pre-ABBA === 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. While filming a nostalgic schlager special for television in May 1969, Björn met eighteen-year-old future wife and singer-songwriter Agnetha Fältskog. 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. 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. === ABBA years === 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". On 6 July 1971, Björn and Agnetha married. On July 1980, Björn and Agnetha Fältskog divorced, and the band broke up shortly after the divorce. === Post-ABBA === 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). 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. 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. 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). 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. In 2016 American media reported that British entrepreneur Simon Fuller had approached Ulvaeus and other members of ABBA with his idea to create a virtual reality ABBA using new technology. In November that year Fuller was photographed in London meeting with Ulvaeus. In September 2017, Benny Andersson told Swedish newspaper Expressen that there were plans for ABBA to tour "virtually", using digital avatars of the group and Ulvaeus told the BBC that the idea had been proposed to the band by Simon Fuller. In April 2018, the four members issued a statement saying that during preparations for the tour, they had regrouped with Fuller in the studio and recorded two new songs, titled "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don't Shut Me Down". In 2020, Björn Ulvaeus has been appointed President of CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers. 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. Since November 2021, Ulvaeus and British actor 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. 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. == Personal life == 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. Ulvaeus married music journalist Lena Källersjö on 6 January 1981. They have two daughters. 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. In 2021, while producing Voyage, Ulvaeus met Christina Sas, a product manager at Universal Music Group, and they began dating the following year. Ulvaeus and Sas were married on 21 September 2024 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The ceremony was officiated by Sandi Toksvig. Ulvaeus is one of the four owners (along with Per Gessle) of NoteHeads, a Swedish company which publishes the music notation program Igor Engraver. 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. 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." 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 decade, and ABBA The Museum has operated cash-free since it opened in May 2013. === Tax vindication === 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. === Awards === On 21 March 2024, all four members of ABBA were appointed Commander, First Class, of the Royal Order of Vasa by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. This was the first time in almost 50 years that the Swedish Royal Orders of Knighthood was bestowed on Swedes, also the 50th anniversary of ABBA winning the Eurovision Song Contest. ABBA shared the honour with nine other people. : Royal Order of Vasa, Commander First Class (21 March 2024) == Discography == === Björn solo singles === 1968: "Raring" (Swedish version of "Honey")/"Vill du ha en vän" 1968: "Fröken Fredriksson" (Swedish version of "Harper Valley PTA")/"Vår egen sång" – (Polar POS 162) 1969: "Saknar du något min kära" (Swedish version of "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?"/"Gömt är inte glömt") 1969: "Partaj-aj-aj-aj"/"Kvinnan i mitt liv" === Björn and Benny singles === 1970: "She's My Kind of Girl"/"Inga Theme" 1970: "Hej, gamle man!"/"Lycka" (Happiness) 1971: "Hey, Musikant"/"Was die Liebe sagt" 1971: "Det kan ingen doktor hjälpa" (It Can't Be Remedied by a Doctor)/"På bröllop" 1971: "Tänk om jorden vore ung" (If Only We Had The Time)/"Träskofolket" 1972: "En karusell" (Merry-Go-Round)/"Att finnas till" 1972: "Love Has Its Ways"/"Rock 'N' Roll Band" (Benny & Björn 1st version) === Björn and Benny albums === 1970: Lycka 1984: Chess (concept album with Tim Rice) 1986: Chess Pieces 1988: Chess: Original Broadway Cast Recording 1994: Chess in Concert 1996: Kristina från Duvemåla 1998: Från Waterloo till Duvemåla 1999: 16 favoriter ur Kristina från Duvemåla 1999: Mamma Mia! (Original Cast Recording) 2000: Mamma Mia! (Original Broadway Cast Recording) 2002: Chess på svenska 2005: Mamma Mia! på svenska 2008: Mamma Mia! – The Movie Soundtrack 2009: Chess in Concert (London) 2010: Kristina at Carnegie Hall 2013: Hjälp sökes === Gemini === 1985: Gemini 1987: Geminism === Josefin Nilsson === 1993: Shapes	[ "Eurovision Song Contest 1974", "Benny Andersson", "Andreas Carlsson", "Lars Berghagen", "Watch Out (ABBA song)", "Istanbul", "Ivor Novello", "Brita Borg", "Sandi Toksvig", "ABBA The Museum", "Europop", "Stig Anderson", "Nova (Swedish band)", "schlager", "Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest", "episodic memory", "Swedish folk music", "Chess (musical)", "Anni-Frid Lyngstad", "Expressen", "BBC News", "Anne-Marie David", "Geminism", "knitting", "Tomas Ledin", "List of Swedes in music", "rock music", "Per Gessle", "folk rock", "BBC", "Edward af Sillén", "concert residency", "Mamma Mia (musical)", "Ding-A-Dong", "Västervik", "Money laundering", "RCA Victor", "En del av mitt hjärta (film)", "Swedish krona", "Humanisterna", "2013 Eurovision Song Contest", "The Venetian Las Vegas", "Ian McKellen", "Scorewriter", "Danderyd Municipality", "Swedish Armed Forces", "Djursholm", "You're Summer", "Don't Shut Me Down", "Tim Rice", "Cameo appearance", "ABBA Voyage", "En karusell", "Mamma Mia! (musical)", "artificial intelligence", "ABBA", "Drama Desk Award", "back taxes", "Royal Order of Vasa", "Copenhagen", "List of Eurovision Song Contest winners", "Universal Music Group", "PolyGram", "Bridlington Spa", "United Kingdom", "People Need Love", "SOS (ABBA song)", "Oricon Combined Singles Chart", "British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors", "Mamma Mia! (film)", "Igor Engraver", "Atlantic Records", "Stockholm", "Hep Stars", "Teach-In (band)", "Rik Mayall", "Polar Record Company", "Sveriges Television", "Black market", "EBU", "Rock Me (ABBA song)", "Rock'n Roll Band", "Voyage (ABBA album)", "Confédération Internationale des Sociétés d'Auteurs et Compositeurs", "Mix (magazine)", "Brighton", "Abbacadabra", "King Kong Song", "I Still Have Faith in You", "Christmas jumper", "The Guardian", "entrepreneurship", "Does Your Mother Know", "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?", "Hootenanny Singers", "International Humanist and Ethical Union", "Royalties", "Metadata", "Swedish Tax Agency", "Epic Records", "Grammy Award", "Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park", "Tony Award", "Gothenburg", "More Than Just a Residency", "Polydor", "Scandinavia", "Kristina från Duvemåla", "jukebox musical", "Linda Ulvaeus", "I Still Have Faith In You", "Simon Fuller", "Tu te reconnaîtras", "Carl XVI Gustaf", "Svensktoppen", "music industry", "Gemini (Gemini album)", "Avicii", "Euro disco", "Two for the Price of One (ABBA song)", "Jennie, Jennie", "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again", "I Saw It in the Mirror", "The Emigrants (novels)", "Cher", "Love Isn't Easy (But It Sure Is Hard Enough)", "Vilhelm Moberg", "Agnetha Fältskog", "Instagram", "Sverigetopplistan", "Eurovision", "Money, Money, Money", "long-term memory", "Polar Music", "Another Town, Another Train", "He Is Your Brother", "Keynote", "Honey (Bobby Goldsboro song)", "Summer Night City", "Kalmar County", "She's My Kind of Girl", "Fredrik Skavlan", "NME", "Lycka", "Honey, Honey", "Order of Vasa", "Harper Valley PTA", "Universal Music" ]
3,741	Benny Andersson	Göran Bror Benny Andersson (; 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. ==Early life== 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. 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. ==Career== ===Hep Stars (1964–1969)=== 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. ===Before ABBA (1969–1972)=== 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. 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. ===ABBA (1972–1982)=== 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. With ABBA, Benny sang lead vocal on only one song – "Suzy-Hang-Around", from the Waterloo album. ===After ABBA: Chess, Kristina and Mamma Mia! (1983–present)=== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In 1992, he wrote the introduction melody for the European football championship, which was organised by Sweden that year. 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. 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). 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. 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. ===Benny Anderssons Orkester (2001–present)=== 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. 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. ===New compositions (1984–present)=== 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. ===Film music=== 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"). 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. 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. 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. ==Awards== 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). 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". 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. 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." In 2012, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy from the Luleå Tekniska Universitet Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Andersson won the Swedish "Guldbaggen" award in 2012 as composer of the music for the film "Palme". For his album Piano he received the Opus Klassik award in 2018. On 21 March 2024, all four members of ABBA were appointed Commander, First Class, of the Royal Order of Vasa by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. This was the first time in almost 50 years that the Swedish Royal Orders of Knighthood was bestowed on Swedes, also the 50th anniversary of ABBA winning the Eurovision Song Contest. ABBA shared the honour with nine other persons. : Royal Order of Vasa, Commander First Class (21 March 2024) ==Personal life== Andersson was engaged to Christina Grönvall. They have two children. 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, their son Peter Grönvall 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. 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. He married Swedish TV presenter Mona Nörklit in 1981 and had a son, Ludvig. Ludvig is also one of the producers of the concert residency ABBA Voyage. 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. ==Discography== ==Also appears on== Beginner's Guide to Scandinavia (3CD, Nascente 2011)	[ "Eurovision Song Contest 1974", "Royal Alexandra Theatre", "Roy Andersson", "Palme (film)", "Lars Berghagen", "Eurovision Song Contest", "Barbara Dickson", "Sissela Kyle", "Ivor Novello", "Nova (Swedish band)", "Europop", "schlager", "I Know Him So Well", "Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest", "No Response", "Swedish folk music", "Chess (musical)", "Anni-Frid Lyngstad", "The Sweet", "2nd Best to None", "Anders Ekborg", "Anne-Marie David", "Karin Glenmark", "Wedding (song)", "Mio in the Land of Faraway", "Brand New Cadillac", "You, the Living", "Josefin Nilsson", "Sunny Girl (song)", "Elaine Paige", "Sveriges Radio", "Orsa Spelmän", "List of Swedes in music", "Melodifestivalen", "Opus Klassik", "One Night in Bangkok", "concert residency", "Guldbagge Award", "Anne Sofie Von Otter", "Ding-A-Dong", "Jailhouse Rock (song)", "Stockholm University", "Tommy Körberg", "2013 Eurovision Song Contest", "Vasastan, Stockholm", "Ljuva sextital", "Olof Palme", "You're Summer", "Tim Rice", "ABBA Voyage", "Folk rock", "Royal Swedish Academy of Music", "Kalle Moraeus", "Eurovision Song Contest 1996", "Mamma Mia! (musical)", "Murray Head", "accordion", "ABBA", "Prince Edward Theatre", "Drama Desk Award", "Baby Elephant Walk", "Royal Order of Vasa", "List of Eurovision Song Contest winners", "Eurovision Song Festival", "Bryn Terfel", "Mamma Mia! (film)", "Stockholm", "Björn Ulvaeus", "Hep Stars", "Teach-In (band)", "Luleå Tekniska Universitet", "Rik Mayall", "Sveriges Television", "EBU", "48th Guldbagge Awards", "teetotaler", "Middle of the Road (band)", "Elvis Presley", "Swedish language", "Voyage (ABBA album)", "baritone", "Mio My Mio (song)", "folk music", "Mio, My Son", "Caterina Valente", "Highland (song)", "Björn Skifs", "Grammy Award", "Songs from the Second Floor", "Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park", "Tony Award", "Lasse Berghagen", "Royal Albert Hall", "Anders Glenmark", "Deutsche Grammophon", "Waterloo (album)", "Kristina från Duvemåla", "stage musical", "Benny Anderssons Orkester", "Helen Sjöholm", "Benny Anderssons orkester", "A Winter Symphony", "Astrid Lindgren", "Tu te reconnaîtras", "Carl XVI Gustaf", "Svensktoppen", "Carnegie Hall", "Avicii", "Euro disco", "Jennie, Jennie", "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again", "Brian Jones", "Gemini (Swedish band)", "The Emigrants (novels)", "Cher", "One More Time (band)", "Touring Broadway Awards", "Vilhelm Moberg", "Agnetha Fältskog", "Blue Mink", "Grammis", "O klang och jubeltid", "traditional music", "Consolation (song)", "Waterloo (ABBA song)", "Ainbusk", "Middle of the road (music)", "Sarah Brightman", "Order of Vasa" ]
3,742	Bluetooth	{{Infobox protocol \| name = Bluetooth \| image = Bluetooth logo (2016).svg \| image_upright = 1.15 \| developer = Bluetooth Special Interest Group \| industry = Personal area networks \| introdate = \| hardware = \| range = Typically less than , up to .Bluetooth 5.0: It is mainly used as an alternative to wired connections to exchange files between nearby portable devices and connect cell phones and music players with wireless headphones, wireless speakers, HIFI systems, car audio and wireless transmission between TVs and soundbars. 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 the 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 applies to the technology, which is licensed to individual qualifying devices. , 4.7 billion Bluetooth integrated circuit chips are shipped annually. Bluetooth was first demonstrated in space in 2024, an early test envisioned to enhance IoT capabilities. ==Etymology== 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. According to Bluetooth's official website, 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. The Bluetooth logo is a bind rune merging the Younger Futhark runes (ᚼ, Hagall) and (ᛒ, Bjarkan), Harald's initials. == History == 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, and . 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. 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. 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. 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 unreleased prototype Ericsson T36, though it was the revised Ericsson model T39 that actually made it to store shelves in June 2001. However Ericsson released the R520m in Quarter 1 of 2001, making the R520m the first ever commercially available Bluetooth phone. In parallel, IBM introduced the IBM ThinkPad A30 in October 2001 which was the first notebook with integrated Bluetooth. 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. 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. In 2012, Jaap Haartsen was nominated by the European Patent Office for the European Inventor Award. This is in the globally unlicensed (but not unregulated) industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) 2.4GHz 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 1MHz. It usually performs 1600hops per second, with adaptive frequency-hopping (AFH) enabled. 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 1Mbit/s is possible. The term Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) is used to describe π/4-DPSK (EDR2) and 8-DPSK (EDR3) schemes, transferring 2 and 3Mbit/s respectively. 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). 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 312.5μs, two clock ticks then make up a slot of 625μs, and two slots make up a slot pair of 1250μs. 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. The above excludes Bluetooth Low Energy, introduced in the 4.0 specification, which uses the same spectrum but somewhat differently. === Communication and connection === 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). 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. 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. == Uses == 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. === Bluetooth classes and power use === Historically, the Bluetooth range was defined by the radio class, with a lower class (and higher output power) having larger range. The actual range of a given link depends on several qualities of both communicating devices and the air and obstacles in between. The primary attributes affecting range are the data rate, protocol (Bluetooth Classic or Bluetooth Low Energy), transmission power, and receiver sensitivity, and the relative orientations and gains of both antennas. 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. 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. In general, however, Class 1 devices have sensitivities similar to those of Class 2 devices. Connecting two Class 1 devices with both high sensitivity and high power can allow ranges far in excess of the typical 100 m, 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. === Bluetooth profile === To use Bluetooth wireless technology, a device must be able to interpret certain Bluetooth profiles. For example, The Headset Profile (HSP) connects headphones and earbuds to a cell phone or laptop. The Health Device Profile (HDP) can connect a cell phone to a digital thermometer or heart rate detector. The Video Distribution Profile (VDP) sends a video stream from a video camera to a TV screen or a recording device. 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. === List of applications === Wireless control and communication between a mobile phone and a handsfree headset. This was one of the earliest applications to become popular. Wireless control of audio and communication functions between a mobile phone and a Bluetooth compatible car stereo system (and sometimes between the SIM card and the car phone). Wireless communication between a smartphone and a smart lock for unlocking doors. Wireless control of and communication with iOS and Android device phones, tablets and portable wireless speakers. Wireless Bluetooth headset and intercom. Idiomatically, a headset is sometimes called "a Bluetooth". Wireless streaming of audio to headphones with or without communication capabilities. Wireless streaming of data collected by Bluetooth-enabled fitness devices to phone or PC. Wireless networking between PCs in a confined space and where little bandwidth is required. Wireless communication with PC input and output devices, the most common being the mouse, keyboard and printer. Transfer of files, contact details, calendar appointments, and reminders between devices with OBEX and sharing directories via FTP. Triggering the camera shutter of a smartphone using a Bluetooth controlled selfie stick. Replacement of previous wired RS-232 serial communications in test equipment, GPS receivers, medical equipment, bar code scanners, and traffic control devices. For controls where infrared was often used. For low bandwidth applications where higher USB bandwidth is not required and cable-free connection desired. Sending small advertisements from Bluetooth-enabled advertising hoardings to other, discoverable, Bluetooth devices. Wireless bridge between two Industrial Ethernet (e.g., PROFINET) networks. Game consoles have been using Bluetooth as a wireless communications protocol for peripherals since the seventh generation, including Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3 which use Bluetooth for their respective controllers. Dial-up internet access on personal computers or PDAs using a data-capable mobile phone as a wireless modem. Short-range transmission of health sensor data from medical devices to mobile phone, set-top box or dedicated telehealth devices. Allowing a DECT phone to ring and answer calls on behalf of a nearby mobile phone. Real-time location systems (RTLS) are used to track and identify the location of objects in real time using "Nodes" or "tags" attached to, or embedded in, the objects tracked, and "Readers" that receive and process the wireless signals from these tags to determine their locations. Personal security application on mobile phones for prevention of theft or loss of items. The protected item has a Bluetooth marker (e.g., a tag) that is in constant communication with the phone. If the connection is broken (the marker is out of range of the phone) then an alarm is raised. This can also be used as a man overboard alarm. Calgary, Alberta, Canada's Roads Traffic division uses data collected from travelers' Bluetooth devices to predict travel times and road congestion for motorists. Wireless transmission of audio (a more reliable alternative to FM transmitters) Live video streaming to the visual cortical implant device by Nabeel Fattah in Newcastle university 2017. Connection of motion controllers to a PC when using VR headsets Wireless connection between TVs and soundbars. === Devices === 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. 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). 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. === Operating system implementation === 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. 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. FreeBSD has included Bluetooth since its v5.0 release, implemented through netgraph. 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. 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. == Specifications and features == 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. All versions of the Bluetooth standards are backward-compatible with all earlier versions. The Bluetooth Core Specification Working Group (CSWG) produces mainly four kinds of specifications: The Bluetooth Core Specificationtypically released every few years Core Specification Addendum (CSA) Core Specification Supplements (CSS)can be released more frequently than Addenda Errataavailable with a Bluetooth SIG account: Errata login) === Bluetooth 1.0 and 1.0B === Products were not interoperable. Anonymity was not possible, preventing certain services from using Bluetooth environments. === Bluetooth 1.1 === Ratified as IEEE Standard 802.15.1–2002 Many errors found in the v1.0B specifications were fixed. Added possibility of non-encrypted channels. Received signal strength indicator (RSSI) === Bluetooth 1.2 === Major enhancements include: Faster connection and discovery Adaptive frequency-hopping spread spectrum (AFH), which improves resistance to radio frequency interference by avoiding the use of crowded frequencies in the hopping sequence Higher transmission speeds in practice than in v1.1, up to 721 kbit/s Extended Synchronous Connections (eSCO), which improve voice quality of audio links by allowing retransmissions of corrupted packets, and may optionally increase audio latency to provide better concurrent data transfer Host Controller Interface (HCI) operation with three-wire UART Ratified as IEEE Standard 802.15.1–2005 Introduced flow control and retransmission modes for === Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR === 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 data rate of EDR is 3Mbit/s, although the maximum data transfer rate (allowing for inter-packet time and acknowledgements) is 2.1Mbit/s. EDR can provide a lower power consumption through a reduced duty cycle. 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. === Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR === Bluetooth Core Specification version 2.1 + EDR was adopted by the Bluetooth SIG on 26 July 2007. 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. === Bluetooth 3.0 + HS === Version 3.0 + HS of the Bluetooth Core Specification or earlier Core Specification Addendum 1. L2CAP Enhanced modes: Enhanced Retransmission Mode (ERTM) implements reliable L2CAP channel, while Streaming Mode (SM) implements unreliable channel with no retransmission or flow control. Introduced in Core Specification Addendum 1. Alternative MAC/PHY: Enables the use of alternative MAC and PHYs for transporting Bluetooth profile data. The Bluetooth radio is still used for device discovery, initial connection and profile configuration. However, when large quantities of data must be sent, the high-speed alternative MAC PHY 802.11 (typically associated with Wi-Fi) transports the data. This means that Bluetooth uses proven low power connection models when the system is idle, and the faster radio when it must send large quantities of data. AMP links require enhanced L2CAP modes. Unicast Connectionless Data: Permits sending service data without establishing an explicit L2CAP channel. It is intended for use by applications that require low latency between user action and reconnection/transmission of data. This is only appropriate for small amounts of data. Enhanced Power Control: Updates the power control feature to remove the open loop power control, and also to clarify ambiguities in power control introduced by the new modulation schemes added for EDR. Enhanced power control removes the ambiguities by specifying the behavior that is expected. The feature also adds closed loop power control, meaning RSSI filtering can start as the response is received. Additionally, a "go straight to maximum power" request has been introduced. This is expected to deal with the headset link loss issue typically observed when a user puts their phone into a pocket on the opposite side to the headset. ==== Ultra-wideband ==== 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. 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. 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. === Bluetooth 4.0 === The Bluetooth SIG completed the Bluetooth Core Specification version 4.0 (called Bluetooth Smart) and has been adopted . 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. 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. 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, represents a significant progression. In a single-mode implementation, only the low energy protocol stack is implemented. Dialog Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics, AMICCOM, CSR, Nordic Semiconductor and Texas Instruments have released single mode Bluetooth Low Energy solutions. In a dual-mode implementation, Bluetooth Smart functionality is integrated into an existing Classic Bluetooth controller. , the following semiconductor companies have announced the availability of chips meeting the standard: Qualcomm Atheros, CSR, Broadcom and Texas Instruments. The compliant architecture shares all of Classic Bluetooth's existing radio and functionality resulting in a negligible cost increase compared to Classic Bluetooth. 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. 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. 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. Core Specification Addendum 3 revision 2 has an adoption date of 24 July 2012. Core Specification Addendum 4 has an adoption date of 12 February 2013. === Bluetooth 4.1 === 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. New features of this specification include: Mobile wireless service coexistence signaling Train nudging and generalized interlaced scanning Low Duty Cycle Directed Advertising L2CAP connection-oriented and dedicated channels with credit-based flow control Dual Mode and Topology LE Link Layer Topology 802.11n PAL Audio architecture updates for Wide Band Speech Fast data advertising interval Limited discovery time Some features were already available in a Core Specification Addendum (CSA) before the release of v4.1. === Bluetooth 4.2 === Released on 2 December 2014, it introduces features for the Internet of things. The major areas of improvement are: Bluetooth Low Energy Secure Connection with Data Packet Length Extension to improve the cryptographic protocol Link Layer Privacy with Extended Scanner Filter Policies to improve data security Internet Protocol Support Profile (IPSP) version 6 ready for Bluetooth smart devices to support the Internet of things and home automation Older Bluetooth hardware may receive 4.2 features such as Data Packet Length Extension and improved privacy via firmware updates. === Bluetooth 5 === 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." Bluetooth 5 provides, for BLE, options that can double the data rate (2Mbit/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. The major areas of improvement are: Slot Availability Mask (SAM) 2 Mbit/s PHY for LE Long Range High Duty Cycle Non-Connectable Advertising LE Advertising Extensions LE Channel Selection Algorithm #2 Features added in CSA5 – integrated in v5.0: Higher Output Power The following features were removed in this version of the specification: Park State === Bluetooth 5.1 === The Bluetooth SIG presented Bluetooth 5.1 on 21 January 2019. The major areas of improvement are: Angle of arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD) which are used for locating and tracking of devices Advertising Channel Index GATT caching Minor Enhancements batch 1: HCI support for debug keys in LE Secure Connections Sleep clock accuracy update mechanism ADI field in scan response data Interaction between and Flow Specification Block Host channel classification for secondary advertising Allow the SID to appear in scan response reports Specify the behavior when rules are violated Periodic Advertising Sync Transfer Features added in Core Specification Addendum (CSA) 6 – integrated in v5.1: Models Mesh-based model hierarchy The following features were removed in this version of the specification: Unit keys === Bluetooth 5.2 === On 31 December 2019, the Bluetooth SIG published the Bluetooth Core Specification version 5.2. The new specification adds new features: Enhanced Attribute Protocol (EATT), an improved version of the Attribute Protocol (ATT) LE Power Control LE Isochronous Channels LE Audio that is built on top of the new 5.2 features. BT LE Audio was announced in January 2020 at CES by the Bluetooth SIG. Compared to regular Bluetooth Audio, Bluetooth Low Energy Audio makes lower battery consumption possible and creates a standardized way of transmitting audio over BT LE. Bluetooth LE Audio also allows one-to-many and many-to-one transmission, allowing multiple receivers from one source or one receiver for multiple sources, known as Auracast. It uses a new LC3 codec. BLE Audio will also add support for hearing aids. On 12 July 2022, the Bluetooth SIG announced the completion of Bluetooth LE Audio. The standard has a lower minimum latency claim of 20–30 ms vs Bluetooth Classic audio of 100–200 ms. At IFA in August 2023 Samsung announced support for Auracast through a software update for their Galaxy Buds2 Pro and two of their TVs. In October users started getting updates for the earbuds. === Bluetooth 5.3 === The Bluetooth SIG published the Bluetooth Core Specification version 5.3 on 13 July 2021. The feature enhancements of Bluetooth 5.3 are: Connection Subrating Periodic Advertisement Interval Channel Classification Enhancement Encryption key size control enhancements The following features were removed in this version of the specification: Alternate MAC and PHY (AMP) Extension === Bluetooth 5.4 === The Bluetooth SIG released the Bluetooth Core Specification version 5.4 on 7 February 2023. This new version adds the following features: Periodic Advertising with Responses (PAwR) Encrypted Advertising Data LE Security Levels Characteristic Advertising Coding Selection === Bluetooth 6.0 === The Bluetooth SIG released the Bluetooth Core Specification version 6.0 on 27 August 2024. This version adds the following features: Bluetooth Channel Sounding Decision-based advertising filtering Monitoring advertisers enhancement LL extended feature set Frame space update == Technical information == === Architecture === ==== Software ==== 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. 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. ==== Hardware ==== 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. A Bluetooth device is a short-range wireless device. Bluetooth devices are fabricated on RF CMOS integrated circuit (RF circuit) chips. === Bluetooth protocol stack === 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. ==== Link Manager ==== 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: Transmission and reception of data. Name request Request of the link addresses. Establishment of the connection. Authentication. Negotiation of link mode and connection establishment. ==== Host Controller Interface ==== The Host Controller Interface provides a command interface between the controller and the host. ==== Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol ==== 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. 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. 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. Bluetooth Core Specification Addendum 1 adds two additional L2CAP modes to the core specification. These modes effectively deprecate original Retransmission and Flow Control modes: Enhanced Retransmission Mode (ERTM): This mode is an improved version of the original retransmission mode. This mode provides a reliable L2CAP channel. Streaming Mode (SM): This is a very simple mode, with no retransmission or flow control. This mode provides an unreliable L2CAP channel. 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. Only L2CAP channels configured in ERTM or SM may be operated over AMP logical links. ==== Service Discovery Protocol ==== 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). ==== Radio Frequency Communications ==== 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-232 (formerly RS-232) control signals over the Bluetooth baseband layer, i.e., it is a serial port emulation. 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. 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. ==== Bluetooth Network Encapsulation Protocol ==== 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. ==== Audio/Video Control Transport Protocol ==== 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. ==== Audio/Video Distribution Transport Protocol ==== 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. ==== Telephony Control Protocol ==== 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." TCS-BIN is only used by the cordless telephony profile, which failed to attract implementers. As such it is only of historical interest. ==== Adopted protocols ==== 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: Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP): Internet standard protocol for transporting IP datagrams over a point-to-point link. TCP/IP/UDP: Foundation Protocols for TCP/IP protocol suite Object Exchange Protocol (OBEX): Session-layer protocol for the exchange of objects, providing a model for object and operation representation Wireless Application Environment/Wireless Application Protocol (WAE/WAP): WAE specifies an application framework for wireless devices and WAP is an open standard to provide mobile users access to telephony and information services. 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. An overview of Bluetooth vulnerabilities exploits was published in 2007 by Andreas Becker. 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. 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. === Bluejacking === 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. 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. === History of security concerns === ==== 2001–2004 ==== 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 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. ==== 2005 ==== 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. In April 2005, University of Cambridge 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. 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. 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. ==== 2006 ==== 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. In October 2006, at the Luxembourgish 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. ==== 2017 ==== 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. ==== 2018 ==== 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. 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. ==== 2019 ==== 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. ==== 2023 ==== 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 affected. == Health concerns == Bluetooth uses the radio frequency spectrum in the 2.402GHz to 2.480GHz 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 100mW for Class1, 2.5mW for Class2, and 1mW for Class3 devices. Even the maximum power output of Class1 is a lower level than the lowest-powered mobile phones. UMTS and W-CDMA output 250mW, GSM1800/1900 outputs 1000mW, and GSM850/900 outputs 2000mW. == Award programs == 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. 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.	[ "Ultra-wideband", "Received signal strength indicator", "Texas Instruments", "TVs", "Xperia XZ Premium", "S60 (software platform)", "Bluetooth Special Interest Group", "Secure and Fast Encryption Routine", "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers", "Jaap Haartsen", "Auracast", "Video game console", "A2DP", "Personal computer", "E0 (cipher)", "Linux", "IBM", "PlayStation 3", "Bluetooth protocols", "UMTS", "keyboard technology", "error correction", "Near-field communication", "Tethering", "Dial-up Internet access", "set-top box", "NetBSD", "BlueSoleil", "Anglicised", "WiMedia Alliance", "Personal identification number", "Global Positioning System", "wireless speakers", "Lund", "Subnetwork Access Protocol", "Ericsson", "Bluebugging", "Java APIs for Bluetooth", "Johan Ullman", "Advanced Encryption Standard", "malware", "Button cell", "computer printer", "Kaspersky Lab", "milliwatt", "Bluetooth Low Energy beacon", "Man-in-the-middle attack", "The Long Ships", "Microsoft Windows", "Angle of arrival", "Audio headset", "integrated circuit", "Frans G. Bengtsson", "Bluetooth profile", "Advanced Audio Distribution Profile", "NearLink", "Stream cipher attack", "cryptography", "COMDEX", "iOS", "Tord Wingren", "Eurecom", "Alberta", "OpenBSD", "duty cycle", "SBC (codec)", "Bell Laboratories", "ThinkPad", "International Agency for Research on Cancer", "Headset (audio)", "Thread (network protocol)", "near-field communication", "LC3 (codec)", "Path loss", "Broadcom", "carcinogen", "Ultra high frequency", "scatternet", "National Institute of Standards and Technology", "EE Times", "IEEE 802.15.4", "Embedded system", "Real-time locating system", "non-ionizing radiation", "Continua Health Alliance", "Haglaz", "PHY", "telehealth", "Mbit/s", "wireless headphone", "piconet", "Windows XP Service Pack 2", "Eli Biham", "Infrared Data Association", "Personal area network", "DragonFly BSD", "Qualcomm", "iBeacon", "Bluetooth mesh networking", "Bluetooth headset", "Android (operating system)", "automatic repeat request", "EIA-232", "personal area network", "RS-232", "Home automation", "Galaxy S8", "Wireless USB", "intellectual property", "Bluesniping", "OpenBSD Journal", "handsfree", "Quasi-optical", ".SIS", "History of video game consoles (seventh generation)", "Maximum transmission unit", "DASH7", "phase-shift keying", "cryptographic protocol", "Microsoft", "epithet", "headphones", "patent", "IEEE 802.11", "smart lock", "USB", "Nordic Semiconductor", "Types of beacons", "μs", "GHz", "eavesdropping", "European Patent Office", "Toshiba", "List of Bluetooth profiles", "motion controller", "STMicroelectronics", "ISM band", "DECT", "DailyTech", "Qualcomm Atheros", "Bluetooth mesh", "Samsung Galaxy Buds series", "TCP/IP", "network address", "Cambridgeshire", "PROFINET", "RF circuit", "W-CDMA", "master/slave (technology)", "Nintendo", "Younger Futhark", "semiconductor device fabrication", "hearing aid", "Bit rate", "CSR plc", "encryption", "Old Norse", "DPSK", "Zigbee", "adaptive frequency-hopping spread spectrum", "Universally unique identifier", "IPv6", "Nokia", "wireless", "MyriaNed", "Internet of things", "IEEE 802.15", "Intel", "round-robin scheduling", "USB Implementers Forum", "CeBIT", "F-Secure", "Berkanan", "Milliwatt", "GSM frequency bands", "Singapore University of Technology and Design", "modem", "YouTube", "IP datagram", "Bluetooth Low Energy", "home automation", "University of Oxford", "Ericsson T39", "man overboard", "public-key cryptography", "Sony", "forward error correction", "soundbars", "European Inventor Award", "Wi-Fi", "IEEE 802.11ah", "headset (audio)", "radio frequency interference", "Motorola", "Medium access control", "SIM Access Profile", "Wi-Fi hotspot", "MAC address", "CompactFlash", "Secure Digital", "Harald Bluetooth", "BlueBorne", "Bluetooth sniping", "RuBee", "FreeBSD", "Apple Inc.", "HIFI", "confidentiality", "FM transmitter (personal device)", "authentication", "Gwyn Jones (author)", "dongle", "Key finder", "Wii", "IFA Berlin", "smart devices", "Denial-of-service attack", "intercom", "Bluetooth stack", "short-range device", "computer virus", "bit rate", "bind rune", "Mac OS X v10.2", "netgraph", "Wireless Application Protocol", "desktop computer", "University of Cambridge", "Secure Network", "Li-Fi", "frequency-hopping spread spectrum", "FTP server", "Calgary", "Universal asynchronous receiver-transmitter", "Internet of Things", "infrared", "Ericsson Mobile", "selfie stick", "Gaussian frequency-shift keying", "DQPSK", "Point-to-Point Protocol", "Asynchronous connection-oriented logical transport", "data security", "Consumer Electronics Show", "dBm", "cell phone", "List of Bluetooth protocols", "key (cryptography)", "radio frequency", "guard band", "Sony Ericsson T610", "ANT (network)", "Dialog Semiconductor", "computer mouse", "shared secret", "Symbian OS", "mobile phone", "runes", "wireless speaker", "Smartphone", "iPhone 8", "Bluejacking", "RF CMOS", "block cipher", "Eddystone (Google)", "packet switching", "HomePod", "OBject EXchange", "Audio equipment", "radio wave", "Jelling stones", "car audio", "transceiver", "Wireless speaker", "Backward compatibility", "smartphone", "iPhone X" ]
3,743	Bluetooth Special Interest Group	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, US. The SIG does not make, manufacture or sell Bluetooth-enabled products. ==Introduction== 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. 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. 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). From 2012-mid-2024, Mark Powell acted as the Bluetooth SIG's CEO/Executive Director. Effective 29 May 2024, Neville Meijers became the SIG's CEO. 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 40,000 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. ==Structure== The SIG members participate in study groups, expert groups, working groups along with committees. ===Study groups=== 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. ===Expert groups=== 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. ===Working groups=== 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. ===Committees=== 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. ==Membership== 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. ===Promoter members=== 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. Ericsson (founder member) Intel (founder member) Nokia (founder member) Toshiba (founder member) Microsoft (since 1999) Lenovo (since 2005, replaced founder member IBM after the divestment of personal computing division) Apple (since 2015) Google (since 2017) Telink Semiconductor (Since 2019) 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. The SIG's website carries a full list of members. ===Associate members=== 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. ===Adopter members=== 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. ===Individuals=== Membership is not currently open to individuals. ===Universities=== Universities or other educational facilities are not accepted for membership. ==Qualification== 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. 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 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"). An overview of both processes including steps of the processes, types and fees is available on the [https://www.bluetooth.com/develop-with-bluetooth/qualification-listing Bluetooth SIG public portal. 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.	[ "Google", "Kirkland, Washington", "IBM", "Nokia", "wireless", "standards organization", "IEEE 802.15", "United States", "Intel", "Washington (state)", "computer", "Ericsson", "laptop", "frequency", "Computer printer", "engineering", "Manufacturing", "Michael W. Foley", "Telink Semiconductor", "Microsoft", "digital camera", "Bluetooth", "marketing", "Special Interest Group", "trademark", "Toshiba", "Personal digital assistant", "Lenovo", "Apple Inc.", "English language", "radio", "standardization", "Overland Park, Kansas", "Standards Organization", "Wireless LAN" ]
3,744	Boney M.	Boney M. is a German reggae, funk and disco music group founded in 1974, who achieved popularity during the disco era of the second half of the 1970s. The band was created by German record producer Frank Farian, who was the group's primary songwriter and singer. Originally based in West Germany, the four original members of the band's official line-up were Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett from Jamaica, Maizie Williams from Montserrat, and Bobby Farrell from Aruba. Since the 1980s, various line-ups of the band have performed with different members. The band has sold millions of records worldwide and is known for international hits including "Daddy Cool", "Ma Baker", "Belfast", "Sunny", "Rasputin", "Rivers of Babylon/Brown Girl in the Ring", "Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday", "Mary's Boy Child/Oh My Lord" and "Gotta Go Home". ==History== ===1974–1976: Formation and early career=== 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: {{blockquote\|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. Both singles from the album reached no.1 in West Germany and the UK Top 10. 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-publicised 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 subject matter. 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 caredunlike 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 sound of 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. 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 lead and backing vocals credits 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.35. ===1980–1986: The Magic of Boney M. Departure of Farrell and split=== 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. Boney M.'s fifth album had been scheduled for release in November 1980 but the recording sessions dragged on 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 without Farrell. Following this, the group released Christmas Album. In 1982 "Rasputin" was played by local broadcasters in Vietnam during the waiting periods before live games of the España 82 – the 1982 FIFA World Cup. This led to the popularity of the band in Vietnam for decades following. 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", 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. 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. ===1990 and on: Failed reunions and public interest=== 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. 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. 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, Gold – 20 Super Hits, reaching the UK Top 20 in 1993. While Marcia Barrett, by then living 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. Liz Mitchell was touring the world with her line-up of Boney M., which was 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. 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.". 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. 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. 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). 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). 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. 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, continued to work with Liz Mitchell and her line-up all through the 1990s and 2000s. In January 2007, Bobby Farrell's daughter Zanillya Farrell and his ex-wife Yasmina Ayad-Saban renewed the trademark to the name Boney M. in Germany for a 10-year period. 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." 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. 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. 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. In March 2015, Farian released Diamonds, a three-CD 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. 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 singing on three songs, along with the single and video Like Diamonds in the Sky featuring Liz Mitchell, based on El Cóndor Pasa. 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. 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. In January 2024, the group's producer and main founder Frank Farian died. The group is scheduled for a farewell tour in Australia in June and July, 2024. == UK sales mark == 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) 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 No.1 in December 1978. 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. == Back catalogue == 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. "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." == Popularity outside the West == Boney M. was hugely popular in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, although the song "Rasputin" was banned by the Soviet authorities from being played at the group's concert in Moscow in December 1978. The song has been used in several films 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. 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. 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. 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". 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. 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. Boney M. was immensely popular in India throughout 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." == Personnel == Liz Mitchell – lead and backing vocals (1976–1986, 1988–1989, 1990, 1992–present) Marcia Barrett – lead and backing vocals (1975–1986, 1988–1989) Maizie Williams – dancer, live vocals (1975–1986, 1988–1989) Bobby Farrell – dancer, live vocals (1975–1981, 1984–1986, 1988–1989; died 2010) Reggie Tsiboe – lead and backing vocals (1982–1986, 1990) == Discography == Take the Heat off Me (1976) Love for Sale (1977) Nightflight to Venus (1978) Oceans of Fantasy (1979) Boonoonoonoos (1981) Christmas Album (1981) Ten Thousand Lightyears (1984) Eye Dance (1985)	[ "Eurodisco", "Tony Esposito (musician)", "CJ7", "The Magic of Boney M.", "The Power of the Doctor", "Bobby Farrell", "Daddy Cool (Boney M. song)", "Sunny (Bobby Hebb song)", "Kevin Macdonald (director)", "Rivers of Babylon", "Radio Bremen", "Oceans of Fantasy", "Barack Obama", "Belfast (Boney M. song)", "Mary's Boy Child", "Europop", "BMG-Ariola", "Baby Do You Wanna Bump", "Les Humphries Singers", "Patras", "Shanghai Dreams", "Hansa Records", "Gotta Go Home", "2002 South Korean presidential election", "Tulpan", "Kalimba de Luna", "Siula Grande", "Samantha Fox", "Montserrat", "Joe Simpson (mountaineer)", "Christmas With Boney M. (2007 Edition)", "Everybody Wants to Dance Like Josephine Baker", "NU.nl", "Gold – 20 Super Hits", "calypso music", "Panaji", "Ten Thousand Lightyears", "Donna Summer", "Soviet Union", "British Phonographic Industry", "Bravo (magazine)", "Baby's Gang", "Happy Song (Baby's Gang song)", "The Umbrella Academy (TV series)", "Felicidad (Margherita)", "Reggie Tsiboe", "Melo-M", "Tony Esposito", "Andes", "Boney (TV series)", "Aruba", "Saint Petersburg", "Mary's Boy Child – Oh My Lord", "Bertelsmann Music Group", "No Woman, No Cry", "Barry Blue", "David Hamilton (broadcaster)", "Sunny (2011 film)", "I'm Born Again / Bahama Mama", "Doctor Who", "Ra'anana", "Take the Heat off Me", "Bee Gees", "ABBA", "The Magic of Boney M. – 20 Golden Hits", "1982 FIFA World Cup", "falsetto", "Touching the Void (book)", "List of best-selling singles in the United Kingdom", "Painter Man", "Atlantic Records", "RuPaul's Drag Race UK", "The Master (Doctor Who)", "The King's Man", "Rossiya 1", "Rasputin", "Frank Farian", "Daddy Cool (musical)", "International Film Festival of India", "Cheung Gong 7 hou", "Roh Moo-hyun", "Hindustan Times", "Boogie Nights", "Brown Girl in the Ring (song)", "Bobby Hebb", "List of million-selling singles in the United Kingdom", "Psalm 137", "Repentance (1987 film)", "Touching the Void (film)", "Black Mirror", "Greatest Hits of All Times – Remix '88", "YouTube", "Jamaica", "Musikladen", "funk", "Marcia Barrett", "Elton John", "Dean Friedman", "Sunny Girl", "Gilla (singer)", "Rasputin (song)", "Entertainment Weekly", "Patras Carnival", "Love for Sale (Boney M. album)", "OfficialCharts.com", "The Melodians", "backing vocalist", "Young, Free and Single", "Ministry of Sound", "disco", "Christmas Album (Boney M. album)", "Discogs", "Papa Chico", "Billboard Hot 100", "Sony Music", "West Germany", "El Cóndor Pasa (song)", "Ma Baker", "Milli Vanilli", "Kalimba de Luna - 16 Happy Songs", "Boonoonoonoos", "FIFA World Cup", "Harry Belafonte", "Oktyabrskiy Big Concert Hall", "reggae", "List of Christmas number one singles (UK)", "Boney M. discography", "Goa", "Raidió Teilifís Éireann", "Eye Dance", "Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday", "Nightflight to Venus", "Official Charts Company", "El Lute / Gotta Go Home", "Maizie Williams", "Bad Boys Blue", "B-side", "Liz Mitchell", "Johnny English Strikes Again", "Mousse T." ]
3,745	Britain	Britain most often refers to: Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland. The realm of the Monarchy of the United Kingdom, comprising the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies, and British Overseas Territories. Britain may also refer to: ==Places== British Isles, an archipelago comprising Great Britain, Ireland and many other smaller islands British Islands, the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man collectively Roman Britain, a Roman province corresponding roughly to modern-day England and Wales Historical predecessors to the present-day United Kingdom: Kingdom of Great Britain (1707 to 1800) United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801 to 1922) Britain (place name) Britain, Virginia, an unincorporated community in the United States ==People== Calvin Britain (1800–1862), an American politician Clarissa Britain (1816–1895), an American inventor Kristen Britain (born 1965), an American novelist ==Other uses== Captain Britain, a Marvel Comics superhero	[ "Great Britain (disambiguation)", "Britannia", "Briton (disambiguation)", "Great Britain", "Kristen Britain", "National sports teams of the United Kingdom", "British Isles", "Roman Britain", "Monarchy of the United Kingdom", "Britains", "New Britain (disambiguation)", "Terminology of the British Isles", "Brittonic languages", "Clarissa Britain", "Britain, Virginia", "Brittain (disambiguation)", "British (disambiguation)", "Captain Britain", "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland", "Brit (disambiguation)", "Britten (disambiguation)", "Brittany (disambiguation)", "Britain (place name)", "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", "British Islands", "England", "Little Britain (disambiguation)", "Kingdom of Great Britain", "Calvin Britain" ]
3,746	Blade Runner	Blade Runner is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay 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. 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 and a foundational work of the cyberpunk 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. Having invested more than $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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. === Casting === 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. 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. 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. the violent yet thoughtful leader of the replicants. Scott cast Hauer without having met him, based on his performances in Paul Verhoeven's movies that Scott had seen (Katie Tippel, Soldier of Orange, and Turkish Delight). Hauer rewrote his character's "tears in rain" speech himself and presented the words to Scott on set prior to filming. 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. 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. 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. === Design === 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. 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 Runners miniature building shots. 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. ==== Spinner ==== "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. === Music === 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. 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. 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. 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 film, and the third disc is all newly composed music from Vangelis, inspired by, and in the spirit of the film. === Special effects === 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. == Release == === Theatrical run === 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. === Versions === 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. 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". 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 a sequence in which Deckard dreams of a unicorn, 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. It is often falsely claimed that the unicorn sequence was an outtake from Ridley Scott's follow-up film Legend which also features unicorns, but it was in fact shot for Blade Runner as "additional photography" by second unit cinematographer Brian Tufano. 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. == Reception == === Critical response === On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 89% approval rating based on 132 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". 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." === Cultural analysis === 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's production. 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. 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. 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. 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. In a 2019 retrospective, 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. === Awards and nominations === Blade Runner won or received nominations for the following awards: == Themes == 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 – extending 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. 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." 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. The film also consists of themes of Japan as a power, coming amid a time of anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. These thematic elements provide an atmosphere of uncertainty for Blade Runners 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. 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 he envisaged Deckard as 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. == Legacy == === Cultural impact === 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. Rian Johnson, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick have all cited it as an influence. Nolan notes that he has seen Blade Runner "literally hundreds of times", 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 film. 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. 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". 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, the role-playing game Shadowrun, the shooter game Skyhammer, and the Syndicate series of video games. 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. 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. \|- \| rowspan=3 \| 2002 \| Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) \| Top 100 Sci-fi Films of the Past 100 Years \| 2 \| \|- \| Sight & Sound \| Sight & Sound Top Ten Poll 2002 \| 45 \| \|- \| colspan="2"\| 50 Klassiker, Film \| rowspan="2" \| \|- \| rowspan=2 \| 2003 \| colspan="2"\| 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die \| \|- \| Entertainment Weekly \| The Top 50 Cult Movies \| 9 \| \|- \| 2004 \| The Guardian, scientists \| Top 10 Sci-fi Films of All Time \| 1 \| \|- \| rowspan=2 \| 2005 \| Total Films editors \| 100 Greatest Movies of All Time \| 47 \| \|- \| Time magazine's critics \| "All-Time 100" Movies \| \| \|- \| rowspan=2 \| 2008 \| New Scientist \| All-time favorite science fiction film (readers and staff) \| 1 \| \|- \| Empire \| The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time \| 20 \| \|- \| 2010 \| Total Film \| 100 Greatest Movies of All Time \| \| \|- \| rowspan=2 \| 2012 \| Sight & Sound \| Sight & Sound 2012 critics top 250 films \| 69 \| \|- \| Sight & Sound \| Sight & Sound 2012 directors top 100 films \| 67 \| \|- \| 2017 \| Empire \| The 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time \| 13 \| \|- \| 2022 \| IGN \| Top 25 Sci-Fi Movies of All Time \| 2 \| \|- \| 2022 \| Sight & Sound \| Sight & Sound 2022 critics top 100 films \| 54 \| \|- \|2024 \|Far Out Magazine \|10 most accurate movie psychopaths according to the FBI (replicant Leon Kowalski) \|8 \| \|} ==== American Film Institute recognition ==== AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – No. 74 AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – No. 97 AFI's 10 Top 10 – No. 6 Science Fiction Film === In other media === Before filming began, Cinefantastique magazine commissioned Paul M. Sammon to write a special issue about Blade Runners production which became the book Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner. The book chronicles Blade Runners 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. === Documentaries === The film has been the subject of several documentaries. Blade Runner: Convention Reel (1982, 13 minutes) Co-directed by Muffet Kaufman and Jeffrey B. Walker, shot and screened in 16 mm, featured no narrator, was filmed in 1981 while Blade Runner was still in production and featured short "behind-the-scenes" segments showing sets being built and sequences being shot, as well as interviews with Ridley Scott, Syd Mead and Douglas Trumbull. Appears on the Blade Runner Ultimate Collector's Edition. On the Edge of Blade Runner (2000, 55 minutes) Directed by Andrew Abbott and hosted/written by Mark Kermode. Interviews with production staff, including Scott, give details of the creative process and the turmoil during pre-production. Insights into Philip K. Dick and the origins of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are provided by Paul M. Sammon and Hampton Fancher. Future Shocks (2003, 27 minutes) Directed by TVOntario. It includes interviews with executive producer Bud Yorkin, Syd Mead, and the cast, and commentary by science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer and from film critics. Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner (2007, 213 minutes) Directed and produced by Charles de Lauzirika for The Final Cut version of the film. Its source material comprises more than 80 interviews, including extensive conversations with Ford, Young, and Scott. The documentary is presented in eight chapters, with each of the first seven covering a portion of the filmmaking process. The final chapter examines Blade Runner's controversial legacy. All Our Variant Futures: From Workprint to Final Cut (2007, 29 minutes) Produced by Paul Prischman, appears on the Blade Runner Ultimate Collector's Edition and provides an overview of the film's multiple versions and their origins, as well as detailing the seven-year-long restoration, enhancement and remastering process behind The Final Cut. 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. 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). 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. 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). Blade Runner co-writer 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. 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.	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3,747	Bill Gates	William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Following the company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO), Gates became then the youngest ever billionaire in 1987, at age 31. Forbes magazine ranked him as the world's wealthiest person for 18 out of 24 years between 1995 and 2017, including 13 years consecutively from 1995 to 2007. He became the first centibillionaire in 1999, when his net worth briefly surpassed $100 billion. On the 2024 Forbes list, he was ranked the world's seventh wealthiest person, with an estimated net worth of $128 billion. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Gates was privately educated at Lakeside School, where he befriended Allen and developed his computing interests. In 1973, he enrolled at Harvard College, where he took classes including Math 55 and graduate level computer science courses, but he dropped out in 1975 to co-found and lead Microsoft. He served as its CEO for the next 25 years and also became president and chairman of the board when the company incorporated in 1981. Succeeded as CEO by Steve Ballmer in 2000, he transitioned to chief software architect, a position he held until 2008. He stepped down as chairman of the board in 2014 and became technology adviser to CEO Satya Nadella and other Microsoft leaders, a position he still holds. He resigned from the board in 2020. Over time, Gates has reduced his role at Microsoft to focus on his philanthropic work with the Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable organization. Focusing on areas including health, education, and poverty alleviation, Gates became known for his efforts to eradicate transmissible diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and polio. Gates and his then-wife Melinda French Gates co-chaired the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation until 2024, when the latter resigned following the couple's divorce; the foundation was subsequently renamed, with Gates as its sole chair. Gates is founder and chairman of several other companies, including BEN, Cascade Investment, TerraPower, Gates Ventures, and Breakthrough Energy. In 2010, he and Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half their wealth to philanthropy. Named as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century by Time magazine in 1999, he has received numerous other honors and accolades, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded jointly to him and French Gates in 2016 for their philanthropic work. The subject of several documentary films, he published the first of three planned memoirs, Source Code: My Beginnings, in 2025. == Early life and education == William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, as 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 J. W. Maxwell was a national bank president. Gates 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 7. When Gates 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. At age 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school. When he was in the 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. 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. 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 described as one of the saddest days of his life. He then turned to Allen who helped him finish the system for Lakeside. 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 did not stay at Harvard long enough to choose a concentration, 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. 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. 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." == Microsoft == === BASIC === 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. === IBM partnership === 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 mentioned Microsoft to John Opel, IBM's then CEO. IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly 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. 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?". 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. === Windows === 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. === Management style === 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." 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 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. == Post-Microsoft == Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft, Gates has continued his philanthropy and works on other projects. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014 to become technology advisor at the firm to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. Gates provided his perspective on a range of issues in an interview that was published in the March 2014 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. In the interview, he 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." Gates has often expressed concern about the potential harms of superintelligence; in a Reddit "ask me anything", he stated that: 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 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. In March 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. The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2021 that Gates stepped down before Microsoft's board finished its investigation into Gates's alleged inappropriate sexual relationship with a Microsoft employee, which an external law firm had begun probing in late 2019. 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. === Business ventures and investments (partial list)=== Gates has a multi-billion dollar investment portfolio with stakes in companies in multiple sectors and has participated in several entrepreneurial ventures beyond Microsoft, including: AutoNation, an automotive retailer which trades on the NYSE and in which Gates has a 16% stake. bgC3 LLC, a think-tank and research company founded by Gates. Canadian National Railway (CN), a Canadian Class I freight railway. As of 2019, Gates is the single largest shareholder of the company. Cascade Investment LLC, a private investment and holding company incorporated in the United States, founded and controlled by Gates and headquartered in Kirkland, Washington. Gates is the largest private owner of farmland in the United States with his landholdings owned through Cascade Investment totalling 242,000 acres across 19 states. He is the 49th largest private owner of land in the US. Carbon Engineering, a for-profit venture founded by David Keith, which Gates helped fund. It is also supported by Chevron Corporation and Occidental Petroleum. SCoPEx, Keith's academic venture in "sun-dimming" geoengineering, which Gates provided most of the $12 million for. Corbis (originally named Interactive Home Systems and now known as Branded Entertainment Network), a digital image licensing and rights services company founded and chaired by Gates. EarthNow, a Seattle-based startup company aiming to blanket the Earth with live satellite video coverage. Gates is a large financial backer. Eclipse Aviation, a defunct manufacturer of very light jets. Gates was a major stake-holder early on in the project. Impossible Foods, a company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products. Some of the $396 million Patrick O. Brown collected for his business came from Gates around 2014 to 2017. Ecolab, a global provider of water, hygiene and energy technologies and services to the food, energy, healthcare, industrial and hospitality markets. Combined with the shares owned by the Foundation, Gates owns 11.6% of the company. A shareholder agreement in 2012 allowed him to own up to 25% of the company, but this agreement was removed. ResearchGate, a social networking site for scientists. Gates participated in a $35 million round of financing along with other investors. TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company co-founded and chaired by Gates, which is developing next generation traveling-wave reactor nuclear power plants in an effort to tackle climate change. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a closed fund for wealthy individuals who seek ROI on a 20-year horizon (see next section), which "is funding green start-ups and a host of other low-carbon entrepreneurial projects, including everything from advanced nuclear technology to synthetic breast milk". It was founded by Gates in 2015. Ginkgo Bioworks, a biotech startup that received $350 million in venture funding in 2019, in part from Gates's investment firm Cascade Investment. Luminous Computing, a company that develops neuromorphic photonic integrated circuits for AI acceleration. Mologic, a British diagnostic technology company that Gates purchased, along with the Soros Economic Development Fund, "which has developed 10-minute Covid lateral flow tests that it aims to make for as little as $1". == Climate change and energy == 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." 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. 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. Gates has also urged rich nations to shift to 100% synthetic beef industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food production. Gates has been criticized 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 Gates'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. 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. Gates supported the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. He tried to convince Joe Manchin to support a climate bill starting in 2019, and especially in the months leading up to the adoption of the bill. The bill aimed to 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. == Political positions == In October 2024, The New York Times reported Gates had recently donated $50 million to Future Forward USA Action, a 501(c)(4) organization supporting Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign. In response to the report, he did not explicitly address the donation or endorse Harris, but said "this election is different". === Regulation of the software industry === In 1998, Gates rejected the need for regulation of the software industry in testimony before the United States Senate.}} === Donald Trump Facebook ban === After Facebook and Twitter had banned Donald Trump from their platforms on February 18, 2021, 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 – forever would be that good." === Patents for COVID-19 vaccines === 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." 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. == Philanthropy == In an interview with the BBC in 2025, Gates stated that his charitable donations have totalled $100 billion, of which $60 billion have gone to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. === Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation === 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. 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. 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. 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". {{Blockquote\|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. === Personal donations === 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. The Foundation has received criticism, particularly over its role in Common Core, with critics stating the support is "cronyist" in that it profits from the "federal, state, and local contracts". 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 & Melinda Gates Foundation partially funds OpenStax, which creates and provides free digital textbooks. 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'. === Charity sports events === In April 2017, Gates partnered with Swiss tennis player 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. == Books == In 1989, Gates wrote the foreword to the Microsoft Press book Learn BASIC Now, by Michael Halvorson and David Rygmyr, reflecting on the growth of the BASIC language and its use in most of the era's personal computers. He also sketched out plans for BASIC's use as a universal language to embellish or alter the performance of a range of software applications. Gates has authored several books. The Road Ahead, co-authored with Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rinearson, was published in November 1995. It summarized the implications of the personal computing revolution and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global information superhighway. His second book, Business @ the Speed of Thought, co-authored with Collins Hemingway, was published in 1999, and discusses how business and technology are integrated, and shows how digital infrastructures and information networks can help to get an edge on the competition. In 2021 he published How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, which presents what Gates learned in over a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address climate problems. Following the COVID-19 pandemic Gates published How to Prevent the Next Pandemic in 2022 which proposes a "Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization" (GERM) team with annual funding of $1 billion, under the auspices of the WHO. The first of Gates's planned three memoirs, Source Code was published in February 2025. == Personal life == 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, golf, and tennis. 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. 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 estate has a swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a gym and a dining room. 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. === Marriage, family and divorce === In 1987, at a trade fair in New York, Gates met Melinda French, then a recent graduate of Duke University who had begun working at Microsoft around four months earlier. Gates and French became engaged in 1993 after dating for six years. They married on January 1, 1994, at the 12th hole of the Jack Nicklaus–designed Manele Golf Course on the Hawaiian Island of Lānaʻi. They had three children together: Jennifer Katherine Gates (born April 26, 1996; married to Olympic equestrian Nayel Nassar since October 2021), Rory John Gates (born May 23, 1999), and Phoebe Adele Gates (born September 14, 2002). Gates also has two granddaughters, born to Jennifer Gates in March 2023 and October 2024. On May 3, 2021, Bill and Melinda Gates announced their decision to divorce after more than 27 years of marriage. The Wall Street Journal reported that Melinda had begun meeting with divorce attorneys in 2019, citing interviews that suggested Gates's ties with Jeffrey Epstein were among her concerns. However, the couple delayed their divorce until their youngest child Phoebe graduated from high school. The divorce was finalized on August 2, 2021, and the financial details have remained confidential. In February 2023, Gates confirmed that he was dating Paula Hurd, widow of former Oracle Corporation and Hewlett-Packard chief executive Mark Hurd. Appearing on the Today show in February 2025, he described Hurd as a "serious girlfriend", stating he had "moved past the divorce". === Public image === 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 & 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. 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". 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 worldwide COVID-19 pandemic response, written in cooperation with the German newspaper Die Welt. Criticisms included the interconnectivity of the non-profits with Gates, as well as his personal lack of formal credentials in medicine. 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 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. === Religious views === 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." === Wealth === In 1987, Gates was listed as a billionaire in Forbes magazine's first ever America's richest issue; he was the world's youngest-ever self-made billionaire, with a net worth of $1.25 billion. Since then, he has been featured on The World's Billionaires list and was ranked as the richest person in 1995, 1996, 1998–2007, and 2009, maintaining the position until 2018, when Jeff Bezos surpassed his wealth. Gates was ranked first on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans from 1993 to 2007, in 2009, and from 2014 to 2017. According to Forbes, as of 17 February 2025, Gates' estimated net worth stood at US$108.8 billion, making him the 16th richest individual in the world. Gates's wealth briefly surpassed US$100 billion in 1999, making him the first person to reach this net worth. After 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings declined, partly because of the decline in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst, and partly because of the multi-billion dollar donations he had made to his charitable foundations. In May 2006, Gates remarked that he wished that he was 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 regained 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. In the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans in 2023, he was ranked sixth with a wealth of $115.0 billion. He once again became the richest person in the world in November 2019 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. Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of US$616,667 and a bonus of US$350,000, for a total of 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. == Controversies == === Antitrust litigation === 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: 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. 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". In the early 1980s, while business partner Paul Allen was undergoing treatments for cancer, Gates—according to Allen—conspired to reduce Allen'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". 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. When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend". === Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein === 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". However, Gates visited Epstein "many times, despite [Epstein's] past". 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. == Recognition == Time magazine listed Gates as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century in 1999, as well as one of the 100 most influential people in 2004, 2005, and 2006 respectively. Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts. In 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time" published by New Statesman. Gates was listed in the Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999, and was also included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001. Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit (1996), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (2002), Waseda University (2005), Tsinghua University (2007), Harvard University (2007), the Karolinska Institute (2007), the University of Cambridge (2009), and Northern Arizona University (2023). He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007. In 1994, he was honored as the 20th Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society (DFBCS). In 1999, Gates received New York Institute of Technology's President's Medal. Gates was elected a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 1996 "for contributions to the founding and development of personal computing". Entomologists named Bill Gates' flower fly, , in his honor in 1997. He was awarded American Library Association Honorary Membership in 1998. In 2002, Bill and Melinda Gates received the Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged. Gates was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005. He was given the 2006 James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award from the Tech Awards. In January 2006, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry by the then President of Portugal Jorge Sampaio. In November 2006, he was awarded the Placard of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, together with his wife Melinda who was awarded the Insignia of the same order, both for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "". Gates received the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership from The Franklin Institute for his achievements at Microsoft and his philanthropic work. Also in 2010, he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth. According to Forbes, Gates was ranked as the fourth most powerful person in the world in 2012, up from fifth in 2011. In 2015, Gates and his wife Melinda received the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award for their social work in the country. In 2016, Barack Obama honored Bill and Melinda Gates with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their philanthropic efforts. In 2017, François Hollande awarded Bill and Melinda Gates with France's highest national order, as Commanders in the Legion of Honour, for their charity efforts. He was elected a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2017. In 2019, Gates was awarded the Professor Hawking Fellowship of the Cambridge Union in the University of Cambridge. In 2020, Gates received the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun for his contributions to Japan and the world in regard to worldwide technological transformation and advancement of global health. In 2021, Gates was nominated at the 11th annual Streamy Awards for the crossover for his personal YouTube channel. In 2022, Gates received the Hilal-e-Pakistan, the second-highest civilian award in Pakistan for his social work in the country. == Depiction in media == === Documentary films about Gates === The Machine That Changed the World (1990) Triumph of the Nerds (1996) Nerds 2.0.1 (1998) Waiting for "Superman" (2010) The Virtual Revolution (2010) Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates (2019) What's Next? The Future with Bill Gates (2024) === Feature films === 1999: Pirates of Silicon Valley, a film that chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft from the early 1970s to 1997. Gates is portrayed by Anthony Michael Hall. 2002: Nothing So Strange, a mockumentary featuring Gates as the subject of a modern assassination. Gates briefly appears at the start, played by Steve Sires. 2010: The Social Network, a film that chronicles the development of Facebook. Gates is portrayed by Steve Sires. 2015: Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates: The Competition to Control the Personal Computer, 1974–1999: Original film from the National Geographic Channel for the American Genius series. === Video and film clips === 1983: Steve Jobs hosts Gates and others in the "Macintosh dating game" at the Macintosh pre-launch event (a parody of the television game show The Dating Game) 1991: Gates spoke to the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group lively weekly Thursday night meeting with questions and answers in PSL Hall (renamed Pimentel Hall in 1994) at University of California, Berkeley 2007: , All Things Digital Since 2009, Gates has given numerous TED talks on current concerns such as innovation, education and fighting global diseases === Radio === 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. === Television === Gates starred as himself in a brief appearance on the Frasier episode "The Two Hundredth Episode". He also made a guest appearance as himself on the TV show The Big Bang Theory, in an episode 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". 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. == Books ==	[ "Cronyism", "Tsinghua University", "Federal Trade Commission", "Presidential Medal of Freedom", "Duke University", "An Open Letter to Hobbyists", "Kirkland, Washington", "Mike McCready", "IBM PC", "Source Code (memoir)", "Diario Oficial de la Federación", "bgC3", "Time Person of the Year", "Byte (magazine)", "nerd", "Fortran", "Omni Processor", "Altair 8800", "National Institutes of Health", "Turbo Pascal", "Nobel Committee", "sodium", "Fossil fuel divestment", "Microsoft Windows", "Teletype Model 33", "Roger Federer Foundation", "Das Bus", "David Keith (scientist)", "philanthropist", "Wondrium", "very light jet", "New York Institute of Technology", "Reddit", "Jeffrey Epstein", "Color blindness", "KTH Royal Institute of Technology", "Harvard University", "501(c) organization", "the Tech Awards", "Chuck Schumer", "PDP-10", "Android (operating system)", "Learn BASIC Now", "Sherman Antitrust Act", "COVID-19", "University of Essex", "Golden Rice", "Contract bridge", "John Opel", "dot-com bubble", "Singapore FinTech Festival", "Bono", "Lost on the Grand Banks", "Hilal-e-Pakistan", "Peace Corps", "The Machine That Changed the World (miniseries)", "OpenStax", "Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire", "Gordon Brown", "Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences", "Silicon Valley (TV series)", "List of richest Americans in history", "John Isner", "Anthony Michael Hall", "technological solutionism", "Snopes", "Christos Papadimitriou", "Savannah Guthrie", "Protestant Reformed Churches in America", "Bill Gates's house", "Impossible Foods", "UNICEF", "Jack Nicklaus", "International Peace Institute", "PC Magazine", "Eclipse Aviation", "PacifiCorp", "ResearchGate", "Oracle Corporation", "Philippe Kahn", "What's Next? The Future with Bill Gates", "Harvard College", "emulator", "Dennis Yao", "The Road Ahead (Bill Gates book)", "AI", "The Economist", "International Rice Research Institute", "tuberculosis", "Shereen Bhan", "Frank Gehry", "Satya Nadella", "Sunday Times", "Yahoo! Finance", "Joe Manchin", "TRS-80 Model 100", "Digital Equipment Corporation", "Paul Allen", "SCoPEx", "David Rockefeller", "Padma Bhushan", "The Washington Post", "The Simpsons", "The Tonight Show", "Peking University", "Kamala Harris 2024 presidential campaign", "The Big Bang Theory (season 11)", "NPR", "English people", "Bower Award for Business Leadership", "Chinese Academy of Engineering", "MITS Altair 8800", "The New York Times", "Systems architect", "TED (Conference)", "Berkeley Macintosh Users Group", "Ed Roberts (computers)", "Carbon Engineering", "Digital Research", "William H. Gates Sr.", "Legion of Honour", "Cascade Investment", "Stanford University", "LinkedIn", "Today (U.S. TV program)", "United States v. Microsoft", "COVID-19 pandemic", "hack (programmer subculture)", "reclaimed water", "SAP Center", "classic Mac OS", "Business @ the Speed of Thought", "86-DOS", "Elon Musk", "American Genius", "Match for Africa", "Medina, Washington", "CNBC", "initial public offering", "Los Angeles Times", "WGBH Educational Foundation", "University of California, Berkeley", "Entomology", "CBC News", "commercial aircraft", "List of unsolved problems in mathematics", "solar fuels", "energy transitions", "Nyenrode Business Universiteit", "NBCNews.com", "2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference", "Congregational Christian Churches", "Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society", "Silver Buffalo Award", "Windows XP", "PC DOS", "EarthNow", "mobile operating system", "Paris Agreement", "Nathan Myhrvold", "NYSE", "Ric Weiland", "CNN", "lawyer", "grid energy storage", "family planning", "Boy Scouts of America", "U.S. president", "Robin Li", "BBC Radio 4", "New Statesman", "OS/2", "Occidental Petroleum", "Microsoft", "combinatorics", "sanitation", "tornado", "Peter Bohlin", "Desert Island Discs", "Intel 8080 CPU", "Wyoming", "National Merit Scholarship Program", "Pearl Jam", "Queen Rania of Jordan", "Intel 8008", "2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference", "The Seattle Times", "Ziff Davis", "Nobel Peace Prize", "Andrew Carnegie", "Bloomberg L.P.", "2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference", "Seattle Computer Products", "YouTube", "Lakeside School (Seattle)", "synthetic beef", "Carnegie Mellon University", "The Guardian", "General Electric", "Kerala", "Deposition (law)", "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster", "NBC News", "Waseda University", "Borland", "The Franklin Institute", "Chevron Corporation", "Karolinska Institute", "Facebook", "Anthony Fauci", "Bloomberg News", "AutoNation", "Politico", "Barron's (newspaper)", "whitehouse.gov", "Wellcome Trust", "Traveling wave reactor", "The Fiscal Times", "University of Cambridge", "Peter Rinearson", "Cambridge Union", "Child prostitution", "Mohammed bin Salman", "National Academy of Engineering", "pancake sorting", "tying (commerce)", "Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems", "Steven Pinker", "Leonardo da Vinci", "Dagens Næringsliv", "source code", "The World's Billionaires", "information superhighway", "Anderson Cooper", "Amazon (company)", "Nothing So Strange", "Jacobin (magazine)", "rummage sale", "Hassanal Bolkiah", "Lanai", "United Way of America", "Key Arena", "Common Core", "Umaru Musa Yar'Adua", "NBC", "Frasier", "John Wiley & Sons", "Saudi Vision 2030", "Branded Entertainment Network", "Jefferson Awards for Public Service", "The Dating Game", "Jack Sock", "Windows 9x", "Mission Innovation", "John Barrasso", "Arab News", "IBM", "Barack Obama", "InfoWorld", "Alzheimer's disease", "personal computer revolution", "Gates Ventures", "Criticism of Microsoft", "sewage sludge treatment", "Sand Point, Seattle", "Rolling Stone", "Popular Electronics", "Greg Whitten", "Streamy Awards", "Nuclear power", "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies", "Channel 4", "Giving Pledge", "The Harvard Gazette", "The Big Bang Theory", "lateral flow test", "TerraPower", "pickleball", "pandemic", "Hewlett-Packard", "Blue Skies (Irving Berlin song)", "BASIC", "Donald Trump", "BBC", "Steve Jobs", "Ecolab", "Warren Buffett", "climate change", "CEO", "Germans", "nuclear power plant", "TRIPS waiver", "Wired (magazine)", "Steve Ballmer", "Codex Leicester", "Lisp (programming language)", "Pirates of Silicon Valley", "Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century", "Hearts (card game)", "Microsoft Excel", "United Nations Climate Change conference", "breast milk", "Forbes 400", "National Geographic Channel", "BBC Two", "geoengineering", "Jerry Pournelle", "John W. Thompson", "The Week", "Windows 8.1", "Mark Gordon (politician)", "SAT", "Forbes", "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022", "François Hollande", "Triumph of the Nerds", "AIDS", "2020 United States presidential election", "Michael Halvorson", "Nick Bostrom", "government-granted monopoly", "CP/M", "Northern Arizona University", "malaria", "property tax", "Ray Ozzie", "vitamin A deficiency", "Roger Federer", "Touchstone Pictures", "polio", "Willie Nelson", "MS-DOS", "The Wall Street Journal", "Richard Dawkins", "John D. Rockefeller", "Patrick O. Brown", "Elizabeth II", "Berkshire Hathaway", "Die Welt", "Gates Foundation", "United States antitrust law", "bioterrorism", "Time (magazine)", "Amol Rajan", "David Boies", "Soros Economic Development Fund", "Traf-O-Data", "MOS:GEOLINK", "Mark Hurd", "anti-competitive", "Nuclear weapon", "Lake Washington", "Baidu", "Macintosh 128K", "Rockefeller Brothers Fund", "Jorge Sampaio", "Bill Gates Sr.", "Class I railroad", "Financial Times", "centibillionaire", "skill set", "Tim Paterson", "Melinda Gates", "Honeywell", "Canadian National Railway", "tic-tac-toe", "Al Arabiya", "The Teaching Company", "developing countries", "Windows 95", "The Social Network", "Today (American TV program)", "Official", "Meat analogue", "Nayel Nassar", "Altair BASIC", "Irish people", "The Great Gatsby", "magna cum laude", "Harry R. Lewis", "sustainable energy", "January 6 United States Capitol attack", "COVID-19 vaccines", "First Interstate BancSystem", "NBCUniversal", "coach class", "The Independent", "Jeff Bezos", "the Giving Pledge", "antitrust case", "Embassy of France, Washington, D.C.", "Signature Aviation", "Massachusetts Institute of Technology", "superintelligence", "cryptocurrency", "Saudi Arabia", "Computer Center Corporation", "cancer", "Nerds 2.0.1", "Jimmy Fallon", "Ginkgo Bioworks", "Order of Prince Henry", "machine language", "nuclear technology", "New York Times", "ZDNet", "American Library Association Honorary Membership", "Medical education", "monopolization", "A&E Television Networks", "Bitcoin", "Melinda French Gates", "Bug (engineering)", "Waiting for \"Superman\"", "Teleprinter", "Breakthrough Energy", "Nobel Prize", "Penguin Books", "Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates", "ebook", "Seattle", "NARA", "All Things Digital", "Programmed Data Processor", "Math 55", "Order of the Aztec Eagle", "Employee stock option", "CNET Networks", "Hawking Fellowship", "congressional page", "microcomputer revolution", "European Investment Bank", "Craig Mundie", "Strasbourg, France", "Hodgkin lymphoma", "UC Berkeley", "neuromorphic", "The Better Angels of Our Nature", "Twitter", "Bill Gates' flower fly", "IGN", "Vanity Fair (magazine)", "HistoryLink", "Bellevue, Washington", "photonic integrated circuits", "Breakthrough Energy Ventures", "TED (conference)", "Autism", "private jet", "Apple Inc.", "Double negative", "Albuquerque, New Mexico", "Scotch-Irish Americans", "Energy access", "Order of the British Empire", "Big History Project", "Upside (magazine)", "Carlos Slim", "The Virtual Revolution", "The Power of Half", "How to Prevent the Next Pandemic", "CP24", "Business Times (Singapore)", "Biotechnology", "Return on investment", "Rockefeller family", "Order of the Rising Sun", "Thorbjørn Jagland", "Time 100", "Mary Maxwell Gates", "GUI" ]
3,748	Bourbon	Bourbon may refer to: == Food and drink == Bourbon whiskey, an American whiskey made using a corn-based mash Bourbon, a beer produced by Brasseries de Bourbon Bourbon biscuit, a chocolate sandwich biscuit Bourbon coffee, a type of coffee made from a cultivar of Coffea arabica Bourbon vanilla, a cultivar of vanilla == Places == Bourbon, Indiana, United States Bourbon, Missouri, United States Bourbon, Boone County, Missouri Bourbon County, Kentucky, United States Bourbon County, Kansas, United States Bourbon Street, a street in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States Bourbon-l'Archambault, Allier département, France Bourbon-Lancy, Saône-et-Loire département, France Bourbonne-les-Bains, Haute-Marne département, France Bourbonnais, an area derived from the former dukedom of Bourbon, France Île Bourbon, former name for the Island of Réunion == Politics and history == House of Bourbon, French and Spanish royal dynasties Spanish royal family Duke of Bourbon, a title in the peerage of France Bourbon Reforms, a series of measures taken by the Spanish Crown Bourbon Restoration (disambiguation), the return to monarchs in the Bourbon Dynasty in France and Spain Bourbon Democrat, from 1876 to 1904 a conservative member of the US Democratic Party Palais Bourbon: meeting place of the French National Assembly == Other uses == USS Bourbon, a frigate Bourbon virus, a tick-borne virus discovered in the summer of 2014 Bourbon (horse) (foaled in 1774), a British Thoroughbred racehorse "Bourbon", a 2019 song by Chad Brownlee from Back in the Game "Bourbon", a 2024 song by Megan Thee Stallion from Megan: Act II	[ "Bourbon coffee", "Bourbon Reforms", "Bourbon vanilla", "Bourbon-l'Archambault", "Bourbon County, Kansas", "Bourbon biscuit", "Bourbon Kid", "Bourbon (horse)", "Île Bourbon", "Bourbon, Indiana", "Bourbon, Missouri", "Palais Bourbon", "Barbon", "Megan: Act II", "Borbon (disambiguation)", "Bourbonnais", "Brasseries de Bourbon", "House of Bourbon", "Bourbon County, Kentucky", "Bourbon-Lancy", "USS Bourbon", "Bourbon Democrat", "Spanish royal family", "Bourbonne-les-Bains", "Bourbon Street", "Bourbonism (disambiguation)", "Bourbon, Boone County, Missouri", "Constable de Bourbon (disambiguation)", "Bhurban", "Bourbon virus", "Back in the Game (Chad Brownlee album)", "Bourbon Restoration (disambiguation)", "Duke of Bourbon", "Bourbon whiskey" ]
3,751	Belgian Blue	The Belgian Blue (, , both literally meaning "Belgian White-Blue") is a breed of beef cattle from Belgium. It may also be known as the , or (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 caused by a deletion in the myostatin gene, resulting in an increased number of muscle fibres (hyperplasia), instead of the (normal) enlargement of individual muscle fibres (hypertrophy). 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. == History == 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 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. == Economic efficiency == 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.	[ "dystocia", "Belgium", "hypertrophy", "FAO", "artificial insemination", "Dairy cattle", "Piedmontese (cattle)", "Shorthorn cattle", "Liège Province", "Charolais cattle", "feed conversion ratio", "cattle", "West Texas", "beef", "semen", "phenotype", "Linebreeding", "Caesarean section", "mutation", "Myostatin", "myostatin", "DAD-IS", "meat tenderness", "hyperplasia" ]
3,755	Boron	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. Boron is synthesized entirely by cosmic ray spallation and supernovas 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. Elemental boron is found in small amounts in meteoroids, but chemically uncombined boron is not otherwise found naturally on Earth. Several allotropes exist: amorphous boron is a brown powder; crystalline boron is silvery to black, extremely hard (9.3 on the Mohs scale), and a poor electrical conductor at room temperature (1.5 × 10−6 Ω−1 cm−1 room temperature electrical conductivity). The primary use of the element itself is as boron filaments with applications similar to carbon fibers in some high-strength materials. 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. 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. ==History== The word boron was coined from borax, the mineral from which it was isolated, by analogy with carbon, which boron resembles chemically. 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 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. Boron was not recognized as an element until it was isolated by Sir Humphry Davy Jöns Jacob Berzelius identified it as an element in 1824. Pure boron was arguably first produced by the American chemist Ezekiel Weintraub in 1909. ==Characteristics of the element== ===Isotopes=== Boron has two naturally occurring and stable isotopes, 11B (80.1%) and 10B (19.9%). The mass difference results in a wide range of δ11B values, which are defined as a fractional difference between the 11B and 10B 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 7B which decays through proton emission and alpha decay with a half-life of 3.5×10−22 s. Isotopic fractionation of boron is controlled by the exchange reactions of the boron species B(OH)3 and [[tetrahydroxyborate\|[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 [10B(OH)4]− ion onto clays. It results in solutions enriched in 11B(OH)3 and therefore may be responsible for the large 11B enrichment in seawater relative to both oceanic crust and continental crust; this difference may act as an isotopic signature. The exotic 17B exhibits a nuclear halo, i.e. its radius is appreciably larger than that predicted by the liquid drop model. ====NMR spectroscopy==== Both 10B and 11B possess nuclear spin. The nuclear spin of 10B is 3 and that of 11B is . 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 10B and 11B nuclei also cause splitting in the resonances of attached nuclei. ===Allotropes=== Boron 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. ===Atomic structure=== Atomic boron is the lightest element having an electron in a p-orbital in its ground state. Its first three ionization energies are higher than those for heavier group III elements, reflecting its electropositive character. ==Chemistry of the element== ===Preparation=== 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. Very pure boron is produced with difficulty because of contamination by carbon or other elements that resist removal. Some early routes to elemental boron involved the reduction of boric oxide with metals such as magnesium or aluminium. However, the product was often 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. ===Reactions of the element=== Crystalline boron is a hard, black material with a melting point of above 2000 °C. 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. Since elemental boron is very rare, its chemical reactions are of little significance practically speaking. The elemental form is not typically used as a precursor to compounds. Instead, the extensive inventory of boron compounds are produced from borates. The rate of oxidation of boron depends on the crystallinity, particle size, purity and temperature. At higher temperatures boron burns to form boron trioxide: 4 B + 3 O2 → 2 B2O3 ==Chemical compounds== ===General trends=== In some ways, boron is comparable to carbon in its capability to form stable covalently bonded molecular networks (even nominally disordered (amorphous) boron contains boron icosahedra, which are bonded randomly to each other without long-range order.). In terms of chemical behavior, boron compounds resembles silicon. Aluminium, the heavier congener of boron, does not behave analogously to boron: it is far more electropositive, it is larger, and it tends not to form homoatomic Al-Al bonds. In the most familiar compounds, boron has the formal oxidation state III. These include the common oxides, sulfides, nitrides, and halides, as well as organic derivatives 4ZnO·B2O3·H2O, ZnO·B2O3·1.12H2O, ZnO·B2O3·2H2O, 6ZnO·5B2O3·3H2O, 2ZnO·3B2O3·7H2O, 2ZnO·3B2O3·3H2O, 3ZnO·5B2O3·14H2O, and ZnO·5B2O3·4.5H2O. As illustrated by the preceding examples, borate anions tend to condense by formation of B-O-B bonds. Borosilicates, with B-O-Si, and borophosphates, with B-O-P linkages, are also well represented in both minerals and synthetic compounds. Related to the oxides are the alkoxides and boronic acids with the formula B(OR)3 and R2BOH, respectively. Boron forms a wide variety of such metal-organic compounds, some of which are used in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals. These developments, especially the Suzuki reaction, was recognized with the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Akira Suzuki. ===Hydrides=== Boranes and borohydrides are neutral and anionic compounds of boron and hydrogen, respectively. Sodium borohydride is the progenitor of the boranes. Sodium borohydride is obtained by hydrogenation of trimethylborate: A large number of anionic boron hydrides are also known, e.g. [[dodecaborate\|[B12H12]2−]]. In these cluster compounds, boron has a coordination number greater than four. ===Organoboron compounds=== A large number of organoboron compounds, species with B-C bonds, are known. Many organoboron compounds are produced from hydroboration, the addition of B-H bonds to bonds. Diborane is traditionally used for such reactions, as illustrated by the preparation of trioctylborane: This regiochemistry, i.e. the tendency of B to attach to the terminal carbon - is explained by the polarization of the bonds in boranes, which is indicated as Bδ+-Hδ-. The significance of these methods was recognized by the award of Nobel Prize in Chemistry to H. C. Brown in 1979. Even complicated boron hydrides, such as decaborane undergo hydroboration. Like the volatile boranes, the alkyl boranes ignite spontaneously in air. In the 1950s, several studies examined the use of boranes as energy-increasing "Zip fuel" additives for jet fuel. Triorganoboron(III) compounds are trigonal planar and exhibit weak Lewis acidity. The resulting adducts are tetrahedral. This behavior contrasts with that of triorganoaluminium compounds (see trimethylaluminium), which are tetrahedral with bridging alkyl groups. A compound with the B≡C triple bond was synthesized for the first time in 2025. ===Nitrides=== The boron-nitrides follow the pattern of avoiding B-B and N-N bonds: only B-N bonding is observed generally. The boron nitrides exhibit structures analogous to various allotropes of carbon, including graphite, diamond, and nanotubes. This similarity reflects the fact that B and N have eight valence electrons as does a pair of carbon atoms. In cubic boron nitride (tradename Borazon), boron and nitrogen atoms are tetrahedral, just like carbon in diamond. Cubic boron nitride, among other applications, is used as an abrasive, as its hardness is comparable with that of diamond. Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is the BN analogue of graphite, consisting of sheets of alternating B and N atoms. These sheets stack with boron and nitrogen in registry between the sheets. 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. Molecular analogues of boron nitrides are represented by borazine, (BH)3(NH)3. ===Carbides=== Boron carbide is a ceramic material. It is obtained by carbothermal reduction of B2O3in an electric furnace: 2 B2O3 + 7 C → B4C + 6 CO Boron carbide's structure is only approximately reflected in its formula of 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. ===Borides=== Binary metal-boron compounds, the metal borides, contain only boron and a metal. They are metallic, very hard, with high melting points. TiB2, ZrB2, and HfB2 have melting points above 3000 °C. ==Occurrence== Boron is rare in the Universe and solar system. The amount of boron formed in the Big Bang is negligible. Boron is not generated in the normal course of stellar nucleosynthesis and is destroyed in stellar interiors. In the high oxygen environment of the Earth's surface, 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. 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. ==Production== 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. 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 () 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. Almost a quarter (23%) of global boron production comes from the Rio Tinto Borax Mine (also known as the U.S. Borax Boron Mine) near Boron, California. ===Market trend=== 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. 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. 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. 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. ==Applications== Nearly all boron ore extracted from the Earth is refined as 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%. === Boronated fiberglass === Fiberglasses, a fiber reinforced polymer sometimes contain borosilicate, borax, or boron oxide, and is added to increase the strength of the glass. The highly boronated glasses, E-glass (named for "Electrical" use) are alumino-borosilicate glass. Another common high-boron glasses, C-glass, also has a high boron oxide content, used for glass staple fibers and insulation. D-glass, a borosilicate glass, named for its low dielectric constant. Because of the ubiquitous use of fiberglass in construction and insulation, boron-containing fiberglasses consume over half the global production of boron, and are the single largest commercial boron market. ===Borosilicate glass=== 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. ===Elemental boron fiber=== 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. 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. ===Boron carbide ceramic=== 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. ===High-hardness and abrasive compounds=== 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. ===Metallurgy=== 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. 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. 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. ===Detergent formulations and bleaching agents=== Borax is used in various household laundry and cleaning products. It is also present in some tooth bleaching formulas. ===Insecticides and antifungals=== Zinc borates and boric acid, popularized as fire retardants, are widely used as wood preservatives and insecticides. Boric acid is also used as a domestic insecticide. ===Semiconductors=== 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. ===Magnets=== 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. ===Shielding and neutron absorber in nuclear reactors=== Boron shielding is used as a control for nuclear reactors, taking advantage of its high cross-section for neutron capture. 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. ===Other nonmedical uses=== Because of its distinctive green flame, amorphous boron is used in pyrotechnic flares. Some anti-corrosion systems contain borax. Sodium borates are used as a flux for soldering silver and gold and with ammonium chloride for welding ferrous metals. They are also fire retarding additives to plastics and rubber articles. Boric acid (also known as orthoboric acid) H3BO3 is used in the production of textile fiberglass and flat panel displays and in many PVAc- and PVOH-based adhesives. Triethylborane is a substance which ignites the JP-7 fuel of the Pratt & Whitney J58 turbojet/ramjet engines powering the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. It was also used to ignite the F-1 Engines on the Saturn V Rocket utilized by NASA's Apollo and Skylab programs from 1967 until 1973. Today SpaceX uses it to ignite the engines on their Falcon 9 rocket. Triethylborane is suitable for this because of its pyrophoric properties, especially the fact that it burns with a very high temperature. Triethylborane is an industrial initiator in radical reactions, where it is effective even at low temperatures. Borates are used as environmentally benign wood preservatives. ===Pharmaceutical and biological applications=== Boron plays a role in pharmaceutical and biological applications as it is found in various antibiotics produced by bacteria, such as boromycins, aplasmomycins, borophycins, and tartrolons. These antibiotics have shown inhibitory effects on the growth of certain bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. 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. 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. 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. A number of potential boronated pharmaceuticals using boron-10, have been prepared for use in boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT). Some boron compounds show promise in treating arthritis, though none have as yet been generally approved for the purpose. Tavaborole (marketed as Kerydin) is an Aminoacyl tRNA synthetase inhibitor which is used to treat toenail fungus. It gained FDA approval in July 2014. Dioxaborolane chemistry enables radioactive fluoride (18F) 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 18F) 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. ==Research== ===MgB2=== Magnesium diboride (MgB2) is a superconductor with the transition temperature of 39 K. MgB2 wires are produced with the powder-in-tube process and applied in superconducting magnets. 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. ===Commercial isotope enrichment=== 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. === Radiation-hardened semiconductors === Cosmic radiation will produce secondary neutrons if it hits spacecraft structures. Those neutrons will be captured in 10B, 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 11B and contains almost no 10B. This is useful because 11B is largely immune to radiation damage. Depleted boron is a byproduct of the nuclear industry (see above). ===Enriched boron (boron-10)=== The 10B isotope is useful for capturing thermal neutrons (see neutron cross section#Typical cross sections). The nuclear industry enriches natural boron to nearly pure 10B. The less-valuable by-product, depleted boron, is nearly pure 11B. Enriched boron or 10B 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 10B 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. In nuclear reactors, 10B 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, 10B 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. ===Nuclear fusion=== Boron has been investigated for possible 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. ===Neutron capture therapy=== 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 (10B) to the tumor cells than to the surrounding normal tissues. When these 10B-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. 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. ==Biological role== 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. Some boron-containing antibiotics exist in nature. 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. In 2013, chemist and synthetic biologist Steve Benner suggested that the conditions on Mars three billion years ago were much more favorable to the stability of RNA and formation of oxygen-containing boron and molybdenum catalysts found in life. According to Benner's theory, primitive life, which is widely believed to have originated from RNA, first formed on Mars before migrating to Earth. ===In human health=== It is thought that boron plays several essential roles in animals, including humans, but the exact physiological role is poorly understood. Boron deficiency has only been clearly established in livestock; in humans, boron deficiency may affect bone mineral density, though it has been noted that additional research on the effects of bone health is necessary. Boron is not classified as an essential human nutrient because research has not established a clear biological function for it. 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 and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not established a daily value for boron for food and dietary supplement labeling purposes. 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. Environmental boron appears to be inversely correlated with arthritis. 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. In humans, boron is usually consumed with food that contains boron, such as fruits, leafy vegetables, and nuts. ===Health issues and toxicity=== 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 an 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. Boric acid is more toxic to insects than to mammals, and is routinely used as an insecticide. However, it has been used in neutron capture therapy alongside other boron compounds such as sodium borocaptate and boronophenylalanine with reported low toxicity levels. 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). 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.	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3,756	Bromine	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 , referring to its sharp and pungent smell. 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. 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. Large amounts of bromide salts are toxic from the action of soluble bromide ions, causing bromism. However, bromine is beneficial for human eosinophils, 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. 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. Other sources claim that the French chemist and physicist Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac suggested the name brôme for the characteristic smell of the vapors. 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. By 1864, a 25% solution of liquid bromine in .75 molar aqueous potassium bromide was widely used to treat gangrene during the American Civil War, before the publications of Joseph Lister and Pasteur. 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. ==Properties== 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 chlorine and iodine, the two neighbouring halogens. 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. 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 X molecule (X = Cl, Br, I), ionic radius, and X–X bond length. 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 colour fades at low temperatures so that solid bromine at −195 °C is pale yellow. Like solid chlorine and iodine, solid bromine crystallises in the orthorhombic crystal system, in a layered arrangement of Br 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. ===Isotopes=== 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 (t = 17.7 min), Br (t = 4.421 h), and Br (t = 35.28 h), which may be produced from the neutron activation of natural bromine. ==Chemistry and compounds== Hypobromous acid is unstable to disproportionation. The hypobromite ions thus formed disproportionate readily to give bromide and bromate: 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: ===Organobromine compounds=== 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. 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. ==Occurrence and production== 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 46th 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. Bromine is the tenth most abundant element in seawater. The main sources of bromine production are Israel and Jordan. The element is liberated by halogen exchange, using chlorine gas to oxidise Br to Br. 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. ==Applications== 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. ===Flame retardants=== 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 hydroxyl 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. 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. 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, CHBrCl), bromochlorodifluoromethane (Halon 1211, CBrClF), and bromotrifluoromethane (Halon 1301, CBrF). ===Other uses=== Silver bromide is used, either alone or in combination with silver chloride and silver iodide, as the light sensitive constituent of photographic emulsions. 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. Poisonous bromomethane was widely used as pesticide to fumigate soil and to fumigate housing, by the tenting method. Ethylene bromide was similarly used. 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 sodium bromide 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. 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. Bromine came into this use in the United States during World War II due to a predicted shortage of chlorine. 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. ==Biological role and toxicity== 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, HO, formed by the eosinophil, and either chloride, iodide, thiocyanate, 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. 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. 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 (CHBr), 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. The bromide anion is not very toxic: a normal daily intake is 2 to 8 milligrams. Bromism is caused by a neurotoxic effect on the brain which results in somnolence, psychosis, seizures and delirium. Elemental bromine (Br) 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. 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.	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"bromothymol blue", "orthorhombic crystal system", "Stassfurt", "azide", "salt marsh", "sunlight", "Bernard Courtois", "Dibromine monoxide", "Heidelberg", "barbiturate", "bismuth", "bromination", "N-Bromosuccinimide", "nitrogen tribromide", "psychosis", "Occupational Safety and Health Administration", "bacteria", "GPa", "azeotrope" ]
3,757	Barium	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. The most common minerals of barium are barite (barium sulfate, BaSO4) and witherite (barium carbonate, BaCO3). The name barium originates from the alchemical derivative "baryta", from Greek (), 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. 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. ==Characteristics== ===Physical properties=== 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. is intermediate between those of the lighter strontium () 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. ===Compounds=== {\| class="wikitable" style="float:left; margin-top:0; margin-right:1em; text-align:center; font-size:10pt; line-height:11pt; width:25%;" \|+ style="margin-bottom: 5px;"\|Selected alkaline earth and zinc salts densities, g/cm3 \|- ! ! oxide\| ! sulfide\| ! fluoride\| ! chloride\| ! sulfate\| ! carbonate\| ! peroxide\| ! hydride\| \|- ! scope="row"\|calcium\| They are denser than the strontium or calcium analogs, except for the halides (see table; zinc is given for comparison). 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. 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. 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. Of the stable isotopes, barium-138 composes 71.7% of all barium; other isotopes have decreasing abundance with decreasing mass number. 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. 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 with air to form barium peroxide, which decomposes above by releasing oxygen: 2 BaO + O2 ⇌ 2 BaO2 Barium sulfate was first applied as a radiocontrast agent in X-ray imaging of the digestive system in 1908. ==Occurrence and production== 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. 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. Barium also exists in the ocean as BaSO4, or barite. Barium has a nutrient-like profile with a residence time of 10,000 years. There is little depletion of barium concentrations in the upper ocean for an ion with a nutrient-like profile, thus lateral mixing is important. ===Other barium compounds=== Other compounds of barium find only niche applications, limited by the toxicity of Ba2+ ions (barium carbonate is a rat poison), which is not a problem for the insoluble BaSO4. Barium oxide coating on the electrodes of fluorescent lamps facilitates the release of electrons. By its great atomic density, barium carbonate increases the refractive index and luster of glass for brilliant green barium chloride is used. Barium peroxide is a catalyst in the aluminothermic reaction (thermite) for welding rail tracks. It is also a green flare in tracer ammunition and a bleaching agent. Barium titanate is a promising electroceramic. Barium fluoride is used for optics in infrared applications because of its wide transparency range of 0.15–12 micrometers. YBCO was the first high-temperature superconductor cooled by liquid nitrogen, with a transition temperature of greater than the boiling point of nitrogen (). Ferrite, a type of sintered ceramic composed of iron oxide (Fe2O3) and barium oxide (BaO), is both electrically nonconductive and ferrimagnetic, and can be temporarily or permanently magnetized. ===Palaeoceanography=== 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. Particulate barium shows a strong correlation with particulate organic carbon or POC. \| NFPA-H = 3 \| NFPA-F = 3 \| NFPA-R = 1 \| NFPA-S = w \| NFPA_ref = }} }} Soluble barium compounds have LD50 near 10 mg/kg (oral rats). Symptoms include "convulsions... paralysis of the peripheral nerve system ... severe inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract". The US EPA considers it unlikely that barium is carcinogenic when consumed orally. Inhaled dust containing insoluble barium compounds can accumulate in the lungs, causing a benign condition called baritosis.	[ "body-centered cubic", "Ferrite (magnet)", "EPA", "pigment", "meta state", "Yttrium barium copper oxide", "calcium", "Thomas Lawrence", "Greenwood Publishing Group", "atomic number", "peroxide", "Particulate organic matter", "vapor pressure", "Beta decay", "mass number", "drilling fluid", "medical imaging", "Cumberland", "Brin process", "hydride", "chloride", "The Periodic Table of Videos", "Greek language", "silicon dioxide", "Barium hydroxide", "silumin", "Mohs hardness", "gamma-ray", "intermetallic compound", "barium nitrate", "dangerous goods", "tin", "zinc", "Hot cathode", "baryte", "froth flotation", "barite", "Carl Scheele", "Barium fluoride", "barium chloride", "synthetic radioisotope", "baritosis", "solder", "flame test", "electrolysis", "radiocontrast", "Deoxidized steel", "rodenticide", "bearing alloy", "Passivation (chemistry)", "ammonium chloride", "spark plug", "Barium titanate", "electrical conductivity", "Guyton de Morveau", "cathode-ray tube", "witherite", "sulfate", "exothermic reaction", "alkaline earth metal", "barium oxide", "Augustus Matthiessen", "picometer", "tracer ammunition", "chalcogen", "England", "Nonmetal (chemistry)", "barium meal", "Symbol (chemistry)", "electron", "spectral line", "redox", "fluoride", "Bologna", "California", "lead", "tonne", "barium carbonate", "Sulfuric acid", "William Withering", "barium sulfide", "China", "Lithopone", "Lower gastrointestinal series", "Italy", "fluorescent lamp", "barium sulfate", "radioactive decay", "ringing ink", "rat poison", "LD50", "Reactivity (chemistry)", "refractive index", "benign", "sintering", "specific weight", "xenon", "aluminothermic reaction", "copper", "strontium", "Robert Bunsen", "Johan Gottlieb Gahn", "aluminium", "nanoparticle", "Barium peroxide", "electrode", "ammonia", "getter", "Barium oxide", "ferrimagnetic", "Humphry Davy", "benitoite", "sulfide", "High-temperature superconductivity", "Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics", "oxide", "thermite", "radiocontrast agent", "primordial nuclides", "San Benito County", "halide", "vacuum tube", "chemical element", "electroceramic", "Barium sulfate", "Antoine Lavoisier", "zinc sulfide", "intermetallics", "Han purple and Han blue", "Group 2 organometallic chemistry", "oil well", "barium metasilicate", "carbonate", "fractional distillation", "silicate" ]
3,758	Berkelium	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. The major isotope of berkelium, 249Bk, 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, 247Bk, can be synthesized via irradiation of 244Cm with high-energy alpha particles. 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. 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. ==Characteristics== ===Physical=== 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/cm3 lies between those of curium (13.52 g/cm3) and californium (15.1 g/cm3), as does its melting point of 986 °C, below that of curium (1340 °C) but higher than that of californium (900 °C). 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. The enthalpy of dissolution in hydrochloric acid at standard conditions is −600 kJ/mol, from which the standard enthalpy of formation (ΔfH°) of aqueous ions is obtained as −601 kJ/mol. The standard electrode potential /Bk is −2.01 V. The ionization potential of a neutral berkelium atom is 6.23 eV. ===Allotropes=== 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. Upon heating, α-berkelium transforms into another phase with an fcc lattice (but slightly different from β-berkelium), space group Fmm 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. ===Chemical=== Like all actinides, berkelium dissolves in various aqueous inorganic acids, liberating gaseous hydrogen and converting into the state. This trivalent oxidation state (+3) is the most stable, especially in aqueous solutions, but tetravalent (+4), 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. ===Isotopes=== 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 247Bk (1,380 years), 248Bk (over 300 years), and 249Bk (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%) 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. ===Occurrence=== 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. 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. 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. The transuranium elements from americium to fermium, including berkelium, occurred naturally in the natural nuclear fission reactor at Oklo, but no longer do so. Berkelium is also one of the elements that have theoretically been detected in Przybylski's Star. ==History== 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. 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." The most difficult steps in synthesising berkelium were its separation from the final products and the production of sufficient quantities of americium for the target material. First, americium (241Am) nitrate solution was coated on a platinum foil, the solution was evaporated and the residue converted by annealing to americium dioxide (). 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 243Bk isotope and two free neutrons: ^{238}_{92}U ->[\ce{(n,\gamma)}] ^{239}_{92}U ->[\beta^-][23.5 \ \ce{min}] ^{239}_{93}Np ->[\beta^-][2.3565 \ \ce{d}] ^{239}_{94}Pu (the times are half-lives) 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, US. The higher flux promotes fusion reactions involving not one but several neutrons, converting 239Pu to 244Cm and then to 249Cm: \begin{align} \ce{^{239}_{94}Pu ->[\ce{4(n,\gamma)}] ^{243}_{94}Pu ->[\beta^-][4.956 \ \ce{h}] ^{243}_{95}Am ->[\ce{(n,\gamma)}] ^{244}_{95}Am ->[\beta^-][10.1 \ \ce{h}]} & \ce{^{244}_{96}Cm}\\ & \ce{^{244}_{96}Cm ->[\ce{5(n,\gamma)}] ^{249}_{96}Cm} \end{align} Curium-249 has a short half-life of 64 minutes, and thus its further conversion to 250Cm has a low probability. Instead, it transforms by beta-decay into 249Bk: ^{249}_{97}Bk ->[\ce{(n,\gamma)}] ^{250}_{97}Bk ->[\beta^-][3.212 \ \ce{h}] ^{250}_{98}Cf Although 247Bk is the most stable isotope of berkelium, its production in nuclear reactors is very difficult because its potential progenitor 247Cm has never been observed to undergo beta decay. Thus, 249Bk 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. The isotope 248Bk 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 245Bk, the existence of a new isotope was proven by the growth of the decay product 248Cf which had been previously characterized. The half-life of 248Bk was estimated as 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 244Cm with alpha-particles: \begin{cases} \ce{^{244}_{96}Cm ->[\ce{(\alpha,n)}] ^{247}_{98}Cf ->[\epsilon][3.11 \ \ce{h}] ^{247}_{97}Bk}\\ \ce{^{244}_{96}Cm ->[\ce{(\alpha,p)}] ^{247}_{97}Bk} \end{cases} Berkelium-242 was synthesized in 1979 by bombarding 235U with 11B, 238U with 10B, 232Th with 14N or 232Th with 15N. It converts by electron capture to 242Cm with a half-life of minutes. A search for an initially suspected isotope 241Bk was then unsuccessful; 241Bk has since been synthesized. \begin{cases} \ce{^{235}_{92}U + ^{11}_{5}B -> ^{242}_{97}Bk + 4^{1}_{0}n} & \ce{^{232}_{90}Th + ^{14}_{7}N -> ^{242}_{97}Bk + 4^{1}_{0}n}\\ \ce{^{238}_{92}U + ^{10}_{5}B -> ^{242}_{97}Bk + 6^{1}_{0}n} & \ce{^{232}_{90}Th + ^{15}_{7}N -> ^{242}_{97}Bk + 5^{1}_{0}n} \end{cases} ===Separation=== 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 solutions to convert it to the +4 state, such as bromates (), bismuthates (), chromates ( and ), silver(I) thiolate (), lead(IV) oxide (), ozone (), 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. 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). 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 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. ===Bulk metal preparation=== 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. 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. Similar results are obtained with fluoride. Berkelium metal can also be produced by the reduction of oxide with thorium or lanthanum. ==Compounds== ===Oxides=== Two oxides of berkelium are known, with the berkelium oxidation state of +3 () and +4 (Berkelium(IV) oxide\|). oxide is a brown solid, while oxide is a yellow-green solid with a melting point of 1920 °C(yellow-green) \| (yellow) \|} fluoride () is a yellow-green ionic solid and is isotypic with uranium tetrafluoride or zirconium tetrafluoride. fluoride () 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. Visible amounts of chloride () 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. Upon heating to nearly melting point, converts into an orthorhombic phase. Two forms of 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 249BkBr3 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 249BkBr3—249CfBr3 transformation. However, other differences were noted for 249BkBr3 and 249CfBr3. For example, the latter could be reduced with hydrogen to 249CfBr2, but the former could not – this result was reproduced on individual 249BkBr3 and 249CfBr3 samples, as well on the samples containing both bromides. phosphorus, arsenic and antimony. They crystallize in the rock-salt structure and are prepared by the reaction of either hydride () or metallic berkelium with these elements at elevated temperature (about 600 °C) under high vacuum. sulfide, , 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. and hydroxides are both stable in 1 molar solutions of sodium hydroxide. phosphate () 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. One cyclopentadienyl ring in (η5–C5H5)3Bk can be substituted by chlorine to yield . The optical absorption spectra of this compound are very similar to those of (η5–C5H5)3Bk. Berkelium also forms Berkelocene, an actinocene complex, with substituted cyclooctatetraenides. ==Applications== There is currently no use for any isotope of berkelium outside basic scientific research. such as lawrencium, rutherfordium and bohrium. 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. ==Nuclear fuel cycle== 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, which can be reduced with a water or steel reflector but would still exceed the world production of this isotope. Berkelium-247 can maintain a 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). 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.	[ "Enthalpy change of solution", "strontium chloride", "oxalate", "metallocene", "berkelium(III) nitrate", "sulfuric acid", "Octahedral molecular geometry", "Idaho National Laboratory", "phosphate", "nitrate", "half-life", "Oak Ridge National Laboratory", "room temperature", "atomic number", "hydrofluoric acid", "Kilogram", "gram", "fermium", "Stanley Gerald Thompson", "alpha decay", "Beta decay", "actinide", "mass number", "picometre", "Joint Institute for Nuclear Research", "amine", "carbon disulfide", "space group", "nitrogen", "zirconium tetrafluoride", "critical mass", "terbium", "isostructural", "hydrogen", "elution", "lawrencium", "timeline of chemical element discoveries", "pH", "Cyclopentadienyl complex", "The Periodic Table of Videos", "University of California, Berkeley", "ammonium sulfate", "Bohr magneton", "nuclear weapons testing", "phosphorus", "Marie Curie", "Pierre Curie", "americium dioxide", "Dimitrovgrad, Russia", "americium", "Ytterby", "yttrium(III) fluoride", "Ionization energy", "Three Mile Island accident", "neutron", "Valence (chemistry)", "primordial nuclide", "centrifugation", "actinocene", "buffer solution", "ammonia solution", "thermonuclear weapon", "neutron flux", "perchloric acid", "tantalum", "standard electrode potential", "hexagonal crystal family", "nuclear chain reaction", "phase transition", "barn (unit)", "United States", "beryllocene", "cyclotron", "nuclide", "potassium hydroxide", "Curie temperature", "Breeder reactor", "thorium", "standard enthalpy of formation", "tennessine", "Organometallic chemistry", "Molar concentration", "Glenn T. Seaborg", "isotope", "rare-earth element", "X-ray crystallography", "nuclear reactor", "beta decay", "sulfate", "Berkelium(III) chloride", "Pnictogen", "ozone", "Arco, Idaho", "Dubna", "rutherfordium", "Ivy Mike", "bohrium", "chalcogen", "neptunium", "Przybylski's Star", "nuclear isomer", "lithium chloride", "lithium", "electron", "arsenic", "Chernobyl disaster", "Berkeley, California", "hydrogen chloride", "redox", "oxygen", "periodic table", "natural nuclear fission reactor", "fluoride", "uranium tetrafluoride", "citric acid", "uranium", "electron shell", "Internal conversion", "nuclear fission", "nanometre", "Curie–Weiss law", "lattice constant", "K-alpha", "Nature Chemistry", "ion exchange", "superheavy element", "Chemical symbol", "Close-packing of equal spheres", "neutron capture", "chromatography", "bromate", "Neutron cross section", "halogen", "curium", "radioactive decay", "Orthorhombic crystal system", "pnictogen", "hydrochloric acid", "Brookhaven National Laboratory", "europium", "High Flux Isotope Reactor", "plutonium", "Angular momentum coupling", "platinum", "Johan Gadolin", "Infrared", "lanthanum(III) chloride", "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory", "uranium(III) chloride", "sodium hydroxide", "Enewetak Atoll", "ammonia", "ammonium", "skeleton", "Russia", "1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash", "nitric acid", "lanthanum", "oxidation state", "antimony", "Isotopes of curium", "electron capture", "lanthanum trifluoride", "Ion exchange", "alpha particle", "Pascal (unit)", "americium-241", "Albert Ghiorso", "calcium-48", "halide", "hydrogen sulfide", "bulk modulus", "synthetic element", "Tennessee", "Electron configuration", "tributyl phosphate", "Neutron temperature", "glovebox", "Berkelium(IV) oxide", "transuranium element", "Kenneth Street Jr.", "sesquioxide", "United States dollar", "enthalpy", "fluorescence", "dysprosium", "coordination number", "californium", "Chromate and dichromate", "cerium", "einsteinium", "Berkelium(III) nitrate", "bismuthate", "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory", "Cubic crystal system", "Oklo", "Sweden", "lanthanide", "reagent", "gadolinium", "Research Institute of Atomic Reactors", "argon", "hydroxide", "antiferromagnetism" ]
3,760	Bauxite	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 (), boehmite (γ-AlO(OH)) and diaspore (α-AlO(OH)), mixed with the two iron oxides goethite (FeO(OH)) and haematite (), the aluminium clay mineral kaolinite () and small amounts of anatase () and ilmenite ( or ). Bauxite appears dull in luster and is reddish-brown, white, or tan. In 1821, the French geologist Pierre Berthier discovered bauxite near the village of Les Baux in Provence, southern France. == Formation == Numerous classification schemes have been proposed for bauxite but, , there was no consensus. Vadász (1951) distinguished lateritic bauxites (silicate bauxites) from karst bauxite ores (carbonate bauxites): ==Production and reserves== 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, may considerably extend the world's bauxite reserves. ==Aluminium production== , 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. Bauxite ore is usually heated in a pressure vessel along with a sodium hydroxide solution at a temperature of . 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 . This aluminium oxide is dissolved at a temperature of about 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. 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. ==Maritime safety== 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. ==Source of gallium== Bauxite is the main source of the rare metal gallium. 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. Bauxite is also a potential source for vanadium. == Socio-ecological impacts == The social and environmental impacts of bauxite extraction are well documented. Most of the world's bauxite deposits can be found within of the earths surface. Strip mining is the most common technique used for extracting shallow bauxite. It contains several elements such as sodium aluminoscilicate, calcium titanate, monohydrate aluminium, and trihydrate aluminium that do not break down in nature. When improperly stored, red mud can contaminate soil and water, which can result in local extinction of all life. Red mud was responsible for killing all life in the Marcal River in Hungary after a spill occurred in 2010. When red mud dries, it turns into dust that can cause lung disease, cancer and birth defects. In the Boké Region of Guinea, there has been a significant increase in bauxite mining pressure on the local population. This has resulted in potable water issues, air pollution, food contamination, and land expropriation disputes due to improper compensation. The forest reserve is one of the only two upland evergreen forests in Ghana, and makes up a significant portion of the remaining 20% of forested habitat left in Ghana. The Atewa range falls under the jurisdiction of Akyem Abuakwa Traditional Area and is overseen by the king known as Okyenhene. These tribal lands are densely populated and home to over 100 million Indigenous Indian peoples. The mountain summits located on these lands act as a source of water and greatly contribute to the regions fertility. The Indian bauxite industry is interested in developing this land for aluminum production, which poses great risk to the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Historically, the Indigenous peoples living on these lands have shown resistance to development, and oppose any new bauxite mining projects in the area. This has led to violent conflicts between Indigenous communities and police. On December 16, 2000, police killed three Indigenous protestors and wounded over a dozen more during a protest over a bauxite project in the Rayagada district of Odisha.	[ "Laterite", "electric current", "haematite", "France", "terrain", "clay", "slurry", "Titanium dioxide", "calcia", "Odisha", "Europe", "sodium", "surface mining", "cadmium", "Rio Tinto Alcan", "Boké Region", "kaolinite", "Guinea", "Aluminium oxide", "Deville process", "sedimentary rock", "shale", "Silicate", "Liquefaction", "Memorandum of understanding", "cryolite", "United Company RUSAL", "limestone", "air pollution", "bulk cargo", "Bauxite, Arkansas", "volcanic ash", "iron oxide", "electrolysis", "gallium", "iron oxides", "Mixture", "Les Baux-de-Provence", "ion-exchange resin", "aluminium hydroxide", "ore", "bauxite tailings", "alumina", "mineral", "potassium", "MS Bulk Jupiter", "water pollution", "ilmenite", "Baltic and International Maritime Council", "geologist", "Bayer process", "Soil retrogression and degradation", "vanadium", "Queensland", "Pierre Berthier", "diaspore", "aluminium recycling", "basalt", "Surface mining", "Rayagada district", "Atewa Range Forest Reserve", "goethite", "China", "Mine reclamation", "Jamaica", "Clay minerals", "gneiss", "expropriation", "French people", "Miocene", "chemical weathering", "overburden", "electric power", "U.S. Geological Survey", "Sodium aluminosilicate", "Lustre (mineralogy)", "aluminium", "syenite", "pisolith", "red mud", "sodium hydroxide", "silica", "gold", "boehmite", "weathering", "Provence", "sodium aluminate", "Guyana", "tropics", "aluminium oxide", "Iron oxide", "vacuum", "free surface effect", "Suriname", "alkalinity", "gibbsite", "carbonate rock", "General Võ Nguyên Giáp", "calcium titanate", "Akyem Abuakwa", "Hall–Héroult process", "granite", "karst", "Dolomite (mineral)", "lateritization", "anatase", "Ours-Pierre-Armand Petit-Dufrénoy", "local extinction", "Vietnam War" ]
3,764	Bavaria	Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total land area of Germany, and with over 13.08 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous German state, behind only North Rhine-Westphalia; however, due to its large land area, 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. 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 the independent Kingdom of Bavaria 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. Bavaria has a distinct culture, largely because of its Catholic heritage and conservative traditions, which includes a language, cuisine, architecture, festivals and elements of Alpine symbolism. It also has the second-largest economy among the German states by GDP figures, giving it the status of a wealthy German region. Contemporary Bavaria also includes parts of the historical regions of Franconia and Swabia, in addition to Altbayern. ==History== ===Antiquity=== Though Bavaria has been occupied by humans since the Paleolithic era, Celtic tribes of the Bronze Age, such as the Boii were the first documented inhabitants of the Bavarian Alps. In June 2023, Archeologists discovered a bronze sword, dated to the 14th century BC, in a former Celtic village; its workmanship so well-preserved "it almost shines." During the early modern era, these peoples were retrospectively romanticized as the most ancient culture of Bavaria, even though the Indo-European languages were relative newcomers to the region. Evidence of the ancient Straubing culture, Únětice culture and La Tène culture may be found in what is Bavaria today. Archeologists know of a large Celtic Iron Age settlement which was founded in Feldmoching-Hasenbergl, in the North of suburban Munich. The settlement featured food ovens, pottery kilns and metallurgical furnaces. An imperial military camp was built 60 km north-west of where Munich sits today, under orders of Augustus Caesar, between 8 and 5 BC. The camp later became the town of Augusta Vindelicorum, which would become the capital of the Roman province of Raetia. By the late 2nd century AD, Germanic tribes, including Marcomanni people, were pushing back on Roman forces of Marcus Aurelius and later, Commodus in the Marcomannic Wars. By 180 AD, Commodus had decided to abandon the annexed positions in Bavaria, leaving its control to Celtic and Germanic tribes. ===Middle Ages=== Around the year 500 AD, some elements of that victorious Marcomanni people helped form the Bavarii confederation, which incorporated Bohemia and Bavaria. 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. 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. 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. 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, oppressing 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. With the revolt of Henry II, Duke of Bavaria in 976, Bavaria lost large territories in the south and southeast. 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. 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. 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. ===Electorate of Bavaria=== 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). To mark the unification of Bavaria and the Electoral Palatinate, both being principal Wittelsbach territories, Elector Maximilian IV Joseph was crowned king of Bavaria. King Maximilian 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. The new state also comprised the Duchy of Jülich and Berg as these on their part were in personal union with the Palatinate. ===Kingdom of Bavaria=== When the Holy Roman Empire dissolved under Napoleon's onslaught, Bavaria became a kingdom in 1806 and joined the Confederation of the Rhine. The Duchy of Jülich was ceded to France and the Electoral Palatinate was divided between France and the Grand Duchy of Baden. The Duchy of Berg was given to Joachim Murat. The County of Tyrol and the federal state of Salzburg were temporarily annexed with Bavaria but eventually ceded to Austria at the Congress of Vienna. 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. 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. 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 (German Empire) in 1871. Bavaria continued as a monarchy, and retained some special rights within the federation (such as railways and postal services and control of its army in peace times). ===Part of the German Empire=== 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. 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. 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. ===Free State of Bavaria=== World War I led to the abolition of monarchy all over Germany in 1918. The Bavarian monarchy was the first to fall when on 8 November 1918 Socialist politician Kurt Eisner proclaimed the Free State (i.e. republic) of Bavaria. Eisner headed a new, republican government as minister-president. On 12 November, King Ludwig III signed the Anif declaration, releasing both civil and military officers from their oaths, which the Eisner government interpreted as an abdication. After losing the January 1919 elections, 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 () was enacted on 12 or 14 August 1919 and came into force on 15 September 1919, placing Bavaria inside the Weimar Republic. 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. 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. The Rhenish Palatinate was detached from Bavaria in 1946 and made part of the new state Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1949, Bavaria became part of the Federal Republic of Germany, despite the Bavarian Parliament voting against adopting the Basic Law of Germany, mainly because it was seen as not granting sufficient powers to the individual states (Länder), but at the same time declared that it would accept it if two-thirds of the other Länder ratified it. All of the other states ratified it, so it became law. Thus, during the Cold War, Bavaria was part of West Germany. ===Bavarian identity=== Bavarians have often emphasized a separate national identity and considered themselves as "Bavarians" first, "Germans" second. In the 19th-century sense, an independent Kingdom of Bavaria existed from only 1806 to 1871. A separate Bavarian identity was emphasized more strongly when Bavaria joined the Prussia-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 as part of Germany. Another consideration is that Bavaria is not culturally uniform. While inhabitants Altbayern ("Old Bavaria"), the regions forming the historic Bavaria before further acquisitions in 1806–1815, speak a Bavarian dialect of German, Franconia in the north and Bavarian Swabia in the south west, have their unique culture, including different dialects of German, East Franconian and Swabian, respectively. ==Flags and coat of arms== ===Flags=== 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 diamond-shaped 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. ===Coat of arms=== The modern coat of arms of Bavaria was designed by Eduard Ege in 1946, following heraldic traditions. The Golden Lion: At the dexter chief, sable, a lion rampant Or, armed and langued gules. This represents the administrative region of Upper Palatinate. The "Franconian Rake": At the sinister chief, per fess dancetty, gules, and argent. This represents the administrative regions of Upper, Middle and Lower Franconia. The Blue "Pantier" (mythical creature from French heraldry, sporting a flame instead of a tongue): At the dexter base, argent, a Pantier rampant azure, armed Or and langued gules. This represents the regions of Lower and Upper Bavaria. The Three Lions: At the sinister base, Or, three lions passant guardant sable, armed and langued gules. This represents Swabia. The White-And-Blue inescutcheon: The inescutcheon of white and blue fusils askance was originally the coat of arms of the Counts of Bogen, adopted in 1247 by the House of Wittelsbach. The white-and-blue fusils are indisputably the emblem of Bavaria and these arms today symbolize Bavaria as a whole. Along with the People's Crown, it is officially used as the Minor Coat of Arms. The People's Crown (Volkskrone): The coat of arms is surmounted by a crown with a golden band inset with precious stones and decorated with five ornamental leaves. This crown first appeared in the coat of arms to symbolize sovereignty of the people after the royal crown was eschewed in 1923. ==Geography== 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). 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. The geographic center of the European Union is located in the northwestern corner of Bavaria. ===Climate=== 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". 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 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. ! colspan="2" \| Area (km2) ! colspan="2" \| No. municipalities \|- \| Lower Bavaria \| style="text-align:center;"\| \| Landshut \| style="text-align:right;"\| 1,244,169 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 9.48% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 10,330 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 14.6% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 258 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 12.5% \|- \| Lower Franconia \| style="text-align:center;"\| \| Würzburg \| style="text-align:right;"\| 1,317,619 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 10.46% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 8,531 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 12.1% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 308 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 15.0% \|- \| Upper Franconia \| style="text-align:center;"\| \| Bayreuth \| style="text-align:right;"\| 1,065,371 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 8.49% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 7,231 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 10.2% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 214 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 10.4% \|- \| Middle Franconia \| style="text-align:center;"\| \| Ansbach \| style="text-align:right;"\| 1,775,169 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 13.65% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 7,245 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 10.3% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 210 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 10.2% \|- \| Upper Palatinate \| style="text-align:center;"\| \| Regensburg \| style="text-align:right;"\| 1,112,102 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 8.60% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 9,691 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 13.7% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 226 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 11.0% \|- \| Swabia \| style="text-align:center;"\| \| Augsburg \| style="text-align:right;"\| 1,899,442 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 14.21% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 9,992 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 14.2% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 340 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 16.5% \|- \| Upper Bavaria \| style="text-align:center;"\| \| Munich \| style="text-align:right;"\| 4,710,865 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 35.12% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 17,530 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 24.8% \| style="text-align:right;"\| 500 \| style="text-align:right;"\| 24.3% \|- style="background:lightgrey;" ! Total ! ! ! style="text-align:right;"\| 13,124,737 ! style="text-align:right;"\| 100.0% ! style="text-align:right;"\| 70,549 ! style="text-align:right;"\| 100.0% ! style="text-align:right;"\| 2,056 ! style="text-align:right;"\| 100.0% \|} ===Districts=== The second communal layer is made up of 71 rural districts (called ', singular ') that are comparable to counties, as well as the 25 independent cities (', singular '), both of which share the same administrative responsibilities. Rural districts: München () Independent cities: Amberg Ansbach Aschaffenburg Augsburg Bamberg Bayreuth Coburg Erlangen Fürth Hof Ingolstadt Kaufbeuren Kempten Landshut Memmingen Munich (München) Nuremberg (Nürnberg) Passau Regensburg Rosenheim Schwabach Schweinfurt Straubing Weiden Würzburg ===Municipalities=== The 71 rural districts are on the lowest level divided into 2,031 regular municipalities (called ', singular '). Together with the 25 independent cities (', which are in effect municipalities independent of ' administrations), there are a total of 2,056 municipalities in Bavaria. In 44 of the 71 rural districts, there are a total of 215 unincorporated areas (as of 1 January 2005, called ', singular '), not belonging to any municipality, all uninhabited, mostly forested areas, but also four lakes (-without islands, -without island , , which are the three largest lakes of Bavaria, and ). ====Major cities and towns==== ==Politics== 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 Free Voters, which became the second largest party in the 2023 Bavarian state election, The Greens, which became the second biggest political party in the 2018 Bavarian state elections, and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), who had 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. The German Greens and the center-right Free Voters have been represented in the state parliament since 1986 and 2008 respectively. In the 2003 elections the CSU won a two-thirds 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. 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). ===Current Landtag === 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 14.6% of the vote. 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. ===Government=== 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. Bavaria has a unicameral ' (English: State Parliament), elected by universal suffrage. Until December 1999, there was also a ', or Senate, whose members were chosen by social and economic groups in Bavaria, but following a referendum in 1998, this institution was abolished. 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: State Chancellery () Ministry of the Interior, for Sport and Integration () Ministry for Housing, Construction and Transport () Ministry of Justice () Ministry for Education and Culture () Ministry for Science and Art () Ministry of Finance and for Home Affairs () Ministry for Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy () Ministry for Environment and Consumer Protection () Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Forestry () Ministry for Family, Labour and Social Affairs () Ministry for Health and Care () Ministry for Digital Affairs () Political processes also take place in the seven regions (' or ') in Bavaria, in the 71 rural districts (') and the 25 towns and cities forming their own districts ('), and in the 2,031 local authorities (). 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. ====Minister-presidents of Bavaria since 1945==== ===Designation as a "free state"=== 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 States". ===Arbitrary arrest and human rights=== 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). ==Economy== Bavaria has one of the largest economies in Germany and Europe as a whole, having a GDP of €768.469 billion ($790.813 billion) in 2023, the second highest of the 16 German states, only behind North Rhine-Westphalia which had a GDP of €839.074 billion ($863.6 billion) in 2023. Bavaria had a GDP per capita of €53,768 ($56,456) in 2022, giving it the third highest GDP per capita behind Bremen in second and Hamburg in first. One of Bavaria's largest industries is the automotive industry, with Bavaria having four BMW and two Audi manufacturing plants and the headquarters of both companies. Bavaria has the second-most employees (207,829) in the automotive industry of all German states after Baden-Württemberg as of 2018. Other countries such as Czechia, Austria, Switzerland and Italy have strong economic ties with Bavaria. Bavaria also is home to the headquarters of commercial vehicle manufacturer MAN and aircraft engine manufacturer MTU Aero Engines. Many other global companies such as Adidas, Siemens, and Allianz also have headquarters in Bavarian cities and towns. Several American companies have set up research and development facilities in Bavaria such as Apple, Google, IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments and Coherent. Despite being hundreds of miles from the sea, companies such as Bavaria Yachtbau produce sailing yachts and motorboats. Bavaria is the most visited state in Germany, as over 38.86 million tourists visited Bavaria in 2023 alone, significantly higher than North Rhine-Westphalia's 23.58 million tourists. In 2019, tourism brought in a gross value of €28.1 billion ($28.918 billion), making up 4.9% of Bavaria's economy. Some significant tourist destinations include the Bavarian National Museum, Margravial Opera House, Deutsches Museum, Christmas markets in Nuremburg and Munich and the annually held Oktoberfest event, which made €1.2 billion ($1.236 billion) in 2018 alone. The unemployment rate stood at 2.9% in October 2018, the lowest in Germany and one of the lowest in the European Union. ==Demographics== 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 , below the national average of . Foreign nationals resident in Bavaria (both immigrants and refugees/asylum seekers) were principally from other EU countries and Turkey. ===Vital statistics=== ==Culture== 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. ===Religion=== 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. 46.9% of Bavarians adhered to Catholicism (a decline from 70.4% in 1970). of the traditional , 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 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. 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. Krustenbraten_mit_Dunkelbierso%C3%9Fe.jpg\|Schweinsbraten N%C3%BCrnberger_Rostbratw%C3%BCrste.JPG\|Nürnberger Rostbratwürste ===Language and dialects=== 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. ===Ethnography=== 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. === Museums === 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 of Bavarian Museums has grown considerably, from 125 in 1907 to around 1,300 today. ==Sports== ===Football=== Bavaria is home to several football clubs including FC Bayern Munich, 1. FC Nürnberg, FC Augsburg, TSV 1860 Munich, SSV Jahn Regensburg, FC Ingolstadt 04 and SpVgg Greuther Fürth. Bayern Munich is the most successful football team in Germany having won a record 33 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. ===Basketball=== 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. ===Ice hockey=== 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. ==Notable people== Notable people who have lived, or live currently, in Bavaria include: Kings: Arnulf of Carinthia, Carloman of Bavaria, Charles the Fat, Lothair I, Louis the Child, Louis the German, Louis the Younger, Ludwig I of Bavaria, Ludwig II of Bavaria, Ludwig III of Bavaria, Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria, Maximilian II of Bavaria, Otto, King of Bavaria Religious leaders: Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger); Pope Damasus II, Pope Victor II Painters: Albrecht Dürer, Albrecht Altdorfer, Joseph Karl Stieler, Carl Spitzweg, Erwin Eisch, Franz von Lenbach, Franz von Stuck, Franz Marc, Gabriele Münter, Hans Holbein the Elder, Johann Christian Reinhart, Lucas Cranach, Paul Klee Classical musicians: Orlando di Lasso, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Leopold Mozart, Max Reger, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Carl Orff, Johann Pachelbel, Theobald Boehm, Klaus Nomi Other musicians: Hans-Jürgen Buchner, Barbara Dennerlein, Klaus Doldinger, Franzl Lang, Bands: Spider Murphy Gang, Sportfreunde Stiller, Obscura, Michael Bredl Opera singers: Jonas Kaufmann, Diana Damrau Writers, poets and playwrights: Hans Sachs, Jean Paul, Friedrich Rückert, August von Platen-Hallermünde, Frank Wedekind, Christian Morgenstern, Oskar Maria Graf, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Thomas Mann, Klaus Mann, Golo Mann, Ludwig Thoma, Michael Ende, Ludwig Aurbacher Scientists: Max Planck, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Werner Heisenberg, Adam Ries, Joseph von Fraunhofer, Georg Ohm, Johannes Stark, Carl von Linde, Ludwig Prandtl, Rudolf Mössbauer, Lothar Rohde, Hermann Schwarz, Robert Huber, Martin Behaim, Levi Strauss, Rudolf Diesel, Feodor Lynen, Georges J. F. Köhler, Erwin Neher, Ernst Otto Fischer, Johann Deisenhofer Physicians: Alois Alzheimer, Max Joseph von Pettenkofer, Sebastian Kneipp Politicians: Ludwig Erhard, Horst Seehofer, Christian Ude, Kurt Eisner, Franz-Josef Strauß, Roman Herzog, Leonard John Rose, Henry Kissinger Football players: Max Morlock, Karl Mai, Franz Beckenbauer, Sepp Maier, Gerd Müller, Paul Breitner, Bernd Schuster, Klaus Augenthaler, Lothar Matthäus, Philipp Lahm, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Holger Badstuber, Thomas Müller, Mario Götze, Dietmar Hamann, Stefan Reuter Other sportspeople: Bernhard Langer, Dirk Nowitzki, Phoenix Sanders Actors: Michael Herbig, Werner Stocker, Helmut Fischer, Walter Sedlmayr, Gustl Bayrhammer, Ottfried Fischer, Ruth Drexel, Elmar Wepper, Fritz Wepper, Uschi Glas, Yank Azman Entertainers: Siegfried Fischbacher, Thomas Gottschalk Film directors: Helmut Dietl, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Bernd Eichinger, Joseph Vilsmaier, Hans Steinhoff, Werner Herzog Designers: Peter Schreyer, Damir Doma, Thomas Nast Entrepreneurs: Charles Diebold, Adi Dassler, Rudolf Dassler, Levi Strauss, Ed Meier Military: Claus von Stauffenberg Nazis: Sepp Dietrich, Karl Fiehler, Karl Gebhardt, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Alfred Jodl, Josef Kollmer, Josef Mengele, Ernst Röhm, Franz Ritter von Epp, Julius Streicher Others: Kaspar Hauser, The Smith of Kochel, Mathias Kneißl, Matthias Klostermayr, Anneliese Michel, Herluka von Bernried	[ "asylum seekers", "Confederation of the Rhine", "Google", "Franconia", "Duchy of Bavaria", "Ingolstadt", "beer garden", "1st century AD", "Eastern Orthodox Church", "Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen", "Ludwig III of Bavaria", "Munich", "Diana Damrau", "referendum", "Passau", "Free Voters of Bavaria", "Celts", "Tourism", "Sepp Dietrich", "s.Oliver Würzburg", "Bavarians", "Weißwurst", "Charles Diebold", "Swabia (administrative region)", "Rhineland-Palatinate", "Alfons Goppel", "Hans Ehard", "Maß", "Alliance 90/The Greens", "FC Bayern Munich (Basketball)", "Outline of Germany", "automotive industry", "Höllentalferner", "Landsberg (district)", "FC Augsburg", "West German", "Bernd Schuster", "Austro-Prussian War", "Karlovy Vary Region", "List of German states by GDP", "Cabinet of curiosities", "Pope Victor II", "Bavarian cuisine", "Ostallgäu", "aircraft engine", "Hans-Jürgen Buchner", "Franconia (wine region)", "Baden-Württemberg", "List of German states by Human Development Index", "Regensburg", "Christian Ude", "Gross value added", "North Rhine-Westphalia", "unicameral", "Human Development Index", "Odilo of Bavaria", "Bundestag", "Thuringia", "Munich Frauenkirche", "Standard German", "The Local", "Elmar Wepper", "Joseph Vilsmaier", "Yank Azman", "Coburg, Germany", "Schweinfurt (district)", "Max Planck", "Motorboat", "Klaus Doldinger", "Fürstenfeldbruck (district)", "Treasury", "Czech Republic", "Unterallgäu", "Lower Bavaria", "Starnberg (district)", "Germanisches Nationalmuseum", "Austrian Empire", "Pope Damasus II", "Sportfreunde Stiller", 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von Lenbach", "Richard Wagner", "Kingdom of Bavaria", "Bocksbeutel", "Christian Social Union in Bavaria", "Margraviate of Brandenburg", "Berg (state)", "Wassily Kandinsky", "Markus Söder", "Hermann Göring", "Freising", "Regensburg (district)", "Landshut (district)", "Paganism in the Eastern Alps", "Memmingen", "Western Roman Empire", "Feodor Lynen", "list of German states by area", "Michael Bredl", "Bavarian Ministry of the Interior", "Bohemian Forest", "Dirk Nowitzki", "Lake Constance", "Edmund Stoiber", "Pannonian Avars", "Counter-Reformation", "Miesbach (district)", "common people", "stem duchy", "Horst Seehofer", "Iron Age", "Upper Austria", "Federal Chancellor of Germany", "Duchy of Jülich", "Nuremberg", "Ernst Röhm", "de:Pendling", "Dachau (district)", "Linderhof Palace", "Maximilian IV Joseph", "EHC Red Bull München", "Freyung-Grafenau", "Bavaria Yachtbau", "Schweinfurt", "Deutsche Eishockey Liga", "Kronach (district)", "Michael Ende", "Süddeutsche Zeitung", "Hans Steinhoff", 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3,765	Brandenburg	Brandenburg, officially the State of Brandenburg (see Names), is a state in northeastern Germany. Brandenburg borders Poland and the states of Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. It is the fifth-largest German state by area and the tenth-most populous, with 2.5 million residents. Potsdam is the state capital and largest city. Other major towns are Cottbus, Brandenburg an der Havel and Frankfurt (Oder). Brandenburg surrounds the national capital and city-state of Berlin. Together they form the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, the third-largest metropolitan area in Germany. There was an unsuccessful attempt to unify both states in 1996, however the states still cooperate on many matters. 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 established Brandenburg-Prussia, the core of the later Kingdom of Prussia. From 1815 to 1947, Brandenburg was a province of Prussia. Following the abolition of Prussia after World War II, Brandenburg was established as a state by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany. In 1952, the German Democratic Republic dissolved the state and broke it up into multiple regional districts. After German reunification, Brandenburg was re-established in 1990 as one of the five new states of the Federal Republic. Southeastern Brandenburg contains part of the historical Lower Lusatia, and most of these localities have two official languages, German and Lower Sorbian (of the Sorbs/Wends). ==Names== Brandenburg takes its name from Brandenburg an der Havel. The name's origin is unclear but it is thought to derive from the Slavic ('marshy/boggy') Other theories have included West Slavic ('defensive forest') and ('pine forest'). in German means 'castle'. In the extinct local language Polabian, Brandenburg was . In the modern local languages, Brandenburg and the State of Brandenburg are named: German: () and and and ==History== In late medieval and early modern times, Brandenburg was, with varying borders, 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. ===Early Middle Ages=== Brandenburg is situated in territory known in antiquity as Magna Germania, which reached to the Vistula river. By the 7th century, Slavic people 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. 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. The eastern parts of current Brandenburg, i.e. the Lubusz Land and Lower Lusatia, became part of Poland in the 10th-11th centuries. ===Late Middle Ages=== In the early 12th century, the Slavic Duchy of Kopanica was established in the central part of present-day Brandenburg, whereas the Lubusz Land in the east remained part of medieval Poland. During the 12th century, the German kings and emperors re-established control over the Slav-inhabited lands of present-day Brandenburg, excluding Polish-controlled Lubusz Land, 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. 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 and seizing territory around and east of the Oder from Poland (Lubusz Land and north-western Greater Poland), later known as the Neumark, in contrast to the Altmark, the cradle of the March of Brandenburg. 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. ===16th and 17th centuries=== 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. 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. ===Kingdom of Prussia and German Empire=== 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. 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. It also included Lower Lusatia, previously ruled at various times by Poland, Bohemia, Hungary and Saxony. 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 and a population of 2.6 million (1925). Under the Nazi government and during World War II, repressions of Poles, especially autochthones in the eastern part of the province, intensified with expulsions of Poles, censorship of Polish newspapers, invigilation, arrests and assassinations of Polish leaders, activists, teachers, entrepreneurs, editors, etc., deportations to concentration camps and closure of Polish organizations, enterprises, schools and libraries. The Sachsenhausen concentration camp with a network of subcamps was located in Brandenburg, and several prisoner-of-war camps, including Stalag III-A, Stalag III-B, Stalag III-C, Stalag III-D, Oflag II-A, Oflag III-A, Oflag III-B, Oflag III-C, Oflag 8 and Oflag 80 for Polish, Belgian, British, Dutch, French, Serbian, Italian, American, Czechoslovak, Soviet, Romanian, Greek, Bulgarian and other Allied POWs with numerous forced labour subcamps. In early 1945, the death marches of prisoners of various nationalities from various dissolved camps passed through the region. In the final stages of the war, it was the place of heavy fights, including the Battle of the Seelow Heights and Battle of Berlin, won by the Allied Soviet and Polish armies. After Germany's defeat, the part of Brandenburg east of the Oder–Neisse line, which formed part of Poland in the Middle Ages and partly also in the early modern period, became again part of Poland. The entire population of former East Brandenburg was expelled en masse in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement. The remainder of the province became a state in the Soviet Zone of occupation in Germany when Prussia was dissolved in 1947. ===East Germany === 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. ===Federal Republic of Germany=== 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. ====Berlin-Brandenburg fusion attempt==== 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. 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. \| 1875 \| 1444441 \| 1890 \| 1578138 \| 1910 \| 1879375 \| 1925 \| 2048866 \| 1939 \| 2433881 \| 1950 \| 2746002 \| 1964 \| 2620071 \| 1971 \| 2667096 \| 1981 \| 2667052 \| 1990 \| 2602404 \|2000\|2589504\|2011\|2455780\|2022\|2534075}} ===Religion=== 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%) \|- ! Nationality \|\| Population (31.12.2023) \|- \| \|\| 35,685 \|- \| \|\| 29,460 \|- \| \|\| 22,320 \|- \| \|\| 12,100 \|- \| \|\| 12,070 \|- \| \|\| 8,945 \|- \| \|\| 6,420 \|- \| \|\| 4,215 \|- \| \|\| 3,815 \|- \| \|\| 3,695 \|- \|} ==Politics == 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. 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 Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz, who sits in the Bundestag for Potsdam. Like in all other New states of Germany, the leftist party of The Left and, more recently, the far-right Alternative for Germany are especially strong in Brandenburg. Brandenburg has 4 out of 69 votes in the Bundesrat and, as of 2021, 25 seats out of 736 in the Bundestag. ===Subdivisions=== Brandenburg is divided into 14 rural districts (Landkreise) and four urban districts (kreisfreie Städte), shown with their population in 2011: === Government=== ====Election of 2024==== The 2024 Brandenburg state election took place on 22 September. One important outcome of the election was that the number of parties with representation in the state parliament went from six to four. The Greens, the Left, and the Brandenburg United Civic Movements/Free Voters all lost their representation while a new party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), gained 14 votes. The BSW was formed on 8 January, 2024, mostly by members who had broken away from the Left. While it shares the Left's economic outlook, it is more closely aligned with stances traditionally held by the right on certain issues. For example, the BSW is broadly anti-immigration and anti-Nato, and has been accused of having Russophile tendencies, partially based on their desire for the war in Ukraine to be ended by diplomacy. Other German parties have generally been unwilling to work with the AfD and that trend continued with the formation of the new government based on this election. Assuming that the AfD would be in the opposition, the only two options that the SPD, with the plurality of seats, had to obtain a majority were to work with the BSW as well as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) or to just work with the BSW. Ultimately, the latter option was chosen and a majority of 46 out of 88 seats was obtained. While this should have been enough votes to reelect Woidke as the Minister-President, he lost the first vote, having only 43 supporters in the secret ballot. While there were only 40 votes against him (there were two abstentions and two votes that were invalid), an absolute majority, 45 votes, was required to win the first round. On 11 December, in the second round of voting, all that was needed was for Woidke to receive more votes in his favor than there were in opposition, and he won in this round with 50 votes. This meant that at least 4 members of the opposition, whether from the AfD, the CDU, or a combination of the two, had voted with the coalition government to reelect Woidke. The CDU accused the SPD of receiving help from the AfD, but it is impossible to know because the ballot was secret. The government in Brandenburg has been led by the SPD since 1990. ====Election of 2019==== The 2019 elections took place on 1 September. 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. ==Economy== 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. 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. Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg is located in Brandenburg. ==Transport== 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 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%). Schönefeld's existing infrastructure and terminals were incorporated into the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER), which opened 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. Berlin Brandenburg Airport receives over sixty combined passenger, charter and cargo airlines. ==Education and research== ===Higher education=== 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. Universities in Brandenburg: University of Potsdam Brandenburg University of Technology in Cottbus and Senftenberg European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg Medizinische Hochschule Brandenburg Theodor Fontane Medizinische Universität Lausitz – Carl Thiem ==Culture== ===Music=== 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. ===Cuisine=== 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. ===Notable people=== Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), philosopher, linguist, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811), poet, dramatist, and novelist Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841), architect, city planner, and painter Peter Joseph Lenné (1789–1866), gardener and landscape architect Theodor Fontane (1819–1898), novelist and poet Wilhelm Pieck (1876–1960), politician, first President of the German Democratic Republic Kurt Demmler (1943–2009), songwriter; accused of sexual abuse he hanged himself in his jail cell. Wolfgang Joop (born 1944), fashion designer, founder of JOOP! Matthias Platzeck (born 1953), politician, Minister President of Brandenburg from 2002 to 2013 Henry Maske (born 1964), professional boxer Paul van Dyk (born 1971), DJ, record producer, and musician Britta Steffen (born 1983), competitive swimmer, former Olympic, World, and European champion Robert Harting (born 1984), discus thrower, former Olympic, World, and European champion Roehl brothers, Charles (1857–1927) and William (1890–1968), businessmen and pioneers of Washington state. Mike David Ortmann (born 1999), racing driver	[ "Wilhelm von Humboldt", "Wolfgang Joop", "2013 German federal election", "French prisoners of war in World War II", "Holy Roman Empire", "Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance", "Uckermark (district)", "Saxony-Anhalt", "Germanization", "bishoprics", "Prignitz", "Ryanair", "Oder River", "Lothair III, Holy Roman Emperor", "Treaty of Oliva", "Margraviate of Brandenburg", "Open Access", "Joachim Friedrich von Blumenthal", "Poland", "German reunification", "Electorate of Saxony", "Chancellor of Germany", "Potsdam Agreement", "2009 German federal election", "Free State of Saxony", "City Palace, Potsdam", "Kingdom of Hungary", "German Democratic Republic", "marches", "Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor", "Oder river", "Brandenburg Concertos", "Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht", "Oberhavel", "Lower Sorbian language", "Bohemian Crown", "Alliance 90/The Greens", "Frederick the Great", "Outline of Germany", "Pannonian Avars", "Barnim Nature Park", "Märkisch-Oderland", "Oberspreewald-Lausitz", "gross domestic product", "Bremen (state)", "Christian Democratic Union of Germany", "Diocese of Brandenburg", "Theodor Fontane", "William Roehl", "Schlaube Valley Nature Parke", "States of Germany", "Battle of the Seelow Heights", "German Bundesrat", "Nuremberg", "Barnim", "baroque music", "abolition of Prussia", "Northern March", "German prisoner-of-war camps in World War II", "Berlin Schönefeld Airport", "Germany", "Wilhelm Pieck", "Elbe-Elster", "List of German states by Human Development Index", "Huns", "Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor", "Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve", "High Fläming Nature Park", "Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin", "Sorbs", "Brandenburg an der Havel", "Administrative divisions of East Germany", "Lusatia", "Stechlin-Ruppiner Land Nature Park", "UNESCO", "Sachsenhausen concentration camp", "Johann Sebastian Bach", "Elbe", "Slavic people", "Potsdam-Mittelmark", "Halberstadt", "Wends", "Polish people", "Forced labour under German rule during World War II", "Human Development Index", "Roman Catholic Diocese of Görlitz", "Frankfurt (Bezirk)", "Uckermark Lakes Nature Park", "Bundestag", "Ukraine", "Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt", "Spreewald gherkins", "Protected Geographical Indication", "New states of Germany", "Heinrich von Kleist", "The Left (Germany)", "Results of the 2021 German federal election", "Brandenburg-Prussia", "Neumark", "Nazi concentration camps", "Westphalia", "2017 German federal election", "Peace of Westphalia", "Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany", "Lower Oder Valley National Park", "Regierungsbezirk Frankfurt", "European Union", "Spree (river)", "Brandenburg University of Technology", "House of Hohenzollern", "Italian Military Internees", "church tax", "Alternative for Germany", "Hevelli", "Havelland (district)", "Schwedt", "Frank-Walter Steinmeier", "List of subcamps of Sachsenhausen", "Polabian language", "Spreewald", "Soviet Military Administration in Germany", "Paul van Dyk", "West Slavic languages", "Elections in Germany", "Cottbus (Bezirk)", "Britta Steffen", "Administrative division of the German Democratic Republic", "Roman Catholicism", "Niederlausitzer Heidelandschaft", "Soviet occupation zone", "Rhineland", "Duchy of Kopanica", "Niederlausitzer Landrücken Nature Park", "German Empire", "Margrave", "Battle of Berlin", "Nuthe-Nieplitz Nature Park", "Charles Roehl", "Kingdom of Prussia", "Death marches during the Holocaust", "First level NUTS of the European Union", "Northern Crusade", "Duden", "Frankfurt (Oder)", "international airport", "Humboldt University of Berlin", "Former countries in Europe after 1815", "Bavaria", "prince-elector", "Westhavelland Nature Park", "Schönefeld", "Potsdam (Bezirk)", "Cottbus", "von Blumenthal", "JOOP!", "Matthias Platzeck", "Neubrandenburg (Bezirk)", "Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences", "Sprevane", "Magna Germania", "Spree-Neiße", "Russophile", "Expulsion of Poles by Germany", "Province of Brandenburg", "Magdeburg (Bezirk)", "Condor Flugdienst", "Potsdam", "Teltow-Fläming", "West Berlin", "Dietmar Woidke", "Dahme-Heideseen Nature Park", "Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg", "Minister-President", "Nazi government", "Protestant Reformation", "Allies of World War II", "Duchy of Cleves", "Havelberg", "Central European Time", "Berlin", "Duchy of Greater Poland", "Slavic languages", "University of Potsdam", "Robert Harting", "Mecklenburg-Vorpommern", "List of German states by area", "Ansbach", "Dahme-Spreewald", "World War II", "Oflag III-C", "Metropolitan regions in Germany", "Bishopric of Havelberg", "Lower Lusatia", "Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg", "Duchy of Prussia", "Margrave of Brandenburg", "Henry Maske", "Havel", "German language", "Potsdam – Potsdam-Mittelmark II – Teltow-Fläming II", "European University Viadrina", "Peter Joseph Lenné", "Frederick I of Prussia", "King in Prussia", "assassination", "Prussia", "Märkische Schweiz Nature Park", "President of Germany", "East Germany", "Brandenburglied", "House of Luxembourg", "Kurt Demmler", "easyJet", "Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia", "State of Brandenburg (1947–1952)", "Oder-Spree", "Stalag III-A", "Schwerin (Bezirk)", "World Heritage Site", "Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II", "Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region", "Stalag III-C", "lignite", "Brandenburg (town)", "Prignitz – Ostprignitz-Ruppin – Havelland I", "Pribislav of Brandenburg", "Oflag II-A", "Olaf Scholz", "Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg", "Thirty Years' War", "Altmark", "Council of Ministers of the GDR", "Oder–Neisse line", "Central European Summer Time", "2024 Brandenburg state election", "states of Germany", "Ostprignitz-Ruppin", "Henry the Fowler", "Protestant Church in Germany", "Berlin Brandenburg Airport", "Social Democratic Party of Germany", "List of German states by population", "House of Ascania", "Washington state", "Lubusz Land", "Burg Hohenzollern", "Fusion of Berlin and Brandenburg", "Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg", "Wittelsbach", "Lands of the Bohemian Crown", "Karl Friedrich Schinkel", "Albert the Bear", "Saxony", "Stalag III-D", "List of Minister-Presidents of Brandenburg", "List of German states by population density", "Mike David Ortmann", "Landtag of Brandenburg", "Germanic languages", "Roman Catholic Church", "1994 Brandenburg state election", "biosphere reserve", "Bundesrat of Germany", "1990 German federal election", "Bautzen", "Lower Saxony" ]
3,768	Bundestag	The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag was established by Title III of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany () in 1949 as one of the legislative bodies of Germany, the other being the Bundesrat. It is thus the historical successor to the earlier Reichstag. 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 conscience. As of the current 21st legislative period, the Bundestag has a fixed number of 630 members. The Bundestag is elected every four years by German citizens aged 18 and older. Elections use a mixed-member proportional representation system which combines First-past-the-post voting for constituency-seats with proportional representation to ensure its composition mirrors the national popular vote. The German Bundestag cannot dissolve itself; only the President of Germany can do so under certain conditions. Together with the Bundesrat, the Bundestag forms the legislative branch of government on federal level. The Bundestag is considerably more powerful than the Bundesrat, which represents the state governments. All bills must first be passed in the Bundestag before they are discussed in the Bundesrat. The Bundesrat can only accept laws passed by the Bundestag without amendment. Only in some areas, where laws directly affect the states, can the Bundesrat reject laws; otherwise, it can only lodge an objection to them, which the Bundestag can overrule. Above all, however, the Chancellor and the federal government are solely responsible to the Bundestag. The Bundestag also has sole budgetary authority. The Bundestag's presiding officer is the President of the Bundestag; he or she is deputized by the Vice Presidents of the Bundestag. Since 2025, Julia Klöckner of the CDU/CSU is the president of the Bundestag. In the protocol order of the federation, the President of the Bundestag ranks second after the President and before the Chancellor. Since 1999, the Bundestag has met in the Reichstag building in Berlin. The Bundestag also operates in multiple new government buildings in Berlin around the neo-renaissance house and has its own police force (the Bundestagspolizei), directly subordinated to the Bundestag Presidency. ==History== The first body to be called Bundestag was the legislative body of the German Confederation, which convened in Frankfurt am Main from 1816 to 1866. At this time, Germany was not yet a federal state and this Bundestag was not a (democratic) parliament, but an assembly of envoys of the sovereign princes. During the revolution of 1848/49, the National Assembly, which met in Frankfurt am Main, was the first elected parliament to serve as a constituent assembly for a German state, which ultimately did not come to pass. The North German Confederation, founded in 1866/67, was the first German nation state with an elected parliament, the Reichstag. In 1870/71, the federation was expanded to include the southern German territories and was henceforth called the German Empire. The Reichstag building, where the current Bundestag meets since 1999 (see below), was built in 1888. The German Empire was not yet a parliamentary democracy in the modern sense, but a constitutional monarchy with democratic elements. The Reichstag had to approve all bills, had the right to initiate legislation and, in particular, had budgetary sovereignty. However, the Chancellor and the imperial government were not responsible to parliament, but to the emperor alone. It was not until 1918, a few weeks before the end of the First World War, that the Reichstag was given the right, as part of a constitutional reform, to withdraw its confidence in the Chancellor and thus force him to resign. There was also no universal suffrage for the Reichstag; only men over the age of 25 were entitled to vote. After its defeat in the First World War, Germany became a republic and a parliamentary democracy with the Weimar Constitution of 1919. The voting age was lowered to 21 years and women were given the right to vote for (and serve in) the Reichstag. However, the first German democracy failed for various reasons, some of which were directly related to the Reichstag. The pure proportional representation system in elections did not produce clear majorities and the various parties were not sufficiently willing to compromise to form stable governments. This led to numerous changes of government and snap elections. In the last years of the Weimar Republic, the extreme right and extreme left parties had a destructive majority in the Reichstag, which forced the governments to rule largely by emergency decrees to bypass parliament. 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, in which only the Nazi Party was represented from November 1933 on, met only rarely, above all to extend the emergency laws on which the Nazi dictatorship was formally based. It last convened on 26 April 1942. With the Basic Law of 1949, Germany's second democratic constitution, the Bundestag was established as the new parliament. Due to the division of Germany, the Bundestag was de facto a West German parliament until 1990. The socialist GDR in East Germany had its own parliament, the People's Chamber, which, however, did not emerge from democratic elections except for its last electoral term in 1990. Because West Berlin was not officially under the jurisdiction of the Basic Law during the division, the Bundestag met in Bonn in several different buildings, including (provisionally) a former waterworks facility and finally in the Bundeshaus in Bonn. 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. Since German reunification in 1990, the Bundestag has once again been a pan-German parliament. In 1999, the German parliament moved from Bonn to Berlin and sits once again in the Reichstag building. ==Tasks== ===Legislative process=== Together with the Bundesrat, the Bundestag forms the legislative branch of the German political system. The Bundestag is one of three constitutional bodies (along with the Bundesrat and the federal government) that have the right of initiative for the legislative process. In order to introduce a bill in the Bundestag, the support of a faction or of a number of MPs corresponding to at least 5% of all MPs is required. All bills (including those introduced by the Bundesrat and the government) are first voted on in the Bundestag (for bills from the Bundesrat and the government, however, an opinion must first be obtained from the other body). A bill is first discussed at first reading, then referred to one or more committees, where it can be amended; the resulting committee version then goes back to the plenary, where it is passed at second and third reading. Amendments can also be tabled at this stage. A simple majority (more yes votes than no votes and abstentions combined) is required for normal legislative proposals. In some very rare cases, the Basic Law requires the so-called chancellor majority (majority of all members of parliament) for simple laws, for example to establish new intermediate and subordinate federal authorities. Laws amending the Basic Law require a two-thirds majority of all members of the Bundestag. A law passed by the Bundestag is passed on to the Bundesrat. Laws that directly affect the states must be passed by the Bundesrat by majority vote (amendments to the Basic Law, again, by a two-thirds majority); all other laws are considered passed if the Bundesrat does not object to them within 14 days. An objection by the Bundesrat can be overruled by the Bundestag with a chancellor majority if the Bundesrat has not raised the objection with a two-thirds majority (in the latter case, in order to override an objection, a two-thirds majority of members present corresponding at least to the chancellor majority is necessary). In no case can the Bundesrat make amendments to a bill. If the Bundesrat rejects a bill, the matter is often referred to the so-called mediation committee, a body made up of an equal number of members of the Bundestag and Bundesrat, which attempts to negotiate whether the bill can find the approval of both chambers with certain amendments. A version amended in this way must then be passed again by a majority in both chambers in order to become law (in this case the rules of procedure of both chambers provide for an abbreviated legislative procedure). In the final step, a law must be signed by the President of Germany (in theory, he has a right of veto, but this has only been used very rarely in the history of the Federal Republic). ===Elections=== The Bundestag has an elective function for a number of offices. ====Chancellor==== The chancellor is elected by the Bundestag and formally appointed by the president of Germany. A chancellor's election is necessary whenever the office of chancellor has fallen vacant. This is the case if a newly elected Bundestag meets for the first time, or during legislative periods, if the former chancellor died or resigned. The chancellor's election is one of the few cases in which a vote in the Bundestag requires a majority of all elected members, not just a majority of those assembled at the time, the so-called Kanzlermehrheit ("chancellor majority"). As with other elections performed by the Bundestag, the chancellor is elected via secret ballot. The election procedure laid down in the Basic Law can be divided into three phases: The process begins with the President of Germany proposing a candidate to the Bundestag (usually a candidate on which the majority party or the coalition parties have agreed to beforehand), who is then voted upon without debate ("1st voting phase"). If the nominee reaches the necessary "chancellor majority", the president appoint him or her and, after that, the president of the Bundestag will administer the oath of office before the assembled house. If this nominee is not elected, the right of nomination is transferred onto the Bundestag: Candidates can now be nominated for election, whereby a nomination must be supported by at least a quarter of all MPs. The Bundestag can hold any number of ballots in this manner for two weeks. To be elected, a candidate still needs a "chancellor majority" of yes-votes ("Second voting phase"). If the Bundestag is unable to elect a chancellor in these fourteen days, a final ballot is held on the very next day. Once again, candidates can be nominated by at least a quarter of all MPs. Candidates receiving a "chancellor majority" in this ballot are elected. Otherwise, it is up to the President of Germany either to appoint the candidate with the plurality of votes as Chancellor or to dissolve the Bundestag and call new elections ("Third voting phase"). Another possibility to vote a new chancellor into office is the constructive vote of no confidence, which allows the Bundestag to replace a sitting chancellor, if it elects a new chancellor with the "chancellor-majority". As of 2025, all chancellors of the federal republic have been (re-)elected on proposal of the President and on the first ballot with the sole exception of Helmut Kohl, who was elected to his first term via a constructive vote of no confidence against Helmut Schmidt. ====Judges of the federal constitutional court==== The Bundestag shares responsibility with the Bundesrat for electing the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court. Both chambers elect four judges to each of the court's two senates. They also elect the president and vice-president of the Federal Constitutional Court in alternating order. In the Bundestag, this requires a two-thirds majority of members present, which has equal at least a majority of all members. ====Further elective functions==== In addition to these central elections, the Bundestag elects the President and Vice President of the Federal Audit Office, the Commissioner for the Armed Forces, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, the Federal Commissioner for the Victims of the SED Dictatorship, two-thirds of the members of the Joint Committee and half of the members of the Mediation Committee. All members of the Bundestag are ex officio members of the Federal Convention, a non-permanent constitutional body whose sole task is to elect the President of Germany. As such, the Bundestag is also involved in the presidential election. == Electoral term and principle of discontinuation == The Bundestag is elected for four years, and new elections must be held no earlier than 46 and no later than 48 months after the beginning of a given legislative session. By way of exception, there may be an early election if the President of Germany dissolves the Bundestag. However, the President only has the right to do so in the event of a failed chancellor election or if an incumbent chancellor requests dissolution after losing a vote of confidence. The possibility of an early election is therefore much more limited than is the case in other parliamentary democracies. This restriction is intended to encourage the parliamentary groups to cooperate in difficult situations and is a lesson learned from the experience of the Weimar Republic, in which snap elections were very frequent because the parties were unable to compromise and form stable governments. In constitutional reality however, the deliberately lost vote of confidence (also known as a false vote of confidence) has established itself as a way for the chancellor to bring about new elections, de facto at his or her discretion (this has happened four times so far: 1972, 1982/83, 2005 and 2024/25). A legislative session ends in the moment, a newly elected Bundestag convenes for the first time, which must occur within 30 days after an election. The principle applies that there can be no 'period without parliament'. An elected Bundestag is fully competent to act until a newly elected Bundestag convenes for its first session. Prorogations and dissolutions (in the strict sense), as known in the Westminster system, do not exist in Germany. Even an early dissolution of the Bundestag, as described above, in practice only leads to an early election, but does not end the legislative period itself. Before a constitutional amendment in 1976, the "Standing Committee" took the place of the Bundestag with all its rights after dissolution by the President or 48 months after its constitution until a new Bundestag was constituted. Since then, a legislative session generally only ends when the new Bundestag convenes, meaning that lame duck sessions can occur in the four weeks following an election. This has happened four times so far: Following the tradition of German parliamentarism, 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. If the succeeding Bundestag convents with same or similar majorities like its predecessor, the parliament can decide to take over earlier initiatives of legislation in the same fashion to abbreviate the process, thus effectively breaking the principle of discontinuation by a pull. ==Election and membership== ===Election system (since 2023)=== After the imperial Reichstag was elected according to a pure first-past-the-post electoral system (with run-off elections) and the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic according to a pure proportional representation system, mixed-member proportional representation, a system combining proportional representation with elements of first-past-the-post voting, has been used for the Bundestag since the founding of the Federal Republic. Before an electoral reform in 2023, the Bundestag nominally had 598 members, with the mixture of majority and proportional representation regularly leading to a large number of additional overhang and compensation mandates. In 2023, this was remedied with a series of modifications that led to a fixed number of seats of 630 and significantly increased the proportional aspect; after this revised electoral law was confirmed by the Federal Constitutional Court with some modifications following constitutional complaints, it was applied for the first time in 2025. 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 (Listenkandidat), first on the federal level and then on state level (Sainte-Laguë method). In most cases, the number of constituencies won by a party in a given state does not exactly correspond to the number of seats to which the party is entitled in that state via second votes. This is balanced in two different ways: If a party wins more constituency seats in a state than its second votes would entitle it to, only the correspondent number of constituency winners with the highest percentage of first votes are elected. If a party wins fewer constituencies in a state than it is entitled to based on the second-vote result, the highest-placed candidates from the state list are elected accordingly to the additional seats. To qualify for any seats, however, a party must either win three single-member constituencies via first votes () or exceed a threshold of 5% of the second votes nationwide. This does not apply to independent constituency candidates: these always enter the Bundestag if they win their constituency (however, no independent constituency candidate has managed to win a constituency since 1949). Seats allocated in this way are subtracted from the base number of 630 when the mandates are distributed among the parties. In addition, the second votes of voters who have elected a successful independent constituency candidate are not taken into account when calculating the number of mandates (although they are for the 5% threshold). Parties representing recognized national minorities (currently Danes, Frisians, Sorbs, and Romani people) are exempt from both the 5% national threshold and the basic mandate clause. 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, 2021, and 2025. ===Succession in case of early retirement=== If a member of parliament leaves the Bundestag during the current legislative session, either through resignation or death, another candidate from that party from the corresponding state takes their place. Successful constituency candidates who did not receive a seat in the previous election due to the principle of second vote coverage are considered first, followed by the candidates on the respective state list. However, if the list is exhausted, the seat in question remains vacant for the remainder of the session. If the departing member was an independent constituency candidate, the seat also remains empty. ==Latest election result== ===Regular election of 2025=== The latest federal election was held on Sunday, 23 February 2025, to elect the members of the 21st Bundestag. ==List of Bundestag by session== ==Presidents since 1949== == Membership == ==Organization== === Presidium and Council of Elders=== The executive bodies of the Bundestag are the Presidium and the Council of Elders. The Presidium consists of the President, the presiding officer, and several Vice Presidents. The President and Vice Presidents are elected by the plenary of the Bundestag, whereby traditionally the largest fraction nominates the President and each fraction may nominate a Vice President. In addition to the members of the Presidium, the Council of Elders includes 23 other deputies who are delegated proportionally by the factions. 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. === Legislative calender === The Bundestag cannot be adjourned or prorogued during the current legislative session, but is always fully capable of acting and sets its own legislative calendar. Normally, the Bundestag sits for at least twenty weeks per year, interrupted by non-sessional weeks, especially a long parliamentary summer recess, during which the MPs are present in their constituencies. The course of a session week is traditionally always the same: meetings of the parliamentary faction's internal committees take place on Monday and Tuesday mornings, and meetings in the faction-plenary on Tuesday afternoon. From Wednesday to Friday, plenary sessions and committee meetings take place in parallel (this is the reason why often very few members are present at plenary debates). Committee meetings are interrupted on very important items on the agenda so that all MPs have the opportunity to be present in the plenary hall. The highlights of the procedures include government statements by the Chancellor and the general debate at the beginning of the annual budget deliberations, during which there is a direct clash between the Chancellor and the opposition leader. Independently of the usual procedure, the Bundestag can also convene for extraordinary sessions at any time. This must happen if one third of the MPs, the President of Germany or the Chancellor request it (Basic Law, Article 39.3). ===Factions and groups=== The most important organisational structures within the Bundestag are 'factions' (Fraktionen; sing. Fraktion). A parliamentary faction must consist of at least 5% of all members of parliament. Members of parliament from different parties may only join in a faction 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 faction of their own. The CDU and CSU however, have always formed a joint faction, called CDU/CSU or Union. This 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 faction 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 factions, not the members, receive the bulk of government funding for legislative and administrative activities. The leadership of each fraction 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. Parties that do not hold 5% of the Bundestag-seats may be granted the status of a group in the Bundestag; this is decided case by case, as the rules of procedure do not state a fixed number of seats for this. This status entails some privileges which are in general less than those of a faction. ===Committees=== 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. === Administration === 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. == Location == Also following the tradition of German diets, the German Bundestag can legally convene on any location, domestic and foreign. The Reichstag plenary chamber is not determined by law as the location of the assembly, making it a facility of convenience. Bundestag's predecessor, the German Reichstag, convened in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin, after the Reichstag with its then wooden interior and walls burned down in the Reichstag fire. After World War II, the Bundestag did not have own facilities to call home and had to convene in the Bundeshaus in Bonn together with the Bundesrat. 1953, the plenary chambers in the Bundeshaus had to be expanded and the Bundestag assembled in a radio building in Cologne. Until 1965, the Bundestag assembled in West Berlin for nine sessions. Seven sessions have been held in the Technische Universität Berlin and two sessions in Berlin's Congress Hall in Tiergarten. The assemblies met severe protest from the communist side, the last session even interrupted by Soviet aircraft in supersonic low-altitude flight. 1971, the four occupying powers agree to not accept Bundestag assemblies in West Berlin anymore. The Bundestag assembled in the Old Waterworks Building in Bonn when the old plenary chamber had to get broken down, and in the new plenary chamber for only a few years after Germany's reunification. The most distinctive assembly of the Bundestag outsite its regular chambers was on 4 October 1990, the day after German reunification. The Bundestag assembled inside the Reichstag building in Berlin for the first time after 57 years, and remote from its then-regular home in Bonn. Soon after this most memorable assembly, the Bundestag decided to move from Bonn back to Berlin by a law which sets only the city of Berlin to be the home of the Bundestag, not the building.	[ "List of members of the 17th Bundestag", "2013 German federal election", "Reichstag (Nazi Germany)", "Decision on the Capital of Germany", "Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance", "Andrea Lindholz", "Socialist Equality Party (Germany)", "Christian Social Union in Bavaria", "Bodo Ramelow", "2029 German federal election", "Helmut Schmidt", "First World War", "Leader of the Opposition (Germany)", "1980 West German federal election", "German reunification", "Chancellor of Germany", "constructive vote of no confidence", "2009 German federal election", "2005 German federal election", "Alliance '90/The Greens", "German Party (1947)", "Hermann Ehlers", "Bärbel Bas", "CDU/CSU", "Human World (political party)", "Alliance 90/The Greens", "Grundgesetz", "First German Bundestag", "Rainer Barzel", "1983 West German federal election", "21st Bundestag", "Danes", "All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights", "1972 West German federal election", "Christian Democratic Union of Germany", "Julia Klöckner", "Politics of Germany", "Nazi Germany", "Soviet Union", "German Bundesrat", "House of Representatives of Berlin", "Kai-Uwe von Hassel", "Germany", "List of members of the 12th Bundestag", "2025 German federal election", "Bündnis Deutschland", "Stefan Seidler", "Sorbs", "Chancellor majority", "North German Confederation", "Schleswig-Holstein", "List of members of the 5th Bundestag", "1998 German federal election", "1994 German federal election", "Wolfgang Schäuble", "MERA25", "Gregor Gysi", "Bonn", "Weimar Constitution", "Independent politician", "1953 West German federal election", "State list (Germany)", "Bundesrat (Germany)", "The Left (Germany)", "Cabinet of Germany", "2021 German federal election", "Annemarie Renger", "2017 German federal election", "Volt Germany", "South Schleswig Voter Federation", "Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany", "Bavaria Party", "1949 West Germany federal election", "List of members of the 10th Bundestag", "Erich Köhler", "Reichstag 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architecture", "Alliance C – Christians for Germany", "Norbert Lammert", "Karl Carstens", "German Confederation", "List of members of the 15th Bundestag", "Parliamentary group (Germany)", "Party of Humanists", "List of members of the 18th Bundestag", "Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität", "West Berlin", "Reichstag building", "List of members of the 13th Bundestag", "Reichstag fire", "German Parliament Police", "Philipp Jenninger", "Economic Reconstruction Union", "Federal Convention (Germany)", "Frisians", "The Left Party.PDS", "South Schleswig Voters' Association", "Die PARTEI", "List of members of the 11th Bundestag", "Council of Elders of the Bundestag (Germany)", "Würzburg", "Federalism in Germany", "electoral threshold", "Second German Bundestag", "Christian Social Union of Bavaria", "Diet (assembly)", "Frankfurt am Main", "Tiergarten (park)", "Sainte-Laguë method", "legislative branch", "List of members of the 19th Bundestag", "Technische Universität Berlin", "Grassroots Democratic Party of Germany", "mixed-member proportional representation", "German order of precedence", "Romani people", "Human Environment Animal Protection Party", "1965 West German federal election", "1976 West German federal election", "First-past-the-post voting", "President of Germany", "Free Democratic Party (Germany)", "List of members of the 7th Bundestag", "first-past-the-post voting", "Scholz cabinet", "second vote", "German constitutional reforms of October 1918", "Joint Committee", "Omid Nouripour", "1949 West German federal election", "German revolutions of 1848–1849", "Mitte", "working group", "Olaf Scholz", "President by right of age of the Bundestag", "Rita Süssmuth", "Helmut Kohl", "proportional representation", "2002 German federal election", "List of members of the 20th Bundestag", "Alliance 90", "1957 West German federal election", "Bundeshaus (Bonn)", "Parliamentwatch", "List of members of the 21st Bundestag", "List of members of the 3rd Bundestag", "Wolfgang Thierse", 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3,769	Bundesrat	Bundesrat is a German word that means federal council and may refer to: Federal Council (Austria) German Bundesrat Federal Council (Switzerland) Bundesrat (German Empire)	[ "Federal Council (disambiguation)", "Bundesrat (German Empire)", "German Bundesrat", "Federal Council (Switzerland)", "Federal Council (Austria)" ]
3,772	BMW	{{Infobox company \| name = Bayerische Motoren Werke AG \| image = 4 cilindros de BMW, Múnich, Alemania1.jpg \| logo = Logo BMW Group 2021.svg \| logo_caption = \| image_caption = BMW Headquarters in Munich, Germany \| type = Public (Aktiengesellschaft) \| traded_as = \| industry = Automotive \| predecessors = \| former_name = Rapp Motorenwerke \| foundation = (as Rapp Motorenwerke) (as BMW) \| founder = Karl Rapp \| location_city = Munich \| location_country = Germany \| area_served = Worldwide \| key_people = \| products = \| services = Car-sharing services, financing, leasing, insurance and other financial services \| production = \| num_employees = 154,950 (2023) with 2,555,341 vehicles produced in that year alone. In 2023, the company was ranked 46th in the Forbes Global 2000. The company has significant motor-sport history, especially in touring cars, sports cars, and the Isle of Man TT. BMW is headquartered in Munich and produces motor vehicles in Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, India, China, and previously also in the Netherlands (ceased in 2023). The 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 remaining shares owned by the public. ==History== The Otto Flugmaschinenfabrik was founded in 1910 by Gustav Otto in the Kingdom of Bavaria, which was a state of the German Empire. The firm was reorganized on 7 March 1916 into . This company was then renamed to (BMW) in 1922. However, the name BMW dates back to 1913, when a company to use the name was founded by Karl Rapp initially as . The name and 's engine-production assets were transferred to in 1922, who adopted the name the same year. BMW's first product was produced for fighter aircraft of the . It 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, agricultural equipment, household items, and railway brakes. The company produced its first motorcycle, the BMW R 32, in 1923. BMW became an automobile manufacturer in 1928 when it purchased Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach, which, at the time, built the Austin 7 under licence from Dixi. The first car sold as a BMW was a rebadged BMW 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. Aircraft engines, motorcycles, and automobiles would be BMW's main products until World War II. During the war, BMW concentrated on the BMW 801 aircraft engine using as many as 40,000 slave laborers. These consisted primarily of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps, most prominently Dachau. Motorcycles remained as a side-line and automobile manufacture ceased altogether. 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. A large investment in BMW by Herbert Quandt and Harald Quandt resulted in the company surviving as a separate entity. Günther Quandt was a well-known German industrialist and joined the Nazi party in 1933; he 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. 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). In March 2018, Daimler and BMW merged their mobility services. In August 2019, Oliver Zipse replaced Harald Krüger as the head of the BMW Group. === 21st century === In January 2021, BMW announced that its sales in 2020 fell by 8.4 percent due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. However, in the fourth quarter of 2020, BMW witnessed a rise of 3.2% in its customers' demands. This recovery was supported by the company's adoption of widely accepted technologies and integration of third-party services such as Apple Pay and on-demand music as well as key partnerships such as its collaboration with Daimler on autonomous driving. Additionally, BMW's strategic investment decisions which include localizing production of its SUVs to the Spartanburg plant in the U.S., placed the group in a position to easily navigate trade challenges and shifting consumer patterns. the last BMW series production vehicle to be fitted with a V-12 engine. == Branding == === Company name === BMW is an abbreviation for Bayerische Motoren Werke. 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 () 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). 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. === Logo === 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). 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. 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 communications but it is not used on vehicles. === Slogan === 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'. ===Marks=== In 2023, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)’s Madrid Yearly Review ranked BMW's number of marks applications filled under the Madrid System as 2nd in the world, with 124 trademarks applications submitted during 2023. == Corporate affairs == ==Motorcycles== 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. The entire BMW Motorcycle production has, since 1969, been located at the company's Berlin-Spandau factory. 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. 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. 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 and enhanced performance to for the R1200GS, compared to of the previous R1150GS. More powerful variants of the oilhead engines are available in the R1100S and R1200S, producing , respectively. In 2004, BMW introduced the new K1200S Sports Bike which marked a departure for BMW. It had an engine producing , 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. == Automobiles == === Current models === The current model lines of BMW cars are: 1 Series five-door hatchbacks (model code F70). 2 Series two-door coupes (model code G42), "Active Tourer" five-seat MPVs (U06), four-door "Gran Coupe" fastback sedans (model code F74) and long wheelbase model exclusive to China (F78). 3 Series four-door sedans (model code G20), five-door station wagons (G21) and long wheelbase model exclusive to China (G28). 4 Series two-door coupes (model code G22), two-door convertibles (model code G23) and five-door "Gran Coupe" fastbacks (model code G26). 5 Series four-door sedans (model code G60), five-door station wagons (G61) and long wheelbase model exclusive to China (G68). BMW 6 series 7 Series four-door sedans (model code G70). 8 Series two-door coupes (model code G14), two-door convertibles (G15) and "Gran Coupe" four-door fastback sedans (G16). File:BMW 120 (F70) IMG 0362.jpg\|1 Series (F70) File:BMW 220d (F74) DSC 7359.jpg\|2 Series Gran Coupé (F74) File:BMW G42 1X7A0370.jpg\|2 Series (G42) File:2019 BMW 318d SE Automatic 2.0 Front.jpg\|3 Series (G20) File:2020 BMW 420i Sport Automatic 2.0.jpg\|4 Series (G22) File:BMW G60 520d 1X7A1681.jpg\|5 Series (G60) File:BMW G70 740d 1X7A7230.jpg\|7 Series (G70) File:BMW G14 IMG 6039.jpg\|8 Series (G15) The current model lines of the X Series SUVs and crossovers are: X1 (U11) X2 (U10) X3 (G45) X4 (G02) X5 (G05) X6 (G06) X7 (G07) XM (G09) File:BMW U11 1X7A6826.jpg\|X1 (U11) File:BMW U10 1X7A2456.jpg\|X2 (U10) File:BMW G45 20 IMG 2276.jpg\|X3 (G45) File:2018 BMW X4 xDrive20d M Sport Automatic 2.0 Front.jpg\|X4 (G02) File:2019 BMW X5 M50d Automatic 3.0.jpg\|X5 (G05) File:BMW G06 IMG 3715.jpg\|X6 (G06) File:BMW G07 (2022) 1X7A6450.jpg\|X7 (G07) File:BMW XM (G09) IMG 7778.jpg\|XM (G09) The current model line of the Z Series two-door roadsters is the Z4 (model code G29). File:2019 BMW Z4 M40i Automatic 3.0.jpg\|Z4 (G29) ==== i models ==== All-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles are sold under the BMW i sub-brand. The current model range consists of: i3 D-segment (compact) sedan, exclusive to China i4 D-segment (compact) liftback i5 E-segment (executive) sedan i7 F-segment (full-size) sedan iX1 C-segment (subcompact) SUV iX2 C-segment (subcompact) SUV iX3 D-segment (compact) SUV iX E-segment (mid-size) SUV File:BMW i3 (G28) China (2) (cropped).jpg\|i3 File:BMW i4 IMG 6695.jpg\|i4 File:BMW i5 1X7A1826.jpg\|i5 File:BMW i7 xDrive60 1X7A6822.jpg\|i7 File:BMW iX1 1X7A6829.jpg\|iX1 File:BMW iX2 xDrive30 IMG 1811.jpg\|iX2 File:BMW iX3 G08 FL IMG 6225.jpg\|iX3 File:BMW iX 1X7A0305.jpg\|iX 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 550e/750e using a 3.0 L six-cylinder 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. ==== M models ==== The BMW M GmbH subsidiary (called BMW Motorsport GmbH until 1993) started making high-performance versions of various BMW models in 1978. , the M lineup is: M2 two-door coupe M3 four-door sedan and five-door station wagon M4 two-door coupe/convertible M5 four-door sedan and five-door station wagon M8 two-door coupe/convertible and four-door sedan X4 M compact coupe SUV X5 M mid-size SUV X6 M mid-size coupe SUV XM Large SUV File:BMW G87 M2 1X7A6663.jpg\|M2 File:2021 BMW M3 Competition Automatic 3.0 Front.jpg\|M3 File:BMW M4 (G82) IMG 4183.jpg\|M4 File:2024 BMW M5 G99 BS O24.jpg\|M5 File:BMW M8 Competition IMG 3364.jpg\|M8 File:2019 BMW X4 M Competition Automatic 3.0 Front.jpg\|X4 M File:BMW X5 M (G05) IMG 3370.jpg\|X5 M File:BMW X6 M Competition (G06) IMG 3572.jpg\|X6 M 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. === Naming convention for models === == Motorsport == BMW has a long history of motorsport activities, including: Touring cars, such as DTM, WTCC, ETCC and BTCC Formula One Endurance racing, such as 24 Hours Nürburgring, 24 Hours of Le Mans, 24 Hours of Daytona and Spa 24 Hours Isle of Man TT Dakar Rally American Le Mans Series IMSA SportsCar Championship Formula BMW, a junior racing Formula category Formula Two Formula E File:16 Timo Glock (27860673816).jpg\|2016 BMW M4 DTM File:BMW M6 GT3 of Richards & Twigg 2016.jpg\|2016 BMW M6 GT3 File:Christian Iddon BSB Knockhill 2016.jpg\|2016 BMW S1000RR File:Nick Heidfeld 2007 Britain 2.jpg\|2007 BMW Sauber F1.07 == Involvement in the arts == === Architecture === The global BMW Headquarters in Munich represents the cylinder head of a four-cylinder engine. It was designed by Karl Schwanzer and was completed in 1972. The building has become a European icon The interior has a spiral theme and the roof is a 40-metre diameter BMW logo. 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. File:BMW Museum Old Wing Interior 200905.jpg\|BMW Museum File:BMW Welt, Múnich, Alemania, 2013-04-22, DD 03.jpg\|BMW Welt === Art Cars === 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. File:Calder CSL.jpg\|1975 3.0 CSL Art Car by Alexander Calder File:BMW M1.jpg\|1979 M1 Art Car by Andy Warhol === Visual arts === 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. 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. 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. == Production and sales == BMW produces complete automobiles in the following countries: Germany: Munich, Dingolfing, Regensburg and Leipzig United States: Spartanburg Mexico: San Luis Potosí China: Shenyang South Africa: Rosslyn BMW also has local assembly operation using complete knock-down (CKD) components in Brazil, Thailand, Russia, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and India. 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. The BMW group (including Mini and Rolls-Royce) produced 1,366,838 automobiles in 2006 and then 1,481,253 automobiles in 2010. On average, 9,000 vehicles per day exit BMW plants, and 63% are transported by rail. Annual production since 2005, according to BMW's annual reports: Annual sales and deliveries since 1972, according to BMW's annual reports: * In 2008–2012, motorcycle productions figures include Husqvarna models. ** Excluding Husqvarna, sales volume up to 2013: 59,776 units. == Recalls == 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. 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. == Industry collaboration == BMW has collaborated with other car manufacturers on the following occasions: McLaren Automotive: BMW designed and produced the V12 engine that powered the McLaren F1. Groupe PSA (predecessor to Stellantis): Joint production of four-cylinder petrol engines, beginning in 2004. Daimler Benz: Joint venture to produce the hybrid drivetrain components used in the ActiveHybrid 7. Development of automated driving technology. Toyota: Three-part agreement in 2013 to jointly develop fuel cell technology, develop a joint platform for a sports car (for the 2018 BMW Z4 (G29) and Toyota Supra) and research lithium-air batteries. Audi and Mercedes: Joint purchase of Nokia's Here WeGo (formerly Here Maps) in 2015. In 2018, Horizn Studios collaborated with BMW to launch special luggage editions. == Sponsorships == BMW made a six-year sponsorship deal with the United States Olympic Committee in July 2010. 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. In rugby, BMW sponsored the South Africa national rugby union team from 2011 to 2015. == Car-sharing services == 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. In 2012, the BMW-owned subsidiary Alphabet began a corporate car-sharing service in Europe called AlphaCity. The ReachNow car-sharing service was launched in Seattle in April 2016. ReachNow currently operates in Seattle, Portland and Brooklyn. 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". == Overseas subsidiaries == === Production facilities === ==== China ==== 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. Between January and November 2014, BMW sold 415,200 vehicles in China, through a network of over 440 BMW stores and 100 Mini stores. On 7 October 2021, BMW announced it would begin additional production of the X5 in China. 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. 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. ====Hungary==== 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. ==== Mexico ==== In July 2014, BMW announced it was establishing a plant in Mexico, in the city and state of San Luis Potosí involving an investment of $1 billion. The plant will employ 1,500 people, and produce 150,000 cars annually. ==== Netherlands ==== 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. ==== South Africa ==== 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. 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. 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. The plant code (position 11 in the VIN) for South African built models is "N". ==== United States ==== 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. 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. 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. === Complete knock-down assembly facilities === ==== Brazil ==== On 9 October 2014, BMW's new complete knock-down (CKD) assembly plant in Araquari, assembled its first car— an F30 3 Series. The cars assembled at Araquari are the F20 1 Series, F30 3 Series, F48 X1, F25 X3 and Mini Countryman. ==== Egypt ==== Bavarian Auto Group became the importer of the BMW and Mini brands in 2003. 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 Cairo. The 20 Million Euro plant aims to produce 1,700 cars per year. ==== Indonesia ==== 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. 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. ==== Malaysia ==== 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. ==== Russia ==== Russian-market 3 Series and 5 Series cars are assembled from complete knock-down components in Kaliningrad beginning in 1999. In March 2022, BMW withdrew from the Russian market and ceased production within Russia in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ==== Uruguay ==== In Uruguay, Spanish-born businessman José Arijón founded Convex (later Camur), which assembled BMW cars from 1965 to 1992. Four models were produced: the 1600, 2002, 3 Series and 5 Series, totalling 12,000 units. === Vehicle importers === ==== Canada ==== BMW's first dealership in Canada, located in Ottawa, was opened in 1969. In 1986, BMW established a head office in Canada. BMW sold 28,149 vehicles in Canada in 2008. ==== Japan ==== BMW Japan Corp, a wholly owned subsidiary, imports and distributes BMW vehicles in Japan. ==== Philippines ==== BMW Philippines, an owned subsidiary of San Miguel Corporation, is the official importer and distributor of BMW in the Philippines. BMW sold 920 vehicles in the Philippines in 2019. ==== Korea ==== BMW Korea imports BMW vehicles in South Korea with more than fifty service centers to fully cater to South Korean customers. Also, BMW Korea has its own driving center in near Incheon International Airport. == Criticism == BMW has received criticism for attempting to lock vehicle hardware features behind subscription fees. In 2018, BMW stated at the Detroit Auto Show that they will start charging users a subscription fee for Apple Car Play. After receiving widespread criticism, BMW removed the subscription. In 2022, BMW announced that they will start charging owners $18 a month to use heated seats. They removed the feature in 2023 after it was criticised.	[ "BMW 7 Series (F01)", "BMW Motorsport", "BMW Z4 (G29)", "BMW in Formula One", "Coop Himmelb(l)au", "Bavarian Auto Group", "All-electric vehicle", "BMW X4 (G02)", "swinging arm", "Интерфакс", "Roundel (magazine)", "BMW X4 (F26)", "BMW K1200S", "BMW iX1", "List of BMW engines", "Astra International", "front-wheel drive", "BMW 3/15", "COVID-19 pandemic", "Rolls-Royce Motor Cars", "Kingdom of Bavaria", "House of Wittelsbach", "BMW G60", "BMW X6", "BMW Masters", "Munich", "BMW Headquarters", "Earles fork", "Seattle, Washington", "24 Hours of Le Mans", "BMW 2 Series Gran Coupé", "Groupe PSA", "BMW 7 Series (G70)", "Formula racing", "Ford Motor Company", "BMW R75", "Brooklyn, New York", "BMW 1600", "BMW S1000RR", "BMW X1 (U11)", "BMW X6 (G06)", "BMW XM", "BMW 8 Series (G14)", "IMSA SportsCar Championship", "Austin 7", "Independent Collectors", "International sanctions during the Russian invasion of Ukraine", "Roundel", "BMW X1", "Here WeGo", "Sub-Saharan Africa", "BMW in the United States", "BMW F48", "Günther Quandt", "BMW iX3", "BMW X3 xDrive30e", "World Touring Car Championship", "SUV", "Incheon International Airport", "BMW F30", "List of manufacturers by motor vehicle production", "DriveNow", "Billion (short scale)", "BMW X2 xDrive25e", "coat of arms of Bavaria", "Aktiengesellschaft", "Born, Netherlands", "Harald Quandt", "Karl Rapp", "Roy Lichtenstein", "flag of Bavaria", "Public company", "BMW R32", "Max Friz", "BMW F20", "BMW 4 Series", "National Library of Australia", "Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft", "aircraft engine", "Formula Two", "Flag of Bavaria", "Flat-twin engine", "fuel cell", "Rosslyn, Gauteng", "Germany", "BMW Group Classic", "David Hockney", "Art Basel", "BMW 8 Series", "Luftstreitkräfte", "BMW G20", "Spa 24 Hours", "Motorcycle", "World Intellectual Property Organization", "BMW X7 (G07)", "Toyota Supra", "Nashville", "General Motors", "Central Jakarta", "Otto Flugmaschinenfabrik", "United States Olympic Committee", "Portland, Oregon", "Dakar Rally", "BMW 2 Series", "Mercedes-Benz", "BMW X5 (F15)", "BMW 6 Series", "motorcycle", "Herbert Quandt", "Rover Group", "BMW X5 (G05)", "BMW i5", "South Africa national rugby union team", "BMW M6 GT3", "Hervé Poulain", "BMW iX2", "Bangkok Post", "San Luis Potosí", "CNN", "American Le Mans Series", "BMW M1", "Formula BMW", "touring car racing", "Sunter, Jakarta", "BMW F25", "Nazi concentration camps", "BMW 501", "BMW 4 Series (G22)", "ReachNow", "Alpina", "Andy Warhol", "differential (mechanics)", "BMW 3 Series (G20)", "left-hand drive", "E-segment", "Indonesian rupiah", "BMW E30", "Daimler Benz", "The Art of the Motorcycle", "Jenny Holzer", "BMW IIIa", "Sedan (automobile)", "BMW Museum", "Rotax", "Nazi party", "Automobilwerk Eisenach", "European Touring Car Championship", "sports car racing", "sidecar", "Minivan", "BMW 801", "D-segment", "Greer, South Carolina", "BMW X5", "BMW 5 Series (G60)", "BMW Sauber F1.07", "Italian Open (golf)", "BMW X3 (G01)", "Apple Car Play", "BMW X5 xDrive40e", "Mini Countryman", "BMW Z1", "BMW E23", "BMW X3", "BMW i7", "Rapp Motorenwerke", "Stefan Quandt", "List of rulers of Bavaria", "BMW New Class", "German Empire", "BMW 7 Series (G11)", "BMW i4", "BMW X7", "BMW Dixi", "BMW 5 Series (G30)", "BMW 2 Series (G42)", "F-segment", "BMW 700", "airhead (motorcycle)", "Madrid Protocol", "BMW PGA Championship", "Mini (marque)", "BMW 3.0 CSL", "BMW R1200GS", "slang", "Bavaria", "McLaren F1", "BMW 3 Series (E30)", "BMW 2002", "straight-four engine", "BMW XM (G09)", "Euro", "BMW M30", "BMW 1 Series (F20)", "BMW Car Club of America", "Araquari", "Harald Krüger", "YouTube", "BMW M8", "BMW 1 Series (F70)", "Robert Rauschenberg", "BMW Z", "Forbes Global 2000", "The Wall Street Journal", "estate car", "BMW i", "Toyota", "BMW M3", "Automotive industry", "BMW X5 (E53)", "Vickers", "anti-lock braking system", "BMW 8 Series (G15)", "Debrecen", "Ottawa", "BMW i3", "Rugby football", "BMW M5", "bankruptcy", "World War II", "24 Hours Nürburgring", "Shenyang", "oilhead", "Car", "Lithium–air battery", "BMW Welt", "DAX", "The Economist", "trademarks", "BMW X2", "bicycle", "right hand drive", "Brilliance Auto", "Gustav Otto", "Bloomberg News", "BMW Group Plant Dingolfing", "BMW M88", "Isetta", "24 Hours of Daytona", "Stellantis", "BMW X1 (F48)", "BMW 7 Series", "Knock-down kit", "subscription service", "BMW M", "C-segment", "Public float", "List of Guggenheim Museums", "BMW M2", "Susanne Klatten", "Husqvarna Motorcycles", "motor vehicle", "Oliver Zipse", "History of BMW motorcycles", "BMW X4", "BMW 3 Series (F30)", "BMW X1 xDrive25e", "BMW M4 DTM", "BMW X", "BMW Motorrad", "Kedah", "San Miguel Corporation", "plug-in hybrid vehicle", "Alexander Calder", "BMW 02 Series", "Karl Schwanzer", "BMW 1 Series", "Olaf Scholz", "BMW 3 Series", "crossover (automobile)", "Kaliningrad", "BMW 2 Series Active Tourer", "Frank Stella", "electronic stability control", "BMW M10", "Gurugram", "Isle of Man TT", "VDL Nedcar", "BMW Z3", "The New York Times", "British Touring Car Championship", "BMW International Open", "BMW iX", "Formula E", "BMW 5 Series", "apartheid", "Norbert Reithofer", "BMW R1150GS", "BMW M4", "Touring cars", "McLaren Automotive", "Audi", "Dachau", "Chennai", "Pretoria" ]
3,774	Bisexual (disambiguation)	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. Bisexual may also refer to: Bisexual characteristics, having an ambiguous sexual identity (e.g. epicenity or androgyny) A bisexual flower (monoicy), in botany, one that possesses both male (pollen-producing) and female (seed-producing) parts A bisexual plant (monoecy), in botany, having separate male and female cones or flowers on the same plant Dioecy, in biology, a species that has members of two different distinct sexes (e.g. humans), opposed to unisexual (only one sex present, always females) The Bisexual, a 2018 British-American comedy-drama television series	[ "monoicy", "monoecy", "Dioecy", "Bisexuality", "The Bisexual", "By-Sexual", "epicenity", "Plant reproductive morphology", "unisexual", "androgyny" ]
3,776	Bornholm	Bornholm () 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. 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. The island is known as ("sunshine island") because of its weather and ("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) (Ficus carica 'Bornholm' ), 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. The island is home to many of Denmark's round churches. Occupying an area of , the island had a total population of 39,332 . == History == === Medieval === 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. There are scholars who believe that the Burgundians are named after Bornholm. The Burgundians were a Germanic people who were settled in the Rhone region by the Romans, and who the region of Burgundy in France is named after. === Modern === Bornholm was pawned to Lübeck by Frederick I of Denmark for 50 years starting in 1525, in payment for its support in his acquisition of the Danish throne. 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. After the revolt, the inhabitants handed back their island to the Danish kings. Bornholm 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). === World War II === On 22 August 1942 a V-1 flying bomb 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. When reported to British Intelligence, it was one of the first signs 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. During the Soviet bombing of the two main towns on 7-8 May 1945, 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 would leave the island on 5 April 1946. Later research found that the Soviet bombing of Bornholm resulted in approximately three thousand Danish civilians in Rønne becoming homeless, while damaging a majority of the houses in Nexø, fully destroying roughly one-tenth. Ten Danes were killed and thirty-five wounded, considered a low number, because many civilians were evacuated to shelters on the outskirts of the respective towns before the worst raids hit. === Cold War === 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. 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. 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. == Municipality == 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". 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 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 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. ===Municipal council=== 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. Below are the election results to the new merged municipal council beginning with the first election 29 May 2002. == Transport == Ferry services connect Rønne to Świnoujście (Poland), Sassnitz (Germany), Køge, by road ( 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. 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. Bornholm Regional Municipality was not merged with other municipalities on 1 January 2007 in the nationwide Municipal Reform of 2007. ==Towns and villages== 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, 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. , Statistics Denmark gave the populations as follows: \| \| \| valign="top" width="15%" \| \|} 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. == Population == 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. == Religion == 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. Church of Denmark (1536) Baptist church (1843) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) (1850) Methodist church (1895) Jehovah's Witnesses (1897) Roman Catholic Church (ca. 1150–1536, 1849) == Sights and landmarks == Geological formations are immediately visible in Bornholm in a way not common elsewhere in Denmark. The still-operated Stubbeløkken and Klippeløkken granite quarries in Knudsker parish just east of central Rønne are among the few remaining of many formerly 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. Furongian (late Cambrian period) sediments of the Alum Shale Formation of Bornholm presented by all six superzones; three agnostoid and fourteen trilobite zones are defined by fossils. 8502 specimens, most of which are disarticulated sclerites, have been collected from these strata. Described gerena include Ctenopyge, Eurycare, Leptoplastus, Olenus, Parabolina, Peltura, Protopeltura, Sphaerophthalmus, Lotagnostus and Triangulopyge. 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 above sea level and Rønne Lighthouse rises over the waterfront. 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. 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. There are 14 European bison near Åkirkeby, attracting 100,000 visitors a year. == Education == 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. ==Economy== 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. Tourism is also important during the summer months. == Electricity supply == 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. ==Military== Almegårds Kaserne on Bornholm is home to the III Reconnaissance Battalion (III/GHR) from the Guard Hussar Regiment. ==Climate== 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. == Sports == 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. 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. == Cultural references == Russian writer Nikolay Karamzin in his 1794 short story "The Island of Bornholm" ("") depicts formidable rocks and green meadows of the island. This story about forbidden love is considered one of the first Russian gothic tales. The Academy Award-winning 1987 Bille August film Pelle the Conqueror, an adaptation of Martin Andersen Nexø's four volume novel by the same name, is set and was shot on the island. A considerable part of the Second World War spy thriller Hornet Flight by Ken Follett takes place on Bornholm, depicting the island under German occupation. Megaheavy by Danish filmmaker Fenar Ahmad is set on Bornholm in the 1980s. It won the Grand Prix at the 2010 Odense Film Festival. The 2006 film Tempelriddernes Skat (The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar) takes place on Bornholm. Bornholm has an appearance in a Roblox game titled Dynamic Ship Simulator 3, made by CaptainMarcin and his dev team, Badyacht. Minor planet 4453 Bornholm is named after the island. The 1933 work, Folkeliv og Indstiftelser paa Bornholm, describes the culture and history of the island. In the webcomic Stand Still, Stay Silent by Minna Sundberg, Bornholm is the last remaining inhabited area of Denmark after the world is ravaged by a pandemic, and the southernmost area known to still be inhabited by humans. == Notable residents == === Arts === Kristian Zahrtmann (1843 in Rønne – 1917) painter, favoured naturalism and realism Michael Ancher (1849 in Rutsker – 1927) realist artist, painted fishermen in Skagen Mathias Bidstrup (1852 in Rønne – 1929) architect of many buildings on Bornholm, schools, churches (including Gudhjem Church), train stations and the post office in Rønne Hans Henny Jahnn (1894–1959), German playwright, novelist, and organ-builder, lived in Rutsker from 1934 to 1950. Janus Laurentius Ridter (1854 in Aakirkeby – 1921) painter and illustrator of topographical watercolours Julius Folkmann (1864 in Rønne – 1948) a Danish photographer and cinematographer Vilhelm Herold (1865 in Hasle – 1937) operatic tenor, voice teacher, and theatre director Oluf Høst (1884 in Svaneke – 1966) Expressionist painter, the only native member of the Bornholm school of painters Else Højgaard (1906–1979) ballerina and an actress of stage and screen, noted for her fiery temperament and edgy intensity Gustaf Munch-Petersen (1912–1938) writer and painter, moved to Bornholm in 1935 Gertrud Vasegaard (1913 in Rønne – 2007), a ceramist remembered for her stoneware, in 1933 she moved to Bornholm whence her family originated and opened a studio in Gudhjem. Arne Ranslet (1931–2018) sculptor and ceramist, moved to Bornholm in 1955 Tulla Blomberg Ranslet (born 1928) Norwegian painter, moved to Bornholm in 1955 Heather Spears (1934–2021), Canadian poet, artist, and novelist, moved to Bornholm in 1962 Ursula Munch-Petersen (born 1937 in Rønne) ceramist Bente Hammer (born 1950) textile artist and fashion designer, moved to Bornholm in 1987, opened a workshop and boutique Pia Ranslet (born 1956 in Allinge) painter and sculptor Klaus Bondam (born 1963 in Aakirkeby) actor and ex-politician Sofie Stougaard (born 1966 in Svaneke) actress Jonas Jeberg (born 1975 in Rønne) a songwriter and music producer, lives in Los Angeles Engelina Andrina Larsen (born 1978) singer and songwriter Aura Dione (born 1985) pop singer and songwriter, resident on Bornholm since age seven === Science === Peder Olsen Walløe (1716–1793) Dano-Norwegian Arctic explorer, explored the former Norse settlements on Greenland Peter Schousboe (1766 in Rønne – 1832) botanist and Danish consul general in Tangier Johan Nicolai Madvig (1804 in Svaneke – 1886) a Danish philologist and Kultus Minister of Denmark. Peter Ludvig Panum (1820 in Rønne – 1885) physiologist and pathologist Dr. Lilli Nielsen (1926 in Rønne – 2013) psychologist, taught blind children and those with multiple disabilities === Business === Hans Peder Kofoed (1743 in Svaneke – 1812) a Danish brewer, merchant and shipowner traded with Danish West Indies M.P. Möller (1854 in Østermarie – 1937), a pipe-organ builder and manufacturer, moved to the United States in 1872 Christian Schmiegelow (1859 in Rønne – 1949) a Danish businessman, co-founder of Dampskibsselskabet Torm Nicolai Nørregaard (born 1979 in Svaneke) chef and restaurateur === Public affairs === Jørgen Landt (1751–1804 in Olsker) a Danish priest, botanist and author Johan Peter Andreas Anker (1838 in Knudsker Sogn – 1876) a Danish military officer Johanne Münter (1844 in Rønne – 1921) a Danish women's rights activist and writer Martin Andersen Nexø (1869–1954) socialist writer, moved to the island aged 8 and adopted the city name Vilhelm Grønbech (1873 in Allinge – 1948) cultural historian and professor of the history of religion at the University of Copenhagen Mogens Glistrup (1926–2008) controversial politician, lawyer and tax protester Flemming Kofod-Svendsen (born 1944 in Aakirkeby) an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church and politician Lea Wermelin (born 1985 in Rønne) a Danish politician, Minister for the Environment Peter Kofod Poulsen (born 1990 in Snogebæk) a Danish politician, MEP since 2019 === Sport === Hans Colberg (1921 in Klemensker – 2007) football player, over 200 pro appearances Allan Kuhn (born 1968 in Rønne) a Danish association football coach and former player. Julie Houmann (born in Rønne 1979) badminton player Lisbet Jakobsen (born 1987 in Nexø) rower, competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics Magnus Cort (born 1993) professional road bicycle racer Mathias Christiansen (born 1994) badminton player Amir Hadžiahmetović (born 1997 in Nexø) a Bosnian professional footballer	[ "Christian Schmiegelow", "NB Bornholm", "2013 Danish local elections", "Greenland", "Hans Henny Jahnn", "France", "Danish language", "Julius Folkmann", "Magnus Cort", "Margrethe II of Denmark", "Above mean sea level", "Snogebæk", "common fig", "Rø", "Methodist church", "Danish Defence Intelligence Service", "catamaran", "Nylars", "Harvard University Press", "Conservative People's Party (Denmark)", "inch", "Oluf Høst", "Poland", "Social Democrats (Denmark)", "Denmark", "Grade (slope)", "Bille August", "Ken Follett", "Amir Hadžiahmetović", "Listed, Bornholm", "Paradisbakkerne", "Skåneland", "Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin", "Douglas Q. Adams", "Jehovah's Witnesses", "Martin Andersen Nexø", "Mogens Glistrup", "Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture", "The Alternative (Denmark)", "Burgundy (region)", "Bornholm school of painters", "Pedersker", "Stenseby", "Kristian Zahrtmann", "Heather Spears", "Norsemen", "Minister for the Environment (Denmark)", "Burgundians", "Ctenopyge", "Łeba", "Non-FIFA international football", "Allinge-Gudhjem Municipality", "VUC Bornholm", "Kultus Minister of Denmark", "Iron Age", "Allinge", "Red–Green Alliance (Denmark)", "Peter Schousboe", "2016 Summer Olympics", "Danish People's Party", "Hornet Flight", "Trøndelag", "association football", "Germany", "Bornholm disease", "Sassnitz", "Belgium", "Lobbæk", "Roblox", "Realism (art movement)", "Furongian", "ballot", "Jørgen Landt", "BAT (transit agency)", "Skagen", "NATO", "Svaneke", "Lotagnostus", "Arne Ranslet", "Parabolina", "Hans Colberg", "Landing at Bornholm", "webcomic", "Free City of Lübeck", "Treaty of Copenhagen (1660)", "Świnoujście", "Helligdomsklipperne", "Østerlars", "Gustaf Munch-Petersen", "Megaheavy", "Baltic Sea", "Mathias Christiansen", "Christian Democrats (Denmark)", "Vang, Bornholm", "oceanic climate", "Peter Ludvig Panum", "Tempelriddernes Skat", "snowdrift", "Baptist church", "HSC Leonora Christina", "Øresund", "term of office", "History of Danish", "trilobite", "4453 Bornholm", "Køge", "Gudhjem", "Karl Isaksson", "Bornholmsk dialect", "Sphaerophthalmus", "Nicolai Nørregaard", "Minna Sundberg", "centimeter", "Peltura", "Flemming Kofod-Svendsen", "Rønne", "Bill (law)", "Lea Wermelin", "sclerite", "Ystad", "Nyker", "naturalism (arts)", "Bohuslän", "Johan Printzensköld", "Almindingen", "Ekkodalen", "Vejle Municipality", "V-1 flying bomb", "J. P. Mallory", "Guard Hussar Regiment", "Ursula Munch-Petersen", "Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty", "Egeby Mølle", "Leptoplastus", "Rhone", "Venstre (Denmark)", "Vilhelm Herold", "philologist", "The Island of Bornholm", "Lilli Nielsen", "2021 Danish local elections", "Jonas Jeberg", "Aarsballe", "World Match Racing Tour", "University of Copenhagen", "Statistics Denmark", "Edvard Weie", "Lübeck", "Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15", "Green Left (Denmark)", "Municipalities of Denmark", "Olsker", "million", "Metre", "sport of athletics", "Aura Dione", "Mathias Bidstrup", "Slamrebjergvej", "Åkirkeby", "Lutheranism", "European bison", "Old Norse", "M.P. Möller", "Rutsker", "Engelina", "Dampskibsselskabet Torm", "ton", "List of windmills on Bornholm", "List of islands of Denmark", "Danish Open (yachting)", "Ertholmene", "Niels Lergaard", "Nexø", "Fenar Ahmad", "Politics of Denmark", "Olenus", "Aarsdale Windmill", "Johanne Münter", "Kræsten Iversen", "Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum", "International Sailing Federation", "Else Højgaard", "Vilhelm Grønbech", "Academy Awards", "Klaus Bondam", "Arctic", "Capital Region of Denmark", "Dueodde Lighthouse", "Aakirkeby", "list of Bornholm churches", "Arts and Crafts movement", "Janus Laurentius Ridter", "Hammershus", "Balka", "Kołobrzeg", "Simrishamn", "Allinge-Sandvig", "Østermarie", "round church", "Triangulopyge", "Frederick I of Denmark", "2005 Danish local elections", "Peenemünde", "Sorthat-Muleby", "Tulla Blomberg Ranslet", "Aarsdale", "World War II", "Jons Kapel", "Hammeren Lighthouse", "Sofie Stougaard", "Denmark-Norway", "Peter Kofod Poulsen", "Agnostoidea", "Michael Ancher", "Hammeren", "stoneware", "pathologist", "Regions of Denmark", "Simblegårdsvej", "northern Europe", "glass production", "Julie Houmann", "Bornholms Milits", "Protopeltura", "Bente Hammer", "2009 Danish local elections", "Johan Peter Andreas Anker", "Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers", "Tejn", "Døndalen", "Cambrian", "Bornholm Airport", "The Conservative People's Party (Denmark)", "Neolithic", "Klemens Kro", "Western Australia", "Hasle, Bornholm", "Vestermarie", "DBU Bornholm", "da:Folkeafstemningen om kommunesammenlægning på Bornholm 2001", "Germanic peoples", "gothic tale", "Hans Peder Kofoed", "Bornholms Erhvervsskole", "List of municipalities of Denmark", "Stand Still, Stay Silent", "Danish West Indies", "Dromaeosauroides", "Nordic round churches", "Rispebjerg", "Johan Nicolai Madvig", "Rytterknægten", "Nexø Stadion", "Nikolay Karamzin", "Peder Olsen Walløe", "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", "Pia Ranslet", "2017 Danish local elections", "Folketing", "Danish Social Liberal Party", "Danish Meteorological Institute", "A.P. Møller og Hustru Chastine Mc-Kinney Møllers Fond til almene Formaal", "Pelle the Conqueror", "Lisbet Jakobsen", "post mill", "Bornholm County", "Sweden", "Bornholm uprising", "granite", "Battle of Bornholm (disambiguation)", "Gertrud Vasegaard", "Klemensker", "fossil", "Jensen-Group", "Rønne Stadion Nord", "Arnager", "Realism (arts)", "Dueodde", "Franciszek Jarecki", "Alum Shale Formation", "Ustka", "Church of Denmark", "Rønne Lighthouse", "Danish Nature Agency", "Allan Kuhn", "Olaf Rude", "2002 Bornholm local election", "Member of the European Parliament", "Roman Catholic Church", "Treaty of Roskilde", "physiologist", "Eurycare", "Folketinget" ]

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