The Holy See published its first website, www.vatican.va, on December 25, 1995, marking Vatican City’s online debut and the creation of the Vatican Internet Service. By the late 1990s the Vatican established the Internet Office of the Holy See as its ISP, connected Vatican City to the global internet, and secured the .va domain for…
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In June 2024, a team led by Japan’s NICT and Aston University achieved 402 Tbps over a single standard optical fiber using six wavelength bands (O, E, S, C, L, and U). In March 2024, the same international team reached 301 Tbps by extending into E-band and S-band with a custom amplifier for those bands.…
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The F-16 began as General Dynamics’ YF-16 in the USAF’s Lightweight Fighter program, with the prototype’s maiden flight in 1974 and the first operational F-16A delivered in 1979. It introduced relaxed static stability and fly-by-wire controls, enabling exceptional agility and the ability to sustain 9 g turns. The cockpit features a frameless bubble canopy for…
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Direct war damage reached $176 billion by end-2024, with 72% of losses concentrated in frontline regions Donetsk, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Kyiv oblasts. An updated needs assessment estimates Ukraine will require about $524 billion (€506 billion) over the next decade to repair and rebuild, roughly 2.8 times the country’s 2024 GDP. Housing is the…
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Mobile subscriptions grew from zero in 2001 to nearly 100% penetration by 2021. A nationwide fiber-optic backbone was being rolled out, including a 400 km cross-border fiber link to China via the Wakhan Corridor that was near completion in 2021. The Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 stalled or halted many fiber and broader…
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