The structure of the United States Air Force refers to the unit designators and organizational hierarchy of the United States Air Force, which starts at the most senior commands.

The senior headquarters of the Department of the Air Force consists of distinct staffs in the Pentagon: the Secretariat or SAF Staff and the Headquarters Air Force or HAF Staff. The Secretariat is headed by the Secretary of the Air Force (SECAF) and HAF Staff is led by the Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF). Headquarters DAF also includes the Space Staff, which parallels the HAF Staff but governs the United States Space Force.

Organizational types

Direct Reporting Unit
A Direct Reporting Unit (DRU) is an agency of the United States Department of the Air Force that is outside the bounds of the standard organizational hierarchy by being exclusively and uniquely under the control of Air Force headquarters alone, rather than reporting through a major command. The term "direct reporting unit" comes from the fact that the unit reports directly to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force or to a designated representative on the Air staff.

A DRU has a specialized and restricted mission, meaning that it is a single purpose unit, usually to the exclusion of other duties, reporting to Air Force Air Staff alone. It is separate and independent from any organization structure or supervision: major command, numbered air force, operational command, division, wing, group, squadron, or field operating agency. It is a DRU because the unit's specific and focused duties, legal issues that necessitate the unit's independence, or other factors such as national security concerns.

The Air Force has a very limited number of direct reporting units:

Field operating agency

The field operating agency (FOA) is a subdivision of the Air Force, directly subordinate to an HQ USAF functional manager. A FOA performs field activities beyond the scope of any of the major commands. The activities are specialized or associated with an Air Force-wide mission, and do not include functions performed in management headquarters, unless specifically directed by a DoD authority.

Major Command (MAJCOM)

A major subdivision of the Air Force, the major command (MAJCOM) is directly subordinate to HQ USAF or the Air Staff. MAJCOM headquarters are management headquarters for a major segment of the AF and thus have the full range of functional staff. MAJCOMs are commanded by a general (O-10).

Numbered Air Force (NAF)

The numbered air force (NAF) is a tactical echelon directly under an operational MAJCOM that provide operational leadership and supervision. NAFs are structured to perform an operational or warfighting mission, often oriented to a specific geographic region. A NAF is directly assigned operational units, such as wings, groups, and squadrons. NAFs are commanded by either a major general (O-8) or lieutenant general (O-9).

Wing

Wings have a distinct mission with a specific scope, reporting to the NAF or HQ USAF. Wings are made up of one or more groups, consisting of several squadrons, and usually commanded by a colonel (O-6), but high visibility wings can have a brigadier general (O-7) in command. Second in command to the Wing Commander is the Deputy Wing Commander who is and only can be a colonel. The senior enlisted personnel of a wing can be known as the Command Chief who holds the rank of command chief master sergeant (E-9). Wings now encompass both operations and support activities (maintenance groups, mission support groups), and are usually one of three major types: operational wing, air base wing, and specialized mission wing. As of 30 September 2006 USAF had 120 wings, including 57 flying (crewed aircraft) wings.

Group

Made up of several squadrons and typically commanded by a colonel (O-6). Second in command to the group commander is the deputy group commander, who is also a colonel or lieutenant colonel (O-5); in some cases, this role may be performed by a designated civilian, typically at the GS-15 level, with the alternative title of deputy group director. The senior enlisted member of a group is known as the group senior enlisted leader (formerly group superintendent). This position can only be held by a chief master sergeant (E-9). The group was of less visibility for some decades but came back to prominence during a transition to the "objective wing" organization in the 1990s. This reorganization changed the base command structure from the "wing commander/base commander" scheme to a single wing commander ("one base-one boss") with multiple groups under his command. There are two general types of groups: dependent (operations, logistics, support, medical, or large functional unit); and independent (a group with wing-like functions and responsibilities whose scope and size does not warrant wing-level designation). As of 30 September 2006, USAF had 17 independent groups, nine of them flying establishments.

Squadron

The squadron is considered to be the basic unit within the USAF and exists to "[provide] a specific operational or support capability."  Squadrons are usually composed of two to six flights and contain from 35 to 700 people, depending upon the type.  (An operational, or "flying," squadron will typically contain aircrew, organized in three or four flights, sufficient to man from eight to 24 aircraft, dependent upon the type/model/series of aircraft operated. The aircraft are "owned" by the squadron's parent wing's maintenance group, while the operational squadrons and their aircrews belong to the wing's operations group.)

A squadron is usually commanded by a major (O-4) or lieutenant colonel (O-5); however lieutenant colonel is the most common rank for the squadron commander (SQ/CC) of most types of squadrons. Alternatively, a small number of squadrons are headed by civilian commander-equivalents, known as squadron directors (abbreviated as SQ/CL for civilian leader) - typically at the GS-15 pay grade.

Second in command of a squadron is typically a squadron operations officer or director of operations (DO), who is usually a senior-ranking major (O-4). The DO may be assisted by one or two assistant operations officers, who are normally majors or senior-ranking captains (O-3).

In addition to flight subdivisions, the squadron may feature a number of "administrative" supporting elements that report directly to the commander. These may include a "command support staff" (CSS) that handles personnel records and manpower management; a "secretary" (often civilian employee) or "executive officer" directly assigned to the SQ/CC; as well as "safety" and "standardization/evaluation" functional areas.

Air Force squadrons also include enlisted senior non-commissioned officer (SNCO) leadership to advise and support the commander. The SQ/CC is assisted by a chief master sergeant (E-9)  "senior enlisted leader" that handles enlisted programs and manpower within the squadron; as well as a "first sergeant" (i.e., a specially selected and trained master, senior, or chief master sergeant in pay grades "E-7," "E-8," or "E-9," respectively) that serves as "a dedicated focal point for all readiness, health, morale, welfare, and quality of life issues within their organizations."

Flight
A flight is a subdivision of the squadron. Flights range from a dozen people to over a hundred; or typically four aircraft. A flight may be either a "Numbered or Named Flight" (lowest-level recognized unit, such as "Operations Flight"), "alpha" flight (part of a squadron composed of elements performing identical missions), or a "Functional Flight" (element performing specific missions, such as a "Manpower and Organization Flight").

The flight commander, also referred to as an "Officer-In-Charge" (OIC), is a company-grade officer (CGO) typically at the rank of captain (O-3). The OIC is assisted by a senior non-commissioned officer (SNCO), typically at the rank of senior master sergeant (E-8). Unlike squadrons, flight commanders are not on "G-Series Orders" and do not hold the same command authorities as the squadron.

The primary bulk of manpower and mission accomplishment within a squadron is located within the flights of the squadron. Most flights are broken into subdivisions known as sections and elements. While these subdivisions are not normally recognized by official Air Force reporting functions, they are typically recognized by their wing. These subdivisions exist to clump together specific missions or capabilities and serve to identify their purpose to the installation.

Section
A section is an internal subdivision of a flight. It is typically staffed by a non-commissioned or senior non-commissioned officer (SNCO), typically at the rank of master sergeant (E-7); who is referred to as a "Section Chief." Some sections may also be under the command of an "Officer-In-Charge" (OIC), typically a company-grade-officer (CGO) at the rank of second lieutenant (O-1) or first lieutenant (O-2). Examples of sections include "Outbound Assignments" within the "Military Personnel Flight" of the "Force Support Squadron" and the "Avionics Intermediate Section" (AIS) within the "Avionics Flight" of the "Maintenance Squadron."

Some sections may be further subdivided into multiple elements, often referred to as "workcenters". Such elements are typically staffed by a "Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge" (NCOIC); typically at the rank of technical sergeant (E-6). One such example is the division of "Infrastructure" and "Technical Control Facility" workcenters within the "Infrastructure Section" of the "Operations Flight" of a "Communications Squadron."

Historical organizations

Separate operating agency
(not in current use)

Separate operating agencies (SOA) were major Air Force subdivisions directly subordinate to HQ USAF and has all the "procedural (administrative and logistical) responsibilities" of a MAJCOM. In 1991, most active SOAs changed in status to DRUs or FOAs.

Air division

Air divisions have existed since World War II when many of the Numbered Air Divisions began as wings. There were both named and numbered divisions, mostly air divisions. Recently HQ USAF gradually inactivated or redesignated divisions in an effort to encourage rapid decision-making and to create a more flat organizational structure without "middle management" units, and as such air divisions are rarely used.

Reserve components and auxiliary

Air National Guard

The Air National Guard, often referred to as the Air Guard, is the air force militia organized by each of the fifty U.S. states, the commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the territories of Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia of the United States. Established under Title 10 and Title 32 of the U.S. Code, the Air National Guard is part of a state's National Guard and is divided up into units stationed in each of the 50 states and U.S. territories and operates under their respective state governor or territorial government. The Air National Guard may be called up for active duty by the state governors or territorial commanding generals to help respond to domestic emergencies and disasters, such as those caused by hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes.

With the consent of state governors, members or units of the Air National Guard may be appointed, temporarily or indefinitely, to be federally recognized members of the armed forces, in the active or inactive service of the United States. If federally recognized, the member or unit becomes part of the Air National Guard of the United States, which is one of two reserve components of the United States Air Force, and part of the National Guard of the United States. Air National Guard of the United States units or members may be called up for federal active duty in times of congressionally sanctioned war or national emergency.

United States Air Force Reserve

CONUS based AFRC units are assigned to AFRC. This assignment governs command relationships within the Air Force chain of command. 10 USC § 10174 states:

(a)	Establishment of Command.— The Secretary of the Air Force, with the advice and assistance of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, shall establish an Air Force Reserve Command. The Air Force Reserve Command shall be operated as a separate command of the Air Force.

(b)	Commander.— The Chief of Air Force Reserve is the Commander of the Air Force Reserve Command. The commander of the Air Force Reserve Command reports directly to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

(c)	Assignment of Forces.— The Secretary of the Air Force—

(1)	 shall assign to the Air Force Reserve Command all forces of the Air Force Reserve stationed in the continental United States other than forces assigned to the unified combatant command for special operations forces established pursuant to section 167 of this title; and

(2)	 except as otherwise directed by the Secretary of Defense in the case of forces assigned to carry out functions of the Secretary of the Air Force specified in section 8013 of this title, shall assign to the combatant commands all such forces assigned to the Air Force Reserve Command under paragraph (1) in the manner specified by the Secretary of Defense.

Civil Air Patrol

Civil Air Patrol (CAP) is a congressionally chartered, federally supported, non-profit corporation that serves as the official auxiliary of the USAF. It performs three congressionally assigned key missions: emergency services, which includes search and rescue (by air and ground) and disaster relief operations; aerospace education for youth and the general public; and cadet programs for teenage youth. In addition, CAP has recently been tasked with homeland security and courier service missions. CAP also performs non-auxiliary missions for various governmental and private agencies, such as local law enforcement and the American Red Cross. The program is established as an organization by Title 10 of the United States Code and its purposes defined by Title 36. When conducting missions for the Air Force as the official Air Force auxiliary, CAP is now included in the Air Force's definition of the total force.

Other generic designations

In addition to the aforementioned unit structures, the USAF has used, and still uses, a variety of other designations to identify organizations. These organization designations include:

 Academy
 Agency
 Area
 Band
 Battlelab
 Branch
 Center
 Central
 Clinic
 College
 Crew

 Depository
 Depot
 Detachment
 Directorate
 Dispensary
 Division
 District
 Element
 Facility
 Fire team
 Hospital
 Infirmary

 Institute
 Laboratory
 Library
 Museum
 Office
 Operating Location
 Organization
 Plant
 Range
 Region

 School
 Section
 Sector
 Squad
 Staff
 System
 Team
 Unit
 University

Notes

References

External links
  Airman magazine Web Edition copyright notice: https://web.archive.org/web/20090517081401/http://www.af.mil/news/airman/notice.shtml

United States Air Force

Structure of the United States Air Force


The Chinese Character Simplification Scheme () is the standardized simplification of Chinese characters promulgated in the 1950s by the State Council of the People's Republic of China. It contains the existing Simplified Chinese characters that are in use today. To distinguish from the later Second round of simplified Chinese characters, this reform is also known as the First Chinese Character Simplification Scheme.

History
In 1952, the Language Reform Research Committee of China first drafted the List of Frequently Used Simplification of Chinese Characters (), affirming the principle of "only describing and stating the concepts of the ancient [Han] people, not creating [new characters]" ().

The Chinese Character Simplification Scheme (Draft) was published on 7 January 1955 for public consultation. It consists of three sections: List of simplification of 798 characters (draft) (), List of 400 variant characters intended to be abolished (draft) () and List of simplification in handwriting of character components (draft) (). The second and third sections were deleted in the modification process. The modified Chinese Character Simplification Scheme (Draft) was passed by the National Language Reform Meeting after discussion in October 1955, followed by modifications by the Language Reform Committee of China in accordance to the outcome of the discussions. The modified draft was reviewed by the State Council's Committee for the Application of the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme.

On 21 November 1955, the Ministry of Education issued a Notice Regarding the Implementation of Simplified Chinese Character in All Schools (). The People's Liberation Army General Political Department made similar notices in the same month.

On 28 January 1956, the 23rd State Council Plenary Meeting passed the Resolution Regarding the Promulgation of the "Chinese Character Simplification Scheme" ().

On 31 January 1956, the People's Daily published in full about the Resolution Regarding the Promulgation of the "Chinese Character Simplification Scheme" and the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme (). The first list of the scheme was used nationwide on 1 February 1956, and the rest was put into use in batches later.

Later development

Significant changes were subsequently made to this scheme, in particular the introduction of the principle of simplification by analogy. In May 1964, the Language Reform Committee published the List of Simplified Chinese Characters () to address the defects found in the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme.

It is divided into three parts. The first part records 352 simplified characters that are not used as radicals; The second part records simplified characters that may be used as radicals and 14 simplified radicals; The third part records 1,754 simplified characters that are formed according to its radicals. There are a total of 2,238 characters (realistically only 2,236 characters, as the characters 签 qiān and 须 xū appear twice as duplicates).

The Language Reform Committee of China proposed the Second Chinese Character Simplification Scheme (Draft) on 20 December 1977, rescinded in 1986.

Structure
The Chinese Character Simplification Scheme is divided into three parts. The first part consists of 230 simplified characters; the second part consists of 285 simplified characters; the third part consists of 54 simplified components. The first and second parts differ in their time of implementation; the first part was to be implemented the day after the announcement, while the second part was mostly implemented in three batches later between 1956 and 1959 after further trials and slight changes, leaving out 28 simplified characters which were implemented in 1964 when the List of Simplified Chinese Characters was published.

Controversy
The simplification of Chinese characters met strong resistance from the public and the academia. The prominent scholar Chen Mengjia was one of the outspoken critics of the scheme. When the Anti-Rightist Movement began in 1957, Chen was labeled a Rightist and attacked as an enemy of the Communist Party. In 1966, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Chen was again severely persecuted for his ideas and committed suicide.

On 10 January 1958, Premier Zhou Enlai gave a report on the task of Chinese writing reform, in which he criticized "rightists" for opposing the scheme, saying that the opposition was used to undermine the party and state. He went on to state that simplification was "in line with the interests of the general public," and "should be strongly supported."

See also
Simplified Chinese characters
Second round of simplified Chinese characters

References

1950s in China
Simplified Chinese characters
Chinese character lists

Chinese Character Simplification Scheme


Tropical Storm Zeta was the twenty-eighth and last storm of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It formed very late during the year on December 30, after the official end of the season, and was a very rare tropical cyclone to live during two calendar years.

Tropical Storm Zeta formed on December 30 in the central Atlantic Ocean, where it stayed far away from land during its whole lifetime. While every forecast given to the storm predicted it to dissipate quickly, Zeta, like Hurricane Epsilon, denied those advisories. Zeta reached to its maximum strength on January 2 until finally dissipating on January 8, also bringing the close to the end of the 2005 season.

Storm history

Late on December 29, 2005, a tropical depression developed in the east-central Atlantic Ocean from a frontal trough and strengthened into a tropical storm early the next day. As this was more than four weeks after the official end of the season, the National Hurricane Center did not actually classify the system until after it had already become a tropical storm. The new bound storm originally moved to the northwest but stopped for a few hous late on December 31 before moving west. As Tropical Storm Zeta slowly gained strength, it had many characteristics similar to Hurricane Epsilon, like when the National Hurricane Center constantly forecasted that Zeta would weaken because of the high wind shear; but Zeta still held onto its strength, like Epsilon had done.

Tropical Storm Zeta weakened a little bit on January 2, before strengthening again to its maximum strength with 65 mph (100 km/h) winds on the same day. One of the models suggested that Zeta could strengthen further and become a hurricane but this did not happen. Tropical Storm Zeta continued to reject forecasts of weakening and on January 4, so much frustration made NHC forecaster, Dr. Lixion Avila to say that he had "run out of things to say".

The effects huge amount of wind shear finally began to affect the storm itself on January 4, as Zeta's strength began to weaken. This made Tropical Storm Zeta to weaken into a very weak tropical storm. The NHC still continued to overestimate how fast Zeta would dissipate and early on January 5 they actually downgraded Zeta to a depression, which was later confirmed to have been wrong. Zeta continued to move west-northwestward, barely holding on to tropical storm status before becoming disorganized again. Zeta weakened into a tropical depression on January 6 and dissipated into a remnant later that day, finally bringing an end to the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. But the remnant low still its identity for one more day before it dissipated 660 miles (1060 km) southeast of Bermuda.

Impact
Several of the people that were taking part in the 2005 Atlantic Rowing Race were affected with heavy seas and strong, unpleasant winds from Tropical Storm Zeta. The ship Liberty Star made several reports of strong winds from Tropical Storm Zeta, including one of 40 mph (65 km/h) winds early on December 31, when the ship was about 45 miles (75 km) north from the center of the storm. Because Tropical Storm Zeta never came close to land, no coastal watches or warnings were given out. There were no reports of damages or deaths from Zeta.

Naming and records
When Tropical Storm Zeta formed at 0600 UTC on December 31, it became the second latest-forming tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, forming about six hours earlier than Hurricane Alice did in 1954. Zeta is only the second Atlantic tropical cyclone on record to have lived through two calendar years (after Alice). Tropical Storm Zeta also extended the record number of storms to form in the 2005 season to twenty-eight, seven more than the previous record held by a hurricane season from 1933. It was also the only Atlantic storm to have a name beginning with the letter "Z", since the list of names for Atlantic storms do not have a "Z" name.

Related pages
 2005 Atlantic hurricane season

References

Other websites

 NHC Zeta Report
 NHC's archive on Tropical Storm Zeta

Atlantic tropical storms

Tropical Storm Zeta


Infiltrator is a combat flight simulation game published in North America in 1986 by Mindscape and in Europe by U.S. Gold. It was developed for the Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Apple II, and Atari 8-bit family by Chris Gray Enterprises. Paragon Programming ported it to the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum.

The player takes on the role of a master-of-all-trades hero named Johnny "Jimbo Baby" McGibbits. The player's objective is to fly an Airwolf-like helicopter named the Gizmo DHX-3, land at enemy bases, and infiltrate compounds to stop the mad leader.

Gameplay
Infiltrator is divided into six missions: three helicopter flying missions, and three ground-based missions, which are paired together.

During the helicopter missions (the first, third and fifth missions), the goal is to take off in the helicopter, program the ADF (Automatic Direction Finder) to set the correct course, maneuver the helicopter to the landing area while hailing nearby planes to determine if they are friend or foe and engaging in firefights if the player responds incorrectly, and finally land the helicopter safely without detection through use of whisper mode. Their helicopter is equipped with missiles, guns, chaffs, flares, Radio Communications, a Status terminal, a Turbo engine and a whisper mode.

Once the player lands safely, the ground base mission begins. The player has access to five different items in their inventory. The papers are used to trick the enemy into thinking that they are part of the mad leader's forces. If the guards get suspicious the player must use their gas canister or gas grenades to knock them out. The mine detector is used to discover buried mines while walking about. Finally, the explosives are used in the final ground mission to destroy the mad leader's base.

The player's goal in each mission is to find a security card hidden in a cabinet in one of several multi-room buildings. Once located, the card will open up the locked security doors protecting the goal for each mission. In the second mission, the player must find the four chemical containers and take them to the lab for analysis to determine which is the nerve gas neutralizer, and then find the vat of nerve gas to neutralize it. In the fourth mission, the player must find and rescue Dr. Phineas Gump, a scientist who has been captured by the mad leader. The player must feed him the invisibility pill to make their escape. In the sixth mission, the player must find all seven of the mad leader's missile control rooms and plant explosives in them, then escape before the 10-minute timer (which lasts for 20 minutes of actual time) counts down to zero.

After completing the ground mission, the player must return to the helicopter and fly back to home base. The return flight is much shorter with fewer enemy planes than the missions to get to the enemy base. Once the player completes a mission, they are given a four letter passcode, so that they can return to the same mission during subsequent plays.

Reception
Infiltrator was Mindscape's second best-selling Commodore game as of late 1987. Steve Panak writing for ANALOG Computing approved of the documentation but preferred Ace of Aces as an Atari 8-bit flight simulator. A 1994 survey of strategic space games set in the year 2000 and later gave the game one star out of five, stating that "Tongue-in-cheek documentation quickly grows tiresome, as does the program itself".

Reviews
Jeux & Stratégie #43

Legacy
Infiltrator was followed by a sequel, Infiltrator II: The Next Day, released in 1987 for the Apple II, Commodore 64, IBM PC compatibles, and the Nintendo Entertainment System. Because the original was never released on the NES, the sequel was released as "Infiltrator" on that platform. Computer Gaming World awarded Infiltrator II zero stars and described it as "Even worse than the original".

The game was novelized by Peter Lerangis, as part of the Worlds of Power series published by Scholastic Books.

References

External links
Infiltrator at MobyGames
Infiltrator at Atari Mania

1986 video games
Amstrad CPC games
Apple II games
Atari 8-bit family games
Commodore 64 games
DOS games
Gray Matter (company) games
Helicopter video games
Science fiction video games
Stealth video games
U.S. Gold games
Video games developed in Canada
ZX Spectrum games
Mindscape games

Infiltrator (video game)


The history of the Jews in Sudan goes back to a small but vibrant community of Jews who lived there from about 1885 to around 1970. Most of the community left for Israel or Europe after anti-Semitic attacks began to spread against both the Jews in Israel and those still living in Sudan.

Early Jewish presence in the region
Due to other Jewish presence near Sudan, such as in Elephantine, Abyssinia, and Yemen, there is a possibility that there were Jews in the region earlier than the 15th century. However, David Reubini (1490 -1540), is thought to be the first Jewish traveler to the region.

Beginnings of the community
There was a small Jewish presence consisting of eight Sephardi Jewish families in 1885 living in Omdurman in Sudan, under Turkish and Egyptian rule. The origins of these families and how they settled in Sudan is largely unknown. They were free to practice Judaism until the rebel leader Muhamed Ahmed Ibn Abdulla El-Mahdi seized control of Sudan from its Ottoman-Egyptian rulers in 1885 and established Mahdist Sudan. During Mahdist rule, the Jewish community was forcibly converted to Islam. In September 1898, General Kitchener and 20,000 Anglo-Egyptian troops including a young Winston Churchill entered Omdurman and regained control of the Sudan. The country became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium and with this new political status it began to economically flourish. The railway line built by the British from Cairo to Khartoum (originally for the military campaign) became particularly important for opening up a previously long and difficult route for traders, including many Jews.

The main community
When the British arrived in 1898, there were 36 people who declared themselves to be Jewish in Sudan. After Anglo-Egyptian rule had been established, six of the formerly Jewish families who had been forcibly converted to Islam reverted to Judaism. They were quickly joined by many more Jewish families who saw the economic opportunities of the developing country. Beginning in approximately 1900, Jews from all over the Middle East and North Africa, in particular from Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, began to arrive in Sudan and settle along the Nile in the four towns of Khartoum, Khartoum North, Omdurman and Wad Madani. Predominantly small-time merchants of textiles, silks and gum, their businesses soon began to flourish. In 1905, Farag Shua, an Egyptian-Jewish merchant who had migrated to Sudan in 1900, established a makeshift synagogue in a small rented room and began teaching Jewish children Torah, Hebrew, and Jewish prayers. Sudan did not have a rabbi until 1908, when Moroccan rabbi Suleiman Malka moved to Sudan with his family at the request of the Egyptian-Jewish religious authorities, who oversaw the affairs of the Sudanese Jews. The Jewish community of Khartoum was first officially organized in 1918. By 1926 the small synagogue they had quickly erected had been replaced by a brand new, self-funded building and several of its members owned large, successful businesses. In the 1930s, a few Jews escaping persecution in Europe settled in Sudan.

Despite the fact that the Jewish community as a whole was split between Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman, it was incredibly tight-knit. There was only one synagogue in Sudan and two mikvehs, one in the synagogue and the other in the rabbi's house. A single mohel and shochet served the entire community and at the centre of the social scene was the bustling Jewish Social Club (sometimes referred to as the Jewish Recreational Club). There were no Jewish schools; Jewish children primarily went to English or Catholic schools with some going to a local Sudanese school. Most Jewish boys went to the Comboni College, a private Catholic school run by Italian priests.

At its peak, between 1930 and 1950 the Jewish community in Sudan numbered between 800 and 1,000 people, with about 250 Jewish families.

Decline
After Israeli independence in 1948, a small number of Sudanese Jews immigrated to Israel between 1948 and 1950. Most of them were among the poorer members of the Jewish community and migrated for economic reasons. The community banded together to purchase tickets to Israel for its poorest members so they could start a new life there. Rabbi Suleiman Malka died in 1949 and the community was left without a rabbi. In 1956, Sudan gained independence and hostility towards the Jewish community began to grow as the Pan-Arab ideology of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, with the anti-Israel rhetoric it entailed, gained popularity. Antisemitic attacks appeared in the press and Jews were accused of being fifth columnists. A Jewish woman won the Miss Khartoum beauty contest that year but was stripped of the title after it was discovered that she was Jewish. That same year, the community was bolstered when some Egyptian Jews moved to Sudan after the Suez Crisis. The community also gained a rabbi after seven years without one when Egyptian-Jewish rabbi Massoud Elbaz arrived in Sudan. However, as antisemitism intensified, many members of the community began to leave Sudan for Israel (via Greece), the United States, and European countries - mostly to the United Kingdom and Switzerland. Israel and Switzerland were the primary destinations of emigrating Sudanese Jews. Much of the community had left by 1960. In 1967, following the Six-Day War, there was a mass arrest of Jewish men and antisemitic attacks appeared in Sudanese newspapers advocating the torture and murder of prominent Jewish community leaders. Jewish emigration subsequently intensified, with the vast majority of Jews still in the country soon leaving. The last remaining Jews in Sudan left the country in the early 1970s. Overall, about 500 Sudanese Jews immigrated to Israel while the rest went to other countries.

The desecration of Jewish cemetery
In 1975 an air-transfer of some of the human remains from the Jewish Cemetery in Khartoum was organized by several prominent members of the community and reburial was arranged in Jerusalem after reports of desecration and vandalism occurring there. The bodies were moved and reburied at the Givat Shaul Cemetery in Jerusalem. As of 2005 there were at least 15 Jewish graves left in the Jewish Cemetery at Khartoum. However, in recent years even these have been desecrated and the site was used as a dumping ground for used car parts. In the last year efforts have been made to preserve and clean up the cemetery. The Synagogue was sold and demolished in 1986 and a bank now occupies the site.

See also
Jewish history
Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries

References

Further reading
 History

The Jewish cemetery of Khartoum, Sudan — Philipp Breu Photography - Freelance Photojournalist

History of the Jews in Sudan


Bidher () is a village and union council, an administrative subdivision, of Chakwal District in the Punjab Province of Pakistan, it is part of Talagang Tehsil.

Mr. Abdul Sattar Shah (late) was the leading and most respectful personality of Bidher in
the 20th century. He was a scholar, having a good knowledge of Islam, history, law and languages
such as Arabic and Persian. He was very much influential in Bidher and adjacent areas. Most
of the time, he played an important role as arbitrator for controversial issues and the clashes among the local people of Talagang. He was also looking after many Islamic schools in Talagang.

Mr. Abdul Rauf (1945–2008) s/o Mr. Abdul Sattar Shah (late) was also a renowned scientist of Pakistan. He served Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission as a Research Specialist in "Health and
physics".

Engineer Saqib Rauf and Dr. Atif Rauf are sons of Mr. Abdul Rauf (late). Engr Saqib
Rauf is head of Contracts Section in Attock Refinery Limited and Dr. Atif Rauf is doing practice in UK. Engr Saqib Rauf is also having a strong political stature in politics of Talagang and running a network with name of "Talagang Awami Council". He is Office bearer of main right wing party "Jamaat e Islami".

References

Union councils of Chakwal District
Populated places in Chakwal District

Bidher


Caban v. Mohammed, 441 U.S. 380 (1979), was a United States Supreme Court family law case which argued that a New York law, which allowed unwed mothers, but not unwed fathers, a veto over the adoption of that couple's children, was discriminatory.

Background

At the time of this case, § 111 of New York's Domestic Relations Law required any adoption of a child to be limited by the consent of either married parent of a child, but only the mother in the case that the parents had never married.  The law, in part, read:

consent to adoption shall be required as follows: . . . (b) Of the parents or surviving parent, whether adult or infant, of a child born in wedlock; [and] (c) Of the mother, whether adult or infant, of a child born out of wedlock. . . .

Abdiel Caban and his partner Maria Gonazles lived together for five years, during which time they had a son, and later, a daughter. After separating in 1973, Maria later married Kazim Mohammed. Two years later, Kazim filed to legally adopt the children. Caban and his new wife Nina also filed for adoption, but due to § 111, that attempt was blocked, and the Mohammeds' request was granted. Caban appealed unsuccessfully to the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division and then the New York Court of Appeals, after which he appealed to the United States Supreme Court, arguing violations of both equal protection and due process.

New York argued for the law's distinction, expressing the concern that allowing an unwed father to veto his child's adoption might have the effect of discouraging adoption, which wouldn't be in the best interests of the children.

Opinion of the Court

The Court split 5–4, with Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. writing the majority opinion. That opinion found that § 111 of New York's Domestic Relations Law unconstitutionally discriminated on the basis of sex, conflicting with the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection, using an intermediate level of judicial scrutiny. Powell's reasoning argued that Caban's formation of a "natural family", through five years of living with his partner and the children, entitled him to legal rights to those children. Moreover, Powell found that treating mothers and fathers differently in  § 111 did not "bear a substantial relation to the State's interest in providing adoptive homes for its illegitimate children."

Powell's opinion declined to decide whether there was also a due process violation, or whether there was an additional equal protection issue in treating fathers differentially depending on whether or not they had been legally married.

Stewart's dissent, on the other hand, found no violation of equal protection. Stewart believed that the process of carrying the child to term was a situational difference between mothers and fathers which, along with the state's interest in having illegitimate children adopted provided a legitimate basis for the differential treatment of unwed mothers and fathers in § 111. Similarly, Stevens' dissent found a strong interest in promoting adoption and that maternity created a significant difference in physical and psychological parenting between biological mothers and fathers.

Subsequent developments
As a result of the ruling, Caban regained the visitation rights he had enjoyed before the original decision granting adoption to Kazim Mohammed.

See also
List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 441

References

External links

1979 in United States case law
United States Supreme Court cases
United States Supreme Court cases of the Burger Court
United States equal protection case law
United States family case law
United States men's rights case law
History of women in New York (state)

Caban v. Mohammed


The Finnish Museum of Natural History (, ), established in 1988, is a research institution under the University of Helsinki in Finland, based in Helsinki, Finland. It is a natural history museum responsible for the national botanical, zoological, geological and paleontological collections, which consist of samples from around the world. The collections serve scientific, public informational and educational purposes.

In regard to locations and buildings, the museum is divided into three: The Natural History Museum, the Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, and the Kumpula Botanic Garden. From 1869 to 2014 it also included an independent geological department, but that has now been moved to the Kumpula Botanic Garden.

Research units
Botany Unit
Botanical Museum maintains the national herbarium of Finland containing 3,3 million specimens of plants, mosses and fungi.
Botanic Gardens maintain a collection of living plants for education and research; is responsible for international seed exchange and public education on plants. In addition, there is a Sensory garden.
Zoology Unit
Zoological Museum maintains a collection of 8 million animal specimens; performs research mainly on systematics, taxonomy, and zoogeography.
Bird ringing centre and monitoring of bird populations
Natural Sciences Unit
Laboratory of Chronology performs age determination of samples with physical methods (radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating).
Geological Museum maintains collections of rock and ore samples (35,000 items), meteorites (500), and fossils (6,000).

References

External links

Finnish Museum of Natural History

Museums in Helsinki
Natural history museums in Finland
University of Helsinki
University museums in Finland
Töölö

Finnish Museum of Natural History


Lord Macduff, the Thane of Fife, is a character and the main antagonist in William Shakespeare's Macbeth (c.1603–1607) that is loosely based on history. Macduff, a legendary hero, plays a pivotal role in the play: he suspects Macbeth of regicide and eventually kills Macbeth in the final act. He can be seen as the avenging hero who helps save Scotland from Macbeth's tyranny in the play.

The character is first known from Chronica Gentis Scotorum (late 14th century) and Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland (early 15th century). Shakespeare drew mostly from Holinshed's Chronicles (1587).

Although characterised sporadically throughout the play, Macduff serves as a foil to Macbeth and a figure of morality.

Origin
The overall plot that would serve as the basis for Macbeth is first seen in the writings of two chroniclers of Scottish history, John of Fordun, whose prose Chronica Gentis Scotorum was begun about 1363, and Andrew of Wyntoun's Scots verse Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, written no earlier than 1420. These served as the basis for the account given in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), on whose narratives of King Duff and King Duncan Shakespeare in part based Macbeth.

Historically, Duff was a 10th century King of Alba. In John of Fordun's work, the reign of Duff is portrayed as having suffered from pervasive witchcraft. The Orygynale Cronykil suggests that Duff was murdered. Due to the Irish use of tanistry, Duff's immediate descendants did not become rulers of Alba, and instead became mormaers of Fife. Their clan – the Clan MacDuff – remained the most powerful family in Fife in the Middle Ages.
The ruins of Macduff's Castle lie in the village of East Wemyss next to the cemetery.  Not only did history influence Shakespeare's work, but the work itself influenced the role of future Duffs. Few could determine where Duff Family history began and historical fiction ended, working to the benefit of the Duffs as their reach expanded into Northeast Scotland. In 1404 David Duff received a charter in Aberdeenshire from Robert III of Scotland. In 1759, his descendant William Duff was granted the historic Celtic Title of "Fife", resurrecting the title and tying the Duffs of Northeast Scotland, both to the their 11th century Lowland ancestors, and to Shakespeare's MacDuff. Various Fife titles were held by the Duffs until as recently as 1929 when the dignity passed to the Carnegie descendants, where it remains in use today.  This association not only secured the Duff family influence in the peerage, but also helped ensure their position as one of the largest landowners in Scotland, heading countless feudal baronies including the barony of MacDuff, named for James Duff, 2nd Earl Fife.

In Holinshed's narrative, attributes of King Duff are transposed onto the MacDuff mormaer from Macbeth's era. Macduff first appears in Holinshed's narrative of King Duncan after Macbeth has killed the latter and reigned as King of Scotland for 10 years. When Macbeth calls upon his nobles to contribute to the construction of Dunsinane castle, Macduff avoids the summons, arousing Macbeth's suspicions. Macduff leaves Scotland for England to prod Duncan's son, Malcolm III of Scotland, into taking the Scottish throne by force. Meanwhile, Macbeth murders Macduff's family. Malcolm, Macduff, and the English forces march on Macbeth, and Macduff kills him. Shakespeare follows Holinshed's account of Macduff closely, with his only deviations being Macduff's discovery of Duncan's body in act 2 sc. 3, and Macduff's brief conference with Ross in act 2 sc. 4.

Role in the play
Macduff first speaks in the play in act 2, scene 3 to the drunken porter to report to his duty of awaking King Duncan when he is sleeping for the night at Macbeth's castle. When he discovers the corpse of King Duncan (murdered by Macbeth, but it appears that nearby guards are guilty since Lady Macbeth put his knife by them and smeared them with Duncan's blood), he raises an alarm, informing the castle that the king has been murdered.  Macduff begins to suspect Macbeth of regicide when Macbeth says, "O, yet I do repent me of my fury / That I did kill them" (2.3.124–125). Macduff's name does not appear in this scene; rather, Banquo refers to him as "Dear Duff" (2.3.105).

In 2.4 Macbeth has left for Scone, the ancient royal city where Scottish kings were crowned. Macduff, meanwhile, meets with Ross and an Old Man. He reveals that he will not be attending the coronation of Macbeth and will instead return to his home in Fife. However, Macduff flees to England to join Malcolm, the slain King Duncan's elder son, and convinces him to return to Scotland and claim the throne.

Macbeth, meanwhile, visits the Three Witches again after the spectre of Banquo appears at the royal banquet. The Witches warn Macbeth to "beware Macduff, beware the Thane of Fife" (4.1.81–82). However, they inform Macbeth that "none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth" (4.1.91–92) — leading one to infer that no human could possibly defeat Macbeth. Macbeth, fearing for his position as King of Scotland, learns soon afterward that Macduff has fled to England to try to raise an army against him and orders the deaths of Macduff's wife, children and relatives. Macduff, who is still in England, learns of his family's deaths through Ross, another Scottish thane. He joins Malcolm, and they return to Scotland with their English allies to face Macbeth at Dunsinane Castle.

After Macbeth slays the young Siward, Macduff charges into the main castle and confronts Macbeth. Although Macbeth believes that he cannot be killed by any man born of a woman, he soon learns that Macduff was "from his mother's womb / Untimely ripped" (Act V Scene 8 lines 2493/2494) — meaning that Macduff was born by caesarean section. The two fight, and Macduff slays Macbeth offstage. Macduff ultimately presents Macbeth's head to Malcolm, hailing him as king and calling on the other thanes to declare their allegiance with him (5.11.20–25).

Analysis

Macduff as a foil to Macbeth
As a supporting character, Macduff serves as a foil to Macbeth; his integrity directly contrasts with Macbeth's moral perversion. The play positions the characters of Macduff as holy versus Macbeth as evil.

The contrast between Macduff and Macbeth is accentuated by their approaches to death. Macduff, hearing of his family's death, reacts with a tortured grief. His words, "But I must also feel it as a man" (4.3.223), indicate a capacity for emotional sensitivity. While Macbeth and Lady Macbeth insist that manhood implies a denial of feeling (1.7.45–57), Macduff insists that emotional sense and depth are part of what it means to be a man. This interpretation is supported by contrasting Macbeth's famous response to the news of Lady Macbeth's death:
 "She should have died hereafter
 There would have been a time for such a word
 Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" (5.5.17–19).
Macbeth's words seem to express a brutal indifference – that someday, she would have died anyway – and perhaps even suggest that he has lost the capacity to feel.

Compare Macduff's reaction upon his discovery of Duncan's corpse: He struggles to find the words to express his rage and anguish, crying, "O horror, horror, horror" (2.3.59). In some stage interpretations, Macduff's character transitions from a state of shock to one of frenzied alarm.  When Ross announces his wife and children's deaths to him, Macduff's expression of grief contrasts starkly with Macbeth's resignation to Lady Macbeth's death.

Macduff as a moral figure
Although Macduff comes to represent a type of "goodness" in the dark world of Macbeth, Shakespeare also allows for some instability in his character. This becomes most evident in 4.3, when Macduff joins Malcolm in England. In this scene, the play has moved from the tumult in Scotland to England.

References

Characters in Macbeth
Male Shakespearean characters
Male characters in literature
Fictional characters based on real people

Macduff (Macbeth)


St Andrew's Church is the only congregation of the Church of Scotland in Portugal. It seeks to provide English-speaking Reformed Christian worship and pastoral care to a multinational community.

About
An English-speaking congregation was established in Lisbon by the Free Church of Scotland in 1866; the present church building in Rua Arriaga in the historic Lapa district of Lisbon was constructed in 1899. The Church of Scotland services are conducted in English, but the building is also used by an Orthodox congregation.

The majority of the congregations of the Free Church of Scotland united with the United Presbyterian Church in 1900 creating the United Free Church of Scotland, which itself united with the Church of Scotland in 1929. The congregation was part of the Church of Scotland's Presbytery of Spain & Portugal, which in 1974 became part of the Presbytery of Europe, which was renamed the International Presbytery in 2016.

Services are held at 11.00 am every Sunday. As of late March 2013 the congregation is without a permanent minister; the previous minister was the Rev Graham McGeoch, who was ordained and inducted to the congregation in December 2009 and moved to Edinburgh in early 2013.

See also
Church of Scotland
St. George's Church (the Church of England/Anglican congregation in Lisbon)

References

External links
St Andrew's Church, Lisbon - official website

Church of Scotland churches
Churches in Lisbon
Presbyterian churches in Europe
Churches completed in 1899
Religious organizations established in 1866
1866 establishments in Portugal

St Andrew's Church, Lisbon


A full table scan (also known as a sequential scan) is a scan made on a database where each row of the table is read in a sequential (serial) order and the columns encountered are checked for the validity of a condition. Full table scans  are usually the slowest method of scanning a table due to the heavy amount of I/O reads required from the disk which consists of multiple seeks as well as costly disk to memory transfers.

Overview
In a database, a query that is not indexed results in a full table scan, where the database processes each record of the table to find all records meeting the given requirements. Even if the query selects just a few rows from the table, all rows in the entire table will be examined. This usually results in suboptimal performance but may be acceptable with very small tables or when the overhead of keeping indexes up to date is high.

When the Optimizer Considers a Full Table Scan
The most important factor in choosing depends on speed. This means that a full table scan should be used when it is the fastest and cannot use a different access path. Several full table scan examples are as follows.
 No index
The optimizer must use a full table scan since no index exists.
 Small number of rows
The cost of full table scan is less than index range scan due to small table.
 When query processed SELECT COUNT(*), nulls existed in the column
The query is counting the number of null columns in a typical index. However, SELECT COUNT(*) can't count the number of null columns.
 The query is unselective
The number of return rows is too large and takes nearly 100% in the whole table. These rows are unselective.
 The table statistics does not update
The number of rows in the table is higher than before, but table statistics haven't been updated yet. The optimizer can't correctly estimate that using the index is faster.
 The table has a high degree of parallelism
The high degree of parallelism table distorts the optimizer from a true way, because optimizer would use full table scan.
 A full table scan hint
The hint lets optimizer to use full table scan.

Examples
The first example shows a SQL statement that returns the name of every fruit in the fruits table whose color is red. If the fruits table does not have an index for the color column, then the database engine must load and examine every row within fruits in order to compare each row's color to 'red':

    SELECT   name
    FROM     fruits
    WHERE    color = 'red';

The second example shows a SQL statement which returns the name of all fruits in the fruits table. Because this statement has no condition - no WHERE clause - the database engine will use a table scan to load and return the data for this query even if the fruits table has an index on the name column because accessing - i.e. scanning - the table directly is faster than accessing the table through the extra abstraction layer of an index:

    SELECT   name
    FROM     fruits

The third example is a counter-example that will almost certainly cause the SQL engine to use an index instead of a table scan. This example uses almost the same query as the previous one, but adds an ORDER BY clause so that the returned names will be in alphabetical order. Assuming that the fruits table has an index on the name column, the database engine will now use that index to return the names in order because accessing the table through the extra abstraction layer of the index provides the benefit of returning the rows in the requested order. Had the engine loaded the rows using a table scan, it would then have to perform the additional work of sorting the returned rows. In some extreme cases - e.g. the statistics maintained by the database engine indicate that the table contains a very small number of rows - the optimizer may still decide to use a table scan for this type of query:

    SELECT   name
    FROM     fruits
    ORDER BY name

Pros and Cons
Pros:
 The cost is predictable, as every time database system needs to scan full table row by row.
 When table is less than 2 percent of database block buffer, the full scan table is quicker.
Cons:
 Full table scan occurs when there is no index or index is not being used by SQL. And the result of full scan table is usually slower that index table scan. The situation is that: the larger the table, the slower of the data returns.
 Unnecessary full-table scan will lead to a huge amount of unnecessary I/O with a process burden on the entire database.

See also
 Database
 Optimizing compiler
 SQL
 Oracle full table scan tips

References

Database theory

Full table scan


The Fountain of Neptune () is a fountain in Rome, Italy, located at the north end of the Piazza Navona.

Name
It was once called "Fontana dei Calderari" because it was located close to a small alley with blacksmith's workshops, makers of pots and pans and of other metal based businesses, all of them generating heat.

History

The restoration of the Roman Aqua Virgo aqueduct in 1570 was immediately followed by the start of work on a continuation water supply pipe towards the district of the old Campo Marzio, which following the diminution of the city's size and importance was left as the most densely populated part of the city.  Restoration of a piped water supply in turn permitted the construction of several public fountains.   The basin of the Fontana del Nettuno, (without the sculptures), was designed in 1574 by Giacomo Della Porta, who was also responsible for the Moor Fountain at the other side of the square. It was sponsored by pope Gregory XIII. The lower part of the basin consists of white marble and the upper part of the local stone from Pietrasanta. For the next 300 years, the fountain survived without statues.

Nineteenth-century infrastructure developments reduced dependence on urban fountains for drinking and washing purposes but increased their visual and political importance, especially following the creation of the Italian state with Rome as its capital after 1870.  The fountain as it exists today was finally completed in 1878 by Antonio della Bitta, who added the imposing sculpture of Neptune fighting with an octopus, and Gregorio Zappalà, who created the other sculptures, based on the mythological theme of the "Nereids with Cupids and walruses". This statuary was added following a competition in 1873, in order to balance that of the Moor Fountain on the south side of the piazza and of the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers) at its centre.

References

 Martin Pulvers, "Roman Fountains, 2000 Fountains in Rome, a complete collection", L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2002

External links

Neptune, Piazza Navona
Rome R. VI Parione
Sculptures of Neptune
Sculptures of horses
Sculptures of Cupid
Animal sculptures in Italy

Fountain of Neptune, Rome


The 1998 Winter Paralympics medal table is a list of National Paralympic Committees (NPCs) ranked by the number of gold medals won by their athletes during the 1998 Winter Paralympics, held in Nagano, Japan, from March 5 to March 14, 1998.

Medal table

The ranking in this table is based on information provided by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and is consistent with IPC convention in its published medal tables. By default, the table is ordered by the number of gold medals the athletes from a nation have won (in this context, a "nation" is an entity represented by a National Paralympic Committee). The number of silver medals is taken into consideration next and then the number of bronze medals. If nations are still tied, equal ranking is given and they are listed alphabetically by IPC country code.

To sort this table by nation, total medal count, or any other column, click on the  icon next to the column title.

See also
 1998 Winter Olympics medal table

References

External links
International Paralympic Committee

Medal Table
Winter Paralympics medal tables

1998 Winter Paralympics medal table


The Opet Festival (, "beautiful festival of Opet") was an annual ancient Egyptian festival celebrated in Thebes (Luxor), especially in the New Kingdom and later periods, during the second month of the season of Akhet, the flooding of the Nile.

The festival was celebrated to promote the Fertility of Amun-Re and the Pharaoh, who was believed to be the spiritual offspring of Amun-Re – the son or daughter of Amun-Re. John Coleman Darnell argues that "Opet began on II Akhet 15 under Thutmose III and lasted 11 days (Sethe 1907: 824, line 10); by the beginning of the reign of Ramesses III, the festival stretched over 24 days."

The festival included a ritual procession of the barque (a ceremonial boat used to transport statues of gods and deities) of the cult statue of "Amun-Re, supreme god, his wife Mut, and his son Khons." The procession carried the statue for 2 km from Karnak Temple to "Luxor Temple, destination of the Opet Feast." At the Luxor Temple, a ritual marriage ceremony took place in the Birth room between the Pharaoh and Amun-Re, spiritually linking them to ensure the Pharaoh's fertility and reinstate the Pharaoh as the intermediary between the gods and Egypt. During the marriage ceremony, the Pharaoh was ceremonially reborn through a re-crowning ceremony, emphasising the fertile nature of the Pharaoh and legitimising his divine right to rule.

The ancient festival survives in the present-day feast of Sheikh Yūsuf al-Haggāg, an Islamic holy man whose boat is carried around Luxor in celebration of his life.

History of the festival
The Opet festival became a mainstream festival in the early New Kingdom (circa. 1539-1075 B.C.) when the 18th dynasty came to power, after "driving out the Hyksos invaders who had occupied the northern part of the Nile Valley for 200 years. Egypt's new rulers wasted no time in making its capital city Thebes a vast ceremonial stage to celebrate the consolidation of power, and the Opet festival took centre stage".

During the reign of Thutmose III (1458-1426 B.C.), the festival lasted for 11 days. By the start of the rule of Ramesses III in 1187 B.C., it had expanded to 24 days; by his death in 1156 B.C., it had stretched to 27.

The most accurate information of the history of the Opet festival comes from the changing nature of the route between Karnak and Luxor temples. Marina Escolano-Poveda provides a comprehensive analysis of the shifting path between the temples. "The processional route between the temples varied with time, sometimes traveling by foot along the Avenue of Sphinxes, a road nearly two miles long, lined with statues of the mythical beasts.

At other times, the sacred statue traveled from Karnak to Luxor in a specially made bark, known in Egyptian as the Userhat-Amun ("mighty of prow is Amun"). This vessel was built of Lebanon cedar covered with gold. Its prow and stern were decorated with a ram's head, sacred to the god.". Although the nature of the route between temples remained the same, the length of the festival changed with each ruler. In certain years, the barque of Amun-Re travelled solely Karnak to Luxor, "…a ritual journey from their shrines at Karnak to the temple of Luxor". However, the return journey from Luxor to Karnak also acted as a celebration, "…part of the Opet Feast, it must have taken place on the return journey to Karnak."

Importance of the festival to society

New Kingdom Egyptian society depended on the generosity of the gods to ensure they received what they needed. Because they lacked scientific understanding to explain specific events, the Egyptians looked upon each natural event as a sign or intervention from a specific god who wanted them to maintain the natural order of the universe, or ma'at. To appease the gods, Egyptians routinely made offerings to the gods of sacrifices, prayers, and festivals. In this perceived symbiotic relationship, celebrations of the gods provided assurance to Egyptians, allowing them to live their lives without fear of divine intervention.

The Opet festival re-established essential communication between the gods and Egyptian society through the rebirth ceremony in the Temple of Luxor's birth-room, which initiated the Pharaoh as an intermediary for the gods by being reborn as the son of Amun-Re, in "the rebirth of the sun-god." This rebirth promoted the fertility of the pharaoh, ensuring his divine right to rule and consolidating his lineage.

The Opet festival also reinforced the fertility of the harvest, which fluctuated depending on the inundation of the Nile, and was therefore celebrated in the "second month of the Akhet season."

It was not just the Pharaoh who was active during the festival; sailors and soldiers were the most prominent non-religious groups in the festival. They have been observed in the colonnade hall relief-scenes, which demonstrated that a large number of civil and military official partook in the preparations for, and running of, the Opet festival. John Coleman Darnell emphasises the importance of the general population in executing the festival: "Ramesses II listed amongst those responsible for arranging the festival: members of the civil administration, provincial governors, border-officials, heads of internal economic departments, officers of the commissariat, city-officials, and upper ranks of the priesthood." Those who were not actively involved in the running of the festival were "able to observe from the riverbanks, and at least some may have had limited access to the forepart of the temple." The festival also provided jobs for wab and lector priests, who were on three-month rotations. They recited spells and hymns among the general population on the riverbank to ensure that reverence was upheld.

Role of the Pharaoh during the festival
"Common people took almost no part in religious rituals; that was the sacred responsibility of the priestly class." The Pharaoh acted as the intermediary between Egyptian society and the gods during the festival at Luxor Temple, and although "the union of a god with his temple may appear as a sexual union", the Pharaoh used this link to promote their divine fertility and re-establish their right to rule over Egypt. The Pharaoh's marriage ceremony to the gods, "a divine marriage, the result of which was the renewal of Amun in the person of his ever-renewing human vessel, the reigning king" ensured that Egypt would be met with another fertile year; through population growth, large harvests, and a large inundation of the Nile. The Pharaoh's religious role was reinforced through the Opet festival, as it re-affirmed their role as "The first prophet of Amun-Re, king of the gods", the holiest title in Egypt. The promotion of fertility in the festival strengthened the validity of the Pharaoh's lineage, as it "celebrated the renewal of the ka-force of Amun, and the transmission of the spirit of kingship in the eternal present", allowing the Royal Family to maintain power over the social classes. The religious rites during the Opet Festival re-established and confirmed the Pharaoh's possession of the royal Ka, the representation of the human soul's lifeforce. "This life force inhabited the bodies of all legitimate pharaohs of Egypt and passed from the old to the new on the latter's death. An annual confirmation of such a process would help bolster the king's authority."

Archaeological sources

The Karnak (Temple of Amun) and Luxor Temples were the archaeological centrepiece of Thebes, being constructed on "the eastern bank of the Nile" with construction commencing c.1970 BC by Senusret I and between 1390-1352 BC by Amunhotep III (see History of the Karnak Temple complex). Karnak was further expanded by Thutmose I early in the New Kingdom, measuring nearly two square miles. Thebes also provides archaeological sources for the Opet Festival and is "believed to have been an ancient observatory as well as a place of worship where the god Amun would interact directly with the people of earth." Carvings on the Red Chapel's south side at Karnak provide the oldest evidence for the festival of Opet. The Chapel was made of grey diorite and red quartzite and housed the ceremonial barque of Amun-Re when not in use.

Sources also provide information on the changing route of the cult statue of Amun-Re. The text on a sphinx of Nectanebo I on the route between Karnak and Luxor describes the construction (refurbishment) of the route for Amun, "so that he might carry out his good navigation in Luxor", revealing that the basic sense of "navigation" would be the same for the deity traveling within the portable barque, both on the deck of the riverine barge and the shoulders of the priests. John Coleman Darnell believes that using the land route to Luxor was meant to evoke the dry period that preceded the Nile's annual inundation and that the return to Karnak by river symbolised the onset of the flooding. He also argues that the contrasting land and water journeys symbolised the perilous journey which the sun was meant to take through "the dry realms of the Land of Sokar" (the underworld) each night.

Egyptologist Marina Escolano-Poveda outlined the importance of a relief in the Red Chapel of Hatshepsut in depicting the celebratory nature of the festival, "The reliefs make a great effort to depict the grand spectacle: many priests support the barks and statues, while a crowd makes a joyous din with sistrum rattles. The gods' barks were brought alongside the jetty at the Temple of Luxor and were carried on the shoulders of the priests to the sacred precinct. A series of ceremonies were conducted in the outer courts, after which the barks were taken into the inner sanctuary, accompanied solely by high-ranking priests and the pharaoh. Once the ceremonies were completed, the barks returned downstream to Karnak."

Revival
On November 25th 2021, after a long renovation project, the Avenue of Sphinxes was re-opened in a grand ceremony similar to the Opet Festival. On December 7th 2021, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced that the ceremony would be held annually.

See also

 Shemu

Citations

References

15th-century BC establishments
Festivals in ancient Egypt
Thebes, Egypt
Amun

Opet Festival


Capelianus was a Roman governor of the province of Numidia in the 3rd century, and commander of the army that defeated and killed Gordian II in 238, the Year of the Six Emperors.

Herodian relates that he had an existing animosity towards Gordian, on account of an unspecified lawsuit. Gordian, on his acclamation as co-emperor with his father Gordian I (governor of the neighbouring province of Africa), ordered the replacement of Capelianus. The latter refused to go quietly, however, and took an army to Carthage, where his numerically superior and well-trained forces (Numidia, in contrast to Africa, was well-garrisoned against Berber raids) easily defeated those of Gordian. He then allowed his soldiers free rein to pillage Africa, hoping to maintain their favour in the event of an opportunity to make a bid for emperor himself. Such an opportunity presumably never arose, as he disappears from the historical record from that point.

References

Ancient Roman generals
Crisis of the Third Century
3rd-century Romans
Ancient Roman governors

Capelianus


The inner core is the very center of the Earth, and the hottest part of the planet. It is a mainly a solid ball with a radius of about , according to seismological studies. It is believed to consist mostly of an iron–nickel alloy and to be about the same temperature as the surface of the Sun: about 5700 K (5400 °C).

The inner core was discovered by Inge Lehmann in 1929, using seismology. Lehmann was studying a large New Zealand earthquake. An earthquake makes vibrations which move through the inside of the Earth. The vibrations Lehmann studied seemed to be moving across something solid in the center of the planet. She called this the inner core. She wrote about it for many years, but it was not proved to exist until 1970.

The inner core is more than 5,000 kilometers below the earth's surface. The pressure in Earth's inner core is about 3,500,000  atmospheres. Iron can only be solid at such high temperatures because its melting temperature increases dramatically at such pressures.

References

Related pages
 Earth's core
 Planetary core

Structure of the Earth

Earth's inner core


Musi River (also called Musinuru or Muchukunda or Moosa) is a river in the Deccan Plateau flowing through Telangana state in India. The Musi River flows into the Krishna River. Hyderabad stands on the edge of Musi River, which divides the historic old city and the new city.

Rivers of India
Telangana

Musi River (India)


James Aston, 5th Lord Aston of Forfar (23 May 1723 – 24 August 1751), was a son of Walter Aston, 4th Lord Aston of Forfar, and Lady Mary Howard.

On 30 June 1742, James married Lady Barbara Talbot, sister of the 14th Earl of Shrewsbury, by whom he had two daughters.

In 1748, he succeeded his father as Lord Aston of Forfar in the Peerage of Scotland.

Lord Aston produced no direct male heir, and on his death in 1751 his title passed to his distant cousin Philip Aston, 6th Lord Aston of Forfar.

See also
Lord Aston of Forfar

Aston of Forfar, James Aston, 5th Lord
1723 births
1751 deaths

James Aston, 5th Lord Aston of Forfar


The Alabama Scenic River Trail (ASRT) is a water trail that spans the state of Alabama. The trail starts in northeast Alabama on the Coosa River's Weiss Lake at the Georgia-Alabama state line and ends at Fort Morgan, Alabama, where Mobile Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico. It comprises sections of the Coosa, Tallapoosa, Alabama, and Mobile rivers.

Extending more than 630 miles, the ASRT is "the nation's longest one-state river trail," and it was designated as a National Recreation Trail in 2009 by Dirk Kempthorne, then the United States Secretary of the Interior. It was designated a National Water Trail in 2012 by Kempthorne's successor, Ken Salazar.

Because the trail's route extends through diverse topographic and climatic conditions, paddlers along the trail may encounter a wide and changing variety of flora and fauna. Over one hundred trail access points and nearly that many campsites are available for public use, many provided by private landowners who are known as "trail angels."

Although most paddlers take on only a section of the trail, some "through paddlers" have completed the entire route from Weiss Lake to Mobile Bay.

See also
 List of Hiking Trails in Alabama

References

External links
 Alabama Scenic River Trail

Rivers of Alabama
National Recreation Trails in Alabama
Hiking trails in Alabama
Water trails

Alabama Scenic River Trail


Antoine Alexandre Barbier (11 January 1765 – 5 December 1825) was a French librarian and bibliographer.

He was born in Coulommiers (Seine-et-Marne). He took priest's orders, from which, however, he was finally released by the pope in 1801. In 1794 he became a member of the temporary commission of the arts, and was charged with the duty of distributing among the various libraries of Paris the books that had been confiscated during the French Revolution. In the execution of this task he discovered the letters of Huet, bishop of Avranches, and the manuscripts of the works of Fénelon.

He became librarian successively to the French Directory, to the Conseil d'Etat, and in 1807 to Napoleon, from whom he carried out a number of commissions.   He produced a standard work in his Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes (4 vols., 1806—1809). Only the first part of his Examen critique des dictionnaires historiques (1820) was published.

He had a share in the foundation of the libraries of the Louvre, of Fontainebleau, of Compiègne and Saint-Cloud; under Louis XVIII he became administrator of the king's private libraries, but in 1822 he was deprived of all his offices. Barbier died in Paris, aged 60.

References

External links
 Jean Chrétien Ferdinand Hoefer. Nouvelle biographie générale depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à nos jours. Vol. 4 (BAA-BEA). 1859.
 Antoine Alexandre Barbier on data.bnf.fr

1765 births
1825 deaths
People from Coulommiers
Knights of the Legion of Honour
French bibliographers
French librarians
French male non-fiction writers
French encyclopedists
École Normale Supérieure alumni

Antoine Alexandre Barbier


Star position is the apparent angular position of any given star in the sky, which seems fixed onto an arbitrary sphere centered on Earth. The location is defined by a pair of angular coordinates relative to the celestial equator: right ascension () and declination (). This pair based the equatorial coordinate system.

While  is given in degrees (from +90° at the north celestial pole to −90° at the south),  is usually given in hour angles (0 to 24 h). This is due to the observation technique of star transits, which cross the field of view of telescope eyepieces due to Earth's rotation. The observation techniques are topics of positional astronomy and of astrogeodesy.

Ideally, the Cartesian coordinate system  refers to an inertial frame of reference. The third coordinate is the star's distance, which is normally used as an attribute of the individual star.

The following factors change star positions over time:
axial precession and nutation – slow tilts of Earth's axis with rates of 50 arcseconds and 2 arcseconds respectively, per year;
the aberration and parallax – effects of Earth's orbit around the Sun; and
the proper motion of the individual stars.

The first and second effects are considered by so-called mean places of stars, contrary to their apparent places as seen from the moving Earth. Usually the mean places refer to a special epoch, e.g. 1950.0 or 2000.0. The third effect has to be handled individually.

The star positions  are compiled in several star catalogues of different volume and accuracy. Absolute and very precise coordinates of 1000-3000 stars are collected in fundamental catalogues, starting with the FK (Berlin ~1890) up to the modern FK6.

Relative coordinates of numerous stars are collected in catalogues like the Bonner Durchmusterung (Germany 1859-1863, 342,198 rough positions), the SAO catalogue (USA 1966, 250.000 astrometric stars) or the Hipparcos and Tycho catalogue (110.000 and 2 million stars by space astrometry).

See also
 Star catalogue, FK4, FK6
 Equatorial coordinates, Ecliptic coordinates
 annual aberration, improper motion
 Geodetic astronomy, transit instruments

References

External links
 How Astronomers describe the position of stars

 Apparent Places of Fundamental Stars

Astrometry
Position

Star position


The Treaty of Titalia was signed between the chogyal (monarch) of the Kingdom of Sikkim and the British East India Company (EIC). The treaty, which was negotiated by Captain Barre Latter in February 1817, guaranteed security of Sikkim by the British and returned Sikkimese land annexed by the Nepalese over the centuries. It followed the Anglo-Nepalese War, 1814–1816. In return, the British were given trading rights and rights of passage up to the Tibet frontier. The treaty was signed at Titalia, now known as Tetulia Upazila, in the Rangpur District of present-day Bangladesh. In the Gazette of Sikkim, 1894 by H.H. Risley, it was written that "by the Treaty of Titalia, British India has assumed the position of Lord's paramount of Sikkim and a title to exercise a predominant influence in that State has remained undisputed."

Provisions

Signed by Captain Barre Latter as agent for the EIC and three Sikkimese officials, Nazir Chaina Tenjin, Macha Teinbah and Lama Duchim Longadoo, the primary purpose of the treaty under Article 1 was to return land previously seized by the Gorkha Kingdom of Nepal to Sikkim. This land, lying to the east of the Mechi River and the west of the Teesta River had been ceded to the EIC by the Gorkhas under the 1816 Treaty of Sugauli following the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814–16.

In exchange, the Sikkimese Chogyal agreed to abstain from aggression towards the Gorkhas and to allow the British to mediate any dispute with its neighbours. Further articles pledged military support to the British, that absconders from British justice, whether criminal or civil, would be arrested in Sikkim and finally that all EIC company goods shipped through Sikkim would thereafter be free from duty.

Impact
The treaty effectively transformed Sikkim into a channel for Anglo-Chinese diplomacy.

See also
History of Sikkim
List of treaties

References

A Lexicon of Vocabulary, Events and Treaties from India and Central Asia
History of Sikkim – Government of Sikkim

Titalia
History of Sikkim
19th century in Nepal
1817 in India
1817 treaties
Treaties of the British East India Company
1817 in the United Kingdom
Treaties of Sikkim
February 1817 events

Treaty of Titalia


The Qiu Shi Prizes are awarded on an annual basis in recognition of advances in science and technology. The Qiu Shi Science and Technology Foundation was established by Cha Chi Ming () (1914–2007) in 1994 in Hong Kong, with the intention of promoting science and technology research in China, and to encourage and reward successful Chinese scientists and scholars. Prizes are awarded each year Prize categories include Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Mathematics or Information Technology.

Qiu Shi (; pronounced ch-OO/sh-ER) means "seeking truth". The Qiu Shi Foundation was named after the famous Qiu Shi Academy () in Hangzhou, which was subsequently renamed Zhejiang University (). Qiu Shi Science and Technology Foundation is not related to the Qiushi Journal, the political theory periodical.

Founder/Foundation
Cha Chi-ming, GBM, JP, was born in 1914, in Haining County, Jiaxing, Zhejiang province. He studied textile technology and graduated from Zhejiang University in 1931. Cha was best known for his industrial prowess, building a multinational textile conglomerate. He was the chairman of CDW International Limited, The Mingly Corporation Limited and Hong Kong Resort International Limited.

The Qiu Shi Advisory Board
Members:

Chen Ning Yang (a Nobel laureate in physics),
Zhou Guangzhao (physician, and honorary chairman of China Association for Science and Technology),
Yuan T. Lee (a Nobel laureate in chemistry),
Yuet Wai Kan (genetic researcher),
David Ho (physician and innovator of the "cocktail" therapy for HIV),
Andrew Yao (computer scientist and the first Asian A.M. Turing Award recipient).

Prize types
Alumni

References

Science and technology awards
Science and technology in China

Qiu Shi Science and Technology Prize


The National Indoor Athletics Centre is an indoor track and field athletics sports venue in the Cyncoed area of Cardiff, capital of  Wales.  It is sited on the Cardiff Metropolitan University Campus and is one of the main facilities used by Welsh Athletics, which organises the Cardiff branch of the Athletics Development Centre at the National Indoor Athletics Centre.

The track facilities include:
200m, 4 lane banked track
60m, 8 lane straight track
120m, 6 lane straight track which finishes outside the main arena

A centre of sporting excellence opened at the site in January 2011 by First Minister Carwyn Jones and Wales football manager Gary Speed. The Sport and Exercise Medicine Centre provides elite facilities for students, athletes and the wider public.
There are sports medicine and physiotherapy professionals located on-site with services available not only to performance level athletes, but also the general public. The sports medicine practitioners can work with athletes and players to identify potential injury risk and therefore work to prevent injuries from occurring. The centre also boasts renowned sports psychologists, offering a range of individual or group sessions to help athletes enhance performance.

See also
 Sport in Cardiff

References

External links
Cardiff Met National Indoor Athletics Centre website

Sports venues in Cardiff
Athletics (track and field) venues in Wales

National Indoor Athletics Centre


Structural loads or actions are forces, deformations, or accelerations applied to a structure or its components. A load is the amount of weight a structure has to carry. Loads cause stresses, deformations, and displacements in structures. Structural analysis is the calculation of the effects of loads on physical structures. Excess load or overloading may cause structural failure. This is a consideration in the design and construction of a structure.

Mechanical structures, such as aircraft, satellites, rockets, space stations, ships and submarines, have their own particular structural loads and actions. In a vehicle, especially trucks, the chassis is designed to carry the structural load. In many cars unibody construction is used where the metal skin (or other materials) is designed to carry the load.

Gravity on Earth is an attractive force that affects all objects. A gravity load is one that the downward force of gravity affects.

Structural loads
The following are typical loads exerted against most structures:
Dead load is the load that permanently acts on the structure. It includes the structure itself. A dead load is a gravity load.
Live load is anything the structure is designed to carry. Live loads may move within the structure exerting different loads in different parts of the structure at different times. They are not permanent. A live load may be furniture and people in a building. It may be passengers and luggage in a vehicle.
Wind load is the force of wind against the surface of a structure. Wind loads are horizontal lateral forces. Wind load is very important in the design of taller buildings. Wind shear is a force that may affect structures vertically or horizontally. Uplift is a negative force caused by wind. It may cause a roof to lift upward.
Snow load is the load caused by snow. Similar to a live load is it not permanent and may move due to wind causing snow to drift on a roof.

Other environmental loads
Seismic loads
Temperature changes leading to thermal expansion cause thermal loads
Ponding loads
Frost heaving
Lateral pressure of soil, groundwater or bulk materials
Loads from fluids or floods
Permafrost melting

Aircraft structural loads
For aircraft, loading is divided into two major categories: limit loads and ultimate loads. Limit loads are the maximum loads a component or structure may carry safely. Ultimate loads are the limit loads times a factor of 1.5 or the point beyond which the component or structure will fail. Gust loads are determined statistically and are provided by an agency such as the Federal Aviation Administration. Crash loads are loosely bounded by the ability of structures to survive the deceleration of a major ground impact. Other loads that may be critical are pressure loads (for pressurized, high-altitude aircraft) and ground loads. Loads on the ground can be from adverse braking or maneuvering during taxiing. Aircraft are constantly subjected to cyclic loading. These cyclic loads can cause metal fatigue.

References

Engineering

Structural load


Winnie the Pooh (also known as Pooh Bear, or simply Pooh) is a fictional bear and the main character in Disney's Winnie the Pooh franchise, based on the character Winnie-the-Pooh created by English author A. A. Milne and English artist and book illustrator E. H. Shepard, being one of the most popular characters adapted for film and television by The Walt Disney Company. Disney first received certain licensing rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, characters, and trademarks from Stephen Slesinger, Inc. and the estate of A. A. Milne in 1961.

Adaptation and development by Disney
In 1961, Walt Disney Productions licensed certain film and other rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh characters, stories and trademarks from Stephen Slesinger, Inc. and the estate of A. A. Milne. and made a series of animated films about him.  These early films were based on several of the original stories and the distinctive artwork made popular by Stephen Slesinger, Inc. during the 1930s through the 1960s. Alongside the animated versions, which Disney adapted from Slesinger, Slesinger's simplified lines and pastel color adaptations of Shepard's original illustrations are now marketed under the description "Classic Pooh".

In 1977, Disney released the animated feature film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, introducing a new character named Gopher (which Gopher acknowledges by proclaiming, "I'm not in the book, you know").  The film constitutes three stories originally released as separate featurettes: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974). The 1977 release featured new bridging material and a new ending.  A fourth featurette, Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore, was released in 1983.

The live-action TV series Welcome to Pooh Corner ran on the Disney Channel from 1983 to 1986. In 1988, Disney launched an animated TV series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which aired from 1988 to 1991 with a total of 83 episodes. Pooh appeared with Tigger in the anti-drug animated TV special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue.

In 2000, Disney released the feature film The Tigger Movie in which the character of Tigger played the leading role. Due to its success, two more feature-length Pooh movies based on other characters were released to theaters: Piglet's Big Movie in 2003 and Pooh's Heffalump Movie in 2005. Pooh also made appearances in episodes of the animated series House of Mouse, however he doesn't have any speaking lines and is mostly seen in the background.

Disney, along with Shadow Projects produced a puppet TV series for preschoolers, called The Book of Pooh which aired on Playhouse Disney from 2001 to 2003. Disney produced another series for preschoolers, called My Friends Tigger & Pooh, which aired on Playhouse Disney from 2007 to 2010 and done in CGI. Pooh also makes a cameo appearance in the DreamWorks animated film, Bee Movie along with Piglet, at one point, a man spies Pooh and Piglet eating honey and Barry tells him to "take him out" with a tranquilizer dart.

Winnie the Pooh was released in 2011. In April 2015, Deadline reported that Disney would develop a live action Winnie the Pooh movie with Brigham Taylor producing and Alex Ross Perry writing. The film focuses both on Pooh and the adult Christopher Robin returning to the Hundred Acre Woods and his reunion with Pooh and friends. Christopher Robin was released on August 3, 2018 by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures in the United States.

Casting history
Sterling Holloway was the original voice of Pooh, starting with the 1966 theatrical featurette, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, although the Disneyland Records version was actually released in 1965. Holloway continued to voice the character for over a decade, which included the next two theatrical featurettes, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974), as well as several albums for Disneyland Records. Holloway's last performance as Pooh was for the bridging material in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977).

Hal Smith, who also voiced Owl in the original theatrical featurettes, took over as the voice of Pooh in 1977, starting with the Disney Read-Along adaptation of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. His first performance as Pooh in animation was for the 1981 short, Winnie the Pooh Discovers the Seasons. He would continue to voice Pooh regularly for various projects up until the late 1980s, which included the theatrical featurette Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore (1983) and the TV series Welcome to Pooh Corner. He briefly reprised the role again in 1989 for the Welcome to Pooh Corner television specials Responsible Persons and One and Only You.

Jim Cummings was chosen to voice the character for the 1988 TV series, The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Cummings has since become the official voice for the character, having voiced him in various TV series, video games, and movies, including the 2018 live-action film, Christopher Robin.

Disney Parks
Pooh is a common character in the Disney Parks and the most common in the Winnie the Pooh franchise. He is also usually seen with Tigger and Eeyore, and occasionally Piglet, and is mainly located in Fantasyland.

In the Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom attraction, Pooh has his own spell card known as "Winnie the Pooh's Honey Bees." Pooh also has his own show in Disneyland Paris, called "Winnie the Pooh and Friends, too!." In the same park, Pooh takes part on his own float in Disney Magic on Parade.

In the 2015 rendition of World of Color, Pooh made a cameo appearance during the opening sequence, in honor of Walt Disney.

Ownership controversy and changes
During his lifetime, Milne was liberal with his grant of rights. At times he licensed the same exclusive rights to more than one entity.

In the United States, E. P. Dutton and Company acquired exclusive volume publication rights and Stephen Slesinger, Inc., acquired sole and exclusive rights to virtually all uses outside of the Dutton books as well as rights to any sorts of future uses. Beginning in 1930 Stephen Slesinger created all of the distinctive and colorful images of Pooh outside of the books. Under license from Slesinger, Pooh made his debuts in radio, film, animation, children's theatre, advertising and a host of consumer products and services protected by trademark. Outside of the U.S. and Canada, Milne retained most of his literary copyright rights which he left to four beneficiaries of his trust:  The Garrick Club, Westminster School, The Royal Literary Fund and the A. A. Milne Family. By direction of Milne's will, the Pooh Properties Trust was formed. Mrs. Milne, trustee of the Milne Estate, and Spencer Curtis Brown, Trustee, licensed certain exclusive film rights to Disney in 1961. Christopher Robin Milne sold his rights to the other copyright holders, in order to raise money to support his daughter, before his death in 1996.

Sometime around 2000, the Pooh Properties Trust licensed additional rights to Disney and accepted a buyout of their claims to royalties as defined in a 1991 lawsuit brought by Stephen Slesinger, Inc. Although Slesinger's rights are arguably more valuable, the combined value paid by Disney to The Pooh Properties Trust is said to be approximately $300 million for Milne's portion of those rights.

To further minimize Disney's legal exposure to Slesinger, Disney paid money to the Pooh Properties attorneys and trusts to use the name of Clare Milne, daughter of Christopher Robin, in an attempt to terminate certain of the copyright rights of Stephen Slesinger Inc, in the wake of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. The district court found in favor of Stephen Slesinger, Inc., as did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On June 26, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, thus sustaining the Appeals Court ruling.

In December 2005, Disney announced that Pooh's friend and owner Christopher Robin would be replaced as Pooh's main friend by a six-year-old "tomboyish" red-haired girl Darby for the Disney Channel animated television series, My Friends Tigger & Pooh. Christopher Robin appeared intermittently in the series.

Awards and honors

In 2002, TV Guide compiled a list of the 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time as part of the magazine's 50th anniversary. Winnie the Pooh was given the honor of number 27.

On April 11, 2006, Pooh was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, being the fourth Disney character to receive one after Mickey Mouse, Snow White and Donald Duck. The star is located on 6834 Hollywood Blvd.

Controversies in China

Winnie the Pooh has been used in political satire and has created controversies in China since 2013. In that year, critics compared an image of Pooh and his friend Tigger to a picture of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US president Barack Obama, who met at the G20 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Cartoons of Xi as Winnie the Pooh were regarded as disrespectful, but they continued to be used by critics. Dissident Liu Xiaobo and his wife Liu Xia were photographed holding Pooh mugs as an act of protest. Some commentators have speculated that the movie Christopher Robin has been banned in China as a result of these controversies.

Filmography

Theatrical shorts
 Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966) - Sterling Holloway
 Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) - Sterling Holloway
 Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974) - Sterling Holloway
 Winnie the Pooh Discovers the Seasons (1981) - Hal Smith
 Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore (1983) - Hal Smith
 Once Upon a Studio  (2023) - Sterling Holloway (archive recordings) - Jim Cummings

Feature-length films
 The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) - Sterling Holloway
 Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin (1997) DVD - Jim Cummings
 A Valentine for You (1999) DVD - Jim Cummings
 Seasons of Giving (1999) DVD - Jim Cummings
 The Tigger Movie (2000) - Jim Cummings
 The Book of Pooh: Stories from the Heart (2001) DVD - Jim Cummings
 Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse (2001) DVD - Jim Cummings
 Mickey's House of Villains (2002) DVD - Jim Cummings
 A Very Merry Pooh Year (2002) DVD - Jim Cummings
 Piglet's Big Movie (2003) - Jim Cummings
 Springtime with Roo (2004) DVD - Jim Cummings
 Pooh's Heffalump Movie (2005) - Jim Cummings
 Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie (2005) DVD - Jim Cummings
 Winnie the Pooh (2011) - Jim Cummings
 Christopher Robin (2018) - Jim Cummings
 Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) - Jim Cummings (bootleg version)

Television series
 Welcome to Pooh Corner (1983–1986) - Hal Smith
 The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1988–1991) - Jim Cummings
 House of Mouse (2001-2003) - Jim Cummings
 The Book of Pooh (2001–2004) - Jim Cummings
 My Friends Tigger & Pooh (2007–2010) - Jim Cummings
 Doc McStuffins (2017) (guest appearance) - Jim Cummings
 Monsters at Work (2021) (brief cameo)
 Playdate with Winnie the Pooh (2023–present) - Leon Chan

Television specials
 Too Smart for Strangers (1985) - Hal Smith
 Responsible Persons (1989) - Hal Smith
 One and Only You (1989) - Hal Smith
 Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too (1991) - Jim Cummings
 Boo to You Too! Winnie the Pooh (1996) - Jim Cummings
 A Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving (1998) - Jim Cummings
 A Valentine for You (1999) - Jim Cummings

See also
List of Winnie-the-Pooh characters

References

External links
 Winnie the Pooh at d23.com

Winnie the Pooh (franchise)
Winnie-the-Pooh characters
Film characters introduced in 1966
Anthropomorphic bears
Works banned in China
Walt Disney Animation Studios characters
Male characters in animated films

Winnie the Pooh (Disney character)