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Electronic voting

Electronic voting is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or take care of casting and counting ballots including voting time.

Depending on the particular implementation, e-voting may use standalone electronic voting machines (also called EVM) or computers connected to the Internet (online voting). It may encompass a range of Internet services, from basic transmission of tabulated results to full-function online voting through common connectable household devices. The degree of automation may be limited to marking a paper ballot, or may be a comprehensive system of vote input, vote recording, data encryption and transmission to servers, and consolidation and tabulation of election results.

A worthy e-voting system must perform most of these tasks while complying with a set of standards established by regulatory bodies, and must also be capable to deal successfully with strong requirements associated with security, accuracy, integrity, swiftness, privacy, auditability, accessibility, cost-effectiveness, scalability and ecological sustainability trustworthiness inclusive.

Electronic voting technology can include punched cards, optical scan voting systems and specialized voting kiosks (including self-contained direct-recording electronic voting systems, or DRE). It can also involve transmission of ballots and votes via telephones, private computer networks, or the Internet. The functions of electronic voting depends primarily on what the organizers intent to achieve.

In general, two main types of e-voting can be identified:

 * e-voting which is physically supervised by representatives of governmental or independent electoral authorities (e.g. electronic voting machines located at polling stations);
 * remote e-voting via the Internet (also called i-voting) where the voter submits his or her vote electronically to the election authorities, from any location.

Many countries have used electronic voting for at least some elections, including Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States. , Brazil is the only country in which all elections are conducted through electronic voting.

Benefits
Electronic voting technology intends to speed the counting of ballots, reduce the cost of paying staff to count votes manually and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters. Also in the long term, expenses are expected to decrease. Results can be reported and published faster. Voters save time and cost by being able to vote independently from their location. This may increase overall voter turnout. The citizen groups benefiting most from electronic elections are the ones living abroad, citizens living in rural areas far away from polling stations and the disabled with mobility impairments.

Concerns
It has been demonstrated that as voting systems become more complex and include software, different methods of election fraud become possible. Others also challenge the use of electronic voting from a theoretical point of view, arguing that humans are not equipped for verifying operations occurring within an electronic machine and that because people cannot verify these operations, the operations cannot be trusted. Furthermore, some computing experts have argued for the broader notion that people cannot trust any programming they did not author.

The use of electronic voting in elections remains a contentious issue. Some countries such as Netherlands and Germany have stopped using it after it was shown to be unreliable, while the Indian Election commission recommends it. The involvement of numerous stakeholders including companies that manufacture these machines as well as political parties that stand to gain from rigging complicates this further.

Critics of electronic voting, including security analyst Bruce Schneier, note that "computer security experts are unanimous on what to do (some voting experts disagree, but it is the computer security experts who need to be listened to; the problems here are with the computer, not with the fact that the computer is being used in a voting application)... DRE machines must have a voter-verifiable paper audit trails... Software used on DRE machines must be open to public scrutiny" to ensure the accuracy of the voting system. Verifiable ballots are necessary because computers can and do malfunction, and because voting machines can be compromised.

Many insecurities have been found in commercial voting machines, such as using a default administration password. Cases have also been reported of machines making unpredictable, inconsistent errors. Key issues with electronic voting are therefore the openness of a system to public examination from outside experts, the creation of an authenticatable paper record of votes cast and a chain of custody for records. And, there is a risk that commercial voting machines results are changed by the company providing the machine. There is no guarantee that results are collected and reported accurately.

There has been contention, especially in the United States, that electronic voting, especially DRE voting, could facilitate electoral fraud and may not be fully auditable. In addition, electronic voting has been criticised as unnecessary and expensive to introduce. While countries like India continue to use electronic voting, several countries have cancelled e-voting systems or decided against a large-scale rollout, notably the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and the United Kingdom due to issues in reliability of EVMs.

Moreover, people without internet access and/or the skills to use it are excluded from the service. The so-called digital divide describes the gap between those who have access to the internet and those who do not. Depending on the country or even regions in a country the gap differs. This concern is expected to become less important in future since the number of internet users tends to increase.

The main psychological issue is trust. Voters fear that their vote could be changed by a virus on their PC or during transmission to governmental servers.

Expenses for the installation of an electronic voting system are high. For some governments they may be too high so that they do not invest. This aspect is even more important if it is not sure whether electronic voting is a long-term solution.

New South Wales 2021 iVote failures
During the 2021 NSW Local Government Elections the online voting system "iVote" had technical issues that caused some access problems for some voters. Analysis done of these failures indicated a significant chance of the outages having impacted on the electoral results for the final positions. In the Kempsey ward, where the margin between the last elected and first non-elected candidates was only 69 votes, the electoral commission determined that the outage caused a 60% chance that the wrong final candidate was elected. Singleton had a 40% chance of having elected the wrong councillor, Shellharbour was a 7% chance and two other races were impacted by a sub-1% chance of having elected the wrong candidate. The NSW Supreme Court ordered the elections in Kempsey, Singleton and Shellharbour Ward A to be re-run. In the 2022 Kempsey re-vote the highest placed non-elected candidate from 2021, Dean Saul, was instead one of the first councillors elected. This failure caused the NSW Government to suspend the iVote system from use in the 2023 New South Wales state election.

Electronic voting machines
Electronic voting systems for electorates have been in use since the 1960s when punched card systems debuted. Their first widespread use was in the US where 7 counties switched to this method for the 1964 presidential election. The newer optical scan voting systems allow a computer to count a voter's mark on a ballot. DRE voting machines which collect and tabulate votes in a single machine, are used by all voters in all elections in Brazil and India, and also on a large scale in Venezuela and the United States. They have been used on a large scale in the Netherlands but have been decommissioned after public concerns. In Brazil, the use of DRE voting machines has been associated with a decrease in error-ridden and uncounted votes, promoting a larger enfranchisement of mainly less educated people in the electoral process, shifting government spending toward public healthcare, particularly beneficial to the poor.

Paper-based electronic voting system
Paper-based voting systems originated as a system where votes are cast and counted by hand, using paper ballots. With the advent of electronic tabulation came systems where paper cards or sheets could be marked by hand, but counted electronically. These systems included punched card voting, marksense and later digital pen voting systems.

These systems can include a ballot marking device or electronic ballot marker that allows voters to make their selections using an electronic input device, usually a touch screen system similar to a DRE. Systems including a ballot marking device can incorporate different forms of assistive technology. In 2004, Open Voting Consortium demonstrated the 'Dechert Design', a General Public License open source paper ballot printing system with open source bar codes on each ballot.

Direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting system
A direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machine records votes by means of a ballot display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter (typically buttons or a touchscreen); that processes data with computer software; and that records voting data and ballot images in memory components. After the election it produces a tabulation of the voting data stored in a removable memory component and as a printed copy. The system may also provide a means for transmitting individual ballots or vote totals to a central location for consolidating and reporting results from precincts at the central location. These systems use a precinct count method that tabulates ballots at the polling place. They typically tabulate ballots as they are cast and print the results after the close of polling.

In 2002, in the United States, the Help America Vote Act mandated that one handicapped accessible voting system be provided per polling place, which most jurisdictions have chosen to satisfy with the use of DRE voting machines, some switching entirely over to DRE. In 2004, 28.9% of the registered voters in the United States used some type of direct recording electronic voting system, up from 7.7% in 1996.

In 2004, India adopted Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) for its elections to its parliament with 380 million voters casting their ballots using more than one million voting machines. The Indian EVMs are designed and developed by two government-owned defence equipment manufacturing units, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL). Both systems are identical, and are developed to the specifications of Election Commission of India. The system is a set of two devices running on 7.5 volt batteries. One device, the voting Unit is used by the voter, and another device called the control unit is operated by the electoral officer. Both units are connected by a five-metre cable. The voting unit has a blue button for each candidate. The unit can hold 16 candidates, but up to four units can be chained, to accommodate 64 candidates. The control unit has three buttons on the surface – one button to release a single vote, one button to see the total number of votes cast till now, and one button to close the election process. The result button is hidden and sealed. It cannot be pressed unless the close button has already been pressed. A controversy was raised when the voting machine malfunctioned which was shown in Delhi assembly. On 9 April 2019, the Supreme Court ordered the ECI to increase voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips vote count to five randomly selected EVMs per assembly constituency, which means ECI has to count VVPAT slips of 20,625 EVMs before it certifies the final election results.

Public network DRE voting system
A public network DRE voting system is an election system that uses electronic ballots and transmits vote data from the polling place to another location over a public network. Vote data may be transmitted as individual ballots as they are cast, periodically as batches of ballots throughout the election day, or as one batch at the close of voting. Public network DRE voting system can utilize either precinct count or central count method. The central count method tabulates ballots from multiple precincts at a central location.

Online voting

Internet voting systems have gained popularity and have been used for government and membership organization elections and referendums in Estonia, and Switzerland as well as municipal elections in Canada and party primary elections in the United States and France. Internet voting has also been widely used in sub-national participatory budgeting processes, including in Brazil, France, United States, Portugal and Spain.

Security experts have found security problems in every attempt at online voting,   including systems in Australia,  Estonia,  Switzerland,  Russia,  and the United States.

It has been argued political parties that have more support from less-wealthy voters—who tend to have less access to and familiarity with the Internet—may suffer in the elections due to e-voting, which tends to increase participation among wealthier voters. It is unsure as to whether narrowing the digital divide would promote equal voting opportunities for people across various social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds.

The effects of internet voting on overall voter turnout are unclear. A 2017 study of online voting in two Swiss cantons found that it had no effect on turnout, and a 2009 study of Estonia's national election found similar results. To the contrary, however, the introduction of online voting in municipal elections in the Canadian province of Ontario resulted in an average increase in turnout of around 3.5 percentage points. Similarly, a further study of the Swiss case found that while online voting did not increase overall turnout, it did induce some occasional voters to participate who would have abstained were online voting not an option.

A paper on “remote electronic voting and turnout in the Estonian 2007 parliamentary elections” showed that rather than eliminating inequalities, e-voting might have enhanced the digital divide between higher and lower socioeconomic classes. People who lived greater distances from polling areas voted at higher levels with this service now available. The 2007 Estonian elections yielded a higher voter turnout from those who lived in higher income regions and who received formal education. Still regarding the Estonian Internet voting system, it was proved to be more cost-efficient than the rest of the voting systems offered in 2017 local elections.

Electronic voting is perceived to be favored moreover by a certain demographic, namely the younger generation such as Generation X and Y voters. However, in recent elections about a quarter of e-votes were cast by the older demographic, such as individuals over the age of 55. Including this, about 20% of e-votes came from voters between the ages of 45 and 54. This goes to show that e-voting is not supported exclusively by the younger generations, but finding some popularity amongst Gen X and Baby Boomers as well. In terms of electoral results as well, the expectation that online voting would favor younger candidates has not been borne out in the data, with mayors in Ontario, Canada who were elected in online elections actually being slightly older on average than those elected by pencil and paper.

Online voting is widely used privately for shareholder votes, and other private organizations. The election management companies do not promise accuracy or privacy. In fact one company uses an individual's past votes for research, and to target ads.

Corporations and organizations routinely use Internet voting to elect officers and board members and for other proxy elections. Internet voting systems have been used privately in many modern nations and publicly in the United States, the UK, Switzerland and Estonia. In Switzerland, where it is already an established part of local referendums, voters get their passwords to access the ballot through the postal service. Most voters in Estonia can cast their vote in local and parliamentary elections, if they want to, via the Internet, as most of those on the electoral roll have access to an e-voting system, the largest run by any European Union country. It has been made possible because most Estonians carry a national identity card equipped with a computer-readable microchip and it is these cards which they use to get access to the online ballot. All a voter needs is a computer, an electronic card reader, their ID card and its PIN, and they can vote from anywhere in the world. Estonian e-votes can only be cast during the days of advance voting. On election day itself people have to go to polling stations and fill in a paper ballot.

Sybil attacks
One of the biggest weaknesses of online voting is the difficulty of dealing with fake identities, especially when voting is implemented using software without the cooperation of some kind of government agency. These attacks use sybils—fake or duplicate identities—to influence community decisions. Since a single vote has the potential to tilt a group decision, prevention of sybil attacks is an important priority in ensuring the security of voting. Sybil attacks are a common issue with implementations on open, peer-to-peer networks, as the system must have a way to prevent fake identities to prevent gaming of the vote.

Some future possible avenues of inquiries include to investigate more intersectional proof of personhood systems that aren't directly blockchain-based. For example, extending the web of trust by having a protocol that verifies proof of identities using social interactions would allow a community of users to assign corresponding levels of trusts to different candidates in relation with others. However, this would require a fully decentralized system. This web-of-trust protocol could even expand to allowing candidates to provide proof of personhood by physical attendance, which could lead to trusted clusters that grow into communities.

Hybrid systems
There are also hybrid systems that include an electronic ballot marking device (usually a touch screen system similar to a DRE) or other assistive technology to print a voter verified paper audit trail, then use a separate machine for electronic tabulation. Hybrid voting often includes both e-voting and mail-in paper ballots.

Internet voting can use remote locations (voting from any Internet capable computer) or can use traditional polling locations with voting booths consisting of Internet connected voting systems.

Analysis
Electronic voting systems may offer advantages compared to other voting techniques. An electronic voting system can be involved in any one of a number of steps in the setup, distributing, voting, collecting, and counting of ballots, and thus may or may not introduce advantages into any of these steps. Potential disadvantages exist as well including the potential for flaws or weakness in any electronic component.

Charles Stewart of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that 1 million more ballots were counted in the 2004 US presidential election than in 2000 because electronic voting machines detected votes that paper-based machines would have missed.

In May 2004 the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report titled "Electronic Voting Offers Opportunities and Presents Challenges", analyzing both the benefits and concerns created by electronic voting. A second report was released in September 2005 detailing some of the concerns with electronic voting, and ongoing improvements, titled "Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic Voting Systems Are Under Way, but Key Activities Need to Be Completed".

Electronic ballots
Electronic voting systems may use electronic ballot to store votes in computer memory. Systems which use them exclusively are called DRE voting systems. When electronic ballots are used there is no risk of exhausting the supply of ballots. Additionally, these electronic ballots remove the need for printing of paper ballots, a significant cost. When administering elections in which ballots are offered in multiple languages (in some areas of the United States, public elections are required by the National Voting Rights Act of 1965), electronic ballots can be programmed to provide ballots in multiple languages for a single machine. The advantage with respect to ballots in different languages appears to be unique to electronic voting. For example, King County, Washington's demographics require them under U.S. federal election law to provide ballot access in Chinese. With any type of paper ballot, the county has to decide how many Chinese-language ballots to print, how many to make available at each polling place, etc. Any strategy that can assure that Chinese-language ballots will be available at all polling places is certain, at the very least, to result in a significant number of wasted ballots. (The situation with lever machines would be even worse than with paper: the only apparent way to reliably meet the need would be to set up a Chinese-language lever machine at each polling place, few of which would be used at all.)

Critics argue the need for extra ballots in any language can be mitigated by providing a process to print ballots at voting locations. They argue further, the cost of software validation, compiler trust validation, installation validation, delivery validation and validation of other steps related to electronic voting is complex and expensive, thus electronic ballots are not guaranteed to be less costly than printed ballots.

Accessibility
Electronic voting machines can be made fully accessible for persons with disabilities. Punched card and optical scan machines are not fully accessible for the blind or visually impaired, and lever machines can be difficult for voters with limited mobility and strength. Electronic machines can use headphones, sip and puff, foot pedals, joy sticks and other adaptive technology to provide the necessary accessibility.

Organizations such as the Verified Voting Foundation have criticized the accessibility of electronic voting machines and advocate alternatives. Some disabled voters (including the visually impaired) could use a tactile ballot, a ballot system using physical markers to indicate where a mark should be made, to vote a secret paper ballot. These ballots can be designed identically to those used by other voters. However, other disabled voters (including voters with dexterity disabilities) could be unable to use these ballots.

Cryptographic verification
The concept of election verifiability through cryptographic solutions has emerged in the academic literature to introduce transparency and trust in electronic voting systems. It allows voters and election observers to verify that votes have been recorded, tallied and declared correctly, in a manner independent from the hardware and software running the election. Three aspects of verifiability are considered: individual, universal, and eligibility. Individual verifiability allows a voter to check that her own vote is included in the election outcome, universal verifiability allows voters or election observers to check that the election outcome corresponds to the votes cast, and eligibility verifiability allows voters and observers to check that each vote in the election outcome was cast by a uniquely registered voter.

Voter intent
Electronic voting machines are able to provide immediate feedback to the voter detecting such possible problems as undervoting and overvoting which may result in a spoiled ballot. This immediate feedback can be helpful in successfully determining voter intent.

Transparency
It has been alleged by groups such as the UK-based Open Rights Group that a lack of testing, inadequate audit procedures, and insufficient attention given to system or process design with electronic voting leaves "elections open to error and fraud".

In 2009, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany found that when using voting machines the "verification of the result must be possible by the citizen reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject." The DRE Nedap-computers used till then did not fulfill that requirement. The decision did not ban electronic voting as such, but requires all essential steps in elections to be subject to public examinability.

In 2013, The California Association of Voting Officials was formed to maintain efforts toward publicly owned General Public License open source voting systems

Coercion evidence
In 2013, researchers from Europe proposed that the electronic voting systems should be coercion evident. There should be a public evidence of the amount of coercion that took place in a particular elections. An internet voting system called "Caveat Coercitor" shows how coercion evidence in voting systems can be achieved.

Audit trails
A fundamental challenge with any voting machine is to produce evidence that the votes were recorded as cast and tabulated as recorded. Election results produced by voting systems that rely on voter-marked paper ballots can be verified with manual hand counts (either valid sampling or full recounts). Paperless ballot voting systems must support auditability in different ways. An independently auditable system, sometimes called an Independent Verification, can be used in recounts or audits. These systems can include the ability for voters to verify how their votes were cast or enable officials to verify that votes were tabulated correctly.

A discussion draft argued by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) states, "Simply put, the DRE architecture’s inability to provide for independent audits of its electronic records makes it a poor choice for an environment in which detecting errors and fraud is important." The report does not represent the official position of NIST, and misinterpretations of the report has led NIST to explain that "Some statements in the report have been misinterpreted. The draft report includes statements from election officials, voting system vendors, computer scientists and other experts in the field about what is potentially possible in terms of attacks on DREs. However, these statements are not report conclusions."

Various technologies can be used to assure DRE voters that their votes were cast correctly, and allow officials to detect possible fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the tabulated results. Some systems include technologies such as cryptography (visual or mathematical), paper (kept by the voter or verified and left with election officials), audio verification, and dual recording or witness systems (other than with paper).

Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, the creator of the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) concept (as described in her Ph.D. dissertation in October 2000 on the basic voter verifiable ballot system), proposes to answer the auditability question by having the voting machine print a paper ballot or other paper facsimile that can be visually verified by the voter before being entered into a secure location. Subsequently, this is sometimes referred to as the "Mercuri method." To be truly voter-verified, the record itself must be verified by the voter and able to be done without assistance, such as visually or audibly. If the voter must use a bar-code scanner or other electronic device to verify, then the record is not truly voter-verifiable, since it is actually the electronic device that is verifying the record for the voter. VVPAT is the form of Independent Verification most commonly found in elections in the United States and other countries such as Venezuela.

End-to-end auditable voting systems can provide the voter with a receipt that can be taken home. This receipt does not allow voters to prove to others how they voted, but it does allow them to verify that the system detected their vote correctly. End-to-end (E2E) systems include Punchscan, ThreeBallot and Prêt à Voter. Scantegrity is an add-on that extends current optical scan voting systems with an E2E layer. The city of Takoma Park, Maryland used Scantegrity II for its November 2009 election.

Systems that allow the voter to prove how they voted are never used in U.S. public elections, and are outlawed by most state constitutions. The primary concerns with this solution are voter intimidation and vote selling.

An audit system can be used in measured random recounts to detect possible malfunction or fraud. With the VVPAT method, the paper ballot is often treated as the official ballot of record. In this scenario, the ballot is primary and the electronic records are used only for an initial count. In any subsequent recounts or challenges, the paper, not the electronic ballot, would be used for tabulation. Whenever a paper record serves as the legal ballot, that system will be subject to the same benefits and concerns as any paper ballot system.

To successfully audit any voting machine, a strict chain of custody is required.

The solution was first demonstrated (New York City, March 2001) and used (Sacramento, California 2002) by AVANTE International Technology, Inc.. In 2004 Nevada was the first state to successfully implement a DRE voting system that printed an electronic record. The $9.3 million voting system provided by Sequoia Voting Systems included more than 2,600 AVC EDGE touchscreen DREs equipped with the VeriVote VVPAT component. The new systems, implemented under the direction of then Secretary of State Dean Heller replaced largely punched card voting systems and were chosen after feedback was solicited from the community through town hall meetings and input solicited from the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

Hardware
Inadequately secured hardware can be subject to physical tampering. Some critics, such as the group "Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet" ("We do not trust voting machines"), charge that, for instance, foreign hardware could be inserted into the machine, or between the user and the central mechanism of the machine itself, using a man in the middle attack technique, and thus even sealing DRE machines may not be sufficient protection. This claim is countered by the position that review and testing procedures can detect fraudulent code or hardware, if such things are present, and that a thorough, verifiable chain of custody would prevent the insertion of such hardware or software. Security seals are commonly employed in an attempt to detect tampering, but testing by Argonne National Laboratory and others demonstrates that existing seals can usually be quickly defeated by a trained person using low-tech methods.

Software
Security experts, such as Bruce Schneier, have demanded that voting machine source code should be publicly available for inspection. Others have also suggested publishing voting machine software under a free software license as is done in Australia.

Testing and certification
One method to detect errors with voting machines is parallel testing, which are conducted on the Election Day with randomly picked machines. The ACM published a study showing that, to change the outcome of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, only 2 votes in each precinct would have needed to be changed.

Cost
Cost of having electronic machines receive the voter's choices, print a ballot and scan the ballots to tally results is higher than the cost of printing blank ballots, having voters mark them directly (with machine-marking only when voters want it) and scanning ballots to tally results, according to studies in Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

In popular culture
In the 2006 film Man of the Year starring Robin Williams, the character played by Williams—a comedic host of political talk show—wins the election for President of the United States when a software error in the electronic voting machines produced by the fictional manufacturer Delacroy causes votes to be tallied inaccurately.

In Runoff, a 2007 novel by Mark Coggins, a surprising showing by the Green Party candidate in a San Francisco Mayoral election forces a runoff between him and the highly favored establishment candidate—a plot line that closely parallels the actual results of the 2003 election. When the private-eye protagonist of the book investigates at the behest of a powerful Chinatown businesswoman, he determines that the outcome was rigged by someone who defeated the security on the city's newly installed e-voting system.

"Hacking Democracy" is a 2006 documentary film shown on HBO. Filmed over three years, it documents American citizens investigating anomalies and irregularities with electronic voting systems that occurred during America's 2000 and 2004 elections, especially in Volusia County, Florida. The film investigates the flawed integrity of electronic voting machines, particularly those made by Diebold Election Systems and culminates in the hacking of a Diebold election system in Leon County, Florida.

The central conflict in the MMO video game Infantry resulted from the global institution of direct democracy through the use of personal voting devices sometime in the 22nd century AD. The practice gave rise to a 'voting class' of citizens composed mostly of homemakers and retirees who tended to be at home all day. Because they had the most free time to participate in voting, their opinions ultimately came to dominate politics.

title: Electronic voting


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Talk:Kölsch

The last line is untrue - Kölsch is sold in bottles and most bars have larger glasses - the shape is important, the size is just tradition. --Pteron 17:03, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Kölsch is no real language. It is just a dialect. 82.82.120.215 14:12, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * But moving it to Kölsch is not good either, as that is also the name of a beer. andy 14:27, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Kölsch


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Afar language

 Afar  (Qafaraf; also known as ’Afar Af, Afaraf, Qafar af) is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken by the Afar people inhabiting Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Classification
Afar is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. It is further categorized in the Lowland East Cushitic sub-group, along with Saho and Somali. Its closest relative is the Saho language.

Geographic distribution
The Afar language is spoken as a mother tongue by the Afar people in Djibouti, Eritrea, and the Afar Region of Ethiopia.

According to Ethnologue, there are total Afar speakers. Of these, 1,280,000 were recorded in the 2007 Ethiopian census, with 906,000 monolinguals registered in the 1994 census.

Official status
In Djibouti, Afar is a recognized national language. It is also one of the broadcasting languages of the Radio Television of Djibouti public network.

In Eritrea, Afar is recognized as one of nine national languages which formally enjoy equal status although Tigrinya and Arabic are by far of greatest significance in official usage. There are daily broadcasts on the national radio and a translated version of the Eritrean constitution. In education, however, Afar speakers prefer Arabic – which many of them speak as a second language – as the language of instruction.

In the Afar Region of Ethiopia, Afar is also recognized as an official working language. Since 2020, Afar is one of the five official working languages of Ethiopia.

Consonants
The consonants of the Afar language in the standard orthography are listed below in angle brackets (preceded by the IPA notation):

Voiceless stop consonants which close syllables are released, e.g.,.

Vowels and stress
Sentence final vowels of affirmative verbs are aspirated (and stressed), e.g. Sentence final vowels of negative verbs are not aspirated (nor stressed), e.g. Sentence final vowels of interrogative verbs are lengthened (and stressed), e.g. Otherwise, stress in word-final.
 * abeh = 'He did.'
 * maabinna = 'He did not do.'
 * abee? = 'Did he do?'

Phonotactics
Possible syllable shapes are V, VV, VC, VVC, CV, CVV and CVVC.

Syntax
As in most other Cushitic languages, the basic word order in Afar is subject–object–verb.

Writing system
In Ethiopia, Afar used to be written with the Ge'ez script (Ethiopic script). Since around 1849, the Latin script has been used in other areas to transcribe the language. Additionally, Afar is also transcribed using the Arabic script.

In the early 1970s, two Afar intellectuals and nationalists, Dimis and Redo, formalized the Afar alphabet. Known as Qafar Feera, the orthography is based on the Latin script.

Officials from the Institut des Langues de Djibouti, the Eritrean Ministry of Education, and the Ethiopian Afar Language Studies and Enrichment Center have since worked with Afar linguists, authors and community representatives to select a standard orthography for Afar from among the various existing writing systems used to transcribe the language.

title: Afar language


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Afar

Afar may refer to:

Peoples and languages

 * Afar language, an East Cushitic language
 * Afar people, an ethnic group of Djibouti, Eritrea, and Ethiopia

Horn of Africa

 * Afar Desert or Danakil Desert, a desert in Ethiopia
 * Afar Region, a regional state of Ethiopia
 * Afar Triangle or Afar Depression, a geological feature in East Africa
 * Afar Triple Junction, a geological rift system which divides the Nubian, Somalian, and Arabian plates
 * French Territory of the Afars and the Issas, a former French colony (now Djibouti)

Iraq

 * Tal Afar, in Iraq
 * Tel Afar District, region in Iraq

Arts, entertainment, and media

 * Afar (album), a synthpop album by Ice Choir
 * Afar (magazine), a publication focused on experiential travel
 * Afar, a Combo Rangers character

Organizations

 * Afar Liberation Front, a former Ethiopian militant group
 * Afar National Democratic Party, a former Ethiopian political party
 * Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front, an Ethiopian political party
 * American Federation for Aging Research, or AFAR, a private charitable organization

title: Afar


text:
Province of Prussia

The Province of Prussia (Provinz Preußen; Prūsijos Provincija; Prowincja Prusy; Prowincjô Prësë) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1824 to 1878. The province was established in 1824 from the provinces of East Prussia and West Prussia, and was dissolved in 1878 when the merger was reversed.

Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad, Russia) was the provincial capital.

History
Ducal Prussia became part of Brandenburg-Prussia in 1618, and became the Kingdom of Prussia upon Frederick I of Prussia's coronation as king in 1701. After the coronation, the term "Province of Prussia" was used to designate East Prussia to differentiate the former duchy's territory within the larger kingdom. Royal Prussia (consisting of the Malbork Land and Warmia which were parts of historical Prussia, but also of historically Polish Pomerelia) was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772 during the First Partition of Poland, placing them under Prussian rule under the name West Prussia, with the exception of Warmia integrated into East Prussia.

The Province of Prussia was created on April 13, 1824, as the easternmost province of the Kingdom of Prussia. The province was formed in a merger with the pre-existing provinces of East Prussia and West Prussia joined together in a personal union, and from December 3, 1829, in a real union. Its territory included the entire historical region of Prussia, from which the province and the kingdom derived their names, as well as Pomerelia and (following the Congress of Vienna) parts of Greater Poland. On April 1, 1878, the Province of Prussia was divided back into the provinces of West Prussia and East Prussia.

title: Province of Prussia


text:
Dzongkha

Dzongkha is a Tibeto-Burman language that is the official and national language of Bhutan. It is written using the Tibetan script.

The word dzongkha means "the language of the fortress", from dzong "fortress" and kha "language". , Dzongkha had 171,080 native speakers and about 640,000 total speakers.

Dzongkha is a South Tibetic language. It is closely related to and partially intelligible with Sikkimese, and to some other Bhutanese languages such as Chocha Ngacha, Brokpa, Brokkat and Lakha. It has a more distant relationship to Standard Tibetan. Spoken Dzongkha and Tibetan are around 50 to 80 percent mutually intelligible.

Usage
Dzongkha and its dialects are the native tongue of eight western districts of Bhutan (viz. Wangdue Phodrang, Punakha, Thimphu, Gasa, Paro, Ha, Dagana and Chukha). There are also some native speakers near the Indian town of Kalimpong, once part of Bhutan but now in North Bengal, and in Sikkim.

Dzongkha was declared the national language of Bhutan in 1971. Dzongkha study is mandatory in all schools, and the language is the lingua franca in the districts to the south and east where it is not the mother tongue. The Bhutanese films Travellers and Magicians (2003) and Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019) are in Dzongkha.

Writing system

The Tibetan script used to write Dzongkha has thirty basic letters, sometimes known as "radicals", for consonants. Dzongkha is usually written in Bhutanese forms of the Uchen script, forms of the Tibetan script known as Jôyi "cursive longhand" and Jôtshum "formal longhand". The print form is known simply as Tshûm.

Romanization
There are various systems of romanization and transliteration for Dzongkha, but none accurately represents its phonetic sound. The Bhutanese government adopted a transcription system known as Roman Dzongkha, devised by the linguist George van Driem, as its standard in 1991.

Tones
Dzongkha is a tonal language and has two register tones: high and low. The tone of a syllable determines the allophone of the onset and the phonation type of the nuclear vowel.

Consonants
All consonants may begin a syllable. In the onsets of low-tone syllables, consonants are voiced. Aspirated consonants (indicated by the superscript h),, and are not found in low-tone syllables. The rhotic is usually a trill  or a fricative trill, and is voiceless in the onsets of high-tone syllables.

are dental. Descriptions of the palatal affricates and fricatives vary from alveolo-palatal to plain palatal.

Only a few consonants are found in syllable-final positions. Most common among them are. Syllable-final is often elided and results in the preceding vowel nasalized and prolonged, especially word-finally. Syllable-final is most often omitted when word-final as well, unless in formal speech. In literary pronunciation, liquids and  may also end a syllable. Though rare, is also found in syllable-final positions. No other consonants are found in syllable-final positions.

Vowels

 * When in low tone, vowels are produced with breathy voice.
 * In closed syllables, varies between  and, the latter being more common.
 * varies between and.
 * varies between close-mid and open-mid, the latter being common in closed syllables.  is close-mid .  may not be longer than  at all, and differs from  more often in quality than in length.
 * Descriptions of vary between close-mid  and open-mid.
 * is close-mid, but may approach open-mid especially in closed syllables.  is close-mid.
 * is slightly lower than open-mid, i.e..
 * may approach, especially in closed syllables.
 * When nasalized or followed by, vowels are always long.

Phonotactics
Many words in Dzongkha are monosyllabic. Syllables usually take the form of CVC, CV, or VC. Syllables with complex onsets are also found, but such an onset must be a combination of an unaspirated bilabial stop and a palatal affricate. The bilabial stops in complex onsets are often omitted in colloquial speech.

Classification and related languages
Dzongkha is considered a South Tibetic language. It is closely related to and partially intelligible with Sikkimese, and to some other Bhutanese languages such as Chocha Ngacha, Brokpa, Brokkat and Lakha.

Dzongkha bears a close linguistic relationship to J'umowa, which is spoken in the Chumbi Valley of Southern Tibet. It has a much more distant relationship to Standard Tibetan. Spoken Dzongkha and Tibetan are around 50% to 80% mutually intelligible, with the literary forms of both highly influenced by the liturgical (clerical) Classical Tibetan language, known in Bhutan as Chöke, which has been used for centuries by Buddhist monks. Chöke was used as the language of education in Bhutan until the early 1960s when it was replaced by Dzongkha in public schools.

Although descended from Classical Tibetan, Dzongkha shows a great many irregularities in sound changes that make the official spelling and standard pronunciation more distant from each other than is the case with Standard Tibetan. "Traditional orthography and modern phonology are two distinct systems operating by a distinct set of rules."

Vocabulary
The following is a sample vocabulary:

Sample text
The following is a sample text in Dzongkha of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Vocabulary

 * Online searchable dictionary (Dz-En, En-Dz, Dz-Dz) or Online Dzongkha-English Dictionary – site  Dzongkha Development Commission (en – dz)
 * Dzongkha Computer Terms (pdf)
 * English-Dzongkha Pocket Dictionary (pdf)
 * Rigpai Lodap: An Intermediate Dzongkha-English Dictionary (pdf)
 * Kartshok Threngwa: A Book on Dzongkha Synonyms & Antonyms (pdf)
 * Names of Countries and Capitals in Dzongkha (pdf)
 * A Guide to Dzongkha-Translation (pdf)

Grammar

 * A colloquial grammar of the Bhutanese language. by Byrne, St. Quintin. Allahabad: Pioneer Press, 1909
 * Dzongkha transliteration – site  National Library of Bhutan (en – dz )
 * Dzongkha, The National Language of Bhutan – site Dzongkha Linux (en – dz)
 * Romanization of Dzongkha
 * Dzongkha : Origin and Description
 * Dzongkha language, alphabet and pronunciation
 * Dzongkha in Wikipedia: Русский, Français, 日本語, Eesti, English
 * Pioneering Dzongkha Text To Speech Synthesis (pdf)
 * Dzongkha Grammar & other materials – site The Dzongkha Development Commission (en – dz)
 * Коряков Ю.Б. Практическая транскрипция для языка дзонг-кэ
 * Classical Tibetan-Dzongkha Dictionary (pdf)

title: Dzongkha


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Talk:Eugen Varga

Untitled
kroeehggeeeeeeee

I took birth and death dates from ThisDayThatYear.com  --Cje 09:44, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Eugen Varga


text:
Quantitative psychological research

Quantitative psychological research is psychological research that employs quantitative research methods.

Quantitative research falls under the category of empirical research.

title: Quantitative psychological research


text:
Talk:Hot swap

I want to use mobile rack with hot swap. Is it neccessary for my mainboard to support hot swap capability if my mobile rack does? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.232.92.242 (talk) 14:27, 18 November 2003 (UTC)

Hot swap vs Hot swapping
Somehow a names needs to be chosen and hot swap and hot swapping need to be combined.
 * any progress on this? --193.1.100.102 08:13, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree. I think that the article should be "hot swappable" as this is the most frequent description — Preceding unsigned comment added by 4012359 (talk • contribs) 06:42, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Both should just redirect to "hot swappable" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.161.200.171 (talk) 05:35, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

 * "Hot swappable" would not only be the most logical choise, but it's also correct english, "hot swap" woudn't be correct... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arp242 (talk • contribs) 14:57, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Hot swap


text:
IDR

IDR may refer to:

 * Indonesian rupiah, by ISO 4217 currency code
 * Devi Ahilyabai Holkar International Airport, Indore, India, by IATA code
 * Instantaneous Decoding Refresh in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video, see Network Abstraction Layer
 * Incentive Distribution Rights, see Master limited partnership
 * Idiosyncratic drug reaction, a type of adverse drug reaction that is specific to an individual
 * Independence Day: Resurgence, 2016 film
 * Indian Depository Receipt, a financial instrument
 * Inner Distribution Road, a ring road in Reading, Berkshire, UK
 * International Depository Receipt, a negotiable security
 * Iskandar Development Region, the southern development corridor in Johor, Malaysia
 * Jane's International Defence Review, a monthly magazine reporting on military news and technology
 * In Death Reborn, album by Army of the Pharaohs
 * Volkswagen I.D. R

title: IDR


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German New Guinea

German New Guinea (Deutsch-Neuguinea) consisted of the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea and several nearby island groups and was the first part of the German colonial empire. The mainland part of the territory, called Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, became a German protectorate in 1884. Other island groups were added subsequently. The Bismarck Archipelago (New Britain, New Ireland and several smaller islands), and the North Solomon Islands were declared a German protectorate in 1885. The Caroline Islands, Palau, and the Mariana Islands (except for Guam) were bought from Spain in 1899. German New Guinea annexed the formerly separate German Protectorate of Marshall Islands, which also included Nauru, in 1906. German Samoa, though part of the German colonial empire, was not part of German New Guinea.

Following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Kaiser-Wilhelmsland and nearby islands fell to Australian forces, while Japan occupied most of the remaining German possessions in the Pacific. The mainland part of German New Guinea (Kaiser-Wilhelmsland), the Bismarck Archipelago and the North Solomon Islands are now part of Papua New Guinea. The Northern Mariana Islands are an unincorporated territory of the United States. The Carolines (as the Federated States of Micronesia), the Marshall Islands, Nauru and Palau are independent countries.

The islands to the east of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, on annexation, were renamed the Bismarck Archipelago (formerly the New Britannia Archipelago) and the two largest islands renamed Neupommern ('New Pomerania', today's New Britain) and Neumecklenburg ('New Mecklenburg', now New Ireland). Due to their accessibility by water, however, these outlying islands were, and have remained, the most economically viable part of the territory.

With the exception of German Samoa, the German islands in the Western Pacific formed the "Imperial German Pacific Protectorates". These were administered as part of German New Guinea and included the Bismarck Archipelago (New Britain, New Ireland, and several smaller islands), the North Solomon Islands (Buka, Bougainville, and several smaller islands), the Carolines, Palau, the Marianas (except for Guam), the Marshall Islands, and Nauru. The total land area of German New Guinea was 249500 km².

Early German South Pacific presence
The first Germans in the South Pacific were probably sailors on the crew of ships of the Dutch East India Company: during Abel Tasman's first voyage, the captain of the Heemskerck was one Holleman (or Holman), born in Jever in northwest Germany.

Hanseatic League merchant houses were the first to establish footholds in the South Pacific: Johann Cesar Godeffroy & Sohn of Hamburg, headquartered at Samoa from 1857, operated a South Seas network of trading stations especially dominating the copra trade and carrying German immigrants to various South Pacific settlements;  in 1877 another Hamburg firm, Hernsheim and Robertson, established a German community on Matupi Island, in Blanche Bay (the north-east coast of New Britain) from which it traded in New Britain, the Caroline, and the Marshall Islands. By the end of 1875, one German trader reported: "German trade and German ships are encountered everywhere, almost at the exclusion of any other nation".

German colonial policy under Bismarck
In the late 1870s and early 1880s, an active minority, stemming mainly from a right-wing National Liberal and Free Conservative background, had organised various colonial societies all over Germany to persuade Chancellor Bismarck to embark on a colonial policy. The most important ones were the Kolonialverein of 1882 and the Society for German Colonization (Gesellschaft für Deutsche Kolonisation) founded in 1884. The reasons for Bismarck's lack of enthusiasm when it came to the subject of Germany's colonial possessions is reflected in his curt response in 1888 to the procolonial, expansionist remarks of Eugen Wolf, reflected in the latter's autobiography. After Bismarck had patiently listened to Wolf enthusiastically laying out his plans that he sought to pitch employing several illustrative maps, Bismarck finally interrupted his monologue:

"Your map of Africa there is very nice I have to admit. But you know, my map of Africa is here ... in Europe. You see here is Russia, over there is [..] France. And us, we are here – right in the middle between those two. That's my map of Africa."

Despite his personal objections, it was Bismarck himself who eventually organised the acquisition of much of what would become the German colonial empire. The first attempts at the new policy came in 1884 when Bismarck had to put German trading interests in southwestern Africa under imperial protection. Bismarck told the Reichstag on 23 June 1884 of the change in German colonial policy: annexations would now proceed but by grants of charters to private companies.

Australian aspiration and British uninterest
The edition of 27 November 1882 of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung carried an article which the Colonial Secretary of the British colony of New South Wales drew to the attention of the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and, on 7 February 1883, the paper published a summary of the article under the heading "German annexation of New Guinea". The argument lifted from the German paper began by stating that New Guinea fell into the Australian sphere but had been neglected; although the Portuguese had explored in the 16th century, it was the Dutch from the 17th century "who seemed better satisfied with the country than other European nations had been" but they had over-reached themselves and had fallen back towards Java, Sumatra and Celebes. Recent explorations had given the basis for reconsideration: it "is considered useful by geology and biology people as holding in its forests the key to solve problems... a profitable field for cultivation" but London had only sent missionaries to save souls. "As we Germans have learnt a little about conducting colonial policy, and as our wishes and plans turn with a certain vivacity towards New Guinea... according to our opinion it might be possible to create out of the island a German Java, a great trade and plantation colony, which would form a stately foundation stone for a German colonial kingdom of the future."

The publication of the Sydney Morning Herald article caused a sensation and not just in the colony of New South Wales: over the border, in the British colony of Queensland where the shipping lanes of the Torres Strait and the beche-de-mer trade were of commercial significance. The Queensland Premier, Sir Thomas McIlwraith who led a political party "considered to represent the interests of the plantation owners in Queensland", drew it to the attention of the Queensland governor together with the general situation in New Guinea and urged annexation of the island. He also instructed the London Agent for Queensland to urge the Imperial Colonial Office to an act of annexation.

"Impatient with the lack of results from this procedure" Premier McIlwraith on his own authority ordered a Queensland Police Magistrate in March 1883 to proclaim the annexation on behalf of the Queensland government of New Guinea east of the Dutch boundary at 141E. When news of this reached London, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Derby promptly repudiated the act. When the matter came before Parliament, Lord Derby advised that the British Imperial Government “were not ready to annex New Guinea in view of its vast size and unknown interior, the certainty of native objections and administrative expense”.

German New Guinea Company
On his return to Germany from his 1879–1882 Pacific expedition, Otto Finsch joined a small, informal group interested in German colonial expansion into the South Seas led by the banker, Adolph von Hansemann. Finsch encouraged them to pursue the founding of a colony on the north-east coast of New Guinea and the New Britain Archipelago even providing them with an estimate of the costs of such a venture.

In 1884, the New Guinea Company was founded in Berlin by Adolph von Hansemann and a syndicate of German bankers for the purpose of colonizing and exploiting resources on Neuguinea (German New Guinea). On 3 November 1884, under the auspices of the Deutsche Neuguinea-Compagnie (New Guinea Company), the German flag was flown over Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, the Bismarck Archipelago and the German Solomon Islands.

Albert Hahl (1868–1945) joined the German Colonial Office in 1895 and until 1914 played a major part in New Guinea's administration. He was an imperial judge at Herbertshoehe (1896–98), deputy governor of New Guinea (1899–1901), and governor (1902–14). As a judge he made three reforms: the appointment of 'luluais' [village chiefs], attempts to integrate the Tolais people into the European economy, and the protection of village lands, which led him to recommend the ending of all alienation of indigenous land. After 1901 Hahl attempted to apply his system to the whole of New Guinea, and although his success was limited, exports rose from one million marks in 1902 to eight million in 1914. He was forced to retire because of disagreements with Berlin officials, and became an active writer on New Guinea and was a leader in German colonial societies between the wars.

Catholic and Lutheran missions
By the mid-1880s German church authorities had devised a definite program for missionary work in New Guinea and assigned it to the Rhenish Mission, under the direction of Friedrich Fabri (1824–91), a Lutheran. The missionaries faced extraordinary difficulties, including repeated sickness, as well as psychological and sometimes violent tensions and fights between the colonial administration and the locals. The latter, at first, rejected European customs and norms of social behaviour, with few embracing Christianity. In 1921, the Rhenish Mission territory was handed over to the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia.

Missionaries sponsored by the Catholic Church in Germany had better resources and influence, and proved more successful. They put more emphasis on tradition and less on modernisation, and were more in line with the world-views and traditions of the locals. European morality and discipline were often adopted, as were notions of dignity and prestige.

Table: German Mission societies in New Guinea

Imperial German Pacific protectorates
By the German–Spanish Treaty of 1899, Germany bought from Spain the Caroline Islands and the Mariana Islands (excluding Guam, which had been ceded to the US after the 1898 Spanish–American War) for 25 million pesetas (equivalent to 16,600,000 goldmarks). These islands became a protectorate and were administered from German New Guinea. The Marshall Islands, which had been a German protectorate since 1885, were annexed to German New Guinea in 1906.

Forced labour policy
To expand the highly profitable plantations, the Germans needed more workers. The government sent military expeditions to take direct control of more areas from 1899 to 1914. Instead of voluntary recruitment it became a matter of forced mobilisation. The government enforced new laws that required the tribes to furnish four weeks of labour per person annually and payment of a poll tax in cash, thereby forcing reluctant local inhabitants into the work force. The government did explore the choice of voluntary recruitment of labourers from China, Japan, and Micronesia, but only a few hundred came. After 1910 the government tried to ameliorate the impact by ending the recruitment of women in some areas and entirely closing other areas to recruiting. The planters protested German forced labor policies vehemently and initiated what would go on to be called the Sokehs rebellion. The government responded by sending 4 warships with 745 troops to defeat the Sokehs workers and impose the forced labour policy. They arrived in January 1911 and by February 1911 the Sokehs leader had surrendered.

World War I

Following the outbreak of World War I, Australian troops captured Kaiser-Wilhelmsland and the nearby islands in 1914, after a short resistance led by Captain Carl von Klewitz and Lt. Robert "Lord Bob" von Blumenthal, while Japan occupied most of the remaining German possessions in the Pacific. The only significant battle occurred on 11 September 1914 when the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force attacked the low-power wireless station at Bita Paka (near Rabaul) on the island of New Britain, then Neu Pommern. The Australians suffered six dead and four wounded – the first Australian military casualties of the First World War. The German forces fared much worse, with one German officer and 30 local policemen killed and one German officer and ten local policemen wounded. On 21 September all German forces in the colony surrendered.

However, Lieutenant (later Hauptmann) Hermann Detzner, a German officer, and some 20 local policemen evaded capture in the interior of New Guinea for the entire war. Detzner was on a surveying expedition to map the border with Australian-held Papua at the outbreak of war, and remained outside militarised areas. Detzner claimed to have penetrated the interior of the German portion (Kaiser Wilhelmsland) in his 1920 book Vier Jahre unter Kannibalen ("Four Years Among Cannibals"). These claims were heavily disputed by various German missionaries, and Detzner recanted most of his claims in 1932.

After the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, Germany lost all its colonial possessions, including German New Guinea. In 1923, the League of Nations gave Australia a trustee mandate over Nauru, with the United Kingdom and New Zealand as co-trustees. Other lands south of the equator became the Territory of New Guinea, a League of Nations Mandate Territory under Australian administration until 1949 (interrupted by Japanese occupation during the New Guinea campaign) when it was merged with the Australian territory of Papua to become the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, which eventually became modern Papua New Guinea. The islands north of the equator became the Japanese League of Nations Mandate for the South Seas Islands. After Japan's defeat in World War II, the former Japanese mandate islands were administered by the United States as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, a United Nations trust territory.

Planned symbols for German New Guinea
In 1914 a series of drafts were made for proposed coats of arms and flags for the German colonies. However, World War I broke out before the designs were finished and implemented, and the symbols were never actually put into use. Following its defeat in the war, Germany lost all its colonies, and the prepared coats of arms and flags were therefore never used.

title: German New Guinea


text:
Bihari languages

Bihari languages are a group of the Indo-Aryan languages. The Bihari languages are mainly spoken in the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, and also in Nepal. The most widely spoken languages of the Bihari group are Bhojpuri, Magahi and Maithili.

Despite the large number of speakers of these languages, only Maithili has been constitutionally recognised in India, which gained constitutional status via the 92nd amendment to the Constitution of India, of 2003 (gaining assent in 2004). Both Maithili and Bhojpuri have constitutional recognition in Nepal. Bhojpuri is also official in Fiji as Fiji Hindi. There are demands for including Bhojpuri in the 8th schedule of Indian constitution.

In Bihar, Hindi is the language used for educational and official matters. These languages were legally absorbed under the overarching label Hindi in the 1961 Census. Such state and national politics are creating conditions for language endangerments. After independence Hindi was given the sole official status through the Bihar Official Language Act, 1950. Hindi was displaced as the sole official language of Bihar in 1981, when Urdu was accorded the status of the second official language.

Speakers
The number of speakers of Bihari languages is difficult to indicate because of unreliable sources. In the urban region most educated speakers of the language name Hindi as their language because this is what they use in formal contexts and believe it to be the appropriate response because of unawareness. The educated and the urban population of the region return Hindi as the generic name for their language.

British linguist Grierson also mentioned that Bajjika, Angika and Surjapuri are also spoken in particular districts of Bihar. These languages are mostly spoken in rural areas.

Classification
The Bihari languages fall into four language subgroups:

 * Bihari
 * Bhojpuri
 * Nagpuriya Bhojpuri
 * Mauritian Bhojpuri
 * Caribbean Hindustani
 * Fiji Hindi
 * South African Bhojpuri (Naitali)
 * Magahi
 * Maithili
 * Begushoraiya Maithili
 * Bajjika (Western Maithili)
 * Angika (Southern Maithili)
 * Standard Maithili (Central Maithili)
 * Eastern Maithili
 * Thēthi
 * Jolaha
 * Kisan
 * Khortha
 * Sadanic
 * Nagpuri (Sadri)
 * Kurmali
 * Panchpargania
 * Unclassified Bihari (Languages of a distinct origin but currently fall under Bihari language family and are mainly spoken in Nepal)
 * Tharuic'''
 * Chitwania Tharu
 * Dangaura Tharu
 * Sonha
 * Kathariya Tharu
 * Kochila Tharu
 * Western Kochila
 * Central Kochila (Saptariya Tharu)
 * Eastern Kochila (Morangiya, Khawas Tharu)
 * Rana Tharu
 * Buksa
 * Musasa
 * Majhi
 * Kumhali
 * Kuswaric
 * Danwar
 * Bote-Darai
 * Bote
 * Darai

title: Bihari languages


text:
Francis II of the Two Sicilies

Francis II (Neapolitan and Francesco II, christened Francesco d'Assisi Maria Leopoldo; Francischieddu; 16 January 1836 – 27 December 1894) was King of the Two Sicilies. He was the last King of the Two Sicilies as successive invasions by Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia ultimately brought an end to his rule, as part of Italian unification. After he was deposed, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Kingdom of Sardinia were merged into the newly formed Kingdom of Italy.

Early life
The only son and heir of King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies by his first wife, Maria Christina of Savoy, Francis II was the last of the Bourbon kings of Naples, where he was born in 1836. His education had been much neglected and he proved a man of weak character, greatly influenced by his stepmother, Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria, whom he feared, and also by the priests and the camarilla, the reactionary court set.

On 3 February 1859 in Bari, Francis married Duchess Maria Sophie of Bavaria, of the royal Bavarian house of Wittelsbach (a younger sister of Empress Elisabeth "Sissi" of Austria) However, their marriage was unhappy. Their only daughter, Maria Cristina, was born ten years after her parents married and lived only three months (24 December 1869 – 28 March 1870).

Reign
Francis II took the throne on 22 May 1859, after the death of his father. For the post of prime minister, he at once appointed Carlo Filangieri, who realised the importance of the Franco-Piedmontese victories in Lombardy and advised Francis II to accept the alliance with the Kingdom of Sardinia proposed by Cavour. On 7 June, a part of the Swiss Guard mutinied, and while the king mollified them by promising to redress their grievances, General Alessandro Nunziante gathered his troops, who surrounded the mutineers and shot them down. The incident resulted in the disbanding of the whole Swiss Guard, which was the strongest bulwark of the Bourbon dynasty.

Cavour again proposed an alliance to divide the Papal States between Piedmont and Naples (the province of Rome excepted), but Francis rejected the idea, which to him seemed like heresy. Filangieri strongly advocated a constitution as the only measure which might save the dynasty, but on the king’s refusal, he resigned.

Garibaldi's invasion
Meanwhile, the revolutionary parties were conspiring for the overthrow of the Bourbons in Calabria and Sicily, and Giuseppe Garibaldi was preparing for a raid in the south of Italy. A conspiracy in Sicily was discovered and the plotters punished with brutal severity, but Rosalino Pilo and Francesco Crispi, who had organised the movement, escaped execution. When Garibaldi landed at Marsala (May 1860) with his Expedition of the Thousand, he conquered the island with astonishing ease.

Those events at last coaxed Francis II into granting a constitution, but its promulgation was followed by disorders in Naples and the resignation of several ministers; Liborio Romano became head of the government. The disintegration of the army and navy proceeded apace, and Cavour sent a Piedmontese squadron carrying troops on board to watch over these events. Garibaldi had crossed the strait of Messina and was advancing northward. After long hesitations and even an appeal to Garibaldi himself and on the advice of Romano, Francis II left Naples on 6 September with his wife, Maria Sophia; the court; and the diplomatic corps (except the French and British ministers) and went by sea to Gaeta, where a large part of the army was concentrated.

The next day, Garibaldi entered Naples, was enthusiastically welcomed, and formed a provisional government.

Piedmontese invasion
King Victor Emmanuel II had decided on the invasion of the Papal States and after occupying Umbria and the Marche, he entered the Neapolitan kingdom. Garibaldi's troops defeated the Neapolitan royalists at the Battle of Volturno, which took place on 1 October 1860, and the Piedmontese captured Capua.

By late 1860, only Gaeta, Messina and Civitella del Tronto still held out. The Siege of Gaeta by the Piedmontese began on 6 November 1860. Both Francis II and his wife behaved with great coolness and courage. Even after the French fleet, whose presence had prevented an attack by sea, was withdrawn, they still resisted. It was not until 13 February 1861 that the fortress capitulated.

Overthrow
Thus, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ceased to exist, and its territory was incorporated into that of the Kingdom of Sardinia (soon renamed the Kingdom of Italy), and Francis II was deposed. Francis and Maria Sophia first lived in Rome as guests of the Pope, where they maintained a government in exile that was recognised by some Catholic powers, including France, Spain, Austria-Hungary and Bavaria. After the Prussian victory against Austria in 1866 and the subsequent expansion of Italian territory, they disbanded this government and left Rome before it was occupied by the Italians in 1870. They led a wandering life from then on by living in Austria, France and Bavaria. In 1894, Francis died at Arco in Trentino (now north-eastern Italy, but at the time in Austria-Hungary). His widow survived him by 31 years and died in Munich.

Upon the death of Francis II, his half-brother, Prince Alfonso, became the pretender to the throne of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Cause of beatification and canonization
On 11 December 2020, the cause of the beatification of King Francis II of the Two Sicilies was introduced by Crescenzio Cardinal Sepe, the Archbishop of Naples. Pope Francis declared the king a Servant of God.

Honours

 * 🇧🇪 Belgium: Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold, 9 June 1855
 * 🇪🇸 Spain: Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, 15 June 1844
 * Empire of Brazil: Grand Cross of the Order of Pedro I
 * Austrian Empire:
 * Grand Cross of the Order of St. Stephen, 1849
 * Knight of the Military Order of Maria Theresa, 1861
 * Kingdom of France: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis
 * Kingdom of Prussia:
 * Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle, 4 June 1853
 * Pour le Mérite (military), 20 February 1861
 * Kingdom of Bavaria: Knight of the Order of Saint Hubert, 1857
 * Kingdom of Saxony: Knight of the Order of the Rue Crown, 1860
 * Grand Duchy of Tuscany: Grand Cross of the Order of St. Joseph
 * Württemberg: Grand Cross of the Order of the Württemberg Crown, 1864

title: Francis II of the Two Sicilies


text:
Bolo tie

A bolo tie (sometimes bola tie or shoestring necktie) is a type of necktie consisting of a piece of cord or braided leather with decorative metal tips (called aiguillettes) and secured with an ornamental clasp or slide.

Popularity
In the United States, bolo ties are widely associated with Western wear and are generally most common in the western areas of the country. Bolo tie slides and tips in silver have been part of Hopi, Navajo, Zuni, and Puebloan silversmithing traditions since the mid-20th century. The bolo tie was made the official neckwear of Arizona on April 22, 1971, by Governor Jack Williams. New Mexico passed a non-binding measure to designate the bolo as the state's official neckwear in 1987. On March 13, 2007, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed into law that the bolo tie was the state's official tie. Also in 2007, the bolo tie was named the official tie of Texas.

In the United Kingdom, bolo ties are known as bootlace ties. They were popular with 1950s Teddy Boys, who wore them with drape suits.

Bolo ties became fashionable in the 1980s with rockabilly revivalists and new wavers. The bolo tie returned as a popular fashion accessory in the fall of 1988 when male Hollywood stars would be frequently found wearing them. Chain stores like Jeanswest and Merry-Go-Round sold multiple choices for all occasions.

During the 1980s and 1990s bolo ties, some elegant and expensive, were sold in Japan, Korea, and China. Some had fancy, hand-made cords and unusual tips. Sales overseas skyrocketed post-1970s; this was due to the overflow from the United States, where it had fallen out of fashion in the 1980s.

Author John Bloom (a.k.a. horror host and drive-in expert Joe Bob Briggs) is known by his trademark wearing of various bolo ties during his televised and live shows.

During the 2013 NFL season, San Diego Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers captured media attention for his frequent use of bolo ties. He was noted wearing it again after defeating the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2013–14 NFL playoffs.

Origins
Victor Cedarstaff of Wickenburg, Arizona, claims to have invented the bolo tie in the late 1940s and later patented his slide design.

According to an article in Sunset:

"Victor Cedarstaff was riding his horse one day in Wickenburg, AZ where he was a cowboy when his hat blew off. Wary of losing the silver-trimmed hatband, he slipped it around his neck. His companion joked, 'That's a nice-looking tie you're wearing, Victor.' An idea incubated, and Smith soon fashioned the first bola tie (the name is derived from boleadora, an Argentine and Uruguayan lariat)."

title: Bolo tie


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Talk:Peoples Temple

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jordan.Sayman.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 06:22, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Peoples Temple