User:Wiki User 68/My Portal
Wiki User 68/My Portal
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Wiki User 68 hails from the Great British Isles specifically England ⓘ which is a country that is part of the United Kingdom.[1][2][3] Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population,[4] whilst its mainland territory occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain. England shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west and elsewhere is bordered by the North Sea, Irish Sea, Celtic Sea, Bristol Channel and English Channel. The capital is London, the largest urban area in Great Britain, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most, but not all, measures.[5]
England became a unified state in the year 927 and takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled there during the 5th and 6th centuries. It has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world[6] being the place of origin of the English language, the Church of England, and English law, which forms the basis of the common law legal systems of countries around the world. In addition, England was the birth place of the Industrial Revolution and the first country in the world to industrialise.[7] It is home to the Royal Society, which laid the foundations of modern experimental science.[8] England is the world's oldest parliamentary system[9] and consequently constitutional, governmental and legal innovations that had their origin in England have been widely adopted by other nations.
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Rockingham Castle formerly a royal castle and hunting lodge, now the family home of the Saunders Watson family, in Rockingham Forest on the northern edge of the English county of Northamptonshire a mile to the north of Corby.
Rockingham Castle is often stated as being in the county of Leicestershire. This mistake arises due to Rockingham having a Market Harborough postal address.
It was formerly a Saxon fort and the castle was founded shortly after William the Conqueror arrived in England. It was created because its elevated terrain provided an excellent defence of the surrounding land from the local population. It was used by Norman kings as a retreat when travelling because Rockingham Forest was good for hunting wild boar and deer.
By the time that Henry VIII came to power the castle was in decline and was no more than a hunting lodge for nobles. It was restored during the ensuing centuries following several small skirmishes in the English Civil War and finally restored to its full elegance and grace in the late nineteenth century.
It overlooks the villages of Rockingham and Caldecott and enjoys good views over the Welland Valley. Now privately owned, it is open to the public on certain days.
Rockingham Castle was a popular haunt of writer Charles Dickens who was a great friend of Richard & Levinia Watson, ancestors of the current family. The Castle is the inspiration for Chesney Wold in one of his greatest works, Bleak House.
A cricket pitch lies within the grounds of the castle and is home to Old Eastonians Cricket Club.
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Deforestation is the logging or burning of trees in forested areas. There are several reasons for doing so: trees or derived charcoal can be sold as a commodity and are used by humans while cleared land is used as pasture, plantations of commodities and human settlement. The removal of trees without sufficient reforestation, has resulted in damage to habitat, biodiversity loss and aridity. Also deforested regions often degrade into wasteland.
Disregard or unawareness of intrinsic value, and lack of ascribed value, lax forest management and environmental law allow deforestation to occur on such a large scale. In many countries, deforestation is an ongoing issue which is causing extinction, changes to climatic conditions, desertification and displacement of indigenous people.
In simple terms, deforestation occurs because forested land is not economically viable. Increasing the amount of farmland, woods are used by native populations of over 200 million people worldwide.
The presumed value of forests as a genetic resources has never been confirmed by any economic studies [10]. As a result owners of forested land lose money by not clearing the forest and this affects the welfare of the whole society [11]. From the perspective of the developing world, the benefits of forest as carbon sinks or biodiversity reserves go primarily to richer developed nations and there is insufficient compensation for these services. As a result some countries simply have too much forest. Developing countries feel that some countries in the developed world, such as the United States of America, cut down their forests centuries ago and benefited greatly from this deforestation and that it is hypocritical to deny developing countries the same opportunities: that the poor shouldn’t have to bear the cost of preservation when the rich created the problem [12].
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Bio Fuel Systems is a wholly Spanish owned firm that has developed a method of breeding plankton and turning the marine plants into oil, providing a potentially inexhaustible source of clean fuel. It was formed in 2006 in eastern Spain after three years of research by scientists and engineers connected with the University of Alicante.
The process it has developed converts energy, based on three elements: solar energy, photosynthesis and an electromagnetic field. Its new fuel is said to reduce CO2, is free of other contaminants like sulphur dioxide and would be cheaper than standard fossil fuel that is available now. Their system of bioconversion is about 400 times more productive than any other plant-based system producing oil or ethanol.[citation needed]
In the news
- 6 December 2025 –
- Four protesters from Take Back Power are arrested after they threw custard on a display case containing the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London in England. (DW)
- 4 December 2025 – Russia–United Kingdom relations
- The United Kingdom imposes sanctions against Russia's GRU and several military intelligence officers after a public inquiry concludes that Russian operatives carried out the 2018 Novichok attack in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, under orders from President Vladimir Putin. The UK also summons Russian ambassador Andrey Kelin. (Reuters)
- 2 December 2025 –
- The Winter Egg, one of the few Fabergé eggs remaining in private hands, sells at Christie's in London, England, United Kingdom, for £22.9 million (US$30.2 million), setting a new auction record for a work by the House of Fabergé. (CNN)
- 21 November 2025 –
- High Court judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb sentences former Welsh MEP Nathan Gill to 10 and a half years in prison after he pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from ex-Ukrainian lawmaker Oleh Voloshyn to promote pro-Russian positions in the European Parliament. (AP)
- 17 November 2025 – Opposition to Vladimir Putin in Russia
- Russia's Rosfinmonitoring adds former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and London Business School dean Sergei Guriev to its list of extremists and terrorists. (Reuters)
- 14 November 2025 – Mariana dam disaster
- British High Court judge Finola O'Farrell rules Australian mining corporation BHP liable for the 2015 Samarco dam collapse in Mariana, Minas Gerais, Brazil, considered the biggest environmental disaster in the country. (The Guardian) (G1)
Selected Biography
Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president. Obama previously served as a U.S. senator representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004. (Full article...)
Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He worked as a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree, and practiced as a civil rights attorney in Chicago before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.
Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. Obama's unexpected landslide victory in the March 2004 U.S. Senate primary made him a rising star in the national Democratic Party, with his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 further raising his visibility. He was elected by a landslide margin to the U.S. Senate in November 2004.
After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination, becoming the first major African American candidate for President. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican candidate John McCain and was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2009.
Selected Geography
Bouvet Island is located at 54°26′S 3°24′E. It is 49 km² in area, 93% of which is covered by glaciers which block the south and east coasts.[1]
Bouvet Island is the most remote island in the world. The nearest land is Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, over 1,600 km (1,000 miles) away to the south, which is itself uninhabited.
It has no ports or harbours, only offshore anchorages, and is therefore difficult to approach. Wave action has created a very steep coast. The easiest way to access the island is with a helicopter from a ship. The glaciers form a thick ice layer falling in high cliffs into the sea or onto the black beaches of volcanic sand. The 29.6 km (18.4 miles) of coastline are often surrounded by an ice pack. The highest point on the island is called Olavtoppen, whose peak is 780 m (2,559 ft) above sea level. A lava shelf on the island's west coast, which appeared between 1955 and 1958, provides a nesting site for birds.
Because of the harsh climate and ice-bound terrain, vegetation is limited to lichens and mosses. Seals, seabirds and penguins are the only fauna.
Despite being uninhabited, Bouvet Island has the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .bv, though it is not used.[2] A handful of amateur radio expeditions have gone to this remote location (call signs used here begin with 3Y). There is no telephone country code or area code, and no telephone connection (except by satellite, but there is nothing installed). There is no postal code and no postal distribution. Ships approaching the Bouvet Island fall within the UTC Z time zone. There is a Norwegian law [3] saying that the time zone of Norway is UTC+1, except for a part of year (daylight saving time). This suggests that the legal time zone for the Bouvet Island also should be UTC+1. However, since this law does not apply for the Norwegian Antarctic territories (Bouvet Island, Peter I Island, Queen Maud Land), UTC Z is the proper time zone for Bouvet Island.
Categories
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If I were creating the world I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, Day One! [zaps one of his minions accidentally, minion screams] Sorry.
- Evil Genius
- Time Bandits
Did you know?
- ...that optimistic estimations of peak oil production forecast the global decline will begin by 2020 or later, and assume major investments in alternatives will occur before a crisis, without requiring major changes in the lifestyle of heavily oil-consuming nations. These models show the price of oil at first escalating and then retreating as other types of fuel and energy sources are used?[13]
- ...that if the Greenland ice-sheet melted through global warming, it would raise the global sea level by 7 meters, or 22 feet?
Topics
Related portals
WikiProjects
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| WikiProject Africa | WikiProject Cape Verde | WikiProject Council |
Things to do
- Keep finishing off the various Portals that need creating/completing and start writing content on the relevant interested issues.
- Be bold. Wikipedia is for the people, by the people and needs YOU as a contributor to spread global knowledge.
Wikimedia
- ^ The Countries of the UK statistics.gov.uk, accessed 10 October, 2008
- ^ "Countries within a country". 10 Downing Street. Retrieved 2007-09-10.
The United Kingdom is made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
- ^ "ISO 3166-2 Newsletter Date: 2007-11-28 No I-9. "Changes in the list of subdivision names and code elements" (Page 11)" (PDF). International Organisation for Standardisation codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions -- Part 2: Country subdivision codes. Retrieved 2008-05-31.
ENG England country
- ^ National Statistics Online - Population Estimates. Retrieved 6 June 2007.
- ^ The official definition of LUZ (Larger Urban Zone) is used by the European Statistical Agency (Eurostat) when describing conurbations and areas of high population. This definition ranks London highest, above Paris (see Larger Urban Zones (LUZ) in the European Union); and a ranking of population within municipal boundaries also puts London on top (see Largest cities of the European Union by population within city limits). However, research by the University of Avignon in France ranks Paris first and London second when including the whole urban area and hinterland, that is the outlying cities as well (see Largest urban areas of the European Union).
- ^ England - Culture. Britain USA. Retrieved 12 September 2006.
- ^ "Industrial Revolution". Retrieved 2008-04-27.
- ^ "History of the Royal Society". The Royal Society. Retrieved 2008-09-03.
- ^ "Country profile: United Kingdom". BBC News. Retrieved 2009-04-27.
- ^ Pierce, D.W. The economic value of forest ecosystems" Ecosystem Health 7:4 2001
- ^ Erwin H Bulte; Mark Joenje; Hans G P Jansen 200 "Is there too much or too little natural forest in the Atlantic Zone of Costa Rica"Canadian Journal of Forest Research; 30:3
- ^ Erwin H Bulte; Mark Joenje; Hans G P Jansen 200 "Is there too much or too little natural forest in the Atlantic Zone of Costa Rica"Canadian Journal of Forest Research; 30:3
- ^ "CERA says peak oil theory is faulty". Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). 2006-11-14. Retrieved 2008-07-27.