title: Ayrshire

text: The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 established a uniform system of county councils in Scotland and realigned the boundaries of many of Scotland's counties. Subsequently, Ayr county council was created in 1890. In 1930 the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1929 was implemented. This re-designated the Burghs into large burghs and small burghs. This new categorisation influenced the level of autonomy that the Burghs enjoyed from the county council. The act also abolished the parish as a unit of local government in Scotland. In Ayrshire in excess of 30 parishes were consolidated into ten district councils. The District Councils were Ayr, Cumnock, Dalmellington, Girvan, Irvine, Kilbirnie, Kilmarnock, Maybole, Troon and Saltcoats. Ayrshire County Council was based at County Buildings in Wellington Square.


title: Ayrshire

text: In May 1975 the county council was abolished and its functions were transferred to Strathclyde Regional Council. The county area was divided between four new districts within the two-tier Strathclyde region: Cumnock and Doon Valley, Cunninghame, Kilmarnock and Loudoun and Kyle and Carrick. The Cunninghame district included the Isle of Arran, Great Cumbrae and Little Cumbrae, which had until then been administered as part of the County of Bute.


title: Ayrshire

text: In 1996 the two-tier system of regions and districts was abolished and Ayrshire was divided between the unitary council areas of East Ayrshire (covering the area of the former Kilmarnock & Loudoun District and Cumnock & Doon Valley District), North Ayrshire (covering the area of the former Cunninghame District Council) and South Ayrshire (covering the area of the former Kyle and Carrick District).


title: Ayrshire

text: There was an Ayrshire constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1708 to 1801 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 until 1868, when the constituency was divided into Ayrshire North and Ayrshire South.


title: Ayrshire

text: During the whole of the 1708 to 1868 period, and until 1950, the burghs of Ayr and Irvine were parliamentary burghs, represented as components of Ayr Burghs. In 1832 Kilmarnock became a parliamentary burgh, to be represented as a component of Kilmarnock Burghs until 1918. Ayr Burghs and Kilmarnock Burghs were districts of burghs, and quite different in character from later Ayr and Kilmarnock constituencies.


title: Ayrshire

text: From 1918 to 1983 Ayrshire and Buteshire were treated as if a single area for purposes of parliamentary representation, with their combined area being divided into different constituencies at different times. Scottish local government counties were abolished in 1975, in favour of regions and districts, but the next reform of constituency boundaries was not until 1983.


title: Ayrshire

text: Constituencies covering Ayrshire may be listed by periods as below, but the story is somewhat more complicated than the lists may imply: until 1918, Ayr Burghs and Kilmarnock Burghs included burghs lying outside both Ayrshire and Buteshire; a particular constituency name may represent different boundaries in different periods; in 1974, there were boundary changes without the creation of any new constituency names.


title: Ayrshire

text: A number of railway lines connect the towns of northern Ayrshire to each other and also to Glasgow, as well as south to Stranraer and south-east to Dumfries.


title: Ayrshire

text: Glasgow Prestwick International Airport, serving Glasgow and the west of Scotland more generally, is located away from Glasgow in Ayrshire; it provides various passenger flights to Spain, Portugal, Italy and Poland. The name "Glasgow" was added in front of Prestwick as per American military airport naming conventions, as the airport was in the past oft-used as a stopover by US military personnel on their way to and from military bases in Germany. Moreover, it is known in rock history as the only place in Britain visited by Elvis Presley, on his way home from army service in Germany in 1960.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: Ishikawa is the first volleyball player to have a wax figure in Japan. Currently, his wax figure is displayed at Madame Tussauds Tokyo.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: Ishikawa was named "Best Outside Spiker" award at the FIVB World Cup (2015, 2019), Asian Championship (2017, 2019, 2021), as well as "Most Valuable Player" award at the Asian Championship (2017).


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: As of April 2021, Ishikawa is the captain of the Japan men's national volleyball team, and plays as an outside hitter. He currently plays in the Italian Volleyball League for Allianz Milano.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: Ishikawa's father, Mikihisa, is a former track and field sprinter of "DENSO". His mother, Midori, is a former basketball player of "DENSO". His elder sister, Naomi, is a former volleyball player and his sister, Mayu, is a member of the Japan women's national volleyball team.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: Due to the influence of his elder sister, Ishikawa started playing volleyball in the 4th grade of Elementary School. His best achievement was an 8th place at the . In 2010, he won the bronze medal at the . Then, he was selected as a captain of Aichi Prefecture, and won the silver medal at the the same year. In High School, he became the first student to win "Triple Crown" at 3 tournaments: , , for 2 consecutive years.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: In the 2014–2015 season, Ishikawa played for the Italian team Parmareggio Modena about 3 months after the end of the All Japan Intercollegiate Volleyball Championship. According to an official of the Japan Association, he was the first student to challenge an overseas league through university, and was also the first university freshman to play volleyball in the Italian Volleyball League. In the 2015–2016 season, he returned to Japan to continue playing for Chuo University's club. In December 2016, he transferred to Italy again, played for Top Volley Latina until 2018. During this time, he was an exchange student while actually still playing for his university.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: After graduating from university in March 2018, Ishikawa signed his first professional contract with the Italian team (The club was ranked up to the Italian Volleyball League in 2018–2019 season). He moved to Kioene Padova in the next season. He changed club again in 2020, to Allianz Milano. Then, he extended his contract in the 2021–2022 season, and continued to stay with the club for the 2022–2023 season.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: In 2012, Ishikawa was called for the Japan men's national under-19 volleyball team for the first time, and the Japanese team won the bronze medal at the 2012 Asian Youth Boys Volleyball Championship in Tehran, Iran. He also won the "Best Scorer" award at the end of the tournament.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: In 2013, as the national team representative, Ishikawa competed in the 2013 FIVB Volleyball Boys' U19 World Championship in Mexico, where the Japanese team finished in 17th place. He continued to compete in the 2013 FIVB Volleyball Men's U21 World Championship in Turkey the same year, where the Japanese team finished in 10th place.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: In April 2014, Ishikawa entered Chuo University (Faculty of Law, Department of Political Science), and was called for the Japan men's national volleyball team for the first time. In June 2014, he was selected as a member of "Team CORE" of『Project CORE』(The project responsible for revitalizing volleyball, which was launched by the Japan Volleyball Association). In September 2014, his debut competition was at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea. The Japanese team won the silver medal after losing to the Iran team with a set count 1–3 in the final. In October 2014, he was part of the Japanese roster for the 2014 Asian Men's U20 Volleyball Championship in Manama, Bahrain, and led the team to win the 5th place.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: In September 2015, Ishikawa participated in the 2015 FIVB Volleyball Men's World Cup in Japan for the first time. The Japanese team finished in 6th place but he still won the first "Best Outside Spiker" award of FIVB's tournament as a member of the senior national team.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: In July 2017, Ishikawa participated in the 2017 Asian Men's Volleyball Championship in Gresik, Indonesia for the first time because he was not called to the tournament in 2015. The Japanese team won the gold medal, and he also won the first "Most Valuable Player, Best Outside Spiker" double award of AVC's tournament as a member of the senior national team.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: In 2021, Ishikawa became the captain of the Japan men's national volleyball team, and was assigned to lead the team at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. The Japanese team finished in 7th place after losing to the Brazil team with a set count 0–3 in the quarterfinals. In September 2021, he led the team to win the silver medal at the 2021 Asian Men's Volleyball Championship, and won the "Best Outside Spiker" award as a captain of the senior national team.


title: Yūki Ishikawa

text: In December 2020, Ishikawa was positive for COVID-19 when he was playing volleyball in Italy. He recovered after nearly 20 days of home treatment. However, his taste and smell were still experiencing abnormal symptoms.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: Bjørn Lomborg (; born 6 January 1965) is a Danish author and president of the think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is former director of the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI) in Copenhagen. He became internationally known for his best-selling and controversial book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (2001).


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: His first book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist", which argued many environmental issues are overstated, attracted criticism from the scientific community and brought Lomborg popular media attention. In 2002, Lomborg and the Environmental Assessment Institute founded the Copenhagen Consensus. In 2004, he was listed as one of "Time's" 100 most influential people.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: In his subsequent book, (2007), and its film adaptation, Lomborg outlined his views on global warming, many of which contradict the scientific consensus on climate change. These include his view that negative impacts are overstated and his opposition to climate change mitigation. Lomborg agreed with the premise "Global warming is real and man-made. It will have a serious impact..." but enumerated other disagreements. In 2009, "Business Insider" cited Lomborg as one of "The 10 Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics".


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: Lomborg's views and work have attracted scrutiny in the scientific community. The majority of scientists reacted negatively to "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and he was formally accused of scientific misconduct over the book; the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty concluded in an evaluation of the book that "one couldn't prove that Lomborg had deliberately been scientifically dishonest, although he had broken the rules of scientific practice in that he interpreted results beyond the conclusions of the authors he cited." His positions on climate change have been challenged by experts and characterised as cherry picking.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: Lomborg was an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, earned an M.A. degree in political science at the University of Aarhus in 1991, and a PhD degree in political science at the University of Copenhagen in 1994.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: Lomborg lectured in statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus as an assistant professor (1994–1996) and associate professor (1997–2005). He left the university in February 2005 and in May of that year became an adjunct professor in Policy-making, Scientific Knowledge and the Role of Experts at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: Early in his career, his professional areas of interest lay in the simulation of strategies in collective action dilemmas, simulation of party behavior in proportional voting systems, and the use of surveys in public administration. In 1996, Lomborg's paper, "Nucleus and Shield: Evolution of Social Structure in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma", was published in the academic journal "American Sociological Review".


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: Later, Lomborg's interests shifted to the use of statistics in the environmental arena. In 1998, Lomborg published four essays about the state of the environment in the leading Danish newspaper "Politiken", which according to him "resulted in a firestorm debate spanning over 400 articles in major metropolitan newspapers." This led to the "Skeptical Environmentalist", whose English translation was published as a work in environmental economics by Cambridge University Press in 2001. The book brought him international prominence as an opponent of the scientific consensus on climate change. He later edited "Global Crises, Global Solutions", which presented the first conclusions of the Copenhagen Consensus, published in 2004 by the Cambridge University Press. In 2007, he authored a book entitled "."


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: In March 2002, the newly elected center-right prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, appointed Lomborg to run Denmark's new Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI). On 22 June 2004, Lomborg announced his decision to resign from this post to go back to the University of Aarhus, saying his work at the Institute was done and that he could better serve the public debate from the academic sector.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: In 2001, he attained significant attention by publishing "The Skeptical Environmentalist", a controversial book whose main thesis is that many of the most-publicized claims and predictions on environmental issues are wrong. The book received negative reviews among the scientific community, including from the Union of Concerned Scientists, "Nature" and "Scientific American", with many scientists criticising its assertions as poorly supported, selectively using data and misrepresenting sources. However, it was well received in popular media and brought Lomborg to international attention.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: After the publication of "The Skeptical Environmentalist", Lomborg was formally accused of scientific dishonesty by a group of environmental scientists, who brought a total of three complaints against him to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), a body under Denmark's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MSTI). Lomborg was asked whether he regarded the book as a "debate" publication, and thereby not under the purview of the DCSD, or as a scientific work; he chose the latter, clearing the way for the inquiry that followed. The charges claimed that "The Skeptical Environmentalist" contained deliberately misleading data and flawed conclusions. Due to the similarity of the complaints, the DCSD decided to proceed on the three cases under one investigation.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: In January 2003, the DCSD released a ruling that sent a mixed message, finding the book to be scientifically dishonest through misrepresentation of scientific facts, but Lomborg himself not guilty due to his lack of expertise in the fields in question. That February, Lomborg filed a complaint against the decision with the MSTI, which had oversight over the DCSD. In December, 2003, the Ministry annulled the DCSD decision, citing procedural errors, including lack of documentation of errors in the book, and asked the DCSD to re-examine the case. In March 2004, the DCSD formally decided not to act further on the complaints, reasoning that renewed scrutiny would, in all likelihood, result in the same conclusion.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: The original DCSD decision about Lomborg provoked a petition signed by 287 Danish academics, primarily social scientists, who criticised the DCSD for evaluating the book as a work of science, whereas the petitioners considered it clearly an opinion piece by a non-scientist. The Danish Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation then asked the Danish Research Agency (DRA) to form an independent working group to review DCSD practices. In response to this, another group of Danish scientists collected over 600 signatures, primarily from the medical and natural sciences community, to support the continued existence of the DCSD and presented their petition to the DRA.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: Lomborg's follow-up to "The Skeptical Environmentalist", "", was published in 2007. In it, Lomborg expanded on his views of climate change. Lomborg starts with the premise "Global warming is real and man-made. It will have a serious impact on humans and the environment toward the end of this century." Lomborg argues at length that warming will result in "reducing" total deaths from extreme temperatures, due to warming in cold climates. The main theme is that then-current approaches for addressing climate change, such as the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, were not economically cost-effective.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: "The Lomborg Deception", a 2010 Yale University Press book by Howard Friel, analyzed the ways in which Lomborg has "selectively used (and sometimes distorted) the available evidence", and alleged that the sources Lomborg provided in the footnotes did not support and, in some cases directly contradicted, Lomborg's assertions in the text of the book. Lomborg denied those claims in a 27-page argument-by-argument response. Friel wrote a reply to that response, in which he admitted two errors but otherwise rejected Lomborg's arguments.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: Bjørn Lomborg was the subject of documentary feature film "Cool It", adapted from his book of the same name. It was released on 12 November 2010 in the US. The film in part explicitly challenged Al Gore's 2006 Oscar-winning environmental awareness documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth"." The film received a media critic collective rating of 51% from Rotten Tomatoes and 61% from Metacritic.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: Lomborg and the Environmental Assessment Institute founded the Copenhagen Consensus in 2002, which seeks to establish priorities for advancing global welfare using methodologies based on the theory of welfare economics. A panel of prominent economists was assembled to evaluate and rank a series of problems every four years. The project was funded largely by the Danish government and was co-sponsored by "The Economist". A book summarizing the conclusions of the economists' first assessment, "Global Crises, Global Solutions", edited by Lomborg, was published in October 2004 by Cambridge University Press.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: In 2006, Lomborg became director of the newly established Copenhagen Consensus Center, a Danish government-funded institute intended to build on the mandate of the EAI, and expand on the original Copenhagen Consensus conference. Denmark withdrew its funding in 2012 and the Center faced imminent closure. Lomborg left the country and reconstituted the Center as a non-profit organization in the United States. The Center was based out of a "Neighborhood Parcel Shipping Center" in Lowell, Massachusetts, though Lomborg himself was based in Prague in the Czech Republic. In 2015, Lomborg described the center's funding as "a little more than $1m a year ... from private donations", of which Lomborg himself was paid $775,000 in 2012.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: In 2014, the Australian Government offered the University of Western Australia $4 million to establish a "consensus centre", with Lomborg as director. The university accepted the offer, setting off a firestorm of opposition from its faculty and students, and from climate scientists around the world. In April 2015, the university reversed the decision and rejected the offer. The government continued to seek a sponsor for the proposed institution. On 21 October 2015, the offered funding was withdrawn. In April 2015, it was announced that an alliance between the Copenhagen Consensus Center and the University of Western Australia would see the establishment of the Australian Consensus Centre, a new policy research center at the UWA Business School. The University described the Center's goals as a "focus on applying an economic lens to proposals to achieve good for Australia, the region and the world, prioritizing those initiatives which produce the most social value per dollar spent.". This appointment came under intense scrutiny, particularly when leaked documents revealed that the Australian government had approached UWA and offered to fund the Consensus Centre, information subsequently confirmed by a senior UWA lecturer. Reports indicated that Prime Minister Tony Abbott's office was directly responsible for Lomborg's elevation. $4 million of the total funding for the Center was to be provided by the Australian federal government, with UWA not contributing any funding for the centre.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: On 8 May 2015, UWA cancelled the contract for hosting the Australian Consensus Centre as "the proposed centre was untenable and lacked academic support". The Australian federal education minister, Christopher Pyne, said that he would find another university to host the ACC.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: In July 2015, Flinders University senior management began quietly canvassing its staff about a plan to host the renamed Lomborg Consensus Centre at the University, likely in the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. A week later the story was broken on Twitter by the NTEU (National Tertiary Education Union) and Scott Ludlam. The story appeared the next day in "The Australian", but described as "academic conversations" with no mention of Bjorn Lomborg's involvement and portrayed as a grassroots desire for the Centre by the University. The following week, a story appeared in "The Guardian" quoting two Flinders University academics and an internal document demonstrating staff's withering rejection of the idea. Flinders staff and students vowed to fight against the establishment of any Centre or any partnership with Lomborg, citing his lack of scientific credibility, his lack of academic legitimacy and the political nature of the process of establishing the Centre with the Abbott federal government. The Australian Youth Climate Coalition and 350.org launched a national campaign to support staff and students in their rejection of Lomborg.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: On 21 October 2015, education minister Simon Birmingham told a senate committee the offered funding had been withdrawn. It was subsequently unclear whether the Australian Government would honour its original commitment and transfer the funds directly to the Centre to cover the costs incurred.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: Lomborg has set out his views on climate change in several books, articles, interviews, and opinion pieces. Lomborg believes that climate change is occurring and humans are responsible, but disputes that the effects and economic impacts will be negative. He argues that finances should be spent elsewhere, rather than on mitigation. He has incorrectly argued that a brief "hiatus" in surface warming would mean that longer-term temperature increases would not materialise. He does not support solar panels, saying they are "inefficient", which is "why you have to subsidise them", despite fossil fuels also being subsidised. According to Reuters, "many nations, especially in the developing world where food and water supplies are most vulnerable to climate shifts projected by the U.N. panel of climate scientists, reject Lomborg’s views" that investment into technology is an adequate response to climate change. He has opposed the Kyoto Protocol and called the Paris Agreement a "charade". He has been accused of exaggerating the economic costs of climate change mitigation policies.


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: Several of Lomborg's articles, in newspapers such as "The Wall Street Journal" and "The Daily Telegraph", have been checked by Climate Feedback, a worldwide network of scientists who assess the credibility of influential climate change media coverage. The Climate Feedback reviewers assessed that the scientific credibility of the articles ranged between "low" and "very low". The Climate Feedback reviewers came to the conclusion that in one case, Lomborg "practices cherry picking"; in a second case, he "had reached his conclusions through cherry-picking from a small subset of the evidence, misrepresenting the results of existing studies, and relying on flawed reasoning"; in a third case, "[his] article [is in] blatant disagreement with available scientific evidence, while the author does not offer adequate evidence to support his statements"; and in a fourth case, "The author, Bjorn Lomborg, cherry-picks this specific piece of research and uses it in support of a broad argument against the value of climate policy. He also misrepresents the Paris Agreement to downplay its potential to curb future climate change."


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: Lomborg is gay and a vegetarian. As a public figure he has been a participant in information campaigns in Denmark about homosexuality, and states that "Being a public gay is to my view a civic responsibility. It's important to show that the width of the gay world cannot be described by a tired stereotype, but goes from leather gays on parade-wagons to suit-and-tie yuppies on the direction floor, as well as everything in between".


title: Bjørn Lomborg

text: After the release of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" in 2001, Lomborg was subjected to intense scrutiny and criticism in the media. Like in the scientific community, his scientific qualifications and integrity were criticised, although some popular media outlets supported him. The verdict of the Danish Committees for Scientific Dishonesty fueled this debate and brought it into the spotlight of international mass media. By the end of 2003 Lomborg had become an international celebrity, with frequent appearances on radio, television and print media around the world. He is also a regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 2005.


title: Rogue state

text: "Rogue state" (or sometimes "outlaw state") is a term applied by some international theorists to states that they consider threatening to the world's peace. These states meet certain criteria, such as being ruled by authoritarian or totalitarian governments that severely restrict human rights, sponsoring terrorism, or seeking to proliferate weapons of mass destruction. The term is used most by the United States (although the US State Department officially stopped using the term in 2000); in his speech at the United Nations (UN) in 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated this phrase. However, it has been applied by other countries as well.


title: Rogue state

text: As early as July 1985, President Ronald Reagan stated that "we are not going to tolerate … attacks from outlaw states by the strangest collection of misfits, looney tunes, and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich," but it fell to the Clinton administration to elaborate on this concept. In the 1994 issue of "Foreign Affairs", U.S. National Security Advisor Anthony Lake labelled five nations as "rogue states": North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. He described these regimes as "recalcitrant and outlaw states that not only choose to remain outside the family [of democratic nations] but also assault its basic values". In theory, to be classified as a "rogue state", a state had to seek to obtain weapons of mass destruction, support terrorism, and severely abuse its own citizens. While four of the listed countries met all these conditions, Cuba, though known for repressing its citizens and its vocal criticism of the United States, was put on the list solely because of the political influence of the Cuban-American community and specifically that of the Cuban American National Foundation (pre-Jorge Mas Santos), whereas Syria and Pakistan avoided being added to the list because the United States hoped that Damascus could play a constructive role in the Arab-Israeli peace process, and because Washington had long maintained close relations with Islamabad—a vestige of the Cold War.


title: Rogue state

text: Three other nations, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Sudan, and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, were treated as "rogue states" as well. The US State Department at times labelled Yugoslavia as a "rogue state" because its leader, Slobodan Milošević, had been accused of violating the rights of his nation's citizens, including but not limited to attempted genocide in Croatia and orchestrating the Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia.


title: Rogue state

text: The United States employed several tools to isolate and punish "rogue states". Tough unilateral economic sanctions, often at congressional behest, were imposed on or tightened against Iran, Libya, Cuba, Sudan, and Afghanistan. After the conclusion of the Gulf War in 1991, the United States selectively used airpower against Iraq for years during the Iraqi no-fly zones to force them in complying with various United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding disarmament (i.e., Resolution 687) and human rights (i.e., Resolution 688). Cruise missiles were fired at Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for terrorist attacks against U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. In March 1999, NATO launched a massive air-bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in response to the Yugoslav Army's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in the province of Kosovo.


title: Rogue state

text: In the last six months of the Clinton administration, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced that the term "rogue state" would be abolished in June 2000, in favour of the term "states of concern", as three of the nations listed as "rogue states" (Libya, Iran, and North Korea) no longer met the conditions established to define a "rogue state".


title: Rogue state

text: Libya was removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list in 2006 after achieving success through diplomacy. Relations with Libya also became more mutual following the eight month Libyan Civil War in 2011, which resulted in the National Transitional Council ousting longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi from power.


title: Rogue state

text: In 2015, after the US reopened its embassy in Cuba and restarted diplomatic relations with the Cuban government, Cuba was removed from the list of State sponsors of terrorism and was no longer referred to as a "rogue state".


title: Rogue state

text: More recently, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump labelled Venezuela a "rogue state" due to its gross human rights violations, economic collapse and rampant excess deaths, anti-American stances and its reported involvement in international drug trafficking. During the 2017 UN general assembly, UN ambassador Nikki Haley called Venezuela a global threat and a "dangerous narco-state". Some figures of the Venezuelan government, like Vice President Tareck el Aissami and Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino López, were permanently banned from entering US territory, due to their involvement with human rights abuses and drug cartels. Later in 2017, the US government banned all high ranking Venezuelan government officials from entering US territory. Currently, due to the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis, Nicolas Maduro's government (which controls Venezuela "de facto") is not recognized as legitimate by the United States or any other state in the Western Hemisphere, with the exceptions of Cuba, Dominica, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Suriname.


title: Rogue state

text: On June 19, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the People's Republic of China a "rogue actor" at the Virtual Copenhagen Democracy Summit, saying that "General Secretary Xi Jinping has green-lighted a brutal campaign of repression against Chinese Muslims, a human rights violation on a scale we haven’t seen since World War II." In addition, Pompeo cited China's handling of COVID-19, "malicious cyber campaigns" it conducted, and its treatment of Hong Kong citizens as reasons for labeling China as a rogue actor.


title: Rogue state

text: In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration returned to using a similar term. The concept of "rogue states" was replaced by the Bush administration with the concept of an "Axis of Evil", which encompassed Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. U.S. President George W. Bush first spoke of this "Axis of Evil" during his January 2002 State of the Union Address. More terms, such as "Outposts of Tyranny", would follow suit.


title: Rogue state

text: Because the U.S. government remains the most active proponent of the expression "rogue state", the term has received much criticism from those who disagree with American foreign policy. Both the concepts of "rogue states" and the "Axis of Evil" have been criticized by scholars, including philosopher Jacques Derrida and linguist Noam Chomsky, who considered it more or less a justification of imperialism and a useful word for propaganda. Some critics charge that "rogue state" merely means any state that is generally hostile to the U.S., or even one that opposes the U.S. without necessarily posing a wider threat. Others, such as author William Blum, argued that the term is also applicable to the U.S. and Israel. In his "", Blum claimed that the United States defines itself as a rogue state through its foreign policy.


title: Rogue state

text: On 23 February 1999, Turkish President Süleyman Demirel described Greece as a "rogue state" because of its alleged support of the PKK. Demirel said that "Greece serves as a sanctuary for members of the PKK seeking shelter and provides training facilities and logistics to the terrorists."


title: Rogue state

text: On June 28, 2012, after the shooting down of a Turkish warplane by the Syrian Army during the Syrian civil war, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared Syria to be a "rogue state".


title: Rogue state

text: In October 2020, Turkish President Erdoğan described Armenia as a rogue state, referring to the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. He used the words "countries supporting rogue state Armenia in its occupation of Karabakh would have to face the common conscience of humanity" in his statements. Commentator Robert Ellis, writing in the British newspaper "The Independent" in 2016, claimed that Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan risks "being regarded as a rogue state" due to its increasingly authoritarian government, the deterioration of the human rights in the country, the Turkish government's involvement in Syria and its alleged support of terrorist groups.


title: Rogue state

text: Similarly, Erdoğan made the following statements at the press conference he held after the cabinet meeting on October 5, 2020: "It is not possible for humanity to attain permanent peace and tranquility without saving the world from rogue states and their rogue rulers. Especially in our region, the number of rogue states is quite high. These rogue states, dating back to Israel, Greek Administration of Cyprus and the Syrian regime, persecute their own citizens and destabilize the world."


title: Rogue state

text: Some critics of US foreign policy describe the United States as a rogue state. William Blum's 2000 book "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" suggests that US-led interventions around the world during and after the Cold War have threatened the world's peace. Noam Chomsky has also described the US as a rogue state after the assassination of Qassim Suleimani. Its nuclear proliferation and large numbers of nuclear warheads (the second most in the world), sponsorship of terrorist or guerilla groups to overthrow opposing governments especially in Latin America, and violations of human rights in war time are all suggested to be characteristics of a rogue state.


title: Shield

text: A shield is a piece of personal armour held in the hand, which may or may not be strapped to the wrist or forearm. Shields are used to intercept specific attacks, whether from close-ranged weaponry or projectiles such as arrows, by means of active blocks, as well as to provide passive protection by closing one or more lines of engagement during combat.


title: Shield

text: Shields vary greatly in size and shape, ranging from large panels that protect the user's whole body to small models (such as the buckler) that were intended for hand-to-hand-combat use. Shields also vary a great deal in thickness; whereas some shields were made of relatively deep, absorbent, wooden planking to protect soldiers from the impact of spears and crossbow bolts, others were thinner and lighter and designed mainly for deflecting blade strikes (like the roromaraugi or qauata). Finally, shields vary greatly in shape, ranging in roundness to angularity, proportional length and width, symmetry and edge pattern; different shapes provide more optimal protection for infantry or cavalry, enhance portability, provide secondary uses such as ship protection or as a weapon and so on.


title: Shield

text: In prehistory and during the era of the earliest civilisations, shields were made of wood, animal hide, woven reeds or wicker. In classical antiquity, the Barbarian Invasions and the Middle Ages, they were normally constructed of poplar tree, lime or another split-resistant timber, covered in some instances with a material such as leather or rawhide and often reinforced with a metal boss, rim or banding. They were carried by foot soldiers, knights and cavalry.


title: Shield

text: Depending on time and place, shields could be round, oval, square, rectangular, triangular, bilabial or scalloped. Sometimes they took on the form of kites or flatirons, or had rounded tops on a rectangular base with perhaps an eye-hole, to look through when used with combat. The shield was held by a central grip or by straps with some going over or around the user's arm and one or more being held by the hand.


title: Shield

text: Often shields were decorated with a painted pattern or an animal representation to show their army or clan. These designs developed into systematized heraldic devices during the High Middle Ages for purposes of battlefield identification. Even after the introduction of gunpowder and firearms to the battlefield, shields continued to be used by certain groups. In the 18th century, for example, Scottish Highland fighters liked to wield small shields known as targes, and as late as the 19th century, some non-industrialized peoples (such as Zulu warriors) employed them when waging war.


title: Shield

text: In the 20th and 21st century, shields have been used by military and police units that specialize in anti-terrorist actions, hostage rescue, riot control and siege-breaking.


title: Shield

text: The oldest form of shield was a protection device designed to block attacks by hand weapons, such as swords, axes and maces, or ranged weapons like sling-stones and arrows. Shields have varied greatly in construction over time and place. Sometimes shields were made of metal, but wood or animal hide construction was much more common; wicker and even turtle shells have been used. Many surviving examples of metal shields are generally felt to be ceremonial rather than practical, for example the Yetholm-type shields of the Bronze Age, or the Iron Age Battersea shield.


title: Shield

text: Size and weight varied greatly. Lightly armored warriors relying on speed and surprise would generally carry light shields ("pelte") that were either small or thin. Heavy troops might be equipped with robust shields that could cover most of the body. Many had a strap called a guige that allowed them to be slung over the user's back when not in use or on horseback. During the 14th–13th century BC, the Sards or Shardana, working as mercenaries for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II, utilized either large or small round shields against the Hittites. The Mycenaean Greeks used two types of shields: the "figure-of-eight" shield and a rectangular "tower" shield. These shields were made primarily from a wicker frame and then reinforced with leather. Covering the body from head to foot, the figure-of-eight and tower shield offered most of the warrior's body a good deal of protection in hand-to-hand combat. The Ancient Greek hoplites used a round, bowl-shaped wooden shield that was reinforced with bronze and called an "aspis". The aspis was also the longest-lasting and most famous and influential of all of the ancient Greek shields. The Spartans used the aspis to create the Greek phalanx formation. Their shields offered protection not only for themselves but for their comrades to their left.


title: Shield

text: Examples of Germanic wooden shields circa 350 BC – 500 AD survive from weapons sacrifices in Danish bogs.


title: Shield

text: The heavily armored Roman legionaries carried large shields ("scuta") that could provide far more protection, but made swift movement a little more difficult. The "scutum" originally had an oval shape, but gradually the curved tops and sides were cut to produce the familiar rectangular shape most commonly seen in the early Imperial legions. Famously, the Romans used their shields to create a tortoise-like formation called a "testudo" in which entire groups of soldiers would be enclosed in an armoured box to provide protection against missiles. Many ancient shield designs featured incuts of one sort or another. This was done to accommodate the shaft of a spear, thus facilitating tactics requiring the soldiers to stand close together forming a wall of shields.


title: Shield

text: Typical in the early European Middle Ages were round shields with light, non-splitting wood like linden, fir, alder, or poplar, usually reinforced with leather cover on one or both sides and occasionally metal rims, encircling a metal shield boss. These light shields suited a fighting style where each incoming blow is intercepted with the boss in order to deflect it. The Normans introduced the kite shield around the 10th century, which was rounded at the top and tapered at the bottom. This gave some protection to the user's legs, without adding too much to the total weight of the shield. The kite shield predominantly features enarmes, leather straps used to grip the shield tight to the arm. Used by foot and mounted troops alike, it gradually came to replace the round shield as the common choice until the end of the 12th century, when more efficient limb armour allowed the shields to grow shorter, and be entirely replaced by the 14th century.


title: Shield

text: As body armour improved, knight's shields became smaller, leading to the familiar heater shield style. Both kite and heater style shields were made of several layers of laminated wood, with a gentle curve in cross section. The heater style inspired the shape of the symbolic heraldic shield that is still used today. Eventually, specialised shapes were developed such as the "bouche", which had a lance rest cut into the upper corner of the lance side, to help guide it in combat or tournament. Free standing shields called pavises, which were propped up on stands, were used by medieval crossbowmen who needed protection while reloading.


title: Shield

text: In time, some armoured foot knights gave up shields entirely in favour of mobility and two-handed weapons. Other knights and common soldiers adopted the buckler, giving rise to the term "swashbuckler". The buckler is a small round shield, typically between 8 and 16 inches (20–40 cm) in diameter. The buckler was one of very few types of shield that were usually made of metal. Small and light, the buckler was easily carried by being hung from a belt; it gave little protection from missiles and was reserved for hand-to-hand combat where it served both for protection and offence. The buckler's use began in the Middle Ages and continued well into the 16th century.


title: Shield

text: In Italy, the targa, parma, and rotella were used by common people, fencers and even knights. The development of plate armour made shields less and less common as it eliminated the need for a shield. Lightly armoured troops continued to use shields after men-at-arms and knights ceased to use them. Shields continued in use even after gunpowder powered weapons made them essentially obsolete on the battlefield. In the 18th century, the Scottish clans used a small, round targe that was partially effective against the firearms of the time, although it was arguably more often used against British infantry bayonets and cavalry swords in close-in fighting.


title: Shield

text: During the 19th century, non-industrial cultures with little access to guns were still using war shields. Zulu warriors carried large lightweight shields called Ishlangu made from a single ox hide supported by a wooden spine. This was used in combination with a short spear (iklwa) and/or club. Other African shields include Glagwa from Cameroon or Nguba from Congo.


title: Shield

text: Shields for protection from armed attack are still used by many police forces around the world. These modern shields are usually intended for two broadly distinct purposes. The first type, riot shields, are used for riot control and can be made from metal or polymers such as polycarbonate Lexan or Makrolon or boPET Mylar. These typically offer protection from relatively large and low velocity projectiles, such as rocks and bottles, as well as blows from fists or clubs. Synthetic riot shields are normally transparent, allowing full use of the shield without obstructing vision. Similarly, metal riot shields often have a small window at eye level for this purpose. These riot shields are most commonly used to block and push back crowds when the users stand in a "wall" to block protesters, and to protect against shrapnel, projectiles like stones and bricks, molotov cocktails, and during hand-to-hand combat.


title: Shield

text: The second type of modern police shield is the bullet-resistant ballistic shield, also called tactical shield. These shields are typically manufactured from advanced synthetics such as Kevlar and are designed to be bulletproof, or at least bullet resistant. Two types of shields are available:


title: Shield

text: Tactical shields often have a firing port so that the officer holding the shield can fire a weapon while being protected by the shield, and they often have a bulletproof glass viewing port. They are typically employed by specialist police, such as SWAT teams in high risk entry and siege scenarios, such as hostage rescue and breaching gang compounds, as well as in antiterrorism operations.


title: Shield

text: Law enforcement shields often have a large signs stating "POLICE" (or the name of a force, such as "US MARSHALS") to indicate that the user is a law enforcement officer.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: A salon is a gathering of people held by an inspiring host. During the gathering they amuse one another and increase their knowledge through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate" (Latin: "aut delectare aut prodesse"). Salons in the tradition of the French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries were carried on until as recently as the 1920s in urban settings.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: The salon was an Italian invention of the 16th century, which flourished in France throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The salon continued to flourish in Italy throughout the 19th century. In 16th-century Italy, some brilliant circles formed in the smaller courts which resembled salons, often galvanized by the presence of a beautiful and educated patroness such as Berta Zuckerkandl, Isabella d'Este or Elisabetta Gonzaga.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Salons were an important place for the exchange of ideas. The word "salon" first appeared in France in 1664 (from the Italian "salone", the large reception hall of Italian mansions; "salone" is actually the augmentative form of "sala", room). Literary gatherings before this were often referred to by using the name of the room in which they occurred, like "cabinet", "réduit", "ruelle", and "alcôve". Before the end of the 17th century, these gatherings were frequently held in the bedroom (treated as a more private form of drawing room): a lady, reclining on her bed, would receive close friends who would sit on chairs or stools drawn around.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: This practice may be contrasted with the greater formalities of Louis XIV's "petit lever", where all stood. "Ruelle", literally meaning "narrow street" or "lane", designates the space between a bed and the wall in a bedroom; it was used commonly to designate the gatherings of the "précieuses", the intellectual and literary circles that formed around women in the first half of the 17th century. The first renowned salon in France was the Hôtel de Rambouillet not far from the Palais du Louvre in Paris, which its hostess, Roman-born Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet (1588–1665), ran from 1607 until her death. She established the rules of etiquette of the salon which resembled the earlier codes of Italian chivalry.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: The history of the salon is far from straightforward. The salon has been studied in depth by a mixture of feminist, Marxist, cultural, social, and intellectual historians. Each of these methodologies focuses on different aspects of the salon, and thus have varying analyses of its importance in terms of French history and the Enlightenment as a whole.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Major historiographical debates focus on the relationship between the salons and the public sphere, as well as the role of women within the salons.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Breaking down the salons into historical periods is complicated due to the various historiographical debates that surround them. Most studies stretch from the early 16th century up until around the end of the 18th century. Goodman is typical in ending her study at the French Revolution where, she writes: 'the literary public sphere was transformed into the political public'. Steven Kale is relatively alone in his recent attempts to extend the period of the salon up until Revolution of 1848:A whole world of social arrangements and attitude supported the existence of French salons: an idle aristocracy, an ambitious middle class, an active intellectual life, the social density of a major urban center, sociable traditions, and a certain aristocratic feminism. This world did not disappear in 1789.In the 1920s, Gertrude Stein's Saturday evening salons (described in Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast" and depicted fictionally in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris") gained notoriety for including Pablo Picasso and other twentieth-century luminaries like Alice B. Toklas.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Her contemporary Natalie Clifford Barney’s handmade dinner place setting is on display at The Brooklyn Museum. Like Stein, she was also an author and American ex-pat living in Paris at the time, hosting literary salons that were attended by Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald as well. She bought a home with an old Masonic temple in the backyard which she dubbed Temple d’Amitié, the Temple of Friendship, for private meetings with attendees of her salons.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In 2018, Barnard College professor Caroline Weber’s book “Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siècle Paris” was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize was the first in-depth study of the three Parisian salon hostesses Proust used to create his supreme fictional character, the Duchesse de Guermantes.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Contemporary literature about the salons is dominated by idealistic notions of politeness, civility and honesty, though whether they lived up to these standards is a matter of debate. These older texts tend to portray reasoned debates and egalitarian polite conversation. Dena Goodman claims that, rather than being leisure based or 'schools of civilité', salons were at 'the very heart of the philosophic community' and thus integral to the process of Enlightenment. In short, Goodman argues, the 17th and 18th century saw the emergence of the academic, Enlightenment salons, which came out of the aristocratic 'schools of civilité'. Politeness, argues Goodman, took second-place to academic discussion.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: The period in which salons were dominant has been labeled the 'age of conversation'. The topics of conversation within the salons - that is, what was and was not 'polite' to talk about - are thus vital when trying to determine the form of the salons. The salonnières were expected, ideally, to run and moderate the conversation (See Women in the salon). There is, however, no universal agreement among historians as to what was and was not appropriate conversation. Marcel Proust 'insisted that politics was scrupulously avoided'. Others suggested that little other than government was ever discussed. The disagreements that surround the content of discussion partly explain why the salon's relationship with the public sphere is so heavily contested. Individuals and collections of individuals that have been of cultural significance overwhelmingly cite some form of engaged, explorative conversation regularly held with an esteemed group of acquaintances as the source of inspiration for their contributions to culture, art, literature and politics, leading some scholars to posit the salon's influence on the public sphere as being more widespread than previously appreciated.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Recent historiography of the salons has been dominated by Jürgen Habermas' work, "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere" (triggered largely by its translation into French, in 1978, and then English, in 1989), which argued that the salons were of great historical importance. Theaters of conversation and exchange – such as the salons, and the coffeehouses in England – played a critical role in the emergence of what Habermas termed the "public sphere", which emerged in "cultural-political contrast" to court society. Thus, while women retained a dominant role in the historiography of the salons, the salons received increasing amounts of study, much of it in direct response to, or heavily influenced by Habermas' theory.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: The most prominent defense of salons as part of the public sphere comes from Dena Goodman's "The Republic of Letters", which claims that the 'public sphere was structured by the salon, the press and other institutions of sociability'. Goodman's work is also credited with further emphasizing the importance of the salon in terms of French history, the Republic of Letters and the Enlightenment as a whole, and has dominated the historiography of the salons since its publication in 1994.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Habermas' dominance in salon historiography has come under criticism from some quarters, with Pekacz singling out Goodman's "Republic of Letters" for particular criticism because it was written with 'the explicit intention of supporting [Habermas'] thesis', rather than verifying it. The theory itself, meanwhile, has been criticized for a fatal misunderstanding of the nature of salons. The main criticism of Habermas' interpretation of the salons, however, is that the salons of most influence were not part of an oppositional public sphere, and were instead an extension of court society.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: This criticism stems largely from Norbert Elias' "The History of Manners", in which Elias contends that the dominant concepts of the salons – "politesse", "civilité" and " honnêteté" – were 'used almost as synonyms, by which the courtly people wished to designate, in a broad or narrow sense, the quality of their own behavior'. Joan Landes agrees, stating that, 'to some extent, the salon was merely an extension of the institutionalized court' and that rather than being part of the public sphere, salons were in fact in conflict with it. Erica Harth concurs, pointing to the fact that the state 'appropriated the informal academy and not the salon' due to the academies' 'tradition of dissent' – something that lacked in the salon. But Landes' view of the salons as a whole is independent of both Elias' and Habermas' school of thought, insofar that she views the salons as a 'unique institution', that cannot be adequately described as part of the public sphere, or court society. Others, such as Steven Kale, compromise by declaring that the public and private spheres overlapped in the salons. Antoine Lilti ascribes to a similar viewpoint, describing the salons as simply 'institutions within Parisian high society'.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: When dealing with the salons, historians have traditionally focused upon the role of women within them. Works in the 19th and much of the 20th centuries often focused on the scandals and 'petty intrigues' of the salons. Other works from this period focused on the more positive aspects of women in the salon. Indeed, according to Jolanta T. Pekacz, the fact women dominated history of the salons meant that study of the salons was often left to amateurs, while men concentrated on 'more important' (and masculine) areas of the Enlightenment.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Historians tended to focus on individual salonnières, creating almost a 'great-woman' version of history that ran parallel to the Whiggish, male dominated history identified by Herbert Butterfield. Even in 1970, works were still being produced that concentrated only on individual stories, without analysing the effects of the salonnières' unique position. The integral role that women played within salons, as salonnières, began to receive greater - and more serious - study in latter parts of the 20th century, with the emergence of a distinctly feminist historiography. The salons, according to Carolyn Lougee, were distinguished by 'the very visible identification of women with salons', and the fact that they played a positive public role in French society. General texts on the Enlightenment, such as Daniel Roche's "France in the Enlightenment" tend to agree that women were dominant within the salons, but that their influence did not extend far outside of such venues.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: It was, however, Goodman's "The Republic of Letters" that ignited a real debate surrounding the role of women within the salons and the Enlightenment as a whole. According to Goodman: 'The salonnières were not social climbers but intelligent, self-educated, and educating women who adopted and implemented the values of the Enlightenment Republic of Letters and used them to reshape the salon to their own social intellectual, and educational needs'.Wealthy members of the aristocracy have always drawn to their court poets, writers and artists, usually with the lure of patronage, an aspect that sets the court apart from the salon. Another feature that distinguished the salon from the court was its absence of social hierarchy and its mixing of different social ranks and orders. In the 17th and 18th centuries, "salon[s] encouraged socializing between the sexes [and] brought nobles and bourgeois together". Salons helped facilitate the breaking down of social barriers which made the development of the enlightenment salon possible. In the 18th century, under the guidance of Madame Geoffrin, Mlle de Lespinasse, and Madame Necker, the salon was transformed into an institution of Enlightenment. The enlightenment salon brought together Parisian society, the progressive philosophes who were producing the "Encyclopédie", the Bluestockings and other intellectuals to discuss a variety of topics.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: At that time women had powerful influence over the salon. Women were the center of life in the salon and carried very important roles as regulators. They could select their guests and decide the subjects of their meetings. These subjects could be social, literary, or political topics of the time. They also served as mediators by directing the discussion.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: The salon was an informal education for women, where they were able to exchange ideas, receive and give criticism, read their own works and hear the works and ideas of other intellectuals. Many ambitious women used the salon to pursue a form of higher education.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Two of the most famous 17th-century literary salons in Paris were the Hôtel de Rambouillet, established in 1607 near the Palais du Louvre by the marquise de Rambouillet, where gathered the original précieuses, and, in 1652 in Le Marais, the rival salon of Madeleine de Scudéry, a long time "habituée" of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. , borrowed from England's "blue-stockings," soon found itself in use upon the attending ladies, a nickname continuing to mean "intellectual woman" for the next three hundred years.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Some 19th-century salons were more inclusive, verging on the raffish, and centered around painters and "literary lions" such as Madame Récamier. After the shock of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, French aristocrats withdrew from the public eye. However, Princess Mathilde still held a salon in her mansion, rue de Courcelles, later rue de Berri. From the middle of the 19th century until the 1930s, a lady of society had to hold her "day", which meant that her "salon" was opened for visitors in the afternoon once a week, or twice a month. Days were announced in "Le Bottin Mondain". The visitor gave his visit cards to the lackey or the "maître d'hôtel", and he was accepted or not. Only people who had been introduced previously could enter the "salon".


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Marcel Proust called up his own turn-of-the-century experience to recreate the rival salons of the fictional duchesse de Guermantes and Madame Verdurin. He experienced himself his first social life in "salons" such as Mme Arman de Caillavet's one, which mixed artists and political men around Anatole France or Paul Bourget; Mme Straus' one, where the cream of the aristocracy mingled with artists and writers; or more aristocratic "salons" like Comtesse de Chevigné's, Comtesse Greffulhe's, Comtesse Jean de Castellane's, Comtesse Aimery de La Rochefoucauld's, etc. Some late 19th- and early 20th-century Paris salons were major centres for contemporary music, including those of Winnaretta Singer (the princesse de Polignac), and Élisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe. They were responsible for commissioning some of the greatest songs and chamber music works of Fauré, Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Until the 1950s, some "salons" were held by ladies mixing political men and intellectuals during the IVth Republic, like Mme Abrami, or Mme Dujarric de La Rivière. The last salons in Paris were those of Marie-Laure de Noailles, with Jean Cocteau, Igor Markevitch, Salvador Dalí, etc., Marie-Blanche de Polignac (Jeanne Lanvin's daughter) and Madeleine and Robert Perrier, with Josephine Baker, Le Corbusier, Django Reinhardt, etc.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Salon sociability quickly spread through Europe. In the 18th and 19th centuries, many large cities in Europe held salons along the lines of the Parisian models.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Prior to the formation of Belgium, Béatrix de Cusance hosted a salon in Brussels in what was then the Spanish Netherlands in the mid-17th century. In the late 18th century, the political salon of Anne d'Yves played a role in the Brabant Revolution of 1789.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In Belgium, the 19th-century salon hosted by Constance Trotti attracted cultural figures, the Belgian aristocracy and members of the French exiled colony.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In Denmark, the salon culture was adopted during the 18th century. Christine Sophie Holstein and Charlotte Schimmelman were the most notable hostesses, in the beginning and in the end of the 18th century respectively, both of whom were credited with political influence. During the Danish Golden Age in the late 18th century and early 19th century, the literary salon played a significant part in Danish culture life, notably the literary salons arranged by Friederike Brun at Sophienholm and that of Kamma Rahbek at Bakkehuset.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In the German-speaking palatinates and kingdoms, the most famous were held by Jewish ladies, such as Henriette Herz, Sara Grotthuis, and Rahel Varnhagen, and in Austria in the late 18th and early 19th centuries by two prominent Jewish Patrons of the Arts: Adele Bloch-Bauer and Berta Zuckerkandl. Increasingly emancipated German-speaking Jews wanted to immerse themselves in the rich cultural life. However, individual Jews were faced with a dilemma: they faced new opportunities, but without the comfort of a secure community. For Jewish women, there was an additional issue. German society imposed the usual gender role restrictions "and" antisemitism, so cultivated Jewish women tapped into the cultural salon. But from 1800 on, salons performed a political and social miracle. The salon allowed Jewish women to establish a venue in their homes in which Jews and non-Jews could meet in relative equality. Like-minded people could study art, literature, philosophy or music together. This handful of educated, acculturated Jewish women could escape the restrictions of their social ghetto. Naturally the women had to be in well-connected families, either to money or to culture. In these mixed gatherings of nobles, high civil servants, writers, philosophers and artists, Jewish salonnières created a vehicle for Jewish integration, providing a context in which patrons and artists freely exchanged ideas. Henriette Lemos Herz, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Dorothea Mendelssohn Schlegel, Amalie Wolf Beer and at least twelve other salonnières achieved fame and admiration.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In Spain, by María del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo, 13th Duchess of Alba at the end of the 18th century; and in Greece by Alexandra Mavrokordatou in the 17th century.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Italy had had an early tradition of the salon; Giovanna Dandolo became known as a patron and gatherer of artists as wife of Pasquale Malipiero, the doge in Venice in 1457–1462, and the courtisan Tullia d'Aragona held a salon already in the 16th century, and in the 17th century Rome, the abdicated Queen Christina of Sweden and the princess Colonna, Marie Mancini, rivaled as salon hostesses. In the 18th century, Aurora Sanseverino provided a forum for thinkers, poets, artists, and musicians in Naples, making her a central figure in baroque Italy.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: The tradition of the literary salon continued to flourish in Italy throughout the 19th century. Naturally there were many salons with some of the most prominent being hosted by Clara Maffei in Milan, Emilia Peruzzi in Florence and Olimpia Savio in Turin. The salons attracted countless outstanding 19th-century figures including the romantic painter Francesco Hayez, composer Giuseppe Verdi and naturalist writers Giovanni Verga, Bruno Sperani and Matilde Serao. The salons served a very important function in 19th-century Italy, as they allowed young attendees to come into contact with more established figures. They also served as a method of avoiding government censorship, as a public discussion could be held in private. The golden age of the salon in Italy could be said to coincide with the pre-unification period, after which the rise of the newspaper replaced the salon as the main place for the Italian public to engage in the room of sex.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Argentina's most active female figure in the revolutionary process, Mariquita Sánchez, was Buenos Aires' leading "salonnière". She fervently embraced the cause of revolution, and her "tertulia" gathered all the leading personalities of her time. The most sensitive issues were discussed there, as well as literary topics. Mariquita Sánchez is widely remembered in the Argentine historical tradition because the Argentine National Anthem was sung for the first time in her house, on 14 May 1813. Other notable "salonnières" in colonial Buenos Aires were Mercedes de Lasalde Riglos and Flora Azcuénaga. Along with Mariquita Sánchez, the discussions at her houses led up to the May Revolution, the first stage in the struggle for Argentine independence from Spain.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In the vast Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, Duchess Elżbieta Sieniawska held a salon at the end of the 17th century. They became very popular there throughout the 18th century. Most renowned were the "Thursday Lunches" of King Stanisław II Augustus at the end of the 18th century, and among the most notable "salonnières" were Barbara Sanguszko, Zofia Lubomirska, Anna Jabłonowska, a noted early scientist and collector of scientific objects and books, Izabela Czartoryska, and her later namesake, Princess Izabela Czartoryska founder of Poland's first museum and a patron of the Polish composer Frederic Chopin.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: The salon culture was introduced to Imperial Russia during the Westernization Francophile culture of the Russian aristocracy in the 18th century. During the 19th century, several famous salon functioned hosted by the nobility in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, among the most famed being the literary salon of Zinaida Volkonskaya in 1820s Moscow.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In Sweden, the salon developed during the late 17th century and flourished until the late 19th century. During the 1680s and 1690s, the salon of countess Magdalena Stenbock became a meeting where foreign ambassadors in Stockholm came to make contacts, and her gambling table was described as a center of Swedish foreign policy.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: During the Swedish age of liberty (1718–1772), women participated in political debate and promoted their favorites in the struggle between the Caps (party) and the Hats (party) through political salons. These forums were regarded influential enough for foreign powers to engage some of these women as agents to benefit their interests in Swedish politics.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: The arguably most noted political salonnière of the Swedish age of liberty was countess Hedvig Catharina De la Gardie (1695–1745), whose salon has some time been referred to as the first in Sweden, and whose influence on state affairs exposed her to libelous pamphlets and made her a target of Olof von Dahlin's libelous caricature of the political salon hostess in 1733. Magdalena Elisabeth Rahm was attributed to have contributed to the realization of the Russo-Swedish War (1741–1743) through the campaign for the war she launched in her salon. Outside of politics, Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht acted as the hostess of the literary academy "Tankebyggarorden" and Anna Maria Lenngren did the same for the Royal Swedish Academy.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: During the reign of Gustavian age, the home of Anna Charlotta Schröderheim came to be known as a center of opposition. Salon hostesses were still attributed influence in politic affairs in the first half of the 19th century, which was said of both Aurora Wilhelmina Koskull in the 1820s as well as Ulla De Geer in the 1840s.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In the 19th century, however, the leading salon hostesses in Sweden became more noted as the benefactors of the arts and charity than with politics. From 1820 and two decades onward, Malla Silfverstolpe became famous for her Friday nights salon in Uppsala, which became a center of the Romantic era in Sweden and, arguably the most famed literary salon in Sweden. During the 1860s and 1870s, the "Limnell Salon" of the rich benefactor Fredrika Limnell in Stockholm came to be a famous center of the Swedish cultural elite, were especially writers gathered to make contact with wealthy benefactors, a role which was eventually taken over by the "Curman Receptions" of Calla Curman in the 1880s and 1890s.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In Iberia or Latin America, a tertulia is a social gathering with literary or artistic overtones. The word is originally Spanish and has only moderate currency in English, in describing Latin cultural contexts. Since the 20th century, a typical "tertulia" has moved out from the private drawing-room to become a regularly scheduled event in a public place such as a bar, although some tertulias are still held in more private spaces. Participants may share their recent creations (poetry, short stories, other writings, even artwork or songs).


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In Switzerland, the salon culture was extant in the mid-18th century, represented by Julie Bondeli in Bern and Barbara Schulthess in Zürich, and the salon of Anna Maria Rüttimann-Meyer von Schauensee reached in influential role in the early 19th century.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In Coppet Castle close to Lake Geneva, the exiled Parisian salonnière and author, Madame de Staël, hosted a salon which played a key role in the aftermath of the French Revolution and especially under Napoleon Bonaparte's Regime. It has become known as the "Coppet group". De Staël is author of around thirty publications, from which "On Germany" (1813) was the most well known in its time. She has been painted by such famous painters as François Gérard and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In 18th-century England, salons were held by Elizabeth Montagu, in whose salon the expression bluestocking originated, and who created the Blue Stockings Society, and by Hester Thrale. In the 19th century, the Russian Baroness Méry von Bruiningk hosted a salon in St. John's Wood, London, for refugees (mostly German) of the revolutions of 1848 (the Forty-Eighters). Clementia Taylor, an early feminist and radical held a salon at Aubrey House in Campden Hill in the 1860s. Her salon was attended by Moncure D. Conway, Louisa May Alcott, Arthur Munby, feminists Barbara Bodichon, Lydia Becker, Elizabeth Blackwell, and Elizabeth Malleson. Holland House in Kensington under the Fox family in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was akin to a French salon, largely for adherents to the Whig Party.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Martha Washington, the first American First Lady, performed a function similar to the host or hostess of the European salon. She held weekly public receptions throughout her husband's eight-year presidency (1789–1797). At these gatherings, members of Congress, visiting foreign dignitaries, and ordinary citizens alike were received at the executive mansion. More recently, "society hostesses" such as Perle Mesta have done so as well. The Stettheimer sisters, including the artist Florine Stettheimer, hosted gatherings at their New York City home in the 1920s and '30s. During the Harlem Renaissance, Ruth Logan Roberts, Georgia Douglas Johnson and Zora Neale Hurston hosted salons that brought together leading figures in African-American literature, and in the culture and politics of Harlem at the time.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Modern-day versions of the traditional salon (some with a literary focus, and others exploring other disciplines in the arts and sciences) are held throughout the world, in private homes and public venues.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: Sally Quinn and her husband Ben Bradlee hosted influential salons in Washington DC from the 1970s until the 2000s. "An invitation to the couple’s historic Georgetown home was one of the most coveted status symbols in the nation’s capital, an entry to an elite salon of the powerful, talented and witty."


title: Salon (gathering)

text: In 2014, in response to the isolation of the digital life, in person events and salons grew in popularity. In 2021 response to the isolation of the pandemic, Susan MacTavish Best, who was part of the movement, launched a how-to host a salon website (TheSalonHost.com)


title: Salon (gathering)

text: The word salon also refers to art exhibitions. The Paris Salon was originally an officially sanctioned exhibit of recent works of painting and sculpture by members of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, starting in 1673 and soon moving from the Salon Carré of the Palace of the Louvre.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: The name "salon" remained, even when other quarters were found and the exhibits' irregular intervals became biennial. A jury system of selection was introduced in 1748, and the salon remained a major annual event even after the government withdrew official sponsorship in 1881.


title: Salon (gathering)

text: The related terms "salon-style exhibition" or "salon-style hang" describe the practice of displaying large numbers of paintings, thus requiring placing them close together at multiple heights, often on a high wall.


title: Jake Owen

text: Joshua Ryan Owen (born August 28, 1981), known professionally as Jake Owen, is an American country music singer, songwriter, and actor. Signed to RCA Nashville in 2006, he released his debut studio album, "Startin' with Me", that year.


title: Jake Owen

text: This album produced three singles, all of which reached top 20 on the "Billboard" Hot Country Songs chart: his debut "Yee Haw", "Startin' with Me", and "Something About a Woman". His second studio album, 2009's "Easy Does It", accounted for three more singles: "Don't Think I Can't Love You", "Eight Second Ride", and "Tell Me". In September 2011, Owen achieved his first number one hit with the title track to his third studio album "Barefoot Blue Jean Night"; also toppers were "Alone with You", "The One That Got Away", and "Anywhere with You". His fourth studio album, "Days of Gold", produced two singles with its title track, which broke the top 20 in 2013, and the number one single "Beachin'".


title: Jake Owen

text: Owen has also toured as an opening act for several other country artists, including Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley, Little Big Town, Sugarland, Keith Urban, and Jason Aldean.


title: Jake Owen

text: Joshua Ryan "Jake" Owen and his fraternal twin brother Jarrod were born in Winter Haven, Florida, on August 28, 1981. The brothers regularly participated in a variety of sports. Jake eventually took up golf, and began pursuing a career as a professional golfer, winning his first tournament at 15. After graduating from Vero Beach High School, they attended Florida State University. A wakeboarding accident which required reconstructive surgery left Jake unable to continue participating in the sport.


title: Jake Owen

text: While recovering from his injuries, he borrowed a neighbor's guitar and began to teach himself how to play it. After seeing a guitarist perform at a campus bar, he asked the bar's owner if he could play a gig there. Eventually, he became a regular at the bar, and soon took up writing his own material as well. He then moved to Nashville, Tennessee, making his first stop at a bank to open a savings account; after telling the bank teller that he was a singer and songwriter, the teller then asked if he had any recordings available. He gave her a CD of his work, which she sent to the Warner/Chappell Music publishing company.


title: Jake Owen

text: Although Warner/Chappell did not sign him to a contract, Jake Owen eventually met the record producer and songwriter Jimmy Ritchey. They, along with songwriter Chuck Jones, wrote a song "Ghosts". which they had intended for Kenny Chesney. Chesney, ultimately, did not record "Ghosts", although it drew the attention of Sony BMG Nashville executives, who signed Owen to their RCA Nashville label in 2005. Per their suggestion, Owen changed his first name to Jake, so as to avoid confusion with Josh Turner and Josh Gracin.


title: Jake Owen

text: In early 2006, Jake Owen released his debut single, titled "Yee Haw." He describes the song (an up-tempo party anthem in which the narrator expresses his enjoyment with a cry of "yeehaw") as being written "to make people have a good time." It peaked at No.16 on the "Billboard" Hot Country Songs chart and served as the lead-off single on his debut album, "Startin' with Me".


title: Jake Owen

text: Released on July 25, 2006, the album featured 11 tracks, all co-written by him and his producer. Among them were his own recording of "Ghosts" and a duet with Randy Owen (no relation) of Alabama entitled "You Can Thank Dixie." After the album's release, Jake Owen was signed as an opening act for acts such as Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood.


title: Jake Owen

text: The album's title track, a ballad in which the narrator expresses his desire to change everything in his life, was released as his second single. Spending more than thirty-five weeks on the "Billboard" country chart, "Startin' with Me" became his first top 10 hit, reaching a peak of No.6. Also in 2007, he went on tour with Alan Jackson and Brooks & Dunn. "Something About a Woman" was released in late 2007 as the third single. In September 2007, he and country quartet Little Big Town joined country duo Sugarland's tour. During this tour, the three acts began performing "Life in a Northern Town" (a cover of British pop group The Dream Academy's hit single from 1985). A music video of their live performance was aired on CMT. In April 2008, a recording of this performance entered the "Billboard" country chart based on unsolicited airplay.


title: Jake Owen

text: Jake Owen released his second studio album, "Easy Does It", on February 24, 2009. The album debuted at No.2 on the "Billboard" Top Country Albums and No.13 on the "Billboard" 200. The lead-off single to the album, "Don't Think I Can't Love You" became his first top 5 country hit, reaching No.2 on the Hot Country Songs chart in April 2009. "Eight Second Ride," a song which was originally on "Startin' with Me" and newly recorded for "Easy Does It", was the album's second single; it peaked at No.11 in January 2010. "Tell Me" was the album's third single, reaching number 35.


title: Jake Owen

text: Owen released his third studio album, "Barefoot Blue Jean Night", on August 30, 2011. The lead-off single and title track to the album, "Barefoot Blue Jean Night", became his first number one single on the country chart. The album's second single, "Alone with You," was released in October 2011, and like its predecessor, it reached number one on the country chart in April 2012. The album's next two singles, "The One That Got Away" and "Anywhere with You," both reached number one on the Country Airplay chart. Owen toured with Keith Urban in 2011 on his Get Closer World Tour.


title: Jake Owen

text: Jake Owen released an extended play titled "Endless Summer" on September 25, 2012. It includes "Summer Jam," a collaboration with Florida Georgia Line, which charted within the top 40 of Hot Country Songs despite not being released as a single.


title: Jake Owen

text: The first single from Owen's fourth studio album, "Days of Gold," was released to country radio in August 2013. During Owen's June 2013 StageIt show, he confirmed that the album would also feature the new song "Ghost Town." The album, also titled "Days of Gold", was released on December 3, 2013. In May 2015, Owen released a new non-album single to country radio, titled "Real Life." The song peaked at number 17 on the Country Airplay chart. It was eventually pulled from country radio after receiving overwhelmingly poor response. He performed the single live at the 2015 CMT (U.S. TV channel) Award show.


title: Jake Owen

text: On February 2, 2016, Owen announced via Facebook that a new single would be released to country radio on March 7, 2016, titled "American Country Love Song." It is the lead single from his fifth studio album "American Love" which was released on July 29, 2016.


title: Jake Owen

text: In November 2017, it was announced that Owen had left RCA in favor of Big Loud Records. Owen released two singles for the label: "I Was Jack (You Were Diane)" and "Down to the Honkytonk". These were included on his first Big Loud album, "Greetings from... Jake", which released on March 29, 2019. The album charted at #8 on the Billboard Country album chart, reportedly selling 4,000 copies in the first week. The album's third single, Homemade, was released on June 3, 2019 and reached no. 1 on the Country Airplay chart. Owen performed at the Medina County Fair on July 31, 2019.


title: Jake Owen

text: The album's fourth single, "Made for You," was released on May 18, 2020. He released the new single "Best Thing Since Backroads" in 2021, and joined Canadian country duo the Reklaws on the single "11 Beers" in 2022.


title: Jake Owen

text: Owen married model Lacey Buchanan on May 7, 2012, in Vero Beach, Florida. The couple became engaged on April 7, 2012, after Owen proposed to Buchanan onstage in front of a crowd in his hometown of Vero Beach at his annual charity event. After proposing, he jokingly asked, ""You're probably wondering where your ring is, right?"" referring to the fact that he proposed without a ring, and his single "Don't Think I Can't Love You" which he had performed prior to proposing. The couple had their first daughter on November 22, 2012, Thanksgiving Day. The couple divorced in August 2015 after three years of marriage. Owen and girlfriend Erica Hartlein welcomed a daughter on April 29, 2019.


title: Jake Owen

text: In 2010, Owen founded a nonprofit charity, which has raised over $3 million as of 2022. Initially to offer financial support on a national level to children battling cancer, it now provides assistance to various youth organizations in Indian River County. The foundation holds an annual "Jake Owen Foundation weekend" where he performs to raise money for the foundation.


title: Jake Owen

text: Owen is a keen golfer, and, in November 2017, it was announced that he would be teeing up in the Nashville Golf Open on the Web.com Tour in May 2018.


title: Jake Owen

text: While speaking with Barstool Sports in an April 2, 2019, interview, Jake Owen described an encounter with Phil Mickelson at Jordan Spieth's wedding in November 2018, where Mickelson told Owen to go 'f---' himself. The verbal altercation was initiated by Owen who voiced his disappointment with "" head-to-head match play golf challenge, a pay-per-view event, in which he spent $29.99 on and wanted a refund. As told by Owen, Mickelson pulled a wad of $100 bills from his pocket and responded, ""Yeah, I won 90,000 of these yesterday. Take one and go f--- yourself"." The event purse was $9 million. Mickelson verified the truth of the story via Twitter.


title: Jake Owen

text: During gay pride month in June 2019, Owen released a video performing a cover of "Believe," a song made popular by Cher and one of the anthems used by LGBT community. This was in support of his close friends and coworkers who are gay. The post sparked backlash from fans who threatened to boycott his concerts and music. In response, Owen suggested to those fans that they come to his concert and he would be happy to give them a hug and stated ""You need one"."


title: India at the Big Four international beauty pageants

text: The following is a list of India's official representatives and their placements at the Big Four international beauty pageants, considered the most important in the world. The country has won a total of ten victories with seventy-seven placements in all four pageants:


text: The representatives to these pageants are chosen from the pageants Miss Diva (Miss Universe), Femina Miss India (Miss World), Glamanand Supermodel India (Miss International) and, Miss Divine Beauty (Miss Earth) respectively.


text: India won its first Big Four title when Reita Faria from India bagged the Miss World 1966 title, becoming the first Asian to win Miss World. In 1994, Sushmita Sen won Miss Universe 1994, becoming the country's first ever Miss Universe titleholder. Later that year, Aishwarya Rai added to the winning streak, picking up the Miss World 1994 title, making India the last country to ever win at both Miss Universe and Miss World in the same year in the 20th century.


text: Diana Hayden then won the Miss World 1997. Actor and model Yukta Mookhey was later crowned Miss World 1999. Six years after Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai's double wins, Lara Dutta for Miss Universe 2000 and Priyanka Chopra for Miss World 2000 replicated the feat in 2000, marking the most recent time (as of ) that any country has won back-to-back at Miss World and, to date, the only time that any country won Miss Universe and Miss World in the same year in the 21st century. India's appearances at the Miss Universe semifinals from 1992 to 2002 made it the first country in the Eastern Hemisphere to place annually at the pageant for at least 10 consecutive years.


text: In 2010, Nicole Faria from Bangalore became the first Indian woman to win the Miss Earth 2010 pageant. Manushi Chhillar won the Miss World 2017 title and became the sixth Indian woman to be crowned Miss World. Harnaaz Sandhu won the Miss Universe 2021 title, becoming the third Indian woman to be crowned Miss Universe and the most recent Big Four pageant titleholder from India as of .


text: Crossover winners of a national pageant wins in another major national pageant and then participate in the line of international beauty pageants.


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: The flag of Hong Kong, officially the regional flag of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, depicts a white stylised five-petal Hong Kong orchid tree ("Bauhinia blakeana") flower in the centre of a Chinese red field. Its original design was unveiled on 4 April 1990 at the Third Session of the Seventh National People's Congress. The current design was approved on 10 August 1996 at the Fourth Plenum of the Preparatory Committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The precise use of the flag is regulated by laws passed by the 58th executive meeting of the State Council held in Beijing. The design of the flag is enshrined in Hong Kong's Basic Law, the territory's constitutional document, and regulations regarding the use, prohibition of use, desecration, and manufacture of the flag are stated in the Regional Flag and Regional Emblem Ordinance. The flag of Hong Kong was officially adopted and hoisted on 1 July 1997, during the handover ceremony marking the transfer of sovereignty from the United Kingdom back to China.


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: The design of the flag comes with cultural, political, and regional meanings. The colour itself is significant; red is a festive colour for the Chinese people, used to convey a sense of celebration and nationalism. Moreover, the red colour is identical to that used in the national PRC flag, chosen to signify the link re-established between post-colonial Hong Kong and Mainland China. The position of red and white on the flag symbolises the "one country, two systems" political principle applied to the region. The stylised rendering of the "Bauhinia blakeana" flower, a flower discovered in Hong Kong, is meant to serve as a harmonising symbol for this dichotomy. The five stars of the Chinese national flag are replicated on the petals of the flower. The Chinese name of "Bauhinia × blakeana" is most commonly rendered as "", but is often shortened to / in official uses since "" () means "foreign" in Chinese, notwithstanding / refers to another genus called "Cercis". A sculpture of the plant has been erected in Golden Bauhinia Square in Hong Kong.


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: Before the adoption of the flag, the Chairman of the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee explained the significance of the flag's design to the National People's Congress:


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: The Hong Kong government has specified sizes, colours, and manufacturing parameters in which the flag is to be made. The ratio of its length to breadth is 3:2. In its centre is a five-petal stylised rendering of a white "Bauhinia blakeana" flower. If a circle circumscribes the flower, it should have a diameter 0.6 times the entire height of the flag. The petals are uniformly spread around the centre point of the flag, radiating outward and pointing in a clockwise direction. Each of the flower's petals bears a five-pointed red star with a red trace, suggestive of a flower stamen. The heading that is used to allow a flag to be slid or raised onto a pole is white.


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: A slightly different geometrical description of the flag is specified in the mandatory National Standard "GB 16689-2004: Regional flag of Hong Kong special administrative region".


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: This table lists all the official sizes for the flag. Sizes deviating from this list are considered non-standard. If a flag is not of official size, it must be a scaled-down or scaled-up version of one of the official sizes.


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: The Regional Flag and Regional Emblem Ordinance stipulates that "The regional flag is in red, the chrominance value of which is identical with that of the national flag of the People’s Republic of China."


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: The Regional Flag and Regional Emblem Ordinance stipulates that the Hong Kong flag must be manufactured according to specifications laid out in the ordinance. If flags are not produced in design according to the ordinance, the Secretary for Justice may petition the District Court for an injunction to prohibit the person or company from manufacturing the flags. If the District Court agrees that the flags are not in compliance, it may issue an injunction and order that the flags and the materials that were used to make the flags to be seized by the government.


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: The Hong Kong flag is flown daily from the chief executive's official residence, Government House, the Hong Kong International Airport, and at all border crossings and points of entry into Hong Kong. At major government offices and buildings, such as the Office of the Chief Executive, the Executive Council, the Court of Final Appeal, the High Court, the Legislative Council, and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices overseas, the flag is displayed during days when these offices are working. Other government offices and buildings, such as hospitals, schools, departmental headquarters, sports grounds, and cultural venues should fly the flag on occasions such as the National Day of the PRC (1 October), the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment Day (1 July), and New Year's Day. The flag should be raised at 8:00 a.m. and lowered at 6:00 p.m. The raising and lowering of the flag should be done slowly; it must reach the peak of the flag staff when it is raised, and it may not touch the ground when it is lowered. The flag may not be raised in severe weather conditions. A Hong Kong flag that is either damaged, defaced, faded or substandard must not be displayed or used.


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: Whenever the PRC national flag is flown together with the regional Hong Kong flag, the national flag must be flown at the centre, above the regional flag, or otherwise in a more prominent position than that of the regional flag. The regional flag must be smaller in size than the national flag, and it must be displayed to the left of the national flag. When the flags are displayed inside a building, the left and right sides of a person looking at the flags, and with his or her back toward the wall, are used as reference points for the left and right sides of a flag. When the flags are displayed outside a building, the left and right sides of a person standing in front of the building and looking towards the front entrance are used as reference points for the left and right sides of a flag. The national flag should be raised before the regional flag is raised, and it should be lowered after the regional flag is lowered.


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: An exception to this rule occurs during medal presentation ceremonies at multi-sport events such as the Olympics and Asian Games. As Hong Kong competes separately from mainland China, should an athlete from Hong Kong win the gold medal, and an athlete from mainland China win the silver and/or bronze medal(s) in the same event, the regional flag of Hong Kong would be raised in the centre above the national flag(s) during the medal presentation ceremony.


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: The Hong Kong flag must be lowered to half-mast as a token of mourning when any of the following people die:


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: The flag may also be flown at half-mast when the Central People's Government advises the Chief Executive to do so, or when the Chief Executive considers it appropriate to do so, on occurrences of unfortunate events causing especially serious casualties, or when serious natural calamities have caused heavy casualties. When raising a flag to be flown at half-mast, it should first be raised to the top of the pole and then lowered to a point where the distance between the top of the flag and the top of the pole is one third of the length of the pole. When lowering the flag from half-mast, it should first be raised to the peak of the pole before it is lowered.


title: Flag of Hong Kong

text: The Regional Flag and Regional Emblem Ordinance states what manner of use of the Hong Kong flag is prohibited and that desecration of the flag is prohibited; it also states that it is a punishable offence for a person to use the flag in a prohibited manner or desecrate the flag. According to the ordinance, a flag may not be used in advertisements or trademarks, and that "publicly and wilfully burning, mutilating, scrawling on, defiling or trampling" the flag is considered flag desecration. Similarly, the National Flag and National Emblem Ordinance extends the same prohibition toward the national PRC flag. The ordinances also allow for the Chief Executive to make stipulations regarding the use of the flag. In stipulations made in 1997, the Chief Executive further specified that the use of the flag in "any trade, calling or profession, or the logo, seal or badge of any non-governmental organisation" is also prohibited unless prior permission was obtained.