Syria

Coordinates: 35°N 38°E / 35°N 38°E / 35; 38

Syria (ⁱ/ˈsɪ.rɪə/; Arabic: سوريا‎ or سورية, Sūriyā or Sūrīyah), officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in Western Asia. De jure Syrian territory borders Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest, but the government's control now extends to approximately 30–40% of the de jure state area and less than 60% of the population.

A country of fertile plains, high mountains, and deserts, Syria is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups, including Syrian Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Circassians,Mandeans and Turks. Religious groups include Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Mandeans, Shiites, Salafis, and Yazidis. Sunni Arabs make up the largest population group in Syria.

In English, the name "Syria" was formerly synonymous with the Levant (known in Arabic as al-Sham), while the modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the 3rd millennium BC. Its capital Damascus is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. In the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.

Islamic state (disambiguation)

Islamic state is a type of government based on Islamic religious law (sharia).

Islamic state may also refer to:

Syrian Army

The Syrian Army, officially the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) (Arabic: الجيش العربي السوري‎ al-Jaysh al-’Arabī as-Sūrī), is the land force branch of the Syrian Armed Forces. It is the dominant military service of the four uniformed services, controlling the most senior posts in the armed forces, and has the greatest manpower, approximately 80 percent of the combined services. The Syrian Army originated in local military forces formed by the French after World War I, after France obtained a mandate over the region. It officially came into being in 1945, before Syria obtained full independence the following year.

Since 1946, it has played a major role in Syria's governance, mounting five military coups (two in 1949, including the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état and the August 1949 coup by Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, 1954, 1963, 1966, and in 1970. It has fought four wars with Israel (1948, the Six Day War in 1967, 1973, and 1982 in Lebanon) and one with Jordan (Black September in Jordan, 1970). An armored division was also deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1990–91 during the Persian Gulf War, but saw little action. From 1976 to 2005 it was the major pillar of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Internally, it played a major part in suppressing the 1979–82 Islamist uprising in Syria, and since early 2011 has been heavily engaged in fighting the Syrian Civil War, the most violent and prolonged war the Syrian Army has taken part in since its establishment in the 1940s.

Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera (Arabic: الجزيرة‎ al-ǧazīrah IPA: [æl dʒæˈziːrɐ], literally "The Peninsula", referring to the Arabian Peninsula), also known as JSC (Jazeera Satellite Channel), is a Doha-based state-funded broadcaster owned by the Al Jazeera Media Network, which is partly funded by the House of Thani, the ruling family of Qatar. Initially launched as an Arabic news and current affairs satellite TV channel, Al Jazeera has since expanded into a network with several outlets, including the Internet and specialty TV channels in multiple languages.

Al Jazeera is among the largest news organizations with 80 bureaus around the world. Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar. While Al Jazeera officials have stated that they are editorially independent from the government of Qatar, this assertion has been disputed.

The original Al Jazeera channel's willingness to broadcast dissenting views, for example on call-in shows, created controversies in the Arab States of the Persian Gulf. The station gained worldwide attention following the outbreak of war in Afghanistan, when it was the only channel to cover the war live, from its office there.

VICE

The software program VICE, standing for VersatIle Commodore Emulator, is a free and cross platform emulator for Commodore's 8-bit computers, running on Amiga, Unix, MS-DOS, Win32, Mac OS X, OS/2, Acorn RISC OS, QNX QNX, GP2X GP2X, Dingoo Dingoo A320, Syllable Syllable OS, and BeOS host machines. VICE is free software, released under the GNU General Public Licence.

It's also available for a variety of platforms: for instance VICE for Microsoft Windows (Win32) is known as WinVICE, the OS/2 variant is called Vice/2, and the emulator running on BeOS is called BeVICE.

History

As of version 2.1, released December 19, 2008, VICE emulates the Commodore 64, the C128, the VIC-20, the Plus/4, the C64 Direct-to-TV (with its additional video modes) and all the PET models including the CBM-II but excluding the 'non-standard' features of the SuperPET 9000. WinVICE supports digital joysticks via a parallel port driver, and, with a CatWeasel PCI card, is planned to perform hardware SID playback (requires optional SID chip installed in socket).