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Australian region ... auto-da-fe

Australian region one of the six major land areas of the world defined on the basis of its characteristic animal life. It encompasses Australia and the outlying islands of Tasmania, New Guinea, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. It includes such animals as the birds of paradise, the duck-billed platypus, ... Australian rules football a football sport distinctive to Australia that predates other modern football games as the first to create an official code of play. Invented in Melbourne, capital of the state of Victoria, in the late 1850s, the game was initially known as Melbourne, or Victorian, rules football and was an amalgam ... Australian shepherd breed of herding dog that, despite its name, was developed in the United States in the late 1800s from dogs brought there by Basque shepherds who had spent time in Australia. One ancestor of the Australian shepherd is the berger de Pyrenees, an outstanding working dog from the mountains between ... Australian terrier breed of dog that originated as an Australian farm dog. First exhibited in 1885 as the Australian rough terrier, the perky breed can be traced back to an extinct British breed, the broken-haired, black-and-tan Old English terrier, but it includes in its heritage a number of other terriers, among them ... Australopithecus group of extinct creatures closely related to, if not actually ancestors of, modern human beings and known from a series of fossils found at numerous sites in eastern, central, and southern Africa. The various species of Australopithecus lived during the Pliocene (5.3 to 2.6 million years ago) and Pleistocene (2.6 ... Australopithecus sediba extinct primate species that inhabited southern Africa beginning about 1.98 million years ago and that shares several morphological characteristics in common with the hominin genus Homo. The first specimens were found and identified by American-born South African paleoanthropologist Lee Berger in 2008 at Malapa Cave system in the Cradle of ... Austrasia the eastern Frankish kingdom in the Merovingian period (6th-8th century AD) of early medieval Europe, as distinct from Neustria, the western kingdom. Its mayors of the palace, leading household and government officials under the king, were ancestors of the Carolingian dynasty. Covering present northeastern France, Belgium, and areas of western ... Austria: Year in Review 1994 The federal republic of Austria is a landlocked state of Central Europe. Area: 83,859 sq km (32,378 sq mi). Pop. (1993 est.): 7,938,000. Cap.: Vienna. Monetary unit: Austrian Schilling, with (Oct. 4, 1993) a free rate of 11.42 Schillings to U.S. $1 (17.31 Schillings = 1 sterling). President in 1993, ... Austria: Year in Review 1995 The federal republic of Austria is a landlocked state of Central Europe. Area: 83,859 sq km (32,378 sq mi). Pop. (1994 est.): 8,027,000. Cap.: Vienna. Monetary unit: Austrian Schilling, with (Oct. 7, 1994) a free rate of 10.85 Schillings to U.S. $1 (17.25 Schillings = 1 sterling). President in 1994, ... Austria: Year in Review 1996 The federal republic of Austria is a landlocked state of Central Europe. Area: 83,858 sq km (32,378 sq mi). Pop. (1995 est.): 8,063,000. Cap.: Vienna. Monetary unit: Austrian Schilling, with (Oct. 6, 1995) a free rate of 10.04 Schillings to U.S. $1 (15.87 Schillings = 1 sterling). President in 1995, ... Austria: Year in Review 1997 The federal republic of Austria is a landlocked state of central Europe. Area: 83,858 sq km (32,378 sq mi). Pop. (1996 est.): 8,102,000. Cap.: Vienna. Monetary unit: Austrian Schilling, with (Oct. 11, 1996) a free rate of 10.77 Schillings to U.S. $1 (16.97 Schillings = 1 sterling). President in 1996, ... Austria: Year in Review 1998 Area: 83,859 sq km (32,378 sq mi) Austria: Year in Review 1999 Area: 83,859 sq km (32,378 sq mi) Austria: Year in Review 2000 At the end of 1999, Austria's main political parties-the centre-left Social-Democratic Party of Austria (SPO), the right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), and the centre-right Austrian People's Party (OVP)-were still locked in talks to form a new government following the October 3 general election. In a year dominated by elections-to ... Austria: Year in Review 2001 In its post-World War II history, Austria had rarely had such an eventful year as 2000. Following the inconclusive general election in October 1999, negotiations between the centre-left and centre-right coalition partners dragged on into early 2000. Contrary to expectations, the two parties, which had been in power since 1986, ... Austria: Year in Review 2002 Austria's right-of-centre coalition government, comprising the moderate People's Party (OVP) and the populist-and occasionally xenophobic-Freedom Party (FPO), completed its first full year in office in 2001. Allaying early fears that the inclusion of the FPO in government heralded a lurch to the reactionary right in Austria, the coalition's policies and ... Austria: Year in Review 2003 The beginning of 2002 saw the second anniversary of the formation of Austria's controversial coalition government, comprising the centre-right People's Party (OVP) and the populist, sometimes xenophobic Freedom Party (FPO). This coincided with the beginning of a series of crises within the fractious FPO that broke out intermittently in the ... Austria: Year in Review 2004 Following the collapse in September 2002 of the coalition that comprised the centre-right Austrian People's Party (OVP) and the far-right populist Freedom Party (FPO), the opening months of 2003 saw the four main political parties in Austria involved in negotiations on the formation of a new government. The OVP was ... Austria: Year in Review 2005 The Austrian electorate had a busy time at the ballot box in 2004, with important state elections taking place in March, a new president elected in April, and elections to the European Parliament in June. The two parties in the ruling coalition-the centre-right Austrian People's Party (OVP) and its junior ... Austria: Year in Review 2006 Austria officially designated 2005 a jubilee year as it celebrated 60 years since the founding of the Second Republic after the end of World War II, 50 years since the country regained full independence following the signing of the State Treaty, and 10 years since it joined the EU. Chancellor ... Austria: Year in Review 2007 During the first half of 2006, Austria's government assumed the rotating six-month EU presidency. The list of objectives included measures aimed at reviving the derailed EU constitution and the euro zone's flagging economy while also attempting to restore the trust and confidence of citizens in the EU. In the event, ... Austria: Year in Review 2008 In January 2007 a majority "grand coalition" government comprising the Social Democratic Party (SPO) and the centre-right Austrian People's Party (OVP) entered office. This brought an end to more than three months of negotiations between the parties after the inconclusive result of the general election in October 2006, when an ... Austria: Year in Review 2009 In the first half of 2008, Austrian politics were characterized by deep distrust between the two governing coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party (SPO) and the centre-right Austrian People's Party (OVP), which resulted in the collapse of the federal government in July. Relations between the SPO and the OVP had ... Austria: Year in Review 2010 In 2009 Austria's new "grand" coalition between the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO) and the Austrian People's Party (OVP) was characterized as more cooperative than the previous government, in part because several of the new ministers were previously representatives of social partners. The coalition was sworn in on Dec. ... Austria: Year in Review 2011 In 2010 Austria's grand coalition between the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO) and the centre-right Austrian People's Party (OVP) was characterized by cooperation as the coalition partners worked together to lead the country out of the worst recession it had experienced since World War II. Pres. Heinz Fischer ... Austria: Year in Review 2012 Though Austria continued to be governed in 2011 by a grand coalition made up of the Austrian People's Party (OVP) and the Social Democrats (SPO), a fundamental shift in Austrian politics took place during the year. That largely occurred as a number of negative developments for the OVP left a ... Austria: Year in Review 2013 A coalition made up of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPO) and the conservative Austrian People's Party (OVP) continued to govern Austria in 2012. Social Democrat leader Werner Faymann held the job of chancellor, and Michael Spindelegger of the People's Party served as both vice-chancellor and foreign minister. The far-right ... Austria largely mountainous, landlocked country of south-central Europe. Together with Switzerland, it forms what has been characterized as the neutral core of Europe, notwithstanding Austria's full membership since 1995 in the supranational European Union (EU). Austria, flag of horizontally striped red-white-red national flag. When it is flown by the government, it incorporates a central black eagle. Its width-to-length ratio is 2 to 3. Austria-Hungary the Habsburg empire from the constitutional Compromise (Ausgleich) of 1867 between Austria and Hungary until the empire's collapse in 1918. AUSTRIA: Austria Turns 1,000: Year in Review 1997 In 1996 Austrians marked the 1,000th anniversary of a name--the name Osterreich (Austria) itself. On Nov. 1, 996, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III granted the Bavarian bishopric of Freising 30 "royal hides," or about 800 ha (2,000 ac), of land in Neuhofen an der Ybbs in what is now ... Austrian Hunting Carpet Persian floor covering of silk with the addition of threads wrapped in gilded silver. Thought by some to be the finest of all surviving Safavid carpets, it shows mounted hunters and their prey surrounding a relatively small central medallion, and the unique border includes a series of winged male figures. ... Austrian Netherlands (1713-95), provinces located in the southern part of the Low Countries (roughly comprising present Belgium and Luxembourg), which made up what had been the major portion of the Spanish Netherlands. Austrian school of economics body of economic theory developed in the late 19th century by Austrian economists who, in determining the value of a product, emphasized the importance of its utility to the consumer. Carl Menger published the new theory of value in 1871, the same year in which English economist William Stanley Jevons ... Austrian Succession, War of the (1740-48), a conglomeration of related wars, two of which developed directly from the death of Charles VI, Holy Roman emperor and head of the Austrian branch of the house of Habsburg, on Oct. 20, 1740. Austric languages hypothetical language superfamily that includes the Austroasiatic and Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) language families. The languages of these two families are spoken in an area extending from the island of Madagascar in the west to Easter Island in the east and as far northward as the Himalayas. This classification scheme, proposed in ... Austro-German Alliance (1879) pact between Austria-Hungary and the German Empire in which the two powers promised each other support in case of attack by Russia, and neutrality in case of aggression by any other power. Germany's Otto von Bismarck saw the alliance as a way to prevent the isolation of Germany and ... Austroasiatic languages stock of some 150 languages spoken by more than 65 million people scattered throughout Southeast Asia and eastern India. Most of these languages have numerous dialects. Khmer, Mon, and Vietnamese are culturally the most important and have the longest recorded history. The rest are languages of nonurban minority groups written, ... Austronesian languages family of languages spoken in most of the Indonesian Archipelago; all of the Philippines, Madagascar, and the island groups of the Central and South Pacific (except for Australia and much of New Guinea); much of Malaysia; and scattered areas of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Taiwan. In terms of the number ... Autant-Lara, Claude French motion-picture director who won an international reputation with his film Le Diable au corps (1947; Devil in the Flesh). autecology the study of the interactions of an individual organism or a single species with the living and nonliving factors of its environment. Autecology is primarily experimental and deals with easily measured variables such as light, humidity, and available nutrients in an effort to understand the needs, life history, and behaviour ... auteur theory theory of filmmaking in which the director is viewed as the major creative force in a motion picture. Arising in France in the late 1940s, the auteur theory-as it was dubbed by the American film critic Andrew Sarris-was an outgrowth of the cinematic theories of Andre Bazin and Alexandre Astruc. ... authigenic sediment deep-sea sediment that has been formed in place on the seafloor. The most significant authigenic sediments in modern ocean basins are metal-rich sediments and manganese nodules. Metal-rich sediments include those enriched by iron, manganese, copper, chromium, and lead. These sediments are common at spreading centres, indicating that processes at the ... author one who is the source of some form of intellectual or creative work; especially, one who composes a book, article, poem, play, or other literary work intended for publication. Usually a distinction is made between an author and others (such as a compiler, an editor, or a translator) who assemble, ... authoritarianism principle of blind submission to authority, as opposed to individual freedom of thought and action. In government, authoritarianism denotes any political system that concentrates power in the hands of a leader or a small elite that is not constitutionally responsible to the body of the people. Authoritarian leaders often exercise ... autism developmental disorder affecting physical, social, and language skills, with an onset of symptoms typically before age three. The term autism (from the Greek autos, meaning "self") was coined in 1911 by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who used it to describe withdrawal into one's inner world, a phenomenon he observed in ... autism spectrum disorder any of a group of neurobiological disorders that are characterized by deficits in social interaction and communication and by abnormalities in behaviours, interests, and activities. Autlan city, southwestern Jalisco estado (state), west-central Mexico. Autlan is situated in the western foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental at 3,291 feet (1,003 metres) above sea level. It is a regional centre of commerce, agriculture (oranges, lemons, guavas, and other fruits), livestock raising, and mining. Since its founding during the ... auto sacramental (Spanish: "sacramental act"), Spanish dramatic genre that reached its height in the 17th century with autos written by the playwright Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Performed outdoors as part of the Corpus Christi feast day celebrations, autos were short allegorical plays in verse dealing with some aspect of the mystery ... Auto-da-Fe novel by Elias Canetti, published in 1935 in German as Die Blendung ("The Deception"). It was also published in English as The Tower of Babel. auto-da-fe a public ceremony during which the sentences upon those brought before the Spanish Inquisition were read and after which the sentences were executed by the secular authorities. The first auto-da-fe took place at Sevilla in 1481; the last, in Mexico in 1850. The ceremonies, which became increasingly elaborate and spectacular, ...