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Degei

In Fijian mythology, Degei (pronounced Ndengei), enshrined as a serpent, is the supreme god of Fiji. He is the creator of the (Fijian) world, fruits, and of men and is specially connected to Rakiraki District, Fiji. He judges newly dead souls after they pass through one of two caves: Cibaciba or Drakulu. A few he sends to paradise Burotu. Most others are thrown into a lake, where they will eventually sink to the bottom (Murimuria) to be appropriately rewarded or punished.

He is said to have at first moved about freely, but then in the form of a snake to have grown into the earth with his ringed tail. Since then he has become the god of earthquakes, storms and seasons. Whenever Degei shakes himself fertilising rain will fall, delicious fruits hang on the trees, and the yam fields yield an excellent crop.

Degei is also a god of wrath who declares himself in terrible fashion. He punishes and chastens his people by destroying the crops or by floods; he could indeed easily wipe out mankind from the earth, for since he has lived in the bowels of the earth he has been tormented with so insatiable hunger that he would like to take in and swallow the whole world.

Rokola is a name of the son of Degei.

First human couple
Degei hatched an egg from which the first humans came to Earth.

In popular culture
Friedrich Ratzel in The History of Mankind reported in 1896 a religious practice enjoined by Degei that involved tattooing women on the lower part of the body and the thigh, the corner of the mouth, and the finger.

R.A. Derrick (1957:11) says:

"In these traditions Degei figures not only as the origin of the people, but also as a huge snake, living in a cave near the summit of the mountain Uluda – the northernmost peak of the Nakauvandra Range. Earth tremors and thunder were ascribed as his uneasy turnings within the cave. He took no interest in his people’s affairs; his existence was no more than a round of eating and sleeping. By association with him, snakes were honoured as ‘the Offspring of the origin’. The snake cult was generally throughout the group."

title: Degei


text:
Ngā Atua

In some versions of the Māori legend of Tāwhaki, Ngā Atua is the sixth of the twelve layers of the heavens (Craig 1989:183, White 1887–1891, I:App).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Ngā Atua


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Nganaoa

In Cook Islands mythology (Aitutaki), Nganaoa is a hero who sighted and killed unusually large animals in the ocean while sailing with Rata.

Family
Nganaoa is the son of Vaiaroa and Tairi-tokerau. He discovered his parents on an island, sitting next to a sennit.

Boat request
Rata retrieved a canoe with his grandmother. He requested to enter the boat, claiming that he was excellent at flying kites. However, it did not please Rata, and Nganaoa was thrown overboard. However, Rata changed his mind and let him on the boat.

Monsters
Nganaoa sighted a large clam and shouted to Rata "O Rata! A fearful enemy is rising up from the sea!". Nganaoa was prepared and threw a spear into the clams stomach. After killing the clam, he claimed he saw another one.

Along the way, he discovered giant octopuses and whales. He attempted to kill a whale with his spear, but it broke into half. Before he was almost smashed by the whale, he cut him in half with both pieces of his spear.

title: Nganaoa


text:
Tairi

In the mythology of Mangareva (French Polynesia), Tairi (Ta'iri) is the god of thunder.

title: Tairi


text:
Ngaro

Ngaro ("vanished") is mentioned as a delicacy of the dead in a Māori legend from the far north of the North Island of New Zealand.

Te Atarahi was five days and five nights in Te Reinga, the place from where the spirits of the dead leap into the underworld. His seemingly dead body was found by two women who went out to cut flax leaves. When Te Atarahi revived, he mentioned being offered food by the inhabitants of Te Reinga, and also offered the information that ngaro was one of their delicacies. The story as reported by Edward Shortland has a degree of similarity to the New Testament episode where Jesus rose after three days and three nights in the tomb; Christian influence may have played a role in the plot of this tale.

title: Ngaro


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Ian Paisley

Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside, (6 April 1926 – 12 September 2014) was a loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader from Northern Ireland who served as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from 1971 to 2008 and First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2007 to 2008.

Paisley became a Protestant evangelical minister in 1946 and remained one for the rest of his life. In 1951 he co-founded the Reformed fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and was its leader until 2008. Paisley became known for his fiery sermons and regularly preached anti-Catholicism, anti-ecumenism and against homosexuality. He gained a large group of followers who were referred to as Paisleyites.

Paisley became involved in Ulster unionist/loyalist politics in the late 1950s. In the mid-late 1960s, he led and instigated loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. This contributed to the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s, a conflict that would engulf Northern Ireland for the next 30 years. In 1970 he became Member of Parliament for North Antrim and the following year he founded the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which he would lead for almost 40 years. In 1979 he became a Member of the European Parliament.

Throughout the Troubles, Paisley was seen as a firebrand and the face of hardline unionism. He opposed all attempts to resolve the conflict through power-sharing between unionists and Irish nationalists/republicans, and all attempts to involve the Republic of Ireland in Northern Irish affairs. His efforts helped bring down the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974. He also opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, with less success. His attempts to create a paramilitary movement culminated in Ulster Resistance. Paisley and his party also opposed the Northern Ireland peace process and Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

In 2005, Paisley's DUP became the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, displacing the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which had dominated unionist politics since 1905 and had been an instrumental party in the Good Friday Agreement. In 2007, following the St Andrews Agreement, the DUP finally agreed to share power with republican party Sinn Féin. Paisley and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness became First Minister and deputy First Minister, respectively, in May 2007. He stepped down as First Minister and DUP leader in mid-2008, and left politics in 2011. Paisley was made a life peer in 2010 as Baron Bannside.

Personal life
Ian Richard Kyle Paisley was born in Armagh, County Armagh, and brought up in the town of Ballymena, County Antrim, where his father James Kyle Paisley was an Independent Baptist pastor who had previously served in the Ulster Volunteers under Edward Carson. His mother was Scottish.

Paisley married Eileen Cassells on 13 October 1956. They had five children, daughters Sharon, Rhonda and Cherith and twin sons, Kyle and Ian. Three of their children followed their father into politics or religion: Kyle is a Free Presbyterian minister; Ian is a DUP MP; and Rhonda, a retired DUP councillor. He had a brother, Harold, who is also an evangelical fundamentalist.

Paisley saw himself primarily as an Ulsterman. However, despite his hostility towards Irish republicanism and the Republic of Ireland, he also saw himself as an Irishman and said that "you cannot be an Ulsterman without being an Irishman".

Religious career
When he was a teenager, Paisley decided to follow his father and become a Christian minister. He delivered his first sermon aged 16 in a mission hall in County Tyrone. In the late 1940s he undertook theological training at the Barry School of Evangelism (now called the Wales Evangelical School of Theology), and later, for a year, at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Hall in Belfast.

By June 1950 Paisley was preaching at an 'Old Time Gospel Campaign' on waste ground off Moore Street in the lower Ravehill Road area of Belfast.

A year later a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) was forbidden by church authorities to hold a meeting in their own church hall at which Paisley was to be the speaker. In response, the leaders of that congregation left the PCI and began a new denomination, the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, with Paisley, who was just 25 years old at the time. Paisley soon became the leader (or moderator) of the Free Presbyterian Church and was re-elected every year, for the next 57 years.

The Free Presbyterian Church is a fundamentalist, evangelical church, requiring strict separation from "any church which has departed from the fundamental doctrines of the Word of God." At the time of the 1991 census, the church had about 12,000 members, less than 1 per cent of the Northern Ireland population.

Paisley promoted a highly conservative form of Biblical literalism and anti-Catholicism, which he described as "Bible Protestantism". The website of Paisley's public relations arm, the European Institute of Protestant Studies, describes the institute's purpose as to "expound the Bible, expose the Papacy, and to promote, defend and maintain Bible Protestantism in Europe and further afield." Paisley's website describes a number of doctrinal areas in which he believes that the "Roman church" (which he termed 'Popery') has deviated from the Bible and thus from true Christianity. Over the years, Paisley would write numerous books and pamphlets on his religious and political views, including a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Paisley set up his own newspaper in February 1966, the Protestant Telegraph, as a mechanism for further spreading his message.

In the 1960s, Paisley developed a relationship with the fundamentalist Bob Jones University located in Greenville, South Carolina. In 1966, he received an honorary doctorate of divinity from the institution and subsequently served on its board of trustees. This relationship would later lead to the establishment of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America in 1977. His honorary doctorate, along with his political obstinacy, led to Paisley's nickname of "Dr. No".

When Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother met Pope John XXIII in 1958, Paisley condemned them for "committing spiritual fornication and adultery with the Antichrist". When Pope John died in June 1963, Paisley announced to a crowd of followers that "this Romish man of sin is now in Hell!". He organised protests against the lowering of flags on public buildings to mark the Pope's death.

In 1988, having given advance warning of his intentions, Paisley interrupted a speech being delivered by Pope John Paul II in the European Parliament. Paisley shouted "I denounce you as the Antichrist!" and held up a poster reading "Pope John Paul II ANTICHRIST". Other MEPs jeered Paisley, threw papers at him and snatched his poster, but he produced another and continued shouting. He was admonished by Parliamentary President Lord Plumb, who formally excluded him. He was then forcibly removed from the chamber. Paisley claims he was injured by other MEPs—including Otto von Habsburg—who struck him and threw objects at him.

Paisley believed the European Union is a part of a conspiracy to create a Roman Catholic superstate controlled by the Vatican. He claimed in an article that the seat no. 666 in the European Parliament is reserved for the Antichrist.

Paisley continued to denounce the Catholic Church and the Pope after the incident. In a television interview for The Unquiet Man, a 2001 documentary on Paisley's life, he expressed his pride at being "the only person to have the courage to denounce the Pope". However, after the death of Pope John Paul in 2005, Paisley expressed sympathy for Catholics, saying "We can understand how Roman Catholics feel at the death of the Pope and we would want in no way to interfere with their expression of sorrow and grief at this time."

Paisley and his followers also protested against what they saw as instances of blasphemy in popular culture, including the stage productions Jesus Christ Superstar and Jerry Springer: The Opera, as well as being strongly anti-abortion.

Campaign against homosexuality
Paisley preached against homosexuality, supported laws criminalising it and picketed various gay rights events. He denounced it as "a crime against God and man and its practice is a terrible step to the total demoralisation of any country". Save Ulster from Sodomy was a campaign launched by Paisley in 1977, in opposition to the Northern Ireland Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform, established in 1974. Paisley's campaign sought to prevent the extension to Northern Ireland of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which had decriminalised homosexual acts between males over 21 years of age in England and Wales. Paisley's campaign failed when legislation was passed in 1982 as a result of the previous year's ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Dudgeon v United Kingdom.

Early activism
In 1949, Paisley formed a Northern Irish branch of the National Union of Protestants, the group being led in the UK by his uncle, W. St Clair Taylor. Paisley's first political involvement came at the 1950 general election when he campaigned on behalf of the successful Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) candidate in Belfast West, the Church of Ireland minister James Godfrey MacManaway. Independent Unionist MP Norman Porter came to lead the National Union of Protestants, while Paisley became treasurer, but Paisley left after Porter refused to join the Free Presbyterian Church.

Paisley first hit headlines in 1956 when Maura Lyons, a 15-year-old Belfast Catholic doubting her faith, sought his help and was smuggled illegally to Scotland by members of his Free Presbyterian Church. Paisley publicly played a tape of her religious conversion but refused to help with the search for her, saying he would rather go to prison than return her to her Catholic family. Lyons eventually returned both to her family and Catholicism.

In 1956, Paisley was one of the founders of Ulster Protestant Action (UPA). Its initial purpose was to organise the defence of Protestant areas against anticipated Irish Republican Army (IRA) activity. It carried out vigilante patrols, made street barricades, and drew up lists of IRA suspects in both Belfast and rural areas. The UPA was to later become the Protestant Unionist Party in 1966. UPA factory and workplace branches were formed, including one by Paisley in Belfast's Ravenhill area under his direct control. The concern of the UPA increasingly came to focus on the defence of 'Bible Protestantism' and Protestant interests where jobs and housing were concerned. The UPA also campaigned against the allocation of public housing to Catholics.

As Paisley came to dominate UPA, he received his first convictions for public order offences. In June 1959, Paisley addressed a UPA rally in the mainly-Protestant Shankill district of Belfast. During the speech, he shouted out the addresses of some Catholic-owned homes and businesses in the area. These homes and businesses were then attacked by the crowd; windows were smashed, shops were looted and "Taigs out" painted on the doors.

During the 1964 UK general election campaign, an Irish republican candidate displayed an Irish tricolour from the window of his office in a republican area of Belfast. Paisley threatened that if the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) did not remove the tricolour he would lead a march to the office and take it down himself. The Flags and Emblems Act banned the public display of any symbol, with the exception of the Union Flag, that could cause a breach of the peace. In response, armed officers arrived at the building, smashed their way inside and seized the flag. This led to severe rioting between republicans and the RUC. Thirty people, including at least 18 officers, had to be hospitalised.

Opposition to the civil rights movement
In 1964, a peaceful civil rights campaign began in Northern Ireland. The civil rights movement sought to end discrimination against Catholics and those of Catholic background by the Protestant and unionist government of Northern Ireland. Paisley instigated and led loyalist opposition to the civil rights movement over the next few years. He also led opposition against Terence O'Neill, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Although O'Neill was also unionist, Paisley and his followers saw him as being too 'soft' on the civil rights movement and opposed his policies of reform and reconciliation.

In April 1966, Paisley and his associate Noel Doherty founded the Ulster Constitution Defence Committee (UCDC) and its paramilitary wing, the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV). At the time, Irish republicans were marking the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising. Although the IRA was inactive, loyalists such as Paisley warned that it was about to be revived and launch another campaign against Northern Ireland. At the same time, a loyalist paramilitary group calling itself the "Ulster Volunteer Force" (UVF) emerged in the Shankill area of Belfast, led by Gusty Spence. Many of its members were also members of the UCDC and UPV, including UCDC secretary and UPV leader Noel Doherty. Paisley publicly thanked the UVF for taking part in a march on 7 April. Paisley forced the Stormont government to mobilise B-Specials for the entire month of April with the hope of outlawing public commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. Paisley failed in this objective but did succeed in pressuring the government to ban trains from the Republic transporting people to Northern Ireland for the ceremonies. In May and June, the UVF petrol bombed a number of Catholic homes, schools and businesses. It also shot dead two Catholic civilians as they walked home. These are sometimes seen as the first deaths of the Troubles. Following the killings, the UVF was outlawed and Paisley denied any knowledge of its activities. One of those convicted for the killings said after his arrest "I am terribly sorry I ever heard of that man Paisley or decided to follow him".

Paisley would later establish two other paramilitary groups: Third Force in 1981  and Ulster Resistance in 1986.

On 6 June 1966, Paisley led a march to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church against what he claimed to be its "Romeward trend". The authorities allowed the marchers to go through the Catholic Cromac Square neighbourhood carrying placards with anti-Catholic slogans. Catholic youths attacked the march and clashed with the RUC. Many were injured and cars and businesses were wrecked. Following the riots, Paisley was charged with unlawful assembly and sentenced to three months in prison. The Belfast Telegraph declared that Paisley's organisations "represent a defiance of lawful authority no less serious in essence than that of the IRA". On 22 July 1966, Paisleyites clashed with the RUC outside Crumlin Road Prison, where Paisley was being held. The next day, Protestant mobs several thousand strong "rampaged through the city, smashing windows and trying to damage businesses owned by Catholics". In response, the authorities banned all meetings and marches in Belfast for three months.

On 30 November 1968, hours before a civil rights march in Armagh, Paisley and Ronald Bunting arrived in the town in a convoy of cars. Men armed with nail-studded cudgels emerged from the cars and took over the town centre to prevent the march. The RUC halted the civil rights march, sparking outrage from activists. On 25 March 1969, Paisley and Bunting were jailed for organising the illegal counter-demonstration. On 6 May, they were released during a general amnesty for people convicted of political offences.

In March–April 1969, the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV) bombed water and electricity installations in Northern Ireland, leaving much of Belfast without power and water. Paisley and the UPV blamed the bombings on the dormant IRA and elements of the civil rights movement. Paisley's Protestant Telegraph called them "the first act of sabotage perpetrated by the IRA since the murderous campaign of 1956", warning that it was "an ominous indication of what lies ahead for Ulster". Many people believed these claims of IRA responsibility. The loyalists also hoped that the bombings would weaken confidence in Prime Minister Terence O'Neill. Unionist support for O'Neill waned, and on 28 April he resigned as Prime Minister. Paisley's approach led him, in turn, to oppose O'Neill's successors as Prime Minister, Major James Chichester-Clark (later Lord Moyola) and Brian Faulkner.

The civil rights campaign, and attacks on it by loyalists and police, culminated in the August 1969 riots. The 1969 Northern Ireland riots, Divis Street were the worst in Belfast since the 1930s. Catholic Irish nationalists clashed with the police and with loyalists, who invaded Catholic neighbourhoods and burned scores of homes and businesses. This led to the deployment of British troops and is seen by many as the beginning of the Troubles. Journalists Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie said of the rioting in Belfast: "Both communities were in the grip of a mounting paranoia about the other's intentions. Catholics were convinced that they were about to become victims of a Protestant pogrom; Protestants that they were on the eve of an IRA insurrection". After the riots, Paisley is reported to have said:"Catholic homes caught fire because they were loaded with petrol bombs; Catholic churches were attacked and burned because they were arsenals and priests handed out sub-machine guns to parishioners."

Electoral success and founding of the DUP
On 16 April 1970, in a by-election to the Northern Ireland Parliament, Paisley, standing on behalf of the Protestant Unionist Party, won the Bannside seat formerly held by Prime Minister Terence O'Neill. Another PUP candidate, William Beattie, won the South Antrim seat. In the 1970 UK general election, Paisley won the North Antrim seat. These elections were "further evidence of the break-up of the unionist block and the unease among a large section of Protestants about the reform measures introduced under Chichester-Clark".

On 30 September 1971, Paisley and Desmond Boal founded the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

Relationship with the nationalist SDLP
From the 1960s, one of his main rivals was civil rights leader and co-founder of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), John Hume. British Government papers, released in 2002, show that in 1971 Paisley attempted to reach a compromise with the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). The attempt was made via then British Cabinet Secretary, Sir Burke Trend. The papers show that Paisley had indicated he could "reach an accommodation with leaders of the Catholic minority, which would provide the basis of a new government in Stormont." It appears that the move was rejected once it became clear to the SDLP that it would have created a very one-sided alliance. Speaking about the deal in 2002 Paisley said: The SDLP did not want to go along the road that we would have wanted them to go. I wouldn't say there were talks, there was an exchange of views between us, but it never got anywhere. We were prepared to try and seek a way whereby we could govern Northern Ireland and that people of both faiths could be happy with the way it was being governed, but it all rested on the key point – the person with power would be the person that the people gave the power.

Promoting the DUP's manifesto at a launch event ahead of the 1983 United Kingdom general election Paisley made clear that the core message of the party's campaign would be to "expose and oppose Provisional Sinn Fein and its fellow travellers, the SDLP." Responding to reporters, Paisley said:

"[The SDLP] are going down the same united Ireland road as Sinn Fein, so they are fellow travellers. We will be taking on the Sinn Fein frontmen for the IRA and are determined to smash them at the polls."

Speaking at the launch of the DUP's policy proposals for devolved government for the briefly revived Northern Ireland Assembly in September 1984, Paisley echoed the document's position on power-sharing with the SDLP:

"I am totally opposed to power-sharing because it is unworkable and destroys the very principle of my Unionism, which is that we are part of the UK and cannot in any way bring into government those who want to destroy Northern Ireland."

In one interview during the referendum campaign following the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, he declared that he was 'opposed to power-sharing with nationalists because nationalists are only power-sharing to destroy Northern Ireland' clearly meaning the SDLP as well as Sinn Féin.

Campaign against the Sunningdale Agreement
The Sunningdale Agreement of December 1973 set up a new government for Northern Ireland in which unionists and nationalists would share power. It also proposed the creation of a Council of Ireland, which would facilitate co-ordination and co-operation between the governments of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Paisley and other hardline unionists opposed the Agreement. Specifically, they opposed sharing political power with nationalists and saw the Council of Ireland as a step towards a united Ireland.

Paisley, along with anti-Agreement Ulster Unionist Party leader Harry West and Ulster Vanguard leader William Craig, formed the United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC) to oppose the Agreement. Its slogan was Dublin is just a Sunningdale away. Loyalists formed the Ulster Workers' Council (UWC) to mobilise loyalist workers against the Agreement, while the loyalist paramilitary groups (UDA, UVF etc.) formed the Ulster Army Council (UAC) to co-ordinate their response.

Addressing an anti-Agreement rally in January 1974, Paisley declared:"Mr Faulkner says it's 'hands across the border' to Dublin. I say if they don't behave themselves in the South, it will be shots across the border!"

On 15 May 1974, the UWC called a general strike aimed at bringing down the Agreement and the new government. A co-ordinating committee was set up to help organise the strike. It included Paisley and the other UUUC leaders, the leaders of the UWC, and the heads of the loyalist paramilitary groups. Its chairman was Glenn Barr, a high-ranking member of Ulster Vanguard and the UDA. In its first meeting, Barr arrived late and found Paisley sitting at the head of the table. Barr told him "you might be chairman of the Democratic Unionist Party but I'm chairman of the co-ordinating committee, so move over". Paisley moved from the head of the table but carried the chair away with him and the two argued over the chair itself, with Paisley eventually allowed to keep it as he claimed to need a chair with arms due to back pain.

The strike lasted fourteen days and brought Northern Ireland to a standstill. Loyalist paramilitaries helped to enforce the strike by blocking roads and intimidating workers. On 17 May, the third day of the strike, loyalists detonated four car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, in the Republic of Ireland. The bombs killed 33 civilians and injured 300, making it the deadliest attack of the Troubles, and the deadliest terrorist attack in the Republic's history. In an interview nine months before his death, Paisley said he was "shocked" by the bombings, but claimed that the Republic's government provoked the attack. The strike led to the downfall of the Agreement on 28 May.

Unionist Action Council strike
In 1977 the United Unionist Action Council (UUAC) was formed out of the UUUC. The council was chaired by Joseph Burns and included Paisley, Ernest Baird (leader of the United Ulster Unionist Movement), members of the Ulster Workers' Council, and leaders of loyalist paramilitaries including the UDA, Orange Volunteers and Down Orange Welfare. The UUAC also established its own loyalist vigilante group called the Ulster Service Corps (USC).

On 3 May 1977, the UUAC organised a general strike. It was seen by the public as "Paisley's strike", due to his prominent role in it. The main aims of the strike were to restore devolved government to Northern Ireland under a system of simple majority (i.e. unionist) rule and to force the British Government to introduce tougher security measures against the IRA. As in 1974, loyalist paramilitaries tried to enforce the strike by blocking roads, intimidating workers and attacking businesses that refused to co-operate. However, unlike in 1974, many workers refused to join the strike and the security forces were better prepared. The Ulster Service Corps set up roadblocks and carried out patrols in rural areas. Some members carried guns, although these were generally legally-held firearms. During a speech in the House of Commons, Paisley claimed to have taken part in some of these patrols and encouraged his supporters to join the group. On 10 May, Protestant bus driver Harry Bradshaw was shot dead by loyalists for working during the strike, and UDR soldier John Geddis was killed when loyalists bombed a petrol station that had stayed open. That same day, Paisley, Baird and other members of the UUAC were arrested at a roadblock outside Ballymena. Paisley was charged with obstruction of the highway and then released.

On 13 May, the strike was called off. The strike was widely seen as a failure, but Paisley—who had said he would quit politics if it failed—declared it a success and continued his career. The RUC later reported that three people had been killed by loyalists during the strike, 41 RUC officers had been injured, there had been thousands of reports of intimidation, and 115 people had been charged with offences.

Election to European Parliament
Paisley opposed the European Economic Community (EEC) but stood for election to the European Parliament to give a platform to his views and those of his supporters. In June 1979, in the first election to the European Parliament, Paisley won one of the three Northern Ireland seats. He topped the poll, with 29.8% of the first preference votes. On 17 July, Paisley interrupted the opening proceedings of the European Parliament to protest that the Union Jack outside the building was flying upside down. Louise Weiss, who presided over the Parliament, dealt with the interruption swiftly and later said of it that she was used to dealing with "recalcitrant youngsters". On 18 July, Paisley tried to interrupt Jack Lynch—then Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) and President of the European Council—as he was making a speech in the Parliament. Paisley was shouted down by other MEPs.

Paisley easily retained his seat in every European election until he stood down in 2004, receiving the highest popular vote of any British MEP (although as Northern Ireland uses a different electoral system from Great Britain for European elections, the figures are not strictly comparable).

Third Force
During 1981, Paisley attempted to create a Protestant loyalist volunteer militia—called the (Ulster) Third Force—which would work alongside the police and army to fight the IRA. At the time, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was holding talks with Taoiseach Charles Haughey, and the Irish republican hunger strike was underway.

On the night of 6 February 1981, Paisley summoned journalists to a hillside in County Antrim, where he had gathered 500 men. The men were photographed in military formation, waving what purported to be firearms certificates in the air. Paisley declared: "This is a small token of the men who are placed to devastate any attempt by Margaret Thatcher and Charles Haughey to destroy the Union". He added: "I will take full responsibility for anything these men do. We will stop at nothing."

Paisley helped organise further night-time rallies on 1 April, where large groups of men brandished more pieces of paper. They were held on hillsides near Gortin, Armagh and Newry. At Gortin, the police were attacked and two police vehicles overturned. On 16 November, Paisley addressed a large Third Force rally in Enniskillen, where hundreds of men marched in a show of strength. Paisley organised a loyalist 'Day of Action' on 23 November, to pressure the British government to take a harder line against the IRA. Rallies were held in Protestant areas of Northern Ireland and a number of businesses shut. The DUP and UUP held separate rallies at Belfast City Hall. That night, Paisley addressed a Third Force rally in Newtownards, where thousands of masked and uniformed men marched before him. He declared:"My men are ready to be recruited under the crown to destroy the vermin of the IRA. But if they refuse to recruit them, then we will have no other decision to make but to destroy the IRA ourselves!"

On 3 December, Paisley claimed that the Third Force had 15,000–20,000 members. James Prior, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, replied that private armies would not be tolerated.

In December 1981, the State Department of the United States revoked Paisley's visa, citing his "divisive rhetoric" and forcing him to cancel plans for a two-week speaking and fundraising tour in the US. He insisted the cancellation was part of a "conspiracy between the Thatcher Government and the U.S.A. Government to sell out Ulster".

Campaign against the Anglo-Irish Agreement
The Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed by the British and Irish governments on 15 November 1985, following months of talks between the two governments. The Agreement confirmed that there would be no change in the status of Northern Ireland without the consent of a majority of its citizens, and set out conditions for the creation of a power-sharing government for Northern Ireland. It also gave the Irish government an advisory role on political, legal and security matters in Northern Ireland.

Led by Paisley and UUP leader James Molyneaux, unionists mounted a major protest campaign against the Agreement, dubbed "Ulster Says No". Both unionist parties resigned their seats in the British House of Commons, suspended district council meetings, and supported a campaign of mass civil disobedience. There were strikes and mass protest rallies. On 23 November 1985, more than 100,000 people attended a rally at Belfast City Hall. The rally was addressed by Paisley and Molyneaux. In his address, Paisley famously stated:

''Where do the terrorists operate from? From the Irish Republic! Where do the terrorists return to for sanctuary? To the Irish Republic! And yet Mrs Thatcher tells us that that Republic must have some say in our Province. We say 'Never! Never! Never! Never!'

On 23 June 1986, Paisley and 21 other unionist politicians occupied the Stormont Parliament Building in protest at the Agreement, while 200 supporters protested outside and clashed with police. Paisley and the others were forcibly removed by police the next day. He shouted at police officers: "Don't come crying to me if your homes are attacked. You will reap what you sow!" During the campaign against the Agreement, loyalist militants attacked the homes of over 500 police officers, forcing 150 families to move. That evening, he addressed an Ulster Clubs rally in Larne and warned:"If the British government force us down the road to a united Ireland we will fight to the death! [...] This could come to hand-to-hand fighting in every street in Northern Ireland. We are on the verge of civil war [...] We are asking people to be ready for the worst and I will lead them." On 10 July, Paisley and deputy DUP leader Peter Robinson led 4,000 loyalists in an early morning protest in which they 'took over' and 'occupied' the town of Hillsborough in protest against the Agreement. Hillsborough Castle is where the Agreement had been signed. One month later, Robinson led a loyalist invasion of the village of Clontibret in the Republic of Ireland. Robinson was arrested and charged for his part in the incident. Paisley and many loyalist supporters travelled south to support him during his court appearance in Dundalk. Their singing of loyalist songs outside the courthouse led to rioting, causing Paisley and Robinson to lodge a formal complaint with the Foreign Office about what they said was inadequate protection.

On 10 November 1986, a large private rally was held in the Ulster Hall. At the rally, Paisley and DUP members Peter Robinson and Ivan Foster announced the formation of the Ulster Resistance Movement (URM). This was a loyalist paramilitary organisation whose purpose was to "take direct action as and when required" to bring down the Agreement and defeat republicanism. Paisley, who stood on the platform in a red beret, said "there are many like myself who'd like to see the Agreement brought down by democratic means, but wouldn't we all be fools if we weren't prepared". Other recruitment rallies were held in towns across Northern Ireland and the movement was organised into nine 'battalions'. The following year, the URM helped smuggle a large shipment of weapons into Northern Ireland, which were shared out between the URM, UVF and UDA. Most, but not all, of the weaponry, was seized by police in 1988. In 1989, URM members attempted to trade Shorts' missile blueprints for weapons from the apartheid South African regime. Following these revelations, the DUP said that it had cut its links with the URM in 1987.

On 9 December 1986, Paisley was once again ejected from the European Parliament for continually interrupting a speech by Margaret Thatcher.

Drumcree dispute
Paisley was involved in the Drumcree dispute during the late 1980s and 1990s. He supported the right of the Orange Order, a Protestant unionist fraternal organisation, to march through the Catholic part of Portadown. The Catholic residents sought to ban the yearly march from their area, seeing it as sectarian, triumphalist and supremacist. Paisley was a former member of the Orange Order and belonged to a similar Protestant brotherhood: the Apprentice Boys. He also addressed the yearly gathering of the Independent Orange Order.

On 30 March 1986, a loyalist march was banned from the Catholic district. At midnight, 3,000 loyalists gathered in the town centre. Led by Paisley, they forced their way past police and marched through the Catholic district. Residents claimed that some of the marchers were carrying guns and that police did little to stop the loyalists attacking their homes. This led to severe rioting between residents and the police.

In July 1995, residents succeeded in stopping the Orange march from entering their area. Thousands of Orangemen and loyalists engaged in a standoff with the police and army at Drumcree Church. Paisley addressed a rally at Drumcree, telling a crowd of thousands:"We will die if necessary rather than surrender! If we don't win this battle all is lost. It is a matter of life and death; it is a matter of Ulster or the Irish Republic; it is a matter of freedom or slavery!"

Afterwards, Paisley gathered a throng of Orangemen and tried to push through the police lines, but was arrested. Loyalists threw missiles at the police and tried to break through the blockade; police responded with plastic bullets. In support of the Orangeman, loyalists blocked roads across Northern Ireland, and there were attacks on Catholics and the police. The march was eventually allowed to continue through the Catholic area. As the march ended, Paisley and David Trimble held hands in the air in what appeared to be a gesture of triumph, causing considerable ill-feeling among the Catholic residents.

Campaign against the Good Friday Agreement
Paisley's DUP was initially involved in the negotiations under former United States Senator George J. Mitchell that eventually led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, but the party withdrew in protest when Sinn Féin was allowed to participate after the Provisional IRA's 1994 ceasefire. Instead, Paisley travelled to Cameroon with the documentary filmmaker Jon Ronson, filming an episode of the television series Witness called "Dr Paisley, I Presume". Paisley and his party opposed the Agreement in the referendum that followed its signing, which saw it approved by over 70% of the voters in Northern Ireland and by over 90% of voters in the Republic of Ireland.

Although Paisley often stressed his loyalty to the Crown, he accused Queen Elizabeth of being Tony Blair's "parrot" when she voiced approval of the Agreement.

The DUP fought the resulting election to the Northern Ireland Assembly, to which Paisley was elected while keeping his seats in the Westminster and European parliaments. The DUP took two seats in the multi-party power-sharing executive (Paisley, like the leaders of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Sinn Féin chose not to become a minister) but those DUP members serving as ministers (Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds) refused to attend meetings of the Executive Committee (cabinet) in protest at Sinn Féin's participation.

Paisley assumed the chairmanship of the Agriculture Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly created by the Belfast Agreement. The Minister for Agriculture, the SDLP's Bríd Rodgers, remarked that she and Paisley had a "workmanlike" relationship.

2000s: compromise and power

At the age of 78, Paisley retired from his European Parliament seat at the 2004 elections and was succeeded by Jim Allister. In September 2004, he agreed to meet Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, in his political capacity as leader of the DUP. At an early meeting with Ahern at the Irish embassy in London, he requested breakfast and asked for boiled eggs; when Ahern asked him why he had wanted boiled eggs, he quipped "it would be hard for you to poison them". Following rumours and a marked change in his appearance, it was confirmed in July 2004 that Paisley had been undergoing tests for an undisclosed illness, and in 2005 Ian Paisley Jr. confirmed that his father had been gravely ill. Paisley himself later said that he had "walked in death's shadow."

Paisley again retained his North Antrim seat in the 2005 UK general election. In 2005, he was made a Privy Counsellor, an appointment traditionally bestowed upon leaders of political parties in the British Parliament. In the October 2006 St Andrews Agreement, Paisley and the DUP agreed to new elections, and support for a new executive including Sinn Féin subject to Sinn Féin acceptance of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the successor to the Royal Ulster Constabulary. This reversed half a century of opposition to Sinn Féin, such as his comments four months previously on 12 July in Portrush, following Orange Order parades, when he said, " [Sinn Fein] are not fit to be in partnership with decent people. They are not fit to be in the government of Northern Ireland and it will be over our dead bodies if they ever get there." Sinn Féin subsequently endorsed the PSNI, and in the subsequent election Paisley and the DUP received an increased share of the vote and increased their assembly seats from 30 to 36. On Monday 26 March 2007, the date of the British Government deadline for devolution or dissolution, Paisley led a DUP delegation to a meeting with a Sinn Féin delegation led by Gerry Adams, which agreed on a DUP proposal that the executive would be established on 8 May.

On 8 May 2007 power was devolved, the Assembly met, and Paisley and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness were elected First Minister and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland.

Speaking at Stormont to an invited international audience he said, "Today at long last we are starting upon the road—I emphasise starting—which I believe will take us to lasting peace in our province." Paisley and McGuinness subsequently established a good working relationship and were dubbed the "Chuckle Brothers" by the Northern Irish media. In September 2007, he confirmed that he would contest North Antrim at the 2010 general election as well as serving the full four years as First Minister, stating "I might as well make hay while the sun shines."

In 2007, Paisley was named as "Opposition Parliamentarian of the Year" in The House Magazine Parliamentary Awards and by The Spectator as "Marathon Man of the Year." Following his January 2008 retirement as leader of the Free Presbyterian Church and pressure from party insiders, on 4 March 2008, Paisley announced that he would stand down as DUP leader and First Minister of Northern Ireland in May 2008. On 17 April, Peter Robinson was elected unopposed as leader of the DUP and succeeded Paisley as First Minister at a special sitting of the assembly on 5 June 2008. On 2 March 2010, it was announced that Paisley would step down as a Member of Parliament at that year's general election. His son Ian Paisley Jr. was elected to succeed him in the seat at the general election on 6 May 2010.

On 18 June 2010, Paisley was created a life peer as Baron Bannside, of North Antrim in the County of Antrim, and he was introduced in the House of Lords on 5 July 2010. Bannside was the Northern Ireland Parliament constituency Paisley had won in 1970; he opted not to take the title of "Lord Paisley" as his wife was already in the House as Baroness Paisley and he said that it would have implied she was "sitting not in her own right but as my wife".

Final years and death (2010–14)
In November 2011, Paisley announced to his congregation, which he had led for over 60 years, that he would retire as minister. He delivered his final sermon to a packed attendance at the Martyrs' Memorial Hall on 18 December 2011, and finally retired from his religious ministry at the age of 85, on 27 January 2012.

In February 2012, Paisley was admitted to hospital with heart problems. Jim Flanagan, editor of the Ballymena Guardian, who spoke to close family friends, said that Paisley had been able to communicate "to some degree" with family members. A year before, he had had a pacemaker fitted due to cardiac arrhythmia, during his time in the House of Lords. In late December 2013, Paisley was once again taken to hospital for "necessary tests". Ian Paisley Jr. emphasised that they were routine.

Paisley died in Belfast on 12 September 2014, aged 88. His body was buried at Ballygowan, in County Down on 15 September following a private funeral, and a public memorial for 830 invited guests was held in the Ulster Hall on 19 October 2014. A New York Times obituary reported that late in life Paisley had moderated and softened his stances against Roman Catholics but that "the legacies of fighting and religious hatreds remained."

title: Ian Paisley


text:
Ngaru

Ngaru is a mythological hero from Avaiki (Hawaiki) in the mythology of Mangaia in the Cook Islands. Ngaru's mother was Vaiare and his grandfather the great lizard Moko. His wife was the beautiful Tongatea. To prove his prowess, he battles Tikokura and the shark Tumuitearetoka, who he outwits with the aid of Moko. he later descends to the underworld and returns to the land of the living where he subsequently defeats the sky fairies and Amai-te-rangi, a sky demon.

title: Ngaru


text:
Tongatea

Tongatea may refer to:

 * Tongātea, sixteenth-century Māori chieftain of Ngāti Ruanui from southern Taranaki, New Zealand
 * Tongatea, wife of Ngaru in the mythology of Mangaia of the Cook Islands

title: Tongatea


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Ngendei (mythology)

In the mythology of Fiji, Ngendei is a fertility god who taught humanity the use of fire.

title: Ngendei (mythology)


text:
Qurai

In Fijian mythology, Qurai (Ngurai) is a god of Somosomo. He once changed himself into a rat so he could attend a meeting of the gods unseen.

title: Qurai


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Nu'u

In Hawaiian mythology, Nu'u was a man who built an ark with which he escaped a Great Flood. He landed his vessel on top of Mauna Kea on the Big Island. Nu'u mistakenly attributed his safety to the moon, and made sacrifices to it. Kāne, the creator god, descended to earth on a rainbow and explained Nu'u's mistake. The myth has been interpreted as depicting the hazards of the Oceanian environment and local peoples' ability to withstand them. Missionaries to Hawaii in the 19th century considered him analogous to Noah of the Bible.

title: Nu'u


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Oro

Oro or ORO, meaning gold in Spanish and Italian, may refer to:

Music and dance

 * Oro (dance), a Balkan circle dance
 * Oro (eagle dance), an eagle dance from Montenegro and Herzegovina
 * "Oro" (song), the Serbian entry in the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest
 * ORO, an album by Ufomammut
 * Óró – A Live Session, an album by Máire Brennan
 * Oro: Grandes Éxitos, an album by ABBA
 * Oro album, an RIAA certification for Spanish-language albums

Places

 * Oro, Estonia, a village
 * Orø, an island in Denmark
 * Örö, a Finnish island northeast of Oskarshamn, Sweden
 * 4733 ORO, a main-belt asteroid
 * Oro City, Colorado, US, a ghost town
 * Oro County, Kansas Territory, a US county from 1859 to 1861
 * Oro Moraine, Ontario, Canada, a glacial moraine
 * Oro Province, Papua New Guinea
 * Oro Bay
 * Oro-Medonte or Oro, Ontario, Canada, a township
 * Yonggwang County or Oro, North Korea
 * Oro concentration camp, a North Korean concentration camp for political prisoners
 * Oro, a place in Irepodun, Kwara, Nigeria

Sports

 * CD Oro, a football club in Jalisco, Mexico
 * Oro F.C., a semi-professional association football team from Papua New Guinea

Other uses

 * Oro (name)
 * Oro (beverage), a Peruvian soft drink
 * Oro (grape) or garganega, an Italian wine grape
 * Oro (Street Fighter), a video game character in Street Fighter III
 * 'Oro, a god in Polynesian mythology
 * Oro, a type of tequila
 * Oak Ridge Observatory or ORO, an observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts, United States
 * Open Research Online, an open-access repository of research publications
 * Oro languages
 * Orokolo language, by ISO 639-3 code

title: Oro


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Pahuanui

In Tahiti and Society Islands mythology, Pahuanui or Pahuanuiapitaaiterai is a sea monster.

title: Pahuanui


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Paikea

Paikea is a notable ancestor who originated in Hawaiki according to Māori tradition. He is particularly known to tribes with origins in the Gisborne District such as Ngāti Porou, and Ngāi Tahu. Paikea is the name assumed by Kahutia-te-rangi because he was assisted by a whale to survive an attempt on his life by his half-brother Ruatapu.

On the island of Aitutaki, he is also known as a brother of Ruatapu, but is not as famous as him. In an account, probably from the Kāti Kurī hapū of Ngāi Tahu, the family lived on Mangaia.

Ruatapu's shame
Ruatapu became offended when his father Uenuku elevated his older half-brother Kahutia-te-rangi ahead of him. When Ruatapu was about to use a sacred comb belonging to Kahutia-te-rangi, Uenuku rebuked him, pointing out that Kahutia-te-rangi was of high rank while Ruatapu was of low birth, because his mother was a slave wife.

Some tellings also say Uenuku had built a canoe for his 70 sons and set about to do their hair with sacred combs for the first voyage, or that Ruatapu was about to use Uenuku's own sacred comb rather than Kahutia's. Either way, Ruatapu is told he cannot use any sacred comb because of his heritage, and is shamed.

In other accounts, the rebuke came when Ruatapu dared to walk on the roof of Uenuku's house.

Ruatapu's revenge
Angry and ashamed at his father's disparaging comments, he lured Kahutia-te-rangi and a large number of the other noble sons of Uenuku into a canoe the next day and took them out to sea. He had hid the bailer somewhere onshore prior, and as soon as they were far enough he unplugged a preformed hole on the canoe flooring, drowning all members aboard - apart from Kahutia-te-rangi who recited an incantation invoking his ancestor Tangaroa, or the goddess Moakuramanu, to call forth a whale (usually considered to be a southern humpback whale - paikea to carry him ashore. Kahutia-te-rangi was the sole survivor of his brother's evildoing and assumed the name Paikea as a memorial of the assistance he received from the whale.

In some versions, Kahutia-te-rangi himself transformed into the whale. In some tellings Ruatapu simply slays everybody with a spear once they're out at sea - again with the exception of Paikea who takes to the oceans and is saved by the gods.

The waves of Ruatapu
The episode where Ruatapu threatens to return as the great waves of the eighth month may explain other accounts which portray Ruatapu as having invoked a great flood which destroyed Hawaiki. Such accounts or conclusions may result from Christian influence. According to Ruatapu's account in the Ngāti Porou accounts, Ruatapu shouted out to Kahutia-te-rangi that he would return to fight him: "The great waves of the eighth month, they are me! I am then approaching!" In an endnote, Reedy writes:

In the eighth month of the Māori calendar, in the early summer, large waves known as ngā tai o Rangawhenua, Rangawhenua's waves, sometimes break upon the shore on the East Coast. In this episode Ruatapu announces that in the eighth month he will take this form, and follow Paikea.

The eighth month of the Māori calendar is Kohitātea (December-January) according to Ngāi Tūhoe.

Whāngārā connection
Ngāti Konohi is the Ngāti Porou hapū that is closely associated with Whāngārā, a small settlement located between Gisborne and Tolaga Bay. Oral traditions of the hapū state that Paikea came to New Zealand from Hawaiki on the back of a whale following an event known as Te Huripureiata, a slaughter of the first born sons of Hawaiki at sea. According to tradition, the whale turned into stone, and is now the island of Whāngārā (also known as Te Toka a Rangi or Te Ana o Paikea), immediately offshore.

Kāti Kurī version
In a version probably recorded from Kaikōura, Paikea was the youngest of Uenuku's sons, and his favourite, which made the other siblings incredibly jealous of him. His brothers plot to kill him, intending to slay him out on a fishing trip and tell Uenuku that he drowned. Paikea, through feigning his sleep that night, learned of the plan, and so deliberately sunk the canoe the next day himself, killing his brothers. Paikea alone remained alive, clinging to the remains of the canoe for survival, awaiting his death. Suddenly, a tohorā came to his aid, and carried him all the way to Whāngārā.

title: Paikea


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Pakaʻa

In Hawaiian mythology, Pakaʻa is the god of the wind and the inventor of the sail.

In the legend, Pakaʻa was the child of a traveling royal named Kuanuʻuanu and a beautiful common woman named Laʻamaomao. Kuanu'uanu was summoned back to his liege Keawenuiaumi before Pakaʻa's birth. Pakaʻa was then raised by Laʻamaomao and her elder brother Maʻilou, who Pakaʻa was told was his father. Pakaʻa however questioned this, because despite his young age, he was much taller than Maʻilou.

He then went traveling with the king of Kauaʻi, Paiʻea, to the other Hawaiian Islands, taking the Gord of Laʻamaomao, which gave him control over the many winds of Hawaii.

He later served under Keawenuiaumi and taught his son Ku-a-Pakaʻa to follow in his footsteps.

title: Pakaʻa


text:
Paliuli

In Hawaiian mythology, Paliuli is the equivalent of the Garden of Eden, a legendary paradise and the home of Princess Laieikawai (Lā'i.e.-i-ka-wai). It was used for several place names, including a sugar mill owned by Henry Perrine Baldwin.

The Makawao Union Church was built on its foundation.

Literally pali uli means "green cliff" in the Hawaiian language.

In another legend, Kū and Hinawelalani had three children; Kahanaiakeakua, Paliuli and Keaomelemele. They were raised separately. Paliuli was raised by Waka in Paliuli, Puna, Hawaii island.

title: Paliuli


text:
Pere

Pere may refer to:

 * Pere, Hungary, a village in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county
 * Pärtel-Peeter Pere (born 1985), Estonian entrepreneur, urban strategist, and politician
 * Rangimārie Te Turuki Arikirangi Rose Pere (1937–2020), Māori New Zealand educationalist and spiritual leader
 * Wi Pere (1837–1915), a Māori Member of Parliament in New Zealand
 * Pere Wihongi (born 1993), New Zealand musician, voice actor, choreographer, and kapa haka performer

title: Pere


text:
Pia

Pia or PIA may refer to:

Places

 * Pia, Pyrénées-Orientales, a French commune
 * Pia, Iran, a village in Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran
 * PIA Township, a Pakistan International Airlines staff township, Pakistan
 * 614 Pia, an asteroid

People

 * Pia (given name), a feminine given name
 * Pia (surname)
 * Piá (footballer, born 1982), Brazilian footballer João Batista Inácio
 * Piá (footballer, born 1973), Brazilian football player and manager Reginaldo Revelino Jandoso
 * Pia Pounds, stage name of Ugandan recording artist Tracy Kirabo (born 1996)
 * Pia Ravenna, stage name of Finnish opera singer Hjördis Sophie Tilgmann (1894-1964)

Science and technology

 * para-Iodoamphetamine, a research chemical
 * Peripheral Interface Adapter, an integrated circuit
 * Pia mater, a layer of the meninges of the brain and spinal cord
 * Purified isophthalic acid, an aromatic dicarboxylic acid
 * Tacca leontopetaloides, a species of flowering plant also known as Pia

Aviation

 * Pacific Island Aviation, a former airline headquartered in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands
 * Pakistan International Airlines (abbreviation and ICAO designator)
 * Pearson International Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
 * General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport (IATA code and FAA location identifier), Peoria, Illinois, US
 * Peruvian International Airways, an international airline that operated from 1947 to 1949
 * Plattsburgh International Airport, NY, US
 * Penang International Airport, Penang, Malaysia

Organisations

 * Pasteur Institute of Algeria
 * Philippine Information Agency, the main development communication arm of the government
 * Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US
 * Planning Institute Australia
 * Princeton in Asia, a nonprofit organization
 * Printing Industries of America
 * Private Internet Access, a virtual private network provider
 * Puntland Intelligence Agency, Somalia

Law

 * Proprietary information agreement or non-disclosure agreement
 * Personal Information Agent, an individual authorized in dealings with third persons
 * Post-indictment arraignment, US
 * Primary Insurance Amount, in regards to benefits payable under Title II of the Social Security Act
 * Personal Insolvency Arrangement, a statutory mechanism in Ireland
 * Procurement Integrity Act, in the United States

Other uses

 * Baroudeurs de Pia XIII or Pia Donkeys, a rugby league club based in Pia, Pyrénées-Orientales, France
 * Privacy Impact Assessment, used to identify and minimize the privacy risks of new projects or policies
 * Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, an academic journal
 * PIA F.C., a football club based in Karachi, Pakistan
 * PIA Model Secondary School, a school in PIA Township, Pakistan
 * PIA Planetarium (disambiguation), three planetariums in Pakistan
 * Proto-Indo-Aryan language, a reconstructed language ancestral to the Indo-Aryan languages
 * Pia (band), a Korean rock band
 * Pia (horse), a Thoroughbred racehorse
 * Pia Carry, a lifesaving technique
 * Pia Film Festival, a Japanese film festival

title: Pia


text:
Pouakai

Pouakai or Pouākai may refer to:

 * Pouākai, a monstrous bird in Māori mythology
 * Haast's Eagle, an extinct bird of New Zealand
 * Pouakai Range, an eroded, extinct volcano on the northern flank of Mount Taranaki

title: Pouakai


text:
Pouākai

The pouākai (also spelled poukai) is a monstrous bird in Māori mythology.

Mythologies
In some of these legends, the Pouākai kills and eats humans. The myth may refer to the real but now extinct Haast's eagle: the largest known eagle species, which was able to kill an adult moa weighing up to 230 kg, and which potentially had the capability to kill a human.

History
Haast's eagles, which lived only in the east and northwest of New Zealand's South Island, did not become extinct until around two hundred years after the arrival of Māori. Eagles are depicted in early rock-shelter paintings in South Canterbury. Large amounts of the eagle's lowland habitat had been destroyed by burning by AD 1350, and it was driven extinct by overhunting, both directly (Haast's eagle bones have been found in Māori archaeological sites) and indirectly: its main prey species, nine species of moa and other large birds such as adzebills, flightless ducks, and flightless geese, were hunted to extinction at the same time.

title: Pouākai


text:
Pua Tu Tahi

In the mythology of Tahiti, Pua Tu Tahi was one of the giant monster clam of the deep in the legend of Rata.

title: Pua Tu Tahi


text:
Puna

Puna may refer to:

Americas

 * Puña, a town in the Department of Cajamarca of Peru
 * Puna, Potosí, a village in Bolivia
 * Puna, Hawaii, a district in the east-southeast portion of the Island of Hawaii
 * Puná Island, an island off the coast of southern Ecuador
 * Battle of Puná, a battle fought between Spanish conquistadors and Puná natives
 * Altiplano or Puna, a region that covers part of Bolivia, Peru, and the northern end of Argentina and Chile
 * Puna de Atacama, a plateau in the Andes

Asia

 * Pune, or Puna, a city in Maharashtra, India
 * Puna, Gujarat, a town in Gujarat, India
 * Puna, Pakistan, a village in Punjab, Pakistan

Other uses

 * Puna grassland, a type of grassland in the central part of the high Andes
 * Puna (mythology), a character in Polynesian mythology
 * Maihueniopsis or Puna, a cactus genus

title: Puna


text:
Rata

Rata may refer to:

Biology

 * Some plants of the genus Metrosideros from New Zealand, including:
 * Metrosideros albiflora (Large white rātā)
 * Metrosideros bartlettii (Bartlett's rātā or Cape Reinga white rātā)
 * Metrosideros carminea (Carmine rātā)
 * Metrosideros colensoi (Colenso's rātā)
 * Metrosideros diffusa (White rātā)
 * Metrosideros fulgens (Scarlet rātā)
 * Metrosideros parkinsonii (Parkinson's rātā)
 * Metrosideros perforata (Small white rātā)
 * Metrosideros robusta (Northern rātā)
 * Metrosideros umbellata (Southern rātā)
 * The mangosteen tree Garcinia dulcis of Indonesia
 * Rata (crab), a genus of crabs

Mythology

 * Rātā (Māori mythology)
 * Rata (Tahitian mythology)
 * Rata (Tuamotu mythology)
 * Laka, a figure in Hawaiian mythology

Places

 * Rata, New Zealand, near Hunterville
 * Tanah Rata, a town in Malaysia
 * Malaya Rata, a region of Sri Lanka
 * Maya Rata, medieval kingdom in Sri Lanka
 * Te Rata Bridge, New Zealand
 * Rata (Bug), a tributary of the river Bug in Lviv Oblast, Ukraine

Rivers in Romania

 * Rața, a tributary of the Dâmbovnic in Argeș County
 * Rața, a tributary of the Izvorul Alb in Bacău County
 * Rața, a tributary of the Lunca in Harghita County
 * Rața, a tributary of the Uz in Bacău County

Other

 * Rata (name)
 * Rață
 * Rata ("rat"), nickname of the Polikarpov I-16 fighter in the Spanish Civil War
 * Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority, earlier in Finnish Rahoitustarkastuslaitos Rata
 * TxpA-RatA toxin-antitoxin system (RNA anti-toxin A)
 * Rata Blanca, an Argentinian heavy metal band
 * Rata Blanca (album), their 1988 album
 * Rata Blanca VII, their 1997 album
 * Rata railway station, a former station on the North Island Main Trunk, New Zealand
 * Recording Arts Talent Awards, (1973-1976) a set of music awards in New Zealand, often shortened to RATA.

title: Rata


text:
Slash fiction

Slash fiction (also known as "m/m slash" or slashfic) is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex. While the term "slash" originally referred only to stories in which male characters are involved in an explicit sexual relationship as a primary plot element, it is now also used to refer to any fan story containing a romantic pairing between same-sex characters. Many fans distinguish slash with female characters as a separate genre, commonly referred to as femslash (also known as "f/f slash" or "femmeslash").

These fan-written stories are not often accepted in a work's canon, and the characters are usually not engaged in such relationships in their respective fictional universes.

History
It is commonly believed that slash fan fiction originated during the late 1960s, within the Star Trek: The Original Series fan fiction fandom, starting with "Kirk/Spock" stories generally authored by female fans of the series and distributed privately among friends. The name arises from the use of the slash symbol (/) in mentions in the late '70s of K/S (meaning stories where Kirk and Spock had a romantic [and often sexual] relationship), as compared to the ampersand (&) conventionally used for K&S or Kirk and Spock friendship fiction. For a time, both slash and K/S (for "Kirk/Spock") were used interchangeably. Slash later spread to other fan groups, first Starsky and Hutch, Blake's 7, and The Professionals, then many others, eventually creating a fandom based on the concept of slash. Many early slash stories were based on a pairing of two close friends, a "hero dyad", or "One True Pairing", such as Kirk/Spock or Starsky/Hutch; conversely, a classic pairing between foils was that of Blake/Avon from Blake's 7.

The first K/S stories were not immediately accepted by all Star Trek fans. Later, authors such as Joanna Russ studied and reviewed the phenomenon in essays and gave the genre some academic respectability. Greater subsequent tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality and increased frustration with the portrayal of gay relationships in mainstream media fed a growing desire in authors to explore the subjects on their own terms, using established media characters. Star Trek slash fiction remained important to fans, while new slash fiction grew up around other television shows, movies, and books with sci-fi or action-adventure roots.

Early slash fans in England feared that they would be arrested, because slash violated the obscenity laws there at the time.

Slash sources
From its earliest days, slash fiction has been particularly inspired by popular speculative fiction franchises, possibly because speculative fiction may lack well-developed female characters or because the speculative elements allow greater freedom to reinterpret canonical characters. However, other large bodies of slash fiction, such as Starsky and Hutch or The Professionals, are based on non-speculative sources.

Slash fiction follows popular media, and new stories are constantly produced. There is some correlation between the popularity and activity of each variety of slash fiction and those of the source of the material. Some slash fiction readers and writers tend to adhere closely to the canonical source of their fiction, while other participants may follow the slash content without being fans of the original source material itself.

Slash on the Internet
Until the Internet became accessible to the general public in the early 1990s, slash was hard to find. It was published only in fan-edited non-profit fanzines (often called only "zines"), which were usually priced just high enough to recoup printing costs, and were sold via adzines or at conventions. With the advent of the Internet, slash fiction writers created mailing lists which gradually took the place of amateur press associations (APA), and websites such as FanFiction.Net (which gradually started taking the place of zines).

Forum boards and message boards were active during the first half of the first decade of the millennium, and sites such as Angelfire, Geocities, and ProBoards were quite successful. Other venues in which slash was, and still is, published are Facebook and private groups. Much later came Archive of Our Own. As slash publishing gradually moved to the Internet, the field opened to more writers, and a greater quantity of material was published.

The Internet allowed slash authors more freedom than print: stories could include branching story lines, links, collages, song mixes, and other innovations. The Internet increased slash visibility and the number of readers, as readers were now able to access the stories from their own home at a much lower cost, since zines cost more than an Internet connection. The number of fandoms represented increased dramatically, especially those devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and police dramas. The Internet also increased the level of reader interaction, making it easier for fans to comment on stories, give episode reviews, and discuss comment on trends in slash fandom itself. Websites and fanzines dedicated to fans of The X-Files, Stargate, Harry Potter, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer became common, with tens of thousands of slash stories available.

Critical and queer attention
Slash fiction has received more academic attention than other genres of fan fiction. Slash fiction was the subject of several notable academic studies in the early 1990s, as part of the cultural studies movement within the humanities: most of these, as is characteristic of cultural studies, approach slash fiction from an ethnographic perspective and talk primarily about the writers of slash fiction and the communities that form around it. Slashers have been configured as fans who resisted culture. Some studies – for example by Italian anthropologist Mirna Ciconi – focus on the textual analysis of slash fiction itself.

Slash fiction was often ignored by queer theorists. However, slash fiction has been described as important to the LGBT community and to the formation of queer identities, as it represents a resistance to the expectation of heterosexuality. In a society in which heterosexuality is the norm and homosexuality is highly stigmatized, an online forum is sometimes the only space where young members of the LGBTQ community can be out. Young members of the community all go through a time in which they are still exploring their identity, labels, and pronouns. By writing slash fiction, queer youth can use their favorite characters and stories in order to create scenarios that allow them to explore their feelings, thoughts, and selves. Slash fiction, in this sense, offers queer youth a low-risk chance to explore who they are. They can stay anonymous while creating a world in which they can express themselves creatively and freely. However, slash fiction has also been criticized as being unrepresentative of the gay community as a whole, and as being used as a medium to express feminist frustration with popular and speculative fiction.

The predominant demographic among slash fiction readers is female, the majority of whom identify as other than heterosexual. Science fiction writer Joanna Russ (herself a lesbian), author of How to Suppress Women's Writing, is one of the first major science fiction writers to take slash fiction and its cultural and literary implications seriously. In her essay "Pornography by Women for Women, with Love," Russ argues that, in regard to the Kirk/Spock relationship, slash fiction combines both masculine and feminine traits of emotional vulnerability. Such an equal relationship, she contends, negates the power imbalance typically seen in regular fan fiction.

Definition and ambiguity
Slash fiction fandoms tend to be diverse and segregated, and each has its own rules of style, etiquette, history, and favorite stories and authors.

Slash cannot be commercially distributed due to copyright laws, and, until the 1990s, it was either undistributed or published in zines. Today, slash fiction is most commonly published on Tumblr, LiveJournal accounts and other websites online, such as Archive Of Our Own. Legal scholars promoting copyright reform sometimes use slash fiction as an example of semiotic democracy.

The term slash fiction contains several ambiguities. Due to the lack of canonical homosexual relationships in source media at the time that slash fiction began to emerge, some came to see slash fiction stories as being exclusively outside their respective canons and held that the term "slash fiction" applies only when the characters' same-sex romantic or erotic relationship about which an author writes is not part of the source's canon and that fan fiction about canonical same-sex relationships is therefore not slash. The recent appearance on screen of openly gay and bisexual characters, such as Willow and Tara in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the characters of Queer as Folk, Jack Harkness in Doctor Who, and numerous characters in Torchwood, has occasioned much additional discussion of this problem. Abiding by the aforementioned definition leaves such stories without a convenient label, so this distinction has not been widely adopted.

Some slash authors also write slash fiction which contains transgender themes and transgender/transsexual or intersex characters. As a result, the exact definition of the term has often been hotly debated within various slash fandoms. The strictest definition holds that only stories about relationships between two male partners ('M/M') constitute 'slash fiction', which has led to the evolution of the term femslash. Slash-like fiction is also written in various Japanese anime or manga fandoms but is commonly referred to as shōnen-ai or yaoi for relationships between male characters, and shōjo-ai or yuri between female characters, respectively.

Due to the increasing popularity and prevalence of slash on the Internet in recent years, some use slash as a generic term for any erotic fan fiction, whether it depicts heterosexual or homosexual relationships. This has caused concern for other slash writers, who believe that, while it can be erotic, slash is not, by definition, so, and that defining all erotic fiction as slash makes such fiction unsuitable for potential underage readers of homoromantic fan fiction. In addition, a number of journalists writing about the fan fiction phenomenon in general seem to believe that all fan fiction is slash, or at least erotic in character. Such definitions fail to distinguish between erotic and romantic slash, and between slash, het (works focusing primarily on heterosexual relationships) and gen (works which do not include a romantic focus).

The slash mark itself (/), when put between character's names, has come to mean a shorthand label for a romantic relationship, regardless of whether the pairing is heterosexual or homosexual, romantic or erotic.

Slash and the original media sources
For many people, slash is a controversial subject. In addition to the legal issues associated with traditional fan fiction, some people believe that it tarnishes established media characters to portray them in a way which was never illustrated canonically. But official disapproval of slash, specifically, is hard to find. As early as 1981, Lucasfilm has issued legal notices to fans who wrote sexually explicit stories. J. K. Rowling/Warner Brothers have sent cease and desist letters referencing "sexually explicit" writings on the web, though Rowling approves the writing of fan fiction in general, posting links to fan fiction on her website and openly acknowledging slash fiction while maintaining that pairings such as those between Harry/Draco and Harry/Snape are non-canonical.

Some media creators seem downright slash friendly. In the Angel DVD commentary for "A Hole in the World", Joss Whedon, the creator of Angel, said, "Spike and Angel...they were hanging out for years and years and years. They were all kinds of deviant. Are people thinking they never...? Come on, people! They're open-minded guys!" as well as Spike saying, "Angel and me have never been intimate. Except that one..." to Illyria in the episode "Power Play." Renaissance Pictures invited femslash author Melissa Good to pen scripts for Xena: Warrior Princess. Some people say they see similar evidence of such relationships in other shows such as Smallville, Supernatural and Due South.

Due South's fandom was one of the first to go online, after the show debuted in 1994. In 1999 Due South creator Paul Haggis participated in a question-and-answer panel with an online Due South newsgroup. The newsgroup asked Haggis if he had a problem with fans seeing the characters he created (Detective Ray Vecchio and Constable Benton Fraser) as being in love with each other and having a closeted relationship. Haggis replied, "Absolutely no problem at all. If ever two people loved each other, it's Ray and Fraser."

Furthermore, the YouTubers Daniel Howell and Phil Lester (Daniel Howell and amazingphil) are well known for being very accepting of slash fiction and even wrote some fanfiction about themselves, which was featured in their book The Amazing Book is Not on Fire. In addition, their stage show, The Amazing Tour is Not on Fire, included a section called Fanfiction Live.

In the episode "The Monster at the End of This Book" of the TV show Supernatural, the main characters encounter fictional representations of themselves in a series of books. They find the online fandom, and comment about their activities including the writing of slash fanfiction. This is often referred to by fans of Supernatural as Wincest, based on the characters' surname (Winchester) and the fact that they are brothers (incest).

The revival of Doctor Who led by the openly gay writer Russell T Davies has also seen nods towards the slash fans beyond the omnisexual Captain Jack Harkness and other characters from the spin-off Torchwood. Many fans see exchanges between the Doctor and the Master (played in the new series by John Simm, whose Life On Mars character Sam Tyler is also the subject of a lot of slash fiction) as indicative of a previous relationship, or current attraction. At one point the Master says to the Doctor "I like it when you use my name", and in a Children in Need special, the Tenth Doctor tells the Fifth, after being asked whether the Master still has "that rubbish beard", "No, no beard this time. Well, a wife." – which fans point to as a reference to gay men marrying a woman for public respectability, the wife being referred to as "a beard". The term for shows that seem to be giving material for slash writers to use is "pre-slashed", sometimes "pre-slashed for your convenience".

Conventions
Several slash conventions run throughout the year and across the globe, mostly in the United States, including Escapade in California, REVELcon in Texas, Connexions in Maryland, MediaWest*Con in Michigan, CON.TXT in Washington, D.C., Con*Strict in Nevada, Connotations in England, Zebracon in Illinois, Yaoi-Con in California, Bascon in California, and others.

Terminology
Slash fiction has created and appropriated words to denote peculiarities found within the fandom. "Gayfic" is sometimes used to refer to stories focusing on gay male relationships, and "femslash" or "f/f" used to indicate that a work features female characters in slash relationships.

Slash fiction, like other fan fiction, sometimes borrows the MPAA film rating system to indicate the amount of sexual content in the story. Not all slash fiction has explicit sexual content – the interaction between two characters can be as innocent as holding hands or a chaste kiss, or even contain nothing but unfulfilled yearning; stories may be labeled "UST" for "unresolved sexual tension". Some sites require all stories to be rated and have warnings attached, often by using a beta reader.

The term no lemon is sometimes used to indicate fan fiction stories without explicit sexual content. Anything with explicit content, especially with erotic scenes without accompanying romantic scenes, may be labeled "lemon". The term lemon arose from the anime/yaoi fandoms, referring to a hentai anime series, Cream Lemon. The term squick is most often used as a warning to refer to a reader's possible negative reaction to scenes in the text (often sexual) that some might find offensive or distressing, such as those including incest, BDSM, rape, "mpreg" (male pregnancy), gender swapping, and torture. The term originated in the Usenet newsgroup alt.sex.bondage in 1991. Squicks are often listed as a warning in the header of a fanfiction story.

The term "slasher" is used for someone who creates slash fiction, and the term "slashy" is used to mean "homoerotic". "Slashy moments" are those events in the canonical storyline which slashers interpret as homoerotic, which in turn form the slashers' depiction of the characters in slash fiction.

Femslash
Femslash or femmeslash is a subgenre of slash fiction which focuses on romantic and/or sexual relationships between female fictional characters. Typically, characters featured in femslash are heterosexual in the canonical universe; however, similar fan fiction about lesbian characters are commonly labeled as femslash for convenience. The term is generally applied only to fanworks based on Western fandoms; the nearest anime/manga equivalents are more often called yuri and shōjo-ai fanfiction. Femslash is also known as "f/f slash", "femmeslash", and "saffic", the last term blending the words Sapphic and fiction.

There is less femslash than there is slash based on male couples – it has been suggested that heterosexual female slash authors generally do not write femslash, and that it is rare to find a fandom with two sufficiently engaging female characters. Janeway/Seven is the main Star Trek femslash pairing, as only they have "an on-screen relationship fraught with deep emotional connection and conflict". Although it is debated whether fanfiction about canonical lesbians such as Willow and Tara of Buffy the Vampire Slayer counts as "slash", their relationship storylines are more coy than heterosexual ones, which entices Willow/Tara femslash authors to fill in the gaps in the known relationship storyline. It is "relatively recently" that male writers have begun writing femslash.

Another suggestion in which there is less femslash is its lack of strong female characters in media. TV shows are heavily skewed toward the portrayal of men, with only two notable predominant female TV shows: Xena: Warrior Princess and Orange is the New Black. In these two cases, because there is an overwhelming number of strong female characters, femslash is much more popular. Otherwise, shows with a skew towards men are more popular, as women portrayed in these shows are weaker supporting characters.

Chanslash
Chanslash is the portrayal of underage characters in sexual situations in slash fiction. The prefix chan most likely comes from the Japanese name suffix used as a term of endearment toward children or women. It may be a nod towards yaoi fandoms, in which underage pairings are more commonplace. Owners of the intellectual property rights to characters in this type of slash are often unhappy with chanslash because of the potential legal ramifications and concern over negatively affecting the popularity of the character. Some studios owning the rights to slashed characters have issued cease and desist orders in the past as a result of this type of slash. Chanslash is also called shotacon (abbreviated as "shouta" or "shota") when dealing with anime fanfiction.

Real person slash
Real person slash (RPS), also a subgenre of real person fiction, involves taking a celebrity's public image and creating slash stories with them. Real person slash gained popularity with the 1990s rise of boy bands in the pop music industry. In the Supernatural fandom, slash fans who were uncomfortable with shipping the two main brother characters moved into writing and reading Jsquared/J2 fic (slash involving the lead actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles). This led to the phrase "Supernatural fandom – where RPS is the moral high ground". Though increasingly common, RPS is considered a potential "squick" for slash readers. In addition, the use of celebrities in fictional, sexual stories remains controversial. Journals including RPS often include disclaimers that explain their true fictional nature. Henry Jenkins says that RPS may be "troubling" to the old guard of slash. Fans of real person slash state that the personas presented by the common figures of RPS such as boy bands, celebrities, athletes and pro wrestlers are "largely manufactured" for the pleasure of female fans, "so why not just run with them?"

Reverse slash
Reverse slash is a term used for fanfic without any sexual content, or very little sexual content, compared to the canon. The term is believed to have originated when non-sexual fanfic based on the Anita Blake series began to circulate. Fanfic without sexual content can also be referred to as 'genfic', short for general fiction, non-romantic in nature.

Original slash
Original slash stories are those that contain male/male content, based on perceived homoerotic subtext between fictitious characters. This can be sourced from a variety of media content, such as manga, TV shows, movies and books amongst others. These works are now generally published online and use the same forms of rating, warnings and terminology that is commonly used by slash writers.

Slash has a different sensibility to gay fiction, probably because most slash readers are female and in a closed community that shares their tastes, which makes most stories in the genre centered into emotional relationships, even as sex is very prominent.

A different variety of homoerotic amateur fiction is original yaoi, from the manga/anime genre yaoi (boy-love), popularized in the West by subbers and scanlations.

Both (original slash and original yaoi) are terms that are considered somewhat controversial by some slash fans since they feel that the term 'slash' can only refer to works of fan fiction and not original works.

Omegaverse
Omegaverse is a subgenre of speculative erotic fiction that originated as a subgenre of slash fiction. In Omegaverse works, humans are either dominant "alphas", neutral "betas" or submissive "omegas", and they exhibit sexual traits and behaviors based on those of wolves or other wild animals. The first Omegaverse slash fiction was written about the TV series Supernatural in the 2010s. The subgenre has become so popular that it evolved into a genre of original erotic fiction in its own right, independent from its roots in fan fiction. The earliest commercial publication using omegaverse tropes is With Caution by J.L. Langley. The trope gained rapid popularity in Japan in the mid-2010s through fan dōjinshi and has become a subgenre of yaoi works. In Japanese works, Omegaverse also introduces a caste system, where Alphas are depicted as the upper class elites while Omegas are at the bottom tier and face discrimination. Omegas can get pregnant in spite of being male.

Slash art
In addition to fiction, fans also create artwork depicting media characters in same-sex relationship contexts. Initially, slash art was mostly used in covers and interior pages of fanzines, and sold to other fans at media and slash conventions.

Slash manips
In recent years, more slash artwork has used widespread availability of imaging software, like Adobe Photoshop, to manipulate photographs of their subjects to produce romantic or erotic images (often referred to as slash manips  ) which imply a homosexual relationship, either as static pictures or animated GIFs. When the manipulated photos depict real people instead of media characters, the creation of these images can be as contentious as real person slash, and for many of the same reasons.

Slash vidding
Vidding has existed in media fandom since the 1980s, and slash vidding is still a popular movement within vidding. Slash vidders take clips of characters (generally ones not written as gay, or in a relationship together), and through juxtaposition, song choice, and other techniques, portray a slash relationship on screen. Vidding used to be very guarded within the slash community, among other reasons, because the songs used in videos are copyrighted. When vidders started putting their videos online, their sites were routinely password protected, etc.

Today, there are thousands of vids, and vid-like projects, available on YouTube and other video sites. Many of these vids are made by slash (and gen) fans, but enormous numbers of them are made by people who have never heard of media fandom. The previous secrecy of vidding fans has come to seem unnecessary, but there is still a community ethos of not freely giving out a vidder's URL.

Slash roleplay
Sometimes referred to as yaoi (male/male) or yuri (female/female), roleplay involving same-sex characters in relationships can be either with canonical or original character creations. There are slash roleplaying based on Dungeons & Dragons, Supernatural, Naruto, World of Warcraft and Dragon Age, among others.

There are many mediums used to approach the act of internet roleplaying including message boards, AIM, IRC and specially created chatrooms on servers. Some roleplay is very strict and requires players to be able to type a paragraph or two per each turn, some use strict guidelines involving roleplay dice and some are combinations of all of the above.

Not every roleplay community accepts slash, however, and some people specifically disallow the use of it in their community as not being canonical or simply the operators do not care for slash.

title: Slash fiction


text:
Raka

Raka may refer to:

Places

 * Raka, Burkina Faso
 * Raka, Tibet
 * Raka, Krško, a village in the Municipality of Krško, southeastern Slovenia
 * Raka, Järva County, village in Ambla Parish, Järva County, Estonia
 * Raka, Rapla County, village in Rapla Parish, Rapla County, Estonia
 * Raqqa, a city in Syria

Mythology and religion

 * Raka'ah, one unit of Islamic prayer, or Salaa
 * Raka (mythology), a deity in Cook Islands mythology
 * Raka-maomao, a deity in Māori mythology
 * Raka, in Hindu mythology, a wife of Dhata

Other uses

 * Rajdhani College, University of Delhi, India
 * Raka, an epic poem by Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk Louw
 * Raka, a 2019 EP by Golden Features and the Presets
 * Raka, a fictional villain in the 1960 Indian film Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai, played by Pran
 * Raka, an antagonist in the 2019 Indian animated series Chacha Chaudhary

title: Raka


text:
Raka-maomao

Raka-maomao or Rakamaomao, in Māori mythology, is a god of wind. He is the god of ordinary winds, in contrast to Tāwhirimātea, who is the god of tempests. To the Waitaha tribe of the South Island, Rakamaomao was the group of winds that blew from the south and north.

Raka-maomao is equivalent to Ra‘a (Society Islands), Raka (Cook Islands), La'a Maomao (Hawaii) and Fa'atiu (Samoa).

title: Raka-maomao


text:
Rongomai

In Māori mythology, Rongomai refers to several entities:

 * a deity by whose assistance Haungaroa traveled from Hawaiki to New Zealand as she went to tell Ngātoro-i-rangi that he had been cursed by Manaia.
 * a being in whale form which attacked and almost wiped out the war-party of Maru.
 * a god of comet.
 * the war god of the tribes in the Lake Taupō region.
 * a celebrated demi-god ancestor of some iwi. He went with Ihinga and others of his friends to visit the dread Miru in her abode in the underworld. There they were taught incantations, witchcraft, religious songs, dances, and certain games. One of Rongomai's men was caught, and was claimed by Miru in sacrifice, as payment for having imparted the sacred knowledge, but Rongomai and the others got safely back to the world again.
 * the chief of the Mahuhu canoe in its voyage from Hawaiki to New Zealand. He was drowned when the canoe overturned, and his body was eaten by the araara fish, since held sacred by the Ngā Puhi and Rarawa iwi, who claim descent from Rongomai. Until they embraced Christianity, those iwi would not eat the araara (or trevally, Caranx georianus).
 * a meteor or comet, seen in the full light of day when in comparatively recent times, the Ngāti Hau tribe were besieging the fortress named Rangiuru at Ōtaki, occupied by the Ngāti Awa.Ronngomai can mean princess or sunshine said in many Māori dictionaries and the big book of names.

title: Rongomai


text:
Ru

Ru, ru, or RU may refer to:

Russia

 * Russia (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code)
 * Russian language (ISO 639 alpha-2 code)
 * .ru, the Internet country code top-level domain for Russia

China

 * Rù (入), the entering tone in Chinese language phonetics
 * Rú (儒), a Chinese language term for Confucianism
 * Ru (surname) (茹), a Chinese surname
 * Ru River (汝), in Henan, China
 * Ru ware, a type of Chinese pottery

Educational institutions

 * Rajasthan University in Rajasthan, India
 * Radboud University Nijmegen, in Nijmegen, Netherlands
 * Radford University, in Virginia, USA
 * Rai University in Gujarat, India
 * Rajshahi University in Bangladesh
 * Rama University in India
 * Ramkhamhaeng University in Thailand
 * Regis University in Colorado, USA
 * Reykjavík University Iceland
 * Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa
 * Rockefeller University in New York, USA
 * Rockhurst University in Missouri, USA
 * Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois, USA
 * Rowan University in New Jersey, USA
 * Ruse University in Bulgaria
 * Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA
 * Ryerson University, the former name of Toronto Metropolitan University in Ontario, Canada

Science and technology

 * Resource Unit, a unit used in 802.11 wireless
 * Rack unit, a measurement of the height electronic equipment installed in 19-inch racks
 * Ruthenium, symbol Ru, a chemical element
 * The "backwards-R U" Recognized Component Mark of Underwriters Laboratories

Transport

 * AirBridge Cargo (IATA airline code)
 * Renigunta Junction railway station (Indian Railways station code)

Other uses

 * Reino Unido, the Spanish name of the United Kingdom
 * Royaume-Uni, the French name of the United Kingdom
 * Regno Unito, the Italian name of the United Kingdom
 * Ru (kana), the romanisation of the Japanese kana る and ル
 * Ru (cuneiform), a sign in cuneiform writing
 * Ru (novel), a novel by Canadian novelist Kim Thúy
 * Ru (film), a film by Canadian director Charles-Olivier Michaud based on Kim Thúy's novel
 * Ruanda-Urundi, former German and Belgian colony (today Rwanda and Burundi)
 * Rückkehr unerwünscht "return unwanted", a Nazi designation for concentration camp prisoners who were forbidden to be released
 * RuPaul, an American drag queen, actor, and television personality
 * Rugby union

title: Ru


text:
Rua

Rua means 'street' in Portuguese and Galician language, and is the number 'two' in several Polynesian languages. It may refer to:

Music

 * Rua (band), a New Zealand Celtic fusion band
 * Rua (Clann Zú album), 2003
 * Rua (Moana and the Moahunters album), 1998
 * The Rua, a family pop rock band from Windsor, England

People

 * Rua Kenana Hepetipa (1869–1937), Maori self-proclaimed prophet
 * Rua Tipoki (born 1975), rugby union player
 * Rugila or Rua (died 434), warlord who united the Huns under his sole kingship by 432
 * Rua Van Horn (1892–1978), American educator, federal official

Surname

 * Antonio de la Rúa (born 1974), Argentine lawyer
 * Fernando de la Rúa (1937–2019), Argentine president
 * Jorge de la Rúa (1942–2015), Argentine government official
 * Matt Rua (born 1977), rugby league player
 * Maurício Rua (born 1981), Brazilian mixed martial arts fighter
 * Michele Rua (1837–1910), co-founder of the Salesian Order
 * Murilo Rua (born 1980), Brazilian mixed martial arts fighter
 * Ryan Rua (born 1990), American professional Major League Baseball player

Other uses

 * Rua (Moimenta da Beira), a Portuguese parish in the municipality of Moimenta da Beira
 * CLG Eoghan Rua, a Gaelic Athletic Association club

title: Rua


text:
Rūaumoko

In Māori mythology, Rūaumoko (also known as Rūamoko) is the god of earthquakes, volcanoes and seasons. He is the youngest son of Ranginui (the Sky father) and Papatūānuku (the Earth mother) (commonly called Rangi and Papa).

Ruaumoko Patera, named after this god, is one of many paterae (shallow craters) on Io, one of Jupiter's moons.

Origin story
After Rangi and Papa were separated by their sons, Rangi cried, and his tears drenched the land. To stop this, the sons decided to turn Papa face down, so Rangi and Papa could no longer see each other's sorrow. Rūaumoko was at his mother's breast when this happened, so he was carried into the world below. He was given fire for warmth die by Tama-kaka, and his movements below the earth cause earthquakes and volcanoes. Another version tells that he remains in Papa's womb, with some variants saying it was to keep Papa company after her separation from Rangi. In these versions, his movements in the womb cause earthquakes.

The earthquakes Rūaumoko causes are in turn responsible for the change of seasons. Depending on the time of year, the earthquakes cause the warmth, or cold, of Papa to come to the surface of the land, resulting in the warming, or cooling of the Earth.

Rūaumoko pulls on the ropes that control the land causing the shimmering effect of hot air, called haka of Tane-rore, and in some versions, earthquakes.

Rūaumoko is also known as husband of his niece Hine-nui-te-pō, the goddess of death and a daughter of Tāne.

In some traditions, Rūaumoko creates the Auckland volcanic field alongside his brother Mataaho, in retribution for a war between two rival tribes of patupaiarehe.

title: Rūaumoko


text:
Savali

In Polynesian mythology (Samoa), Savali is the messenger of Tagaloa.

This name was given to the Samoan-language official gazette launched by the Administration of German Samoa in 1905, pursued during New Zealand administration (1914-1962) and still on print nowadays in independent Samoa.

title: Savali