Kourou, French Guiana
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Kourou, French Guiana
Kourou () is a commune in French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France in South America. Kourou is famous for being the location of the Guiana Space Centre, the main spaceport of France and the European Space Agency (ESA). It is an administrative district in French Guiana and the main town there. Geography Some northwest of the French Guianese capital Cayenne the Kourou River empties into the Atlantic Ocean. At the mouth of this river sits the town of Kourou, which is ringed by four hills: Carapa, Pariacabo, Café and Lombard, with the Singes and Condamine mountains not far behind. There are three lakes within the town's city limits: Lake Bois Diable (where one can take lessons in jetski and other aquatic sports), Lake Marie-Claire (the smallest and calmest), and Lake Bois Chaudat (the biggest of the three; also open to sport lovers, especially canoers and kayakers). Long white sand beaches and some rocky outcrops line the town's ocean coast, the riverbank an ...
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Communes Of France
The () is a level of administrative division in the French Republic. French are analogous to civil townships and incorporated municipalities in the United States and Canada, ' in Germany, ' in Italy, or ' in Spain. The United Kingdom's equivalent are civil parishes, although some areas, particularly urban areas, are unparished. are based on historical geographic communities or villages and are vested with significant powers to manage the populations and land of the geographic area covered. The are the fourth-level administrative divisions of France. vary widely in size and area, from large sprawling cities with millions of inhabitants like Paris, to small hamlets with only a handful of inhabitants. typically are based on pre-existing villages and facilitate local governance. All have names, but not all named geographic areas or groups of people residing together are ( or ), the difference residing in the lack of administrative powers. Except for the municipal arrondi ...
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Maroon (people)
Maroons are descendants of Africans in the Americas who escaped from slavery and formed their own settlements. They often mixed with indigenous peoples, eventually evolving into separate creole cultures such as the Garifuna and the Mascogos. Etymology ''Maroon'', which can have a more general sense of being abandoned without resources, entered English around the 1590s, from the French adjective , meaning 'feral' or 'fugitive'. (Despite the same spelling, the meaning of 'reddish brown' for ''maroon'' did not appear until the late 1700s, perhaps influenced by the idea of maroon peoples.) The American Spanish word is also often given as the source of the English word ''maroon'', used to describe the runaway slave communities in Florida, in the Great Dismal Swamp on the border of Virginia and North Carolina, on colonial islands of the Caribbean, and in other parts of the New World. Linguist Lyle Campbell says the Spanish word ' means 'wild, unruly' or 'runaway slave'. In ...
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Albioma
Albioma is an independent renewable energy producer. It is mainly active in the biomass and solar photovoltaic sectors, mainly in mainland France and the French overseas territories. It is listed on the Euronext Paris. History In 1982, SIDEC (''Société Industrielle pour le Développement de l'Énergie Charbon'') was created by the Charbonnages de France Group to help industrialists reduce the share of hydrocarbons in their energy sources. In 1994, Séchilienne, a subsidiary of Air Liquide, acquired a stake in SIDEC's capital, and then progressively acquired a majority stake until the two companies merged in 2001 to form Séchilienne-Sidec. In 2005, Air Liquide sold its stake to ''Financière Hélios'', which became its main shareholder (Hélios was then controlled by funds managed by Apax Partners and Altamir Amboise). The name Albioma was adopted in 2013 by Séchilienne Sidec, in parallel with a refocusing on biomass, reducing the share of coal in its plants, and solar en ...
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Overseas France
Overseas France (french: France d'outre-mer) consists of 13 France, French-administered territories outside Europe, mostly the remains of the French colonial empire that chose to remain a part of the French state under various statuses after decolonization. They are part of the European Union. This collective name is used in everyday life in France but is not an administrative designation in its own right. Instead, the five Overseas region, overseas regions have exactly the same administrative divisions of France, administrative status as the metropolitan regions; the five Overseas collectivity, overseas collectivities are semi-autonomous; and New Caledonia is an autonomous territory. Overseas France includes island territories in the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pacific and Indian Ocean, Indian Oceans, French Guiana on the South America, South American continent, and several list of Antarctic and Subantarctic islands, peri-Antarctic islands as well as a claim in An ...
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Solar Power Plant
A photovoltaic power station, also known as a solar park, solar farm, or solar power plant, is a large-scale grid-connected photovoltaic power system (PV system) designed for the supply of merchant power. They are different from most building-mounted and other decentralised solar power because they supply power at the utility level, rather than to a local user or users. The generic expression utility-scale solar is sometimes used to describe this type of project. The solar power source is solar panels that convert light directly to electricity. However, this differs from and should not be confused with concentrated solar power, the other major large-scale solar generation technology, which uses heat to drive a variety of conventional generator systems. Both approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages, but to date, for a variety of reasons, photovoltaic technology has seen much wider use. , about 97% of utility-scale solar power capacity was PV. In some countries, th ...
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Devil's Island
The penal colony of Cayenne ( French: ''Bagne de Cayenne''), commonly known as Devil's Island (''Île du Diable''), was a French penal colony that operated for 100 years, from 1852 to 1952, and officially closed in 1953 in the Salvation Islands of French Guiana. Opened in 1852, the Devil's Island system received convicts from the Prison of St-Laurent-du-Maroni, who had been deported from all parts of the Second French Empire. It was notorious both for the staff's harsh treatment of detainees and the tropical climate and diseases that contributed to high mortality. The prison system had a death rate of 75% at its worst, and was finally closed down in 1953. Devil's Island was also notorious for being used for the exile of French political prisoners, with the most famous being Captain Alfred Dreyfus, accused of spying for Germany. The Dreyfus affair was a scandal extending for several years in late 19th and early 20th century France, exposing antisemitism and corruption in the Fre ...
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Iles Du Salut
The Salvation Islands (french: Îles du Salut, so called because the missionaries went there to escape plague on the mainland; sometimes mistakenly called Safety Islands) are a group of small islands of volcanic origin about off the coast of French Guiana, north of Kourou, in the Atlantic Ocean. Although closer to Kourou, the islands are part of Cayenne (municipality), specifically . Geography Islands There are three islands, from north to south: Devil's Island, the most famous due to the political imprisonment there of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, is better known to French speakers as . The total area is . Devil's Island and Île Royale are separated by , Île Royale and Saint-Joseph Island by . Climate The climate of Salvation Islands focuses on the characteristics of Royale Island. Royale Island (french: Île-Royale) has a tropical savanna climate (Köppen climate classification ''Aw''). The average annual temperature in Royale Island is . The average annual rainfall is with ...
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Saramaka, French Guiana
Saramaka (also: Saramaca) is a neighbourhood of Kourou, French Guiana. The neighbourhood is mainly populated by Saramaka maroons from Suriname who settled in the area during the construction of the Guiana Space Centre. Background The Saramaka maroons were originally living in Suriname. They first came to French Guiana in the 19th century as freighters to the interior. During the gold rush, their services became important for the economy. In 1883, the Governor of French Guiana and the ''Granman'' (paramount chief) of the Saramaka, signed an official accord that Samarakas could stay in French Guiana under the legal authority of the Granman. The accords have never been rescinded and allow the tribe entry to French Guiana without the risk of deportation. Overview In 1967, Saramaka maroons from Suriname arrived in Kourou to work on the construction of the Guiana Space Centre. They built a shanty town on the outskirts of Kourou. In 1968, Richard Price visited Dangogo to discover that a ...
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Guyana
Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, Brazil to the south and southwest, Venezuela to the west, and Suriname to the east. With , Guyana is the third-smallest sovereign state by area in mainland South America after Uruguay and Suriname, and is the second-least populous sovereign state in South America after Suriname; it is also one of the least densely populated countries on Earth. It has a wide variety of natural habitats and very high biodiversity. The region known as "the Guianas" consists of the large shield landmass north of the Amazon River and east of the Orinoco River known as the "land of many waters". Nine indigenous tribes reside in Guyana: the Wai Wai, Macushi, Patamona, Lokono, Kalina, Wapishana, Pemon, Akawaio and Warao. Histo ...
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Haiti
Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island which it shares with the Dominican Republic. To its south-west lies the small Navassa Island, which is claimed by Haiti but is disputed as a United States territory under federal administration."Haiti"
''Encyclopædia Britannica''.
Haiti is in size, the third largest country in the Caribbean by area, and has an estimated population of 11.4 million, making it the most populous country in the Caribb ...
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Hmong People
The Hmong people ( RPA: ''Hmoob'', Nyiakeng Puachue: , Pahawh Hmong: , ) are a sub-ethnic group of the Miao people who originated from Central China. The modern Hmongs presently reside mainly in Southwest China (Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Chongqing, and Guangxi) and countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. There is also a very large diasporic community in the United States, comprising more than 300,000 Hmong. The Hmong diaspora also has smaller communities in Australia and South America (specifically Argentina and French Guiana, the latter being an overseas region of France). During the First and Second Indo-China Wars, France and the United States intervened in the Lao Civil War by recruiting thousands of Hmong people to fight against forces from North and South Vietnam, which were stationed in Laos in accordance with their mission to support the communist Pathet Lao insurgents. The CIA operation is known as the Secret War. Etymol ...
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Suriname
Suriname (; srn, Sranankondre or ), officially the Republic of Suriname ( nl, Republiek Suriname , srn, Ripolik fu Sranan), is a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, and Brazil to the south. At just under , it is the smallest sovereign state in South America. It has a population of approximately , dominated by descendants from the slaves and labourers brought in from Africa and Asia by the Dutch Empire and Republic. Most of the people live by the country's (north) coast, in and around its capital and largest city, Paramaribo. It is also List of countries and dependencies by population density, one of the least densely populated countries on Earth. Situated slightly north of the equator, Suriname is a tropical country dominated by rainforests. Its extensive tree cover is vital to the country's efforts to Climate change in Suriname, mitigate climate ch ...
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