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Prefect

Prefect (from the Latin praefectus, substantive adjectival form of praeficere: "put in front", meaning in charge) is a magisterial title of varying definition, but essentially refers to the leader of an administrative area.

A prefect's office, department, or area of control is called a prefecture, but in various post-Roman empire cases there is a prefect without a prefecture or vice versa. The words "prefect" and "prefecture" are also used, more or less conventionally, to render analogous words in other languages, especially Romance languages.

Ancient Rome
Praefectus was the formal title of many, fairly low to high-ranking officials in ancient Rome, whose authority was not embodied in their person (as it was with elected Magistrates) but conferred by delegation from a higher authority. They did have some authority in their prefecture such as controlling prisons and in civil administration.

Feudal times
Especially in Medieval Latin, præfectus was used to refer to various officers—administrative, military, judicial, etc.—usually alongside a more precise term in the vernacular (such as Burggraf, which literally means Count of the Castle in the German language).

Ecclesiastical

The term is used by the Catholic Church, which based much of its canon law terminology on Roman law, in several different ways.
 * The Roman Curia has the nine Prefects for the Congregations as well as the two of the Papal Household and of the Economic Affairs of the Holy See.
 * The title also attaches to the heads of some Pontifical Council (central departments of the Curia), who are principally titled president, but in addition there is sometimes an additional ex officio position as a prefect. For example, the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue is also the prefect of the Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims.
 * Traditionally these Curial officials are Cardinals, hence often called "Cardinal-Prefect" or "Cardinal-President". There was a custom that those who were not cardinals when they were appointed were titled "Pro-Prefect" or "Pro-President". Then these officials would be appointed prefect or president after their elevation to the Sacred College. However, since 1998, this custom has fallen into disuse.
 * A Prefect Apostolic is a cleric (sometimes a Titular Bishop, but normally a priest) in charge of an apostolic prefecture, a type of Roman Catholic territorial jurisdiction fulfilling the functions of a diocese, usually in a missionary area or in a country that is anti-religious, such as the People's Republic of China, but that is not yet given the status of regular diocese. It is usually destined to become one in time.

Academic
In the context of schools, a prefect is a pupil who has been given certain responsibilities in the school, similar to the responsibilities given to a hall monitor or safety patrol members.

 * In some British, Irish and Commonwealth schools (especially but not exclusively private schools), prefects, usually students in fifth to seventh years (depending on how many years the school in question has), have considerable power. They were once allowed to administer school corporal punishment in some schools (now abolished in the UK and several other countries). They usually answer to a senior prefect known as the Head of School or Head Prefect or Head Boy or Head Girl or Senior Prefect. Larger schools may have a hierarchical structure with a team of prefects, a team of senior prefects, and a Head Boy and Girl. The Head Prefect may also be the School Captain if that is an appointed position in the school. This system is also practised in Hong Kong, a former British colony. Today, prefect roles in the U.K. are largely perfunctory and are mostly used to reward the better students in the year groups that qualify for prefect roles. Duties tend to be limited to door monitoring during break and representing the school at various extra-curricular events.
 * In India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia, prefects are student leaders in primary and secondary schools, often along the lines of other Commonwealth schools, but with superior powers. The prefect systems in these countries have changed little from when they were under the British, as the present governments have seen them as effective.
 * In Bangladesh, Prefects are the leaders in Army based educational institutions namely Cadet Colleges.
 * In Mexico, Prefects (in Spanish, prefecta/prefecto) is an adult head of a grade of a school, a US equivalent would be a dean.
 * In Sweden, a prefect (prefekt) is the head of a university department.
 * In Jesuit and other Catholic schools this title was given formerly to members of the faculty, a prefect of discipline in charge of student attendance, general order and such, and a prefect of studies in charge of academic issues.

Many college preparatory boarding schools utilize the position of prefect as a high student leadership position.

Modern sub-national administration

 * In Albania a prefect (Prefekti) is the State's representative in a region (qark). His agency is called the Prefektura. Albania has 12 prefects in 12 prefectures, appointed by the Prime Minister of Albania and the Government.
 * In France the prefect is a top-ranking public servant who belongs to the so-called Corps préfectoral. The function was created on 17 February 1800 by Napoléon Bonaparte after his successful coup d'état of 9 November 1799 which made him head of state with the title Premier Consul. The prefect's role at that time (until the reform of the function in the 1980s) was to be the top representative of the central government as well as the chief administrator in a department (which can be compared to a county in most English-speaking nations) . The prefect's office is known as the prefecture (prefecture). Sub-prefects operate as assistants in the arrondissements (departmental subdivisions).

In the 1980s, under the presidency of François Mitterrand (1981–1995), a fundamental change in the role of the prefect (and sub-prefect) took place. The previously extremely centralized French (Fifth) Republic was gradually decentralized by the creation of administrative regions and the devolution of central state powers into regions, departments, and communes (municipalities). New elected authorities were created (e.g. the Conseils régionaux) in order to administer the subdivisional entities (collectivités territoriales) of the nation (law from 2 March 1982). The changes have gradually altered the function of the prefect, who is still the chief representative of the state in a department, but without the omnipotent function of chief administrator. Instead, the prefect has acquired the non-titular roles of chief controller of regional, departmental, and communal public accounts, and of chief inspector of good (i.e. law-abiding) governance of the authorities of the respective territorial entities.

A Préfet maritime is a French Admiral (Amiral) who is commissioned to be the chief commander of a Zone maritime (i.e. a section of the French territorial waters and the respective shores).

In Paris, the Préfet de police (prefect of police) is the head of the city's police under the direct authority of the Ministre de l'Intérieur (Minister of the Interior), which makes him unique as usually in French towns and cities the chief of the local police is subordinate to the mayor, who is the local representative of the minister in police matters.

 * In Italy, a prefect (prefetto) is a high-ranking public servant who belongs to the so-called Corpo prefettizio and is the State's representative in a province. His office is called Prefettura – Ufficio Territoriale del Governo. The prefects have political responsibility and coordinate the local head of the State Police (Questore), who has technical responsibility to enforce laws when public safety is threatened. Similar offices already existed under various names before Italian unification (1861) (e.g., in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies it was named "intendente"); in Northern Italy, it was imported from France during the Napoleonic occupation (1802). Its current form dates back to 1861, when the government of Bettino Ricasoli extended the Kingdom of Sardinia's administrative system to the entire country. In the early years the job entailed a more vigorous and vigilant application of central state authority, by enforcing regulations and dispositions in the fields of education, public works, public health, and the nomination of mayors and provincial deputies. He also plays the role of intermediary between the government and municipalities and other local governments.
 * In some Spanish-speaking states in Latin America, following a French-type model introduced in Spain itself, prefects were installed as governors; remarkably, in some republics (like Peru) two levels were constructed from the French model: a prefecture and a department, the one being only part of the other.
 * In Greece a prefect (nomarhis, νομάρχης) used to be the elected head of one of the 54 prefectures (nomarhies, νομαρχίες), which were second-level administrative divisions, between the first-level Peripheries (periferies, περιφέρειες) and the third-level Municipalities (demoi, δήμοι), until their abolition with the Kallikratis reform in 2010. The Prefectural elections (popular ballot) would be held every four years along with the Municipal elections. The last Prefectural elections in Greece were held in October 2006.
 * In Romania, a prefect (prefect) is the appointed governmental representative in a county (județ) and in the Municipality of Bucharest, in an agency called prefectură. The prefect's role is to represent the national government at local level, acting as a liaison and facilitating the implementation of National Development Plans and governing programmes at local level.
 * In Québec, a warden (French: préfet) is the head of a regional county municipality.
 * In Brazil, a prefect (prefeito) is the elected head of the executive branch in a municipality. Larger cities, such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, etc., also have sub-prefects, appointed to their offices by the elected prefect.
 * In Georgia, the nation in the Caucasus region, a prefect (პრეფექტი) was the head of the executive branch in a municipality, appointed by the President of Georgia from 1990 to 1992.
 * In Iran, a prefect (بخشدار) is responsible for the administration of a sector in Iran's political and administrative system.
 * In China the leader of prefecture is called administration-commissioner(行署专员). Leaders of leagues (the Inner Mongolian equivalent) are simply league-leaders(盟长). Both are equivalent to prefects. But far more common is prefecture-level cities (municipalities are equivalent: just there are no province above them), who have shizhang(市长)s which are often misleadingly translated as mayors, but they are always responsible for the full prefecture rather than just the urban districts or actual urban core, and are thus prefects, not mayors(unless no country-level division exists in the prefecture, such as Dongguan, in which case he/she is prefect-mayor). If the urban area belongs to only one urban district, the head of the district is the effective mayor, otherwise nobody is (like Paris during the time of Department of Seine). In all cases actual leadership is exercised through Party Committee.

Police
In Paris, the Prefect of Police (Préfet de police) is the officer in charge of co-ordinating the city's police forces (see above under "France"). The local police in Japan are divided among prefectures too. Also, in several countries of Latin America, the rank of prefect is still in use. In the Investigations Police of Chile (Policia de Investigaciones de Chile) the rank of prefect is reserved for the highest-ranking officers. On the other hand, in Argentina the Argentine Federal Penitentiary Service (Servicio Penitenciario Argentino) also use the rank of prefect as a high-ranking officer.

Coast guard
Several countries of Latin America use the term "prefecture" (prefectura) to denominate a coast guard service, whether these are independent organizations or as a part of a navy. The Argentine Naval Prefecture is a federal coast guard service of Argentina independent from the Argentine Navy. On the other hand, the National Naval Prefecture of Uruguay has similar duties to the ones of a regular coast guard but it is subordinated to the National Navy of Uruguay.

title: Prefect


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Jean-Pierre Raffarin

Jean-Pierre Raffarin (born 3 August 1948) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 6 May 2002 to 31 May 2005.

He resigned after France's rejection of the referendum on the European Union draft constitution. However, after Raffarin resigned, he said that his decision was not based on the outcome of the vote. Opinion polls following his resignation suggested that Raffarin was one of France's least popular Prime Ministers since the Fifth Republic was established in 1958. However, according to the book France: 1815–2003, written by Martin Evans and Emmanuel Godin, Raffarin was "a remarkably popular Prime Minister" despite his ability "to state the obvious and to make empty statements".

He was also Vice President of the Senate from 2011 to 2014.

Early life
Born 3 August 1948, Raffarin grew up in Poitiers, the son of a prominent national figure: his father Jean Raffarin was vice-minister of Agriculture in the government of Pierre Mendes-France (1954–1955). He studied law at Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas and later graduated from the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris. He started his professional career in marketing.

In the 1970s, his first political commitment was in the association of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's young supporters. Defining himself as a "giscardien", he joined the staff of Lionel Stoléru, Secretary of state for Manual Workers and Immigration, and the Republican Party, the liberal-conservative component of the centre-right confederation the Union for French Democracy (UDF).

Political career
In the 1980s, he started a career in local politics in Poitou-Charentes region. With the support of René Monory, the local political leader, he took the chair of the regional council in 1988. Seven years later, he was elected senator of Vienne département.

Governmental functions

 * Prime Minister : 2002–2005.
 * Minister of Small and Medium Enterprises, Commerce and Craft : 1995–1997.

Electoral mandates

European Parliament

 * Member of European Parliament : 1989–1995 (Became minister in 1995). Reelected in 1994.

Senate of France

 * Senator of Vienne : Elected in 1995, but he stays minister / 1997–2002 (Became Prime minister in 2002) / Re-elected in 2004, but he stays Prime minister / Since 2005. Elected in 1995, re-elected in 1997, 2004, 2005, 2008.

Regional Council

 * President of the Regional Council of Poitou-Charentes : 1988–2002 (Resignation). Re-elected in 1992, 1998.
 * Vice-President of the Regional Council of Poitou-Charentes : 2002–2004.
 * Regional councillor of Poitou-Charentes : 1986–2004. Reelected in 1992, 1998.

Municipal Council

 * Deputy-mayor of Chasseneuil-du-Poitou : 1995–2001.
 * Municipal councillor of Chasseneuil-du-Poitou : 1995–2001.
 * Municipal councillor of Poitiers : 1977–1995. Re-elected in 1983, 1989.

Political functions
 * Vice-President of the Union for a Popular Movement : Since 2007.

In Government
During the 1995 presidential campaign, while most UDF politicians supported Édouard Balladur, he chose the winning candidacy of Jacques Chirac. In return, he was nominated Minister of Small and Medium-sized Companies, Commerce and Craft Industry in Alain Juppé's cabinet (1995–1997).

At the same time, the pro-Chirac UDF members founded the Popular Party for French Democracy. Then, he returned in the Republican Party, became Liberal Democracy (DL) in 1997. He was vice-president of DL until 2002.

Prime Minister
During the 2002 presidential campaign, he advocated the union of the right behind the incumbent President Chirac. After his re-election, Chirac wished to give a sign of political renewal. Furthermore, elected in a special second round by a majority of left-wing voters, he searched for a moderate to lead the cabinet and the June 2002 legislative campaign. Raffarin participated in the formation of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). He criticized the American-led intervention in Iraq.

His political policies combined authority and moderate economical liberalism – that is, the support of laissez-faire economic policies. In 2003 he launched reforms of the public retirement scheme and of decentralisation, which led to many strikes. During the summer of 2003 the country experienced an unusual heat wave which caused the death of nearly 15,000 people. The perceived late reaction of the government was blamed on his administration. In 2004 he began a reform of the French state-run health-care system.

Raffarin's governments were known for their internal quarrels with various ministers taking opposite positions in public. The alleged lack of authority of the Prime Minister was mocked by the media.

On 28 March 2004 the ruling UMP party suffered an important defeat during the regional elections, with all but one région out of 22 of mainland France going to the opposition (PS, PCF, Les Verts). This was generally interpreted, including by Raffarin himself in his post-election speech, as "a sign of distrust against the government from the electorate". On 30 March 2004 Jean-Pierre Raffarin tendered the resignation of his government to president Jacques Chirac, who immediately re-appointed him prime minister, with the delegation to form a new government. This major cabinet reshuffle removed some of its most controversial ministers like Luc Ferry (education) or Jean-François Mattei (health).

Resignation
Raffarin's resignation was accepted by President Chirac on 30 May 2005, after the "no" victory at the European Constitution referendum, and he was replaced as Prime Minister by Dominique de Villepin.

On 18 September 2005, he was elected Senator in the Vienne département. Speculation were that he could eventually try to become President of the Senate or President of the Union for a Popular Movement if Nicolas Sarkozy won the 2007 presidential election. He became one of the Vice presidents of the UMP in 2007. In September 2008, he sought the Senate UMP fraction's investiture to become President of the Senate, but was defeated by Gérard Larcher.

Raffarin is Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour) and Grand-Croix de l'ordre national du Mérite (National Order of Merit).

International policies
During a state visit to China on 21 April 2005 he avoided opposing the new "anti-secession" law on Taiwan, stating that "The anti-secession law is completely compatible with the position of France" and "The position of France has always been to 'one China' and we will remain attached to this position". On the embargo on weapons, he stated that "France continues to ask for a lifting of the embargo, and does not see what could lead the European Council to change position on that question".  By convention, foreign affairs are one of the President's—and not the Prime Minister's—sole responsibilities.

First ministry (May – June 2002)

 * Jean-Pierre Raffarin – Prime Minister
 * Dominique de Villepin – Minister of Foreign Affairs, Cooperation, and Francophonie
 * Michèle Alliot-Marie – Minister of Defense and Veterans
 * Nicolas Sarkozy – Minister of the Interior, Interior Security, and Local Liberties
 * Francis Mer – Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industry
 * François Fillon – Minister of Labour, Social Affairs, and Solidarity
 * Dominique Perben – Minister of Justice
 * Luc Ferry – Minister of National Education, Youth, Higher Education, and Research
 * Jean-Jacques Aillagon – Minister of Culture and Communication
 * Hervé Gaymard – Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs
 * Roselyne Bachelot – Minister of Ecology and Sustainable Development
 * Tokia Saïfi – Minister Delegate of Sustainable Development
 * Jean-François Lamour – Minister of Sport
 * Brigitte Girardin – Minister of Overseas
 * Gilles de Robien – Minister of Transport, Housing, Tourism, Sea, and Equipment
 * Jean-François Mattéi – Minister of Health, Family, and Handicapped People
 * Jean-Paul Delevoye – Minister of Civil Service, Reform of the State, and Regional Planning
 * Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres – Minister of European affairs

Second ministry (2002–2004)

 * Jean-Pierre Raffarin – Prime Minister
 * Dominique de Villepin – Minister of Foreign Affairs
 * Michèle Alliot-Marie – Minister of Defense
 * Nicolas Sarkozy – Minister of the Interior, Interior Security, and Local Liberties
 * Francis Mer – Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industry
 * François Fillon – Minister of Labour, Social Affairs, and Solidarity
 * Dominique Perben – Minister of Justice
 * Luc Ferry – Minister of National Education, Youth, Higher Education, and Research
 * Jean-Jacques Aillagon – Minister of Culture and Communication
 * Hervé Gaymard – Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs
 * Roselyne Bachelot – Minister of Ecology and Sustainable Development
 * Tokia Saïfi – Minister Delegate of Sustainable Development
 * Jean-François Lamour – Minister of Sport
 * Brigitte Girardin – Minister of Overseas
 * Gilles de Robien – Minister of Transport, Housing, Tourism, Sea, and Equipment
 * Jean-François Mattéi – Minister of Health, Family, and Handicapped People
 * Jean-Paul Delevoye – Minister of Civil Service, Reform of the State, and Regional Planning
 * Noëlle Lenoir – Minister of European affairs

Third ministry (2004–2005)

 * Jean-Pierre Raffarin – Prime Minister
 * Michel Barnier – Minister of Foreign Affairs
 * Michèle Alliot-Marie – Minister of Defense
 * Dominique de Villepin – Minister of the Interior, Interior Security, and Local Liberties
 * Nicolas Sarkozy – Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industry
 * Jean-Louis Borloo – Minister of Labour, Employment, and Social Cohesion
 * Dominique Perben – Minister of Justice
 * François Fillon – Minister of National Education, Higher Education, and Research
 * François d'Aubert – Minister delegate of Research
 * Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres – Minister of Culture and Communication
 * Hervé Gaymard – Minister of Agriculture, Food, Fish, and Rural Affairs
 * Serge Lepeltier – Minister of Ecology and Sustainable Development
 * Jean-François Lamour – Minister of Youth, Sport, and Community Life
 * Brigitte Girardin – Minister of Overseas
 * Gilles de Robien – Minister of Transport, Tourism, Regional Planning, Sea, and Equipment
 * Philippe Douste-Blazy – Minister of Health and Social Protection
 * Marie-Josée Roig – Minister of Family and Childhood
 * Renaud Dutreil – Minister of Civil Service and Reform of the State
 * Nicole Ameline – Minister of Parity and Professional Equality

Minor changes
29 November 2004 – following a Nicolas Sarkozy's resignation to become president of the UMP scandal forcing Hervé Gaymard resignation.
 * Hervé Gaymard – Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industry (replaced Nicolas Sarkozy)
 * Dominique Bussereau – Minister of Agriculture, Food, Fish, and Rural Affairs (replaced Hervé Gaymard)

25 February 2005 – following a scandal forcing Gaymard's resignation
 * Thierry Breton – Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industry

Raffarinades
Jean-Pierre Raffarin was often teased for his optimistic aphorisms, known colloquially and ironically as raffarinades, the best known being La route est droite, mais la pente est forte ("The road is straight, but the slope is steep"). Some consider that the word raffarinade was created in reference to the other French word mazarinade. However, mazarinade refers to the songs that the frondeurs (French revolutionaries during the Régence of Queen Anne – Archduchess of Austria – and chief minister Cardinal de Mazarin, before king Louis XIV's personal reign) sang to mock the unpopular chief minister.

Raffarin also tried his English prior to the referendum on the European draft Constitution but this turned out to be an ill-advised idea, as shown in this famous excerpt from his speech: "Win the yes needs the no to win against the no." The referendum itself was eventually nicknamed le Raffarindum by its opponents while Journée de solidarité envers les personnes âgées (Day of solidarity with the elderly) is sometimes referred to as la Saint-Raffarin by discontented workers (following a decision by Raffarin, French workers are supposed to work on Whit Monday for free, but public transportation still uses its "Sundays and holidays" timetable).

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

title: Jean-Pierre Raffarin


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V Corps

5th Corps, Fifth Corps, or V Corps may refer to:

France

 * 5th Army Corps (France)
 * V Cavalry Corps (Grande Armée), a cavalry unit of the Imperial French Army during the Napoleonic Wars
 * V Corps (Grande Armée), a unit of the Imperial French Army during the Napoleonic Wars

Germany

 * V Cavalry Corps (German Empire), a unit of the Imperial German Army
 * V Corps (German Empire), a unit of the Imperial German Army
 * V Reserve Corps (German Empire), a unit of the Imperial German Army
 * V SS Mountain Corps, a unit of the Waffen SS in World War II
 * V Army Corps (Wehrmacht), a unit in World War II

United States

 * V Corps (United States)
 * V Amphibious Corps
 * V Corps Artillery (United States)
 * V Corps (Union Army), a unit in the American Civil War
 * Fifth Army Corps (Spanish–American War), a unit of the U.S. Army

Others

 * V Corps (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
 * V Army Corps (Greece)
 * V Corps (North Korea)
 * V Corps (Ottoman Empire)
 * V Corps (Pakistan)
 * V Corps, part of Ground Operations Command, South Korea
 * 5th Corps (Syria)
 * V Corps (United Kingdom)

title: V Corps


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Cantharidin

Cantharidin is an odorless, colorless fatty substance of the terpenoid class, which is secreted by many species of blister beetles. Its main current use in pharmacology is treating molluscum contagiosum and warts topically. It is a burn agent and poisonous in large doses, and has been historically used as aphrodisiacs (Spanish fly). In its natural form, cantharidin is secreted by the male blister beetle, and given to the female as a copulatory gift during mating. Afterwards, the female beetle covers her eggs with it as a defense against predators.

Poisoning from cantharidin is a significant veterinary concern, especially in horses, but it can also be poisonous to humans if taken internally (where the source is usually experimental self-exposure). Externally, cantharidin is a potent vesicant (blistering agent), exposure to which can cause severe chemical burns. Properly dosed and applied, the same properties have also been used therapeutically, for instance, for treatment of skin conditions, such as molluscum contagiosum infection of the skin.

Cantharidin is classified as an extremely hazardous substance in the United States, and is subject to strict reporting requirements by facilities that produce, store, or use it in significant quantities.

Structure and nomenclature
Cantharidin, from the Greek kantharis, for beetle, is an odorless, colorless natural product with solubility in various organic solvents, but only slight solubility in water. Its skeleton is tricyclic, formally, a tricyclo-[5.2.1.02,6]decane skeleton. Its functionalities include a carboxylic acid anhydride (−CO−O−CO−) substructure in one of its rings, as well as a bridging ether in its bicyclic ring system.

The complete mechanism of the biosynthesis of cantharidin is unknown. Its framework formally consists of two isoprene units. However, feeding studies indicate that the biosynthetic process is more complicated, and not a simple product of geranyl pyrophosphate or related ten-carbon parent structure, as the seeming monoterpene nature would suggest. Instead, there is a farnesol (15-carbon) precursor from which certain carbon segments are later excised.

Distribution and availability
The level of cantharidin in blister beetles can be quite variable. Among blister beetles of the genus Epicauta in Colorado, E. pennsylvanica contains about 0.2 mg, E. maculata contains 0.7 mg, and E. immaculata contains 4.8 mg per beetle; males also contain higher levels than females.

Males of Berberomeloe majalis have higher level of cantharidin per beetle: 64.22 ± 51.28 mg/g (dry weight) and 9.10 ± 12.64 mg/g (d. w.). Cantharidin content in haemolymph is also higher in males (80.9 ± 106.5 μg/g) than in females (20.0 ± 41.5 μg/g).

Aphrodisiac preparations
Preparations made from blister beetles (particularly "Spanish fly") have been used since ancient times as an aphrodisiac, possibly because their physical effects were perceived to mimic those of sexual arousal, and because they can cause prolonged erection or priapism in men. These preparations were known as cantharides, from the Greek word for "beetle".

Examples of such use found in historical sources include:

 * The ancient Roman historian Tacitus relates that a cantharid preparation was used by the empress Livia, wife of Augustus Caesar, to entice members of the imperial family or dinner guests to commit sexual indiscretions (thus, providing her information to hold over them).
 * The German emperor Henry IV (1050–1106) is said to have consumed cantharides.
 * The French surgeon Ambroise Paré (1510–1590) described a case in 1572 of a man suffering from "the most frightful satyriasis" after taking a potion composed of nettles and a cantharid extract. This is perhaps the same man of whom Paré relates that a courtesan sprinkled a cantharid powder on food she served to him, after which the man experienced "violent priapism" and anal bleeding, of which he later died. Paré also cites the case of a priest who died of hematuria after swallowing a dose of cantharides, which he intended to fortify his sex drive.
 * Cantharides were in widespread use among the upper classes in France in the 1600s, despite being a banned substance. Police searches in connection with a rash of poisonings around 1680 turned up many stashes of "bluish flies", which were known to be used in the preparation of aphrodisiac potions.
 * The French sorceress Catherine Monvoisin (known as "La Voisin," c. 1640–1680) was recorded in the 1670s as having prepared a love charm made from Spanish fly mixed with dried mole's blood and bat's blood.
 * Aphrodisiac sweets presumably laced with cantharides were circulated within libertine circles during the 1700s in France. They were multicolored tablets nicknamed "pastilles de Richelieu," after the Maréchal de Richelieu, a notorious libertine (not to be confused with his great-uncle, the Cardinal Richelieu) who procured sexual encounters for King Louis XV.
 * The French writer Donatien Alphonse François — notoriously known as the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) — is said to have given aniseed-flavored pastilles laced with Spanish fly to two prostitutes at a pair of orgies in 1772, poisoning and nearly killing them. He was sentenced to death for that (and for the crime of sodomy), but was later reprieved on appeal.

Non-aphrodisiac uses

 * The Spanish clergyman Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias (es) (c. 1540–1610) reported the use of blister beetles as a poison as well as an aphrodisiac.
 * Preparations of dried blister beetles were at one time used as a treatment for smallpox. As late as 1892, Andrew Taylor Still, the founder of osteopathy, recommended inhaling a tincture of cantharidin as an effective preventative and treatment for smallpox, decrying vaccination.

Pharmaco-chemical isolation
Cantharidin was first isolated as a chemically pure substance in 1810 by Pierre Robiquet, a French chemist then living in Paris. Robiquet isolated cantharidin as the active ingredient in pharmacological preparations of Lytta vesicatoria, a.k.a. "Spanish fly", a species of blister beetle. This was one of the first historical instances of the identification and extraction of a simple active principle from a complex medicine.

Robiquet found cantharidin to be an odorless and colorless solid at room temperature. He demonstrated that it was the active principle responsible for the aggressively blistering properties of the coating of the eggs of the blister beetle, and additionally established that cantharidin had toxic properties comparable in degree to those of the most virulent poisons known in the 19th century, such as strychnine.

Other uses of the pharmacological isolate

 * Diluted solutions of cantharidin can be used as a topical medication to remove warts and tattoos, and to treat the small papules of molluscum contagiosum.
 * In Santería rituals, cantharides are used in incense.

Veterinary issues
Poisoning by Epicauta species from cantharidin is a significant veterinary concern, especially in horses; species infesting feedstocks depend on region—e.g., Epicauta pennsylvanica (black blister beetle) in the U.S. midwest; and E. occidentalis, temexia, and vittata species (striped blister beetles) in the U.S. southwest—where the concentrations of the agent in each can vary substantially. Beetles feed on weeds, and occasionally move into crop fields used to produce livestock feeds (e.g., alfalfa), where they are found to cluster and find their way into baled hay, e.g., a single flake (4–5 in. section ) may have several hundred insects, or none at all. Horses are very sensitive to the cantharidin produced by beetle infestations: the for horses is roughly 1 mg/kg of the horse's body weight. Horses may be accidentally poisoned when fed bales of fodder with blister beetles in them.

Great bustards, a strongly polygynous bird species, are not immune to the toxicity of cantharidin; they become intoxicated after ingesting blister beetles. However, cantharidin has activity also against parasites that infect them. Great bustards may eat toxic blister beetles of the genus Meloe to increase the sexual arousal of males.

General risks
As a blister agent, cantharidin has the potential to cause adverse effects when used medically; for this reason, it has been included in a list of "problem drugs" used by dermatologists and emergency personnel. However, this references unregulated sources of cantharidin. In July 2023, the US FDA approved a topical formulation of cantharidin (Ycanth) for the treatment of molluscum contagiosum.

When ingested by humans, the is around 0.5 mg/kg, with a dose of as little as 10 mg being potentially fatal. Ingesting cantharidin can initially cause severe damage to the lining of the gastrointestinal and urinary tracts, and may also cause permanent renal damage. Symptoms of cantharidin poisoning include blood in the urine, abdominal pain, and rarely prolonged erections.

Risks of aphrodisiac use
The extreme toxicity of cantharidin makes any use as an aphrodisiac highly dangerous. As a result, it is illegal to sell (or use) cantharidin or preparations containing it without a prescription in many countries.

Mechanism of action
Topical cantharidin is absorbed by the lipid membranes of epidermal cells, causing the release of serine proteases, enzymes that break the peptide bonds in proteins. This causes the disintegration of desmosomal plaques, cellular structures involved in cell-to-cell adhesion, leading to detachment of the tonofilaments that hold cells together. The process leads to the loss of cellular connections (acantholysis), and ultimately results in blistering of the skin. Lesions heal without scarring.

Pharmaceutical use
VP-102, an experimental drug-device combination that includes cantharidin delivered via a single-use applicator, is being studied for the treatment of molluscum contagiosum, common warts, and genital warts.

Bioactivities
Cantharidin appears to have some effect in the topical treatment of cutaneous leishmaniasis in animal models. In addition to topical medical applications, cantharidin and its analogues may have activity against cancer cells. Laboratory studies with cultured tumor cells suggest that this activity may be the result of PP2A inhibition.

title: Cantharidin


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Union Pacific Railroad

The Union Pacific Railroad is a Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over 32200 mi routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United States after BNSF, with which it shares a duopoly on transcontinental freight rail lines in the Western, Midwestern and West South Central United States.

Founded in 1862, the original Union Pacific Rail Road was part of the first transcontinental railroad project, later known as the Overland Route. Over the next century, UP absorbed the Missouri Pacific Railroad, the Western Pacific Railroad, the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. In 1995, the Union Pacific merged with Chicago and North Western Transportation Company, completing its reach into the Upper Midwest. In 1996, the company merged with Southern Pacific Transportation Company, itself a giant system that was absorbed by the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. The Union Pacific Railroad Company is the principal operating company of Union Pacific Corporation, which are both headquartered at the Union Pacific Center, in Omaha, Nebraska.

Union Pacific in the 19th century
The original company, the "Union Pacific Rail Road", was incorporated on July 1, 1862, under the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. President Abraham Lincoln had approved the act, which authorized railroad construction from the Missouri River to the Pacific to ensure the stability of the Union throughout the American Civil War, but construction did not complete until after that conflict's conclusion.

Under the original bill that formed the basis of the 1862 Pacific Railroad Act, the Union Pacific Railroad was to be built from the Nevada–Utah border in the west to the Colorado–Kansas border in the east. However, due to intense lobbying by Dr. Thomas Clark Durant, the eastern terminal was moved to a location where the Union Pacific could link up with the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad in Iowa. Following the Act's passage, commissioners appointed by Congress began selling stock in the federally chartered Union Pacific Railroad Company. By 1863, Durant had organized the purchase of 2,000 shares, the prerequisite amount of stock sold in order to begin the railroad's construction.

The resulting track ran westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to meet in Utah the Central Pacific Railroad line, which had been constructed eastward from Sacramento, California. The combined Union Pacific–Central Pacific line became known as the first transcontinental railroad and later the Overland Route.

The line was constructed primarily by Irish labor who had learned their craft during the recent Civil War. Under the guidance of its dominant stockholder, Thomas C. Durant, the namesake of the city of Durant, Iowa, the first rails were laid in Omaha. The two lines were joined at Promontory Summit, Utah, 53 mi west of Ogden on May 10, 1869, hence creating the first transcontinental railroad in North America. Leland Stanford, founder of the Central Pacific Railroad which itself eventually was merged with Union Pacific, himself drove the golden spike, inscribed with the words "to span the continent and wed the oceans." Subsequently, the UP purchased three Mormon-built roads: the Utah Central Railroad extending south from Ogden to Salt Lake City, the Utah Southern Railroad extending south from Salt Lake City into the Utah Valley, and the Utah Northern Railroad extending north from Ogden into Idaho.

The original UP was entangled in the Crédit Mobilier scandal, exposed in 1872. As detailed by the New York Sun, Union Pacific's largest construction company, Crédit Mobilier, had overcharged Union Pacific; the railroad would then pass the inflated costs on to the United States government. To convince the federal government to accept the increased costs, Crédit Mobilier had bribed multiple congressmen. Several prominent UP board members (including Durant) had been involved in the scheme. The ensuing financial crisis of 1873 led to a credit crunch, but not bankruptcy.

As boom followed bust, the Union Pacific continued to expand. A new company, with dominant stockholder Jay Gould, purchased the old on January 24, 1880. Gould already owned the Kansas Pacific (originally called the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, though in essence a separate railroad), and sought to merge it with UP. Through that merger, the original "Union Pacific Rail Road" transformed into "Union Pacific Railway".

Extending towards the Pacific Northwest, Union Pacific built or purchased local lines to reach Portland, Oregon. Towards Colorado, it built the Union Pacific, Denver and Gulf Railway: a system combining narrow-gauge trackage into the heart of the Rockies and a standard gauge line that ran south from Denver, across New Mexico, and into Texas.

The Union Pacific Railway would later declare bankruptcy during the Panic of 1893. The resulting corporate reorganization reversed Gould's name change: Union Pacific "Railway" merged into a new Union Pacific "Railroad".

Union Pacific in the 20th century
In the early 20th century, Union Pacific's focus shifted from expansion to internal improvement. Recognizing that farmers in the Central and Salinas Valleys of California grew produce far in excess of local markets, Union Pacific worked with its rival Southern Pacific to develop a spoilage-resistant rail-based transport system. These efforts came culminated in the 1906 founding of Pacific Fruit Express, soon to be the world's largest lessee of refrigerated railcars.

Meanwhile, Union Pacific worked to construct a faster, and more direct substitute for the original climb to Promontory Summit. In 1904, the Lucin cutoff opened, reducing curvature and grades. The original route would eventually be stripped of track in 1942 to provide war scrap.

To attract customers during the Great Depression, Union Pacific's chairman W. Averell Harriman simultaneously sought to "spruce up" the quality of its rolling stock and to make its unique locations more desirable travel destinations. The first effort resulted in the purchase of the first streamlined train: the M-10000. The latter resulted in the Sun Valley ski resort in central Idaho; it opened in 1936 and finally was sold in 1964. Despite the fact that the M-10000 and its successors were among the first diesel locomotives, Union Pacific completed dieselization relatively late. In 1944, UP finally received delivery of its last steam locomotive: Union Pacific 844.

As the 20th century waned, Union Pacific recognized—like most railroads—that remaining a regional railroad would only lead to bankruptcy. On December 31, 1925, UP and its subsidiaries operated 9834 mile routes and 15,265 mile tracks; in 1980, these numbers had remained roughly constant (9,266 route-miles and 15,647 track-miles). But in 1982, UP acquired the Missouri Pacific and Western Pacific railroads, and 1988, the Missouri–Kansas–Texas. By 1993, Union Pacific had doubled its system to 17,385 mile routes.

By then, few large (class I) railroads remained. The same year that Union Pacific merged with the Chicago and North Western (1995), Burlington Northern and ATSF announced merger plans. The impending BNSF amalgamation would leave one mega-railroad in control of the west. To compete, UP merged with Southern Pacific, thereby incorporating D&RGW and Cotton Belt, and forming a duopoly in the West. The merged railroad took the Union Pacific name. As of 1999, the UP had 33,705 miles of track, about 33,000 employees, nearly 7,000 locomotives and over 155,000 rail cars.

Union Pacific in the 21st Century
In March 2024 Union Pacific layoffs caused concern at the Federal Railroad Administration to the extent that the FRA, in a letter to UP's CEO, said "safety of railroad operations is paramount ... decisions that comprise that fundamental ... are unacceptable. You must ensure that highly trained and experienced personnel perform critical inspections and repairs .... Your railroad (layoffs) are far outpacing any of your Class 1 peers."

In 2024 the railway celebrated 150 years of having its headquarters in Omaha.

The railway's Big Boy #4014, the world's largest operating steam locomotive, will visit 14 states in middle America in 2024. Twenty-five locomotives of Big Boy's size were fabricated during World War II, but only Big Boy survives. Its "Heartland of America" tour begins in August 2024 in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and visits Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas through October.

Another locomotive, UP No. 4141, is named in honor of George H. W. Bush, the US 41st President and is exhibited at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Center at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. The locomotive, custom painted in the colors of GWH Bush's Air Force One is the only UP locomotive not painted in traditional Armour yellow. The engine also pulled the president's funeral train on his final journey to College Station in 2018.

Facilities

The Union Pacific system includes hundreds of yards. Most are flat yards used for local switching. Other types of yards include intermodal terminals and hump yards. Most UP intermodal terminals are typically ports, but UP also has inland terminals for transfers to trucks, such as the terminal in San Antonio that opened in 2009 or the one in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, that opened in 2014.

Hump yards
In 2006, Union Pacific had 11 major active hump yards:

 * Bailey Yard in North Platte, Nebraska
 * Beaumont Yard in Beaumont, Texas
 * Davidson Yard in Fort Worth, Texas
 * Davis Yard in Roseville, California

 * Englewood Yard in Houston, Texas
 * Gateway Yard in East St Louis, Illinois, owned by subsidiary Alton and Southern Railway
 * Livonia Yard in Livonia, Louisiana
 * North Little Rock Yard in North Little Rock, Arkansas
 * Proviso Yard in Northlake, Illinois, owned by Chicago and North Western Transportation Company until 1995
 * Strang Yard in La Porte, Texas
 * West Colton Yard in Bloomington, California

In the late 2010s, Union Pacific began deactivating hump yards in favor of flat switching. In this, Union Pacific followed the industry-wide trend towards Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR); railway executive Hunter Harrison explained that under PSR, few yards receive enough variegated traffic to necessitate a hump. Union Pacific also closed facilities in Kansas City ("Neff yard"), Hinkle, Oregon, and Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 2019.

Locomotives and rolling stock
Union Pacific has owned some of the most powerful locomotives. These include members of the Challenger-type (including the 3985), and the Northern-type (including the 844), as well as the Big Boy steam locomotives (including the 4014). Union Pacific ordered the first diesel streamliner, the largest fleet of turbine-electric locomotives in the world, and the largest diesel locomotives ever built (including 6936).

Paint and colors

The yellow paint scheme was introduced in the spring of 1934. Engineers claimed the visibility of yellow would reduce grade crossing accidents. In 1941, UP introduced its yellow and gray color scheme with red highlights, which remains in use today.

The middle two-thirds of the locomotive body is painted Armour Yellow, a color used by Armour and Company on the packaging of its meat products. A thin band of Signal Red divides this from the Harbor Mist Gray (a light gray) used for the body and roof above that point. There is also a thin band of Signal Red along the bottom of the locomotive body, but this color has gradually become yellow as new Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) regulations for reflectorized tape came into effect in 2005; the trucks (painted Aluminum from 1955 to 1982), underframe, fuel tanks and everything else beneath that line are also Harbor Mist Gray. Lettering and numbering are in Signal Red, with black outlines. Most locomotives have white-outlined blue "wings" on the nose, on either side of the renowned shield featuring white lettering on a blue background and, below it, red and white vertical stripes. Beginning in early 2002, a number of units were repainted with a large, billowing American flag with the corporate motto "Building America" on the side, where the 'UNION PACIFIC' lettering is normally positioned.

Merger partner locomotives

Until 2017, UP operated some locomotives still in the paint scheme of their former railroads. In addition, some locomotives were renumbered by UP, varying in the degree of the previous railroads' logos being eradicated, but always with a yellow patch applied over the locomotive's former number and a new UP number applied on the cab. That allowed UP to number locomotives into its roster without spending the time and money necessary to perform a complete repaint. In May 2015, UP rostered 212 "patches", consisting of:
 * 22 Chicago and North Western (whose CNW logos have been hidden by the "patches"),
 * 174 Southern Pacific (AC4400CW, GP40-2, MP15AC, and GP60)
 * 14 St. Louis Southwestern (GP60)
 * 2 Denver and Rio Grande Western (GP60)
 * While not technically a predecessor locomotive in the traditional sense, UP also rostered a single SD40-2 (3564, since retired) still in the 1970s paint scheme, not counting DDA40X No. 6936, which was part of the Union Pacific Heritage Fleet until 2022.

In 2017, Union Pacific decided to repaint all locomotives which were not in the current corporate colors. only 41 locomotives remained unpainted.

Commemorative color schemes
From the second half of 2005 to the summer of 2006, UP unveiled a new set of six EMD SD70ACe locomotives in "Heritage Colors", painted in schemes reminiscent of railroads acquired by the Union Pacific Corporation since the 1980s. The engine numbers match the year that the predecessor railroad became part of the Union Pacific system. The locomotives commemorate the Missouri Pacific with UP 1982, the Western Pacific with UP 1983, the Missouri–Kansas–Texas with UP 1988, the Chicago and North Western with UP 1995, the Southern Pacific with UP 1996, and the Denver and Rio Grande Western with UP 1989.

In October 2005, UP unveiled SD70ACe 4141, commissioned in honor of George Bush. The locomotive has "George Bush 41" on the sides and its paint scheme resembles that of Air Force One. It was sent into storage in 2007, but returned in 2018 to power Bush's funeral train. It was donated to the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on November 8, 2019.

On March 31, 2010, UP dedicated a specially painted GE ES44AC locomotive commemorating the centennial of the Boy Scouts of America.

On September 28, 2010, UP dedicated a specially painted GE ES44AC locomotive, as a tribute to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

On October 19, 2017, Union Pacific unveiled SD70AH 1943, "The Spirit of the Union Pacific", which is painted in a scheme to honor the United States armed forces.

On June 6, 2019, Union Pacific unveiled SD70ACe 1111, the "Powered By Our People" unit.

In April 2021, Union Pacific repainted an SD70M into a commemorative paint scheme called "We Are ONE" to honor Juneteenth and Pride Month.

UP also has a collection of locomotives painted for Operation Lifesaver, a rail safety organization founded in 1970.

Locomotive Roster
As of December 2023, the Union Pacific had 7,175 locomotives on its active roster consisting of 42 different models.

Heritage equipment
Union Pacific continues to use a small number of "heritage" steam locomotives and early streamlined diesel locomotives. This equipment is used on special charters (excursions).

Low-emissions locomotives
Union Pacific maintains a fleet of low-emissions locomotives. Most are used in Los Angeles basin rail yards, to satisfy an air quality agreement with the local authorities.

Facts and figures
According to UP's 2007 Annual Report to Investors, at the end of 2007 it had more than 50,000 employees, 8,721 locomotives, and 94,284 freight cars.

Broken down by specific type of car, owned and leased:
 * 35,437 covered hoppers
 * 12,272 boxcars
 * 18,647 open-top hoppers
 * 13,780 gondolas
 * 14,148 "other" types of cars

In addition, it owns 6,950 different pieces of maintenance of way work equipment. At the end of 2007, the average age of UP's locomotive fleet was 14.8 years, the freight car fleet 28 years.

UP was ranked 134th on the 2019 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue and had 41,967 employees. The Chief Executive Officer of Union Pacific since August 14, 2023, is Jim Vena, the President is Beth Whited, and the chairman of the board is Mike McCarthy.

In 2019, Union Pacific has been rated the worst company to work for by 247wallst.com, citing Past CEO Lance Fritz's 12% approval rating and the 22% recommendation rating from Glassdoor.com.

Commuter services
When Union Pacific bought out the Chicago & North Western in 1995, it inherited the railroad's Metra commuter rail services in the Chicago metropolitan area: the Union Pacific North Line to Kenosha, Wisconsin, Northwest Line to Harvard, Illinois, and West Line to Elburn, Illinois, all of which operate from Ogilvie Transportation Center (the former North Western Station–a name still used by many Chicago residents). In order to ensure uniformity across the Chicago area commuter rail system, trains are branded as Metra services and use Metra equipment. However, Union Pacific crews continue to operate the trains under a purchase-of-service agreement. In 2023, UP announced its intentions to surrender the control and operation of commuter rail services and trains in Chicago to Metra, however the UP would retain ownership and control of the right-of-ways of former Chicago & Northwestern lines radiating from Chicago.

Former services
Between 1869 and 1971, Union Pacific operated passenger service throughout its historic "Overland Route". These trains ran between Chicago and Omaha on the Chicago & Northwestern trackage starting in 1936. Disputes over trackage rights and passenger revenues with the C&NW prompted the UP to switch to the Milwaukee Road for the handling of its streamliner trains between Chicago and Omaha beginning in late 1955. The last intercity passenger train operated by UP was the westbound City of Los Angeles, arriving at Los Angeles Union Station on May 2. Since then, Union Pacific has satisfied its common carrier requirements by hosting Amtrak trains.

Hosted trains
Many Amtrak and commuter rail routes use Union Pacific rails. This list excludes the commuter services the company directly operates in Chicago (see above).

Amtrak

 * Amtrak Cascades
 * California Zephyr
 * Capitol Corridor
 * Coast Starlight
 * Lincoln Service
 * Missouri River Runner
 * Pacific Surfliner
 * San Joaquin
 * Sunset Limited
 * Texas Eagle

Commuter trains

 * Altamont Corridor Express
 * Caltrain
 * FrontRunner
 * Metrolink
 * Riverside Line
 * Ventura County Line
 * RTD commuter rail
 * G Line
 * Trinity Railway Express

21st century

 * September 4, 2007: a Union Pacific train derailment split the small town of Sergeant Bluff, Iowa. About 16 cars derailed, most carrying salt that spilled into snow-like piles. The derailment interrupted traffic for about two hours.
 * June 24, 2012: three crew members died and caused a property damage of $15 million when two Union Pacific trains collided head-on just east of Goodwell, Oklahoma. The eastbound train passed a stop signal on the main track and struck the westbound train in a siding about 1 mi east of the meeting point. The NTSB provided the probable causes as eastbound train's operator's vision problems and failure by the conductor to get backup assistance as required. NTSB stated UP did not comply with its own policies when it medically recertified the operator. The company only had six color tests despite the policy requiring a color test for 10 signals.
 * November 15, 2012: A UP train struck a parade float in Midland, Texas, killing four and injuring 16 passengers on the parade float.
 * May 25, 2013: in Chaffee, Missouri, a Union Pacific train collided with a BNSF train at a level junction, injuring seven, and causing damages exceeding $10 million. The accident caused a Missouri Route M overpass to partially collapse and caused a fire. The investigation concluded the engineer most likely fell asleep, due to sleep apnea. The uncontrolled train violated four progressively more restrictive signals before colliding with the BNSF train at roughly 40 mph. Three months later, the Route M overpass reopened with a new design.
 * June 3, 2016: a 96-car oil train derailed in the Columbia River Gorge near Mosier, Oregon. Eleven cars derailed, at least one caught on fire, and 42000 gal of Bakken crude oil spilled, some going into the Columbia River. Some 10000 gal were eventually recovered.Going Street Column.jpg
 * Mid-late 2018: the Niland Geyser, a moving mud pot, encroached on the railroad near the eastern shore of the Salton Sea, requiring extensive engineering work to first delay the movement and then build a temporary diversion.
 * September 7, 2019: a Union Pacific train of two locomotives and three tank cars carrying liquefied petroleum gas derailed and crashed into an overpass support column at the Albina Yard in Portland, Oregon. The support column is for the eastbound lanes of the six-lane Going Street overpass, which is the only public access to the major industrial area Swan Island for cars and trucks. Four lanes were left unsafe after the derailment. Two of six lanes remain closed as of November 14, 2019. The cause of the crash was broken rails. There was nobody on board the train which was remotely operated at the time of crash. In May 2020, another Union Pacific derailment damaged a different overpass which The Skanner described as an ongoing safety concern.
 * March 21, 2022: a Union Pacific freight train derailed and fell from a viaduct in Colton, California.
 * September 2023: The railroad furloughed 138 workers, a small fraction of its 50,000 employees, but enough to cause a reprimand from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) that indicated its inspection of UP trains determined the rates of defects in locomotives and cars was double the national average, which the FRA said, was caused by a dearth of personnel.

San Antonio area
On June 28, 2004, a UP train collided with an idle BNSF train in a San Antonio suburb. In the course of the derailment, a 90-ton tank car carrying liquified chlorine was punctured. As the chlorine vaporized, a toxic "yellow cloud" formed, killing three and causing 43 hospitalizations. The costs of cleanup and property damaged during the incident exceeded $7 million. Investigations of the Macdona incident revealed several serious safety lapses on the part of the Union Pacific and its employees, including employees not following the company's own safety rules. While the immediate cause of the derailment was the UP crew's "fatigue", chlorine tank cars had been improperly placed near the front of the train, a danger in the case of derailment.

The Macdona incident was not the first derailment in the San Antonio area. Between May and November 1994, Union Pacific trains derailed five times, killing at least 4 people. Between June 2004 and March 2005, 10 trains derailed, killing as many people.

In the aftermath of Macdona, the Federal Railroad Administration signed a compliance agreement with the railroad in which the railroad promised to rectify the "notable deficiencies" that regulators found. But the relative impunity UP seemed to exhibit regarding the derailment led to suggestions that the FRA was far "too cozy ... to the railroads." In March 2005, Texas Governor Rick Perry supported a plan to reroute trains around large urban population centers in Texas, including San Antonio, but such a plan was purely voluntary and had no timetable associated.

Trains have continued to derail in the area  including an incident in June 2009 where tank cars containing chlorine and petroleum naptha xylene derailed, but did not spill.

Transient camp and graffiti issues
The City of San Jose, California, threatened Union Pacific with a lawsuit in 2019 after years of complaints about transient and graffiti blight going unaddressed. For the first time in many years, Union Pacific cleaned out along the tracks starting in November 2019. San Jose Councilman Sergio Jimenez said "The reality is that Union Pacific has not been a good neighbor".

San Jose's mayor Sam Liccardo said"'At any given conference of mayors, you won't hear anyone expressing confidence that Union Pacific will respond nimbly or collaboratively,' and 'But we are hopeful that the (memorandum of understanding) will turn a page on Union Pacific's behavior in the past to enable a more collaborative relationship going forward.'"The Mercury News reports that company has been uncooperative and non responsive to working together, such as failing to come through with graffiti abatement as Union Pacific had promised the city.

2022 Utah Legislative Action
In 2022, legislators in Utah brought forth two separate bills specifically aimed at Union Pacific. The first, HB181, was raised after some municipalities encountered resistance from Union Pacific when attempting to upgrade rail crossings. In Logan, Utah, Union Pacific altered a construction agreement to require the city to pay maintenance fees in perpetuity for an upgraded crossing, a mandate which was against state code. The proposed legislation would make it easier for municipalities to get crossing improvements approved, and clarifies which party must pay associated maintenance costs. HB181 was ultimately passed.

Environmental record
In Eugene, Oregon, where pollution from a century-old rail yard has been seeping into groundwater, the UP and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality launched a study of ground contamination in 2008. The pollutants are mostly petroleum hydrocarbons, industrial solvents, and metals.

In 2007, Union Pacific Railroad worked with the US EPA to develop a way to reduce locomotive exhaust emissions. They discovered that adding an oxidation catalyst filtering canister to the diesel engine's exhaust manifold and using ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel would reduce particulate emissions by about half, unburned hydrocarbons by 38 percent, and carbon monoxide by 82 percent.

The company's Fuel Master program rewards locomotive engineers who save the most fuel each month. The program has saved the company millions of dollars, much of which has been returned to the engineers. In 2006, the program's founder, Wayne Kennedy, received the John H. Chafee Environmental Award, and the program was recognized by Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.

In January 2018, a former waste water operator at Union Pacific Albina Yard in Portland, Oregon, employed by the railroad's contractor Mott MacDonald negligently released thousands of gallons of oil into the environment. The operator was distracted by a cell phone and allowed the tank to overflow for over an hour. An engineering firm hired by Union Pacific estimates 1800 usgal of it was released into nearby Willamette River, not including the spill that was captured by the containment booms. Employees of United States Environmental Protection Agency who were working at facilities nearby placed booms to contain the oil spill. Federal prosecutors have charged the operator Robert LaRue Webb II with violation of the Clean Water Act for releasing the oil into the environment. Webb pleaded guilty in August 2019, and was sentenced to two years probation and a $2,500 fine.

In 2016, the Union Pacific Railroad Co. was named as a defendant in a lawsuit seeking cleanup of a contaminated rail yard site that operated in Lafayette, Louisiana, from the late 1800s until the 1960s.

In 2020, Houston residents living near a Union Pacific Railroad Company rail yard filed lawsuits against the Union Pacific. These lawsuits followed the finding by the State of Texas of a higher-than-expected incidence of certain cancers in residents living close to the yard. A State of Texas report released in 2021 identified an additional cancer cluster of lymphoblastic leukemia in children.

In 2022, the state of Utah proposed bill, HB405, which would have required Union Pacific to replace their aging fleet of Tier 0 switching locomotives with hydrogen or electric engines by 2028, due to Utah having very poor air quality in winter months. According to Utah Senator Schultz, Union Pacific was uncooperative on the switching locomotive bill if Utah did not drop the railroad crossings bill. HB405 was dropped after Union Pacific made voluntary commitments to replace several tier 0 switching locomotives with less polluting tier 2 locomotives, as well as to test some all electric ones in the Utah Roper Rail Yard.

Wabtec is modernizing 600 older Union Pacific locomotives over a three-year period through 2025. The modernizations will improve fuel efficiency and reliability of these locomotives while also reducing emissions.

Equipment Management Pool (EMP)
Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are the largest owner-partners of Equipment Management Pool (EMP), a domestic freight interline intermodal freight transport service that rents and moves more than 35,000 53-foot containers and chassis throughout North America. Other partners in the freight company include Canadian National Railway, I&M Rail Link, Iowa Interstate Railroad, and Wisconsin Central Ltd.  In 2022, the Canadian Pacific Railway, one year prior to its merger with the Kansas City Southern Railway, was dropped from the pool, leaving CN as the only Canadian member.

Union Pacific Railroad Museum

The Union Pacific Railroad Museum is a former Carnegie library in Council Bluffs, Iowa, that houses artifacts, photographs, and documents that trace the development of the railroad and the American West. The company pays upkeep on the privately owned building, which houses part of Union Pacific's corporate collection, one of the oldest in the United States. Holdings include weapons from the late 19th and 20th centuries, outlaw paraphernalia, a sampling of the immigrants' possessions, and a photograph collection comprising more than 500,000 images.

title: Union Pacific Railroad


text:
CFNY-FM

CFNY-FM (102.1 FM, "102.1 The Edge") is a radio station licensed to Brampton, Ontario. Owned by Corus Entertainment, the station broadcasts a modern rock format serving the Greater Toronto Area. Its studios are in Downtown Toronto at Corus Quay on Toronto's Harbourfront, and its transmitter is located atop the CN Tower.

From CHIC to CFNY
The station commenced operations on August 8, 1960, as an FM rebroadcast of an AM station, CHIC. On September 21, 1962, two brothers, Leslie and Harry Allen Jr., agreed to purchase all shares of CHIC Radio Ltd. from S.W. Caldwell, Frank M. Early, F.J. Shouldice, John Fox, W.S. Martin, Frank W. Richardson, Garth H. Ketemer, G. Clare Burt, J.R. Jenkins and Gordon F. Keeble. The sale occurred on October 15 later that year and was subject to government approval. They began playing album rock music in the evenings while simulcasting the AM programming during the day. The nearby Humber College provided a steady stream of young employees, who were encouraged to play their own selections. Noted Canadian radio and television personality Vicki Gabereau was one of such employees. At this point in the station's existence, it operated under the call letters CHIC-FM, broadcasting about 30 hours per week, with a transmitter power of 857 watts ERP mono. This was enough to just service the town of Brampton.

Until approximately 1975, the AM control room operator spun LPs from the third turntable in AM master control. Nonstop full play of each side of the LP was the norm - with just a break by the AM operator for ID and to flip the LP over. The music was picked by the AM operator prior to their shift. Some of those on air people were Dave Gordon, Mike Lynch, Steve Martak, Rich Elwood, Ted Woloshyn, Scott Cameron; any genre of music was open to airtime.

The style of the station was well received by listeners. In 1976, a new FM studio was built just up the road from the old studio in Brampton on a very limited budget. Engineers Mike Hargrave Pawson and Steve Martak built the new studio and a new transmitter site in Georgetown to increase the coverage from 857 watts to 100 kW ERP, thus able to cover much of the Greater Toronto Area. In 1976, CHIC-FM officially became CFNY-FM. The phrases "Canada's First New Youth", "Canada Finds New Youth", and "Canada's Fresh New Youth" have often been cited as backronyms for the call sign. Staff employed to that point were fired in favour of hiring a new team and David Pritchard joined the station as CFNY's first program director. He had previously been a DJ at CHUM-FM, and under his guidance the station became more structured. It also began hosting specialty programs of reggae and blues music, and a popular, nationally syndicated Beatles show.

David Marsden, who had started as an announcer at the station, was selected as Pritchard's successor in 1978.

"The Spirit of Radio"
During Marsden's tenure as program director, the style of the station evolved into a sound which has been described as a more professional-sounding version of a campus radio station. At the time, alternative music was new and had not yet received wide exposure, but new wave and punk rock soon emerged as dominant forms of popular music—and so the station became known as one of the few commercial stations at the time which played alternative music.

During this period, the station began using "The Spirit of Radio" as a promotional catchphrase. In turn, listeners of the station began to refer to CFNY as "The Spirit of Radio". Canadian band Rush was unable to obtain airplay on many radio stations other than CFNY early in their career, and in 1979 wrote the song "The Spirit of Radio" about the station. Unable to mention CFNY directly for fear of alienating airplay on other stations, the band instead ensured the catalogue number for their album Permanent Waves was 1021, a nod to the station's 102.1 FM frequency.

While the fan base was loyal, the station struggled to grow its audience due to its small studio and low broadcasting power of only 679 watts. With only a small broadcast range, the station used unconventional promotional strategies in an attempt to grow the brand. CFNY would send DJs to host regular new wave dance parties, both to build a community amongst its fans and to supplement the station's limited advertising revenue through admission fees.

Turbulence and expansion
In 1979, the station's original owners were involved in court action unrelated to CFNY and forced to sell the station. In spite of its problems, CFNY garnered praise from its listeners and other broadcasters alike. Referring to its free-form format, the station was called "one of the last truly alternative radio stations in North America". When the new owners went bankrupt in 1979, the station received 6,200 letters and tens of thousands of names on a petition lobbying the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to "save real radio."

With the Canadian economy in recession and interest rates high, the station's owners sold the station to media conglomerate Selkirk Communications. Selkirk moved the station's transmitter to the CN Tower in Toronto, thereby greatly increasing the broadcasting power and range of the station. By 1985, the station had reached new heights of popularity, capturing over 5.4% of the Toronto area listeners and becoming internationally famous for its music mix, due to its availability via satellite. By this time, the station's dance party tradition had evolved into a large video dance party, hosted by Martin Streek, who joined the station as a DJ and on-air personality in 1984. This event regularly toured throughout southern Ontario and expanded the station's influence well beyond its actual broadcast range. For a brief period, it was also available on satellite across North America, although this also led to the introduction of more "popular" music.

Through the early and mid-1980s, CFNY was well-respected for introducing new performers that other stations wouldn't play due to not being well-known names, including Canadian artists such as Martha and the Muffins, Rough Trade, Blue Rodeo, Jane Siberry, 54-40, Skinny Puppy, and Spoons.

CFNY also created Canada's first independent music awards, the U-Knows, the name of which was a pun on Canada's mainstream Juno Awards. In 1986, the station held a listener contest to rename the awards, which were re-dubbed the CASBY Awards, for "Canadian Artists Selected By You".

In 1987, after nine years in the position, David Marsden stepped down as program director. He was succeeded in the role by on-air personality Don Berns. Marsden moved to Vancouver, where he created and launched the variety series Pilot One for CBC Television and became program director of Coast 800.

One notable broadcast was their worldwide period of silence for John Lennon, followed by "Remember" for the recently slain singer. More than 500 radio stations, including one in each Canadian province and American state, plus one in Sydney, Australia played this Dream Network tribute broadcast.

Format change and listener rebellion
Late in 1988, management at CFNY ordered a change in format. After nearly 13 years of success and popular acclaim as a freestyle rock and alternative radio station, CFNY switched to a primarily Top 40 format and began to identify on-air as FM102. Alternative, which had supported the station for most of its history to that point, was relegated to weekends and late night programming.

This dramatic shift in format would not be without consequences. Most significantly, the change sparked a rebellion in its fan base. The station's mid-day phone-in request show was inundated with requests for alternative songs. In support of their new policies and format, station management quickly attempted to put a stop to this by ordering that DJs were to refuse all such calls and fulfill only those requests which were for Top 40 music. Not just unpopular with the station's fan base, the new format also resulted in the dismissal or resignation of much of the on-air staff. Perhaps the most notable of these was the resignation of program director Don Berns after only two years in the role, in protest against station management's decisions.

In response, the more devoted of the station's listeners and fans began signing petitions, even going so far as to file an intervention with the CRTC to oppose the station's 1989 licence renewal. Certain radio analyst reports suggested that as many as 100,000 new listeners had been gained by the change, but this masked the fact that the market share dropped considerably, to 4.3%.

Revival, evolution, and beginning of the Edge
In the summer of 1989, Selkirk was acquired by Maclean-Hunter, which was committed to returning the station to an alternative format. Instead of reviving the old free-form programming, however, Maclean-Hunter tweaked the station's programming to create a more conventional modern rock station. In the same year, "Humble" Howard Glassman and Fred Patterson launched the station's new morning show, Humble & Fred, which would go on to receive wide acclaim. In the early 1990s, the station again became an important outlet for new Canadian music, with bands such as Barenaked Ladies, The Lowest of the Low, Rheostatics, and Sloan counting CFNY as their first major radio supporter. However, alternative rock was the dominant commercial genre by this time, so CFNY did not sound as distinctive compared to other radio stations as it once had.

Unfortunately it would also be some time before the changes were effective in resolving the staff morale problems born during the station's recent turbulent years. The most public manifestation of the station's morale woes came in 1992, when DJ Dani Elwell resigned from the station by reading her résumé live over the air.

In June 1992, with the arrival of the new management team of Vince DiMaggio as general manager and Stewart Meyers as program director, sixteen staff were let go in one day. Those included Scot Turner, Don Berns, Kneale Mann (who would return three years later), Jim Duff, and others.

But the 1990s were also a period of revival and sowing seeds of growth for the station. In addition to the growth of the Humble & Fred morning show, Jason Barr also joined the station at this time and would go on to become a significant contributor to CFNY.

A creation of program director Stewart Meyers, on-air personality Alan Cross launched a new feature on the station in 1993, The Ongoing History of New Music. The program chronicled all manner of history and trivia about the roots of rock music in a quasi-documentary style. Over time the feature would come to be one of the most recognizable and long-running shows on the station, being owned by the station until 2008 and continuing to air new segments up until May 2011, when Cross left the station for other opportunities; it was then revived in 2014 after he returned, and continues to air today.

The mid-1990s were another era of transition for CFNY as station owner Maclean-Hunter was acquired by Rogers Communications in 1994. CFNY was sold to competing telecommunications conglomerate Shaw Communications as a result of the acquisition. During this period, the station dropped its old branding and became 102.1 The Edge. For several years toward the end of the 1990s it was also referred to as Edge 102 before this was dropped in favour of the current usage. On May 1, 1996, the station finally moved from its old studio in Brampton to a new facility at Yonge-Dundas Square along with a street-level studio at 228 Yonge Street in downtown Toronto.

After only four years of ownership, Shaw Communications chose to spin off its radio holdings to Corus Entertainment in 1999. Corus remains CFNY's owner today.

Corus Entertainment
After 13 years as CFNY's morning show hosts, Howard Glassman and Fred Patterson departed CFNY for CFMJ in April 2001. Taking their place were newcomers Dean Blundell and Todd Shapiro, as well as station regular and Humble & Fred contributor Jason Barr. The new morning show was launched as The Morning Show with Dean Blundell, and later renamed The Dean Blundell Show. This remained the station's morning show until its cancellation in January 2014 broadcasting from 5:30 a.m. until 10 a.m., and was a significant driving force behind many of the station's contests and events. Shapiro was fired from the station on July 24, 2013.

Josie Dye joined the station in 2003 as its new mid-day host, on air from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 2002 also saw Derek Welsman join the station as a commercial producer. Welsman was a member of the Dean Blundell morning show until the show was canceled. In June 2003, assistant program director, music director, and host Kneale Mann left the station to launch CJDV-FM, a new Corus station in Kitchener-Waterloo as program director. He left Corus two years later to launch CILV-FM for Newcap (now Stingray) as program director in Ottawa. Mann left the station in December 2006 and created his own consulting firm MannLeadership, which he managed for 14 years. He then became a managing partner at Kenner Media, and is now an integrated marketing manager for Central Ontario Broadcasting. Alan Cross, host of The Ongoing History of New Music, as well as on-air personality since 1986, departed the station in 2001 to pursue an opportunity as program director at Hamilton-based radio station CJXY-FM for several years. However, in 2004 he returned to the Edge as program director. His tenure as program director for the Edge garnered acclaim for both him and the station, as he was awarded Canadian Program Director of the Year three times—in 2005, 2006, and 2008. Cross returned to the station in 2014 as a programming consultant and to resurrect his popular syndicated show "The Ongoing History of New Music".

For a number of years in the 2000s, it became rare that the station would announce its call letters. To most, it was simply 102.1 The Edge. Perhaps due to CRTC regulations requiring radio stations to announce their call letters, the station began in August 2005 to identify itself as both CFNY and the Edge during identification breaks. In 2006, however, the station fell afoul of the CRTC. The regulating body opted to give CFNY only a four-year licence renewal, rather than the customary seven. The regulator's concerns reportedly involved the station failing once to meet its mandated Canadian content targets.

Further staff shake-ups and alterations came with the close of the 2000s. Program director Alan Cross departed the station once more in 2008 to take a position at Corus Entertainment's interactive division, Splice Media. His replacement was former national program director Ross Winters who was fired in July 2013. In May 2009, host Barry Taylor, as well as longtime personality and live-to-air club host Martin Streek were fired for undisclosed reasons. Two months later, Streek took his own life on July 9.

With the departure of Taylor and Streek, host Dave "Bookie" Bookman briefly took over the afternoon drive slot until the Edge hired "Fearless" Fred Kennedy, a host at Edmonton-based CFBR-FM to take over the position. Fred joined the Edge as afternoon drive host in August 2009, while Bookman moved to the weekday evenings time slot.

Just a year later, in August 2010, Dean Blundell Show co-host Jason Barr was released from his contract and left the station and formed the Biggs & Barr morning show at CHTZ-FM with former Mix 99.9 announcer Chris Biggs. Derek Welsman, former commercial producer and show guest, returned to The Dean Blundell Show after a three-year stint at Astral Media as permanent co-host in November of that year.

On September 13, 2010, the Edge left its longtime home studio at 228 Yonge Street for a new studio at the Corus Quay, at 25 Dockside Drive. The new location is adjacent to Sugar Beach, and across the street from the Kool Haus concert venue.

On December 9, 2012, long-time on-air personality and staple Dave Bookman left the station to join the then-upcoming indie station, CIND-FM, making his on-air debut in September 2013. Bookman died on May 21, 2019, after suffering an aneurysm. Indie 88 paid tribute to him with an entire day of programming devoted to their lost colleague.

Staffing changes
In August, 2010 cohost Jason Barr left The Dean Blundell Show and CFNY.

On July 24, 2013, it was announced that Todd Shapiro would not be returning to The Dean Blundell Show. The exact reasons have not been made public.

In November 2013, the station faced criticism when Dean Blundell Show cohost Derek Welsman made on-air comments about a criminal trial on which he had been the jury foreman, resulting in allegations both of homophobia—the case involved allegations of sexual assault against a client of a gay bathhouse—and of potentially causing a mistrial by publicly discussing aspects of the jury deliberations. The station announced the show's suspension on December 12, 2013, and the show was ultimately cancelled on January 6, 2014. With the firings of Blundell and Welsman, the station's morning show was taken over by "Fearless Fred" Kennedy until March 18, 2014, when former CILQ-FM evening show host Dominik Diamond was announced as the morning show's new host.

On March 31, 2014, the station debuted a new weekday schedule. Midday and evening hosts Josie Dye and Greg Beharrell would move to mornings to co-host alongside newcomer Diamond, past host and music programmer Carlos Benevides was re-hired to take over middays, while Fearless Fred returned to the afternoon drive slot joined by weekend host Melani Mariani. Longtime swing host Adam was also granted a permanent timeslot, as evening host. This lineup, however, would prove short-lived. The departure of both Beharrell to KITS in San Francisco and Benevides back to mornings at CKBT-FM in Kitchener was followed by the apparent dismissal of Diamond, forcing the station to rearrange its broadcast schedule for the third time in less than a year.

In September 2014, Alan Cross rejoined the station as music consultant and host, relaunching The Ongoing History of New Music and a new weekday programming feature called Adventures in Vinyl. "Spirit of Radio"-era personality Scot Turner, also program director for CJDV-FM and CKBT-FM, rejoined the station as host of Spirit of Radio Sunday, a program which focused on classic alternative rock tracks from the "Spirit of Radio" era in the 1980s. The return of Cross and Turner was intended to draw in younger listeners, as well as older audiences from the "Spirit of Radio" era who were alienated by station's "harder-edged" atmosphere.

Spirit of Radio Sunday became the station's highest-rated program, but was discontinued following its February 1, 2015, edition because it was not sufficiently popular among the station's core 18–34 demographic. Around this time, the station retired its previous slogan ("Toronto's Alternative") and adopted its current one: "Modern Music".

In February 2016, the station announced that former MuchMusic VJ and current ET Canada correspondent Rick Campanelli will join the station as cohost with Fred and Mel of the morning show, beginning June 27. In November 2018, Kolter Bouchard (ex-CILQ-FM) and Meredith Geddes (ex-CFOX-FM) were announced as the new afternoon drive show, effective immediately. After Geddes left in April 2023 to return to Vancouver and accept a position at CJAX-FM, she was succeeded by Casey-Jo Loos from Vancouver's CFOX-FM as co-host of the afternoon drive show, now called "Kolter & Casey-Jo". Bouchard left the station at the end of March 2024 to become a full-time online content creator..

In January 2020, Ruby and Alex were released and replaced in February 2020 by the morning show team of Shawna, Chris Z and Jay Brody (known collectively as "The B Team") from Hamilton sister station CJXY-FM.

Studios
Prior to 1996, CFNY studios were located in Brampton. The first location was a house at 2 Ellen Street, then to another house 340 Main Street North and finally to a strip plaza at 83 Kennedy Road South. After 1996 the studio moved to downtown Toronto with two locations on Yonge Street before its current location at Corus Quay.

Availability and international reach
102.1 The Edge has long been an international station, as its signal is strong enough that, like many other Toronto radio stations, it is widely available in two of the top fifty media markets in North America. Its signal from Toronto beams from the CN Tower throughout the Buffalo-Niagara Falls New York market, in addition to Toronto.

As a result of these factors, CFNY frequently promotes itself as one of the most listened-to radio stations in the world—the station ranked tenth in a 2002 Arbitron survey of the world's most listened-to Internet radio streams.

Accolades and awards
CFNY-FM and its staff have been the recipients of numerous awards in the station's history.
 * The station has been named "Canadian Rock Station of the Year" by the Canadian Music and Broadcast Industry Awards more than two dozen times.
 * Former morning show Humble & Fred was voted "Best Morning Show in Canada" four times by the Canadian radio industry.
 * Former music director and on-air personality Kneale Mann was twice named Canadian Music Director of Year.
 * Former program director Stewart Meyers was named Canadian Program Director of the Year three times.
 * Former program director Alan Cross was named Canadian Program Director of the Year three times.
 * Afternoon drive host "Fearless" Fred Kennedy won the inaugural 2009 Steve Young Award, recognizing rising Canadian radio stars under the age of 30
 * The Dean Blundell Show was awarded 2011's "Top Radio Program (Morning Show)" award by Top Choice Awards

CASBY Music Awards
CFNY launched the annual U-Knows awards in 1981, to recognize Canadian musicians. Following a listener contest in 1986, they were renamed the CASBY Awards - an acronym for Canadian Artists Selected By You (originally, Chosen As Selected By You). The event is held every summer, where awards are presented to Canadian musicians who have won the most votes from listeners.

Edgefest
Began in 1987 and founded by CFNY-FM staffers Kneale Mann, Earl Veale, and Phil Evans as a thank-you gesture to the listeners and as a birthday party to commemorate both the station's tenth birthday and Canada Day. Since then, it has spanned 30 years, more than 300 bands, over 500,000 attendees, and five locations; Molson Park in Barrie, Ontario, the Ontario Place Forum, the Molson Amphitheatre, Downsview Park, and most recently at TD Echo Beach. It was the longest running rock festival in Canada.

Edge Free Money
Edge Free Money, originally known as Free Money Month, is a call-in contest run by the station. Every day for a given period of time, a band is selected as the Edge Artist of the Day. The first time that this artist is played on-air, listeners may begin calling in. The 102nd caller to get through wins $1000 from the station. In 2011, Free Money Month actually spanned three months: September, October, and November.

Jingle Bell Rock
Since 1998, the Edge has run an annual concert series in December of each year. From 1998 to 2008, it was known as the Edge Electric Christmas. Starting in 2009, it began to be billed as Jingle Bell Rock. It is a series of several concerts which are generally in smaller concert venues, although playing in large venues is not unheard-of. A percentage of proceeds from ticket sales are donated to the Daily Bread Food Bank.

Rock of Fame
The station launched its own hall of fame for notable musicians in summer 2011. This initiative is now defunct as it relied on Dave "Bookie" Bookman's presence in the radio and music industries.
 * Foo Fighters (inducted August 9, 2011)
 * Coldplay (inducted September 21, 2011)
 * Red Hot Chili Peppers (inducted April 28, 2012)
 * The Offspring (inducted September 2, 2012)
 * The Tragically Hip (inducted November 1, 2012)

Sausagefest
A yearly event which had been held since the start of the Dean Blundell Show, Sausagefest was a summertime backyard barbecue-style event which was typically held at the Sound Academy venue and emceed by the hosts of the show. It featured artists and bands (different each year) performing on the stage inside, while drinks and barbecued food were sold outside. The final Sausagefest was held in the summer of 2012.

title: CFNY-FM