Annotated bibliography Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Annotated bibliography - Research Paper Example However, they only contribute 33 percent to the country’s GDP. The proposal is supported by findings that SMEs in developed countries, where SME authority exist, contribute a higher percentage towards GDP. The article points out how lack of SME authority has affected SMEs in Saudi Arabia. The major effect has been lack of support services and financing programs, which has led to the poor performance of SMEs in Saudi Arabia. The article is relevant to my study since it demonstrates the importance of SME Authority in order to establish order in the SME sector and increase their contribution to the Saudi Arabian economy. The article is based on finding from various countries where establishment of SME Authority have enhanced the role of SMEs. The proposal is credible since the article provides enough evidence on the role of SME Authorities have played in developed and emerging countries in Asia and Europe. However, the article is limited since the author does not acknowledge the resources used in establishing the credibility of the findings. Howard, B 2008, Big in Smalls: Howard Bryant FCMA Helped to Turn a Tiny Dot-Com into the World's Largest Online Seller of Branded Underwear. He Explains Why an SME Is a Tougher Test of Professional Mettle Than a Multinational, Financial Management (UK) , July-August, Available at: http://www.questia.com/library/1G1-184538268/big-in-smalls-howard-bryant-fcma-helped-to-turn-a. The aim of the article is to outline challenges facing SMEs and how CIMA, an institute in UK that trains graduates in the field of business, can enhance its programs to equip the graduates with relevant skills to serve the SME sector effectively. The article involves a systematic analysis of factors that hinder SME performance and proposes the skills CIMA students would require in solving various challenges. The sturdy supported by findings that exposure of finance and accounting students to work in SMEs enables them gain wider breadth competence in business. The article is relevant to my study since it establishes to challenges facing SMEs and the role of professionals in the field of finance and accounting in resolving these challenges. The article makes use of statistics from reliable organizations such as Office of National statistics in UK and is thus credible. Moreover, Howard Bryant, who authored the article, is a finance director and consultant in the area of finance and the findings are believable. Possible limitation is that the article is based on findings from SME sector in UK and some findings might not apply to Saudi Arabia. Fu, Y.-K 2011, Marketing activities management in SMEs: An Exploratory Sudy, Human Systems Management, Volume 30, DOI 10.3233/HSM-2010-0743, pp. 155-166. The article aims to establish and compare the tendency of national-level and regional level sales managers to engage in the eight marketing activities management systems. A survey was conducted using questionnaires devised to measure the par ticipation of sale managers in marketing activities. The study supported findings by Siu (2002), whose study found that sales managers play a crucial role in determining the performance of SMEs. Moreover, Siu (2002) found out that findings regarding SME practices and performance are region specific and there is thus need for adoption of contingency approach. The article is relevant to my study since it focused on marketing activities in Eastern business environments where Saudi Arabia is

Role of Parliament in Germany Essay Example for Free

Role of Parliament in Germany Essay This article is about the current parliament of Germany. For the governing body of the Germany. Confederation from 1815 to 1866, see Bundesversammlung (German Confederation). Confederation from 1815 to 1866, see Bundesversammlung (German Confederation). The Bundestag (Federal Diet; pronounced [ˈbÊŠndÉ™staË k]) is a legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag was established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier Reichstag. It meets in the Reichstag Building in Berlin. Norbert Lammert is the current President of the Bundestag. With the new constitution of 1949, the Bundestag was established as the new (West) German parliament. Because West Berlin was not officially under the jurisdiction of the Constitution and because of the Cold War, the Bundestag met in Bonn in several different buildings, including (provisionally) a former water works facility. In addition, owing to the citys legal status, citizens of West Berlin were unable to vote in elections to the Bundestag, and were instead represented by 20 non-voting delegates, indirectly elected by the citys House of Representatives. The Bundeshaus in Bonn is the former Parliament Building of Germany. The sessions of the German Bundestag were held there from 1949 until its move to Berlin in 1999. Today it houses the International Congress Centre Bundeshaus Bonn and in the north areas the branch office of the Bundesrat (upper house). The southern areas became part of German offices for the United Nations in 2008. The former Reichstag building housed a history exhibition (Fragen an die deutsche Geschichte) and served occasionally as a conference center. The Reichstag building was also occasionally used as a venue for sittings of the Bundestag and its committees and the Bundesversammlung, the body which elects the German Federal President. However the Soviets harshly protested against the use of the Reichstag building by institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany and tried to disturb the sittings by flying supersonic jets close to the building. Since 1999, the German parliament has again assembled in Berlin in its original Reichstag building, which dates from the 1890s and underwent a significant renovation under the lead of British architect Sir Norman Foster. Parliamentary committees and subcommittees, public hearings and faction meetings take place in three auxiliary buildings, which surround the Reichstag building: the Jakob-Kaiser-Haus, Paul-Là ¶be-Haus and Marie-Elisabeth-Là ¼ders-Haus. Together with the Bundesrat, the Bundestag is the legislative branch of the German political system. Although most legislation is initiated by the executive branch, the Bundestag considers the legislative function its most important responsibility, concentrating much of its energy on assessing and amending the governments legislative program. The committees (see below) play a prominent role in this process. Plenary sessions provide a forum for members to engage in public debate on legislative issues before them, but they tend to be well attended only when significant legislation is being considered. The Bundestag members are the only federal officials directly elected by the public; the Bundestag in turn elects the Chancellor and, in addition, exercises oversight of the executive branch on issues of both substantive policy and routine administration. This check on executive power can be employed through binding legislation, public debates on government policy, investigations, and direct questioning of the chancellor or cabinet officials. For example, the Bundestag can conduct a question hour (Fragestunde), in which a government representative responds to a previously submitted written question from a member. Members can ask related questions during the question hour. The questions can concern anything from a major policy issue to a specific constituents problem. Use of the question hour has increased markedly over the past forty years, with more than 20,000 questions being posed during the 1987-90 term. Understandably, the opposition parties are active in exercising the parliame ntary right to scrutinize government actions. One striking difference when comparing the Bundestag with the British Parliament is the lack of time spent on serving constituents in Germany. This is in part due to Germanys electoral system. A practical constraint on the expansion of constituent service is the limited personal staff of Bundestag deputies. Despite these constraints especially those deputies that are elected directly normally try to keep close contact with their constituents and to help them with their problems, particularly when they are related to federal policies or agencies. Constituent service does also take place in the form of the Petition Committee. In 2004, the Petition Committee received over 18,000 complaints from citizens and was able to negotiate a mutually satisfactory solution to more than half of them. In 2005, as a pilot of the potential of internet petitions, a version of e-Petitioner was produced for the Bundestag. This was a collaborative project involving The Scottish Parliament, International Teledemocracy Centre and the Bundestag ‘Online Services Department’. The system was formally launched on 1 September 2005, and in 2008 the Bundestag moved to a new system based on its evaluation.[1] ELECTION : Members serve four-year terms; elections are held every four years, or earlier in the relatively rare case that the Bundestag is dissolved prematurely by the president. The Bundestag can be dissolved by the president on the recommendation of the chancellor if the latter has lost a vote of confidence in the Bundestag. This has happened three times: 1972 under Chancellor Willy Brandt, 1983 under Chancellor Helmut Kohl and 2005 under Chancellor Gerhard Schrà ¶der. All candidates must be at least eighteen years old; there are no term limits. The election uses the MMP electoral system. In addition, the Bundestag has a minimum threshold of either 5% of the national party vote or three (directly elected) constituency representatives for a party to gain additional representation through the system of proportional representation. Thus, small minority parties cannot easily enter the Bundestag and prevent the formation of stable majority governments as they could under the Weimar constitution. Since 1961, only two new parties (Bà ¼ndnis 90/Die Grà ¼nen and PDS/Die Linke) have entered the Bundestag. The most recent election, the German federal election, 2009, was held on September 27, 2009.[2] Distribution of seats in the Bundestag Half of the Members of the Bundestag are elected directly from 299 constituencies (first-past-the-post system), the other half are elected from the parties’ Land lists in such a way as to achieve proportional representation for the total Bundestag (if possible). Accordingly, each voter has two votes in the elections to the Bundestag. The first vote, allowing voters to elect their local representatives to the Bundestag, decides which candidates are sent to Parliament from the constituencies. The second vote is cast for a party list; it determines the relative strengths of the parties represented in the Bundestag. At least 598 Members of the Bundestag are elected in this way. Parties that gain more than 5% of the second votes or win at least 3 direct mandates are allocated seats in the Bundestag in proportion to the number of votes it has received (dHondt method until 1987, largest remainder method until the 2005 election, now Sainte-Laguà « method). When the total number of mandates gained by a party has been determined, they are distributed between the Land lists. The distribution of the seats of that party to the 16 Lands is proportional to that partys second vote results in the Lands. The first of the mandates allocated to each Land go to the candidates who have won direct mandates in that Land. The rest are assigned in order to the candidates on the Land list put forward before the election. In addition to this, there are certain circumstances in which some candidates win what are known as overhang seats when the seats are being distributed. If a party has gained more direct mandates in a Land than it is entitled to according to the results of the second vote, it does not forfeit these mandates because all directly elected candidates are guaranteed a seat in the Bundestag. ORGANISATIONS : Parliamentary groups The most important organisational structures within the Bundestag are parliamentary groups (Fraktionen; sing. Fraktion), which are formed by political parties represented in the chamber which incorporate more than 5% of the Bundestag legislators; CDU and CSU have always formed a single united Fraktion. The size of a partys Fraktion determines the extent of its representation on legislative committees, the time slots allotted for speaking, the number of committee chairs it can hold, and its representation in executive bodies of the Bundestag. The Fraktionen, not the members, receive the bulk of government funding for legislative and administrative activities. The Bundestags executive bodies include the Council of Elders and the Presidium. The council consists of the Bundestag leadership, together with the most senior representatives of each fraktion, with the number of these representatives tied to the strength of the Parliamentary groups in the chamber. The council is the coordination hub, determining the daily legislative agenda and assigning committee chairpersons based on Parliamentary group representation. The council also serves as an important forum for interparty negotiations on specific legislation and procedural issues. The Presidium is responsible for the routine administration of the Bundestag, including its clerical and research activities. It consists of the chambers president (usually elected from the largest fraktion) and vice presidents (one from each fraktion).

The Symbolic Meaning Behind the Black Procession in OConners A Late E

The Symbolic Meaning Behind the Black Procession in O'Conner's A Late Encounter with the Enemy Czechoslovakian philosopher and political mind Vaclav Havel, in his discourse The Power of the Powerless, talks about the danger of "living within a lie" (84). He argues that individuals who refuse to develop a strong sense of self and instead "merge with the anonymous crowd and flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudo-life" (38) inevitably experience a "profound crisis of human identity" (45). Havel was speaking specifically of communism, but more broadly of the human condition. His warning is similar to moral message of Southern writer Flannery O'Conner in her short stories, specifically A Late Encounter with the Enemy. O'Conner, unlike Havel, sends her message through her fictional characters. They frequently live in contrived worlds the neglect the realities of their lives. O'Conner operates on a highly symbolic and ironic level to demonstrate this to her readers. In A Late Encounter with the Enemy, the General is typical of O'Conner's characters, unwilling to reveal his actual self. But when he is faced with the black procession at graduation, it reminds him of his true, forgotten past, and it is this truth -- the enemy -- which ultimately leads to his death. The General refuses to remember the past. He refers to it as "a dreary black procession" (399). The past is of no importance to him because he is only concerned with the present. All he cares for are parades and "beautiful guls" (400). The General is able to justify his avoidance of the past. O'Conner tells us that he "didn't have any use for history because he never expected to meet it again" (399). There is only one moment from the... ...he gives about him, giving the reader a clear picture of what sort of character he is. But he is weak in his sense of self, content to live as a symbol of a glorious past rather than as a true human. O'Conner exploits this weakness and slowly breaks the General down through the course of the story. She demonstrates the dangers of living a lie, of becoming someone that one is not. Her message is that the fate of the General will be the fate of all man if he chooses to live within a lie. O'Conner warns that life lived without human identity is comparable to Havel's river of pseudo-life. Only she uses the image of a black procession -- dark, solemn and resulting in painful death. The analogies are very different, but the message is the same. Works Cited Havel, Vaclav. The Power of the Powerless. trans. Paul Wilson. Hutchinson Educational, 1985.

New Technologies Essay

Public relations is the management function which evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of an individual or an organisation with the public interest, and plans and executes a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance. Public relations is the management function that identifies, establishes, and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and the various publics on whom its success or failure depends. Cutlip Scott et al. Effective Public Relations, Prentice Hall 2000 Public Relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. Public relations practice is the discipline which looks after reputation – with the aim of earning understanding and support, and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between organisations and its publics. Harrison Shirley, Public Relations – An introduction, Thomson Learning 2000 Public relations practice is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics. Jenkins Frank, Public Relations Techniques, Butterworth Heinemann 2nd edition Public relations consists of all forms of planned communication, outwards and inwards, between an organisation and its publics for the purpose of achieving specific objectives concerning mutual understanding. Jenkins Frank, Public Relations, Pitman 5th edition Comparison of the characteristics of advertising and public relationsUse of media Purchase media space Normally relies on or time gaining media coverage Degree of control over Relatively tight control Relatively little if any the message over the content and control over content and timing of the message timing of the message Message credibility Normally low credibility Normally relatively high credibility Types of target audience Relatively narrow target Often aimed at a audience usually market relatively broad range related of publics/audiences Focus of the activity Relatively short-term Situation oriented Expected time horizons Market/sales oriented Both short and long term for planning and results objectives and impact. objectives and impact. Forms of evaluation Established measurement Relatively limited number Techniques for coverage of evaluation techniques and cost efficiency used, often confined to measures of media coverage Mode of payment for Agencies receive payment Agencies paid on the agency services in the form of commission basis of fees for from the media based on consultant’s time or by the space or time booked annual retainer for the client Black Sam, Public Relation: revision workbook, HTL publications 1992 pg8 Comparison of propaganda and public relations Sender Varying degrees of source Clear identification of the Identification sender Purpose To build a movement or To achieve consent or a following develop dialogue Message One sided, varying degrees May moderate between of accuracy arguments accuracy important Media Similar media may be used in both cases Receiver Similar audiences may be targeted in both cases Black Sam, Public Relation: revision workbook, HTL publications 1992 pg9 â€Å"New Technologies are drastically changing the whole business of Public Relations† Mobile phones, video recorders, DVD players PCs etc, technology that began as business-to-business has steadily developed for use in the home, in the business market, technology is primarily a productivity tool, but in the home it is much more leisure or entertainment, competing for attention against TV or the cinema. Technology is the technical means people use to improve their surroundings. It is also knowledge of using tools and machines to do tasks efficiently. We use technology to control the world in which we live. Technology is people using knowledge, tools, and systems to make their lives easier and better. People use technology to improve their ability to do work. Through technology, people communicate better. Technology allows them to make more and better products. Our buildings are better with the use of technology. We travel in more comfort and speed because of technology. Yes, technology is everywhere and can make life better.www. ask. com According to most of the articles in the reference list, and the interview with Dan Pinch (consultant at PR agency Weber Shandwick), the biggest impact for the world of public relations in the last five years is most certainly the internet. It has overcome time-zone problems in communicating with clients in the United States as well as the Eastern European countries, and it has so much to offer in speed, quality and communication. Along with various interactive software packages (appendix (ii)) that make it easier for consultants to do their job efficiently and swifter than before. Understanding the unique properties of the internet: *it provides a unique medium in which communities and groups can form, reform, transform and dissolve. *It is relatively inexpensive, *users can be anonymous or have different online personality and act differently as a result, *it recognises no geographic boundaries, *once a message is out, the sender loses control, and *there are already many more internet than non-internet channels for communication. â€Å"It is clear that the internet has and is continuing to change the communication model or paradigm. It is changing the very nature of the relationship between an organisation and its publics in terms of process, content, location, speed and power. † The Public Relations e-Commission www. icas. co. uk e-PR @ ICAS, internet information The internet has created new tools and changed objectives; an altered geography of web sites, newsgroups, usenets, chat rooms, and mailing lists, and a revised lexicon with terms like rogue web sites, metatabs, text-crawlers, reciprocal linking, hyper-text-perts, and search engine placement; the names can make the internet sound very complex, however it is a useful communication tool. With information travelling at the velocity of light, communicators discover fresh ways to deliver and monitor news that keeps them two steps ahead of the media and the competition. Do you want to know if your client or company will be front-page news before the scoop is even in print? No problem! With the emergence of new methods of monitoring media, you can be notified before the news hits the stands or makes the airwaves; today public relations practitioners are receiving ‘real-time’ news-breaks. Public relations consultants can distribute information or look at reports of media placements in literally seconds than wait a week or two. Which system to use depends on the user’s needs, budget and equipment available for collecting or broadcasting data; the more exclusive and appropriate the information sent or received, the more expensive it is. Service companies are constantly coming up with new programs and applications to help public relations practitioners reach the media. Clipping services have upgraded their offerings with daily fax delivery and on-line media monitoring to match the client’s clip profile. Source: Public Relations Society of America, Technology transforms media relations work. Public Relations Journal, Nov 1993 v49 n11 p34(1) News distribution companies allow PR agencies to get vital information to the press on a large scale in a short time. Traditionally an agency would have to do their press release, put them in envelopes, and mail them out to all journalists. With news distribution companies like Pr Newswire, Pimms, Expedite all you do is e-mail them the release with a list of contacts and they will e-mail, fax, or post the information out. Pr Newswire also has capabilities of putting information onto a newswire service which can be accessed by large broadcast and press agencies. Contact Management Software are programmes supplied by companies like Media Disk and PR Newswire, they are large databases containing numerous names of journalists, together with respective publications; the systems should be continuously updated to keep data current. These systems allow users to build mailing lists for effective targeting and distribution of messages. Technology has changed many aspects (from speed of receiving documents via e-mail, to message boards and chat rooms where rumours can be heard of first etc. ) in the world of Public Relations. However, the areas in which it has not changed much is the talking to journalists, PR consultants still have to use the phone a great deal and face-to-face communication will always remain an important way of conducting business; clearly shown with the latest British Airways advertisement, with the strap line ‘It’s better to be there’. The advertisement shows that the use of technology is all well and good however making the effort to go and see the client is even better! (appendix (v)). According to Dan Pinch ‘Human contact of the actual daily job will always stay the same, Public Relations is all about human contact; that will never go away’. â€Å"Public relations whether it is offline is and always will be about human relationships! † The Public Relations e-Commission www. icas. co. uk e-PR @ ICAS, internet information To keep with the times it would be obvious to assume that many of the PR firms are or should be using a combination of easy data access and delivery technology to maintain their client base. Clipping services, news wires and informational databases have upgraded their offerings to supply their clientele with information releases. The functions of Public Relations can now be helped along with today’s technology, the creation of publicity for products and services can be done in numerous ways, from the internet to placement in films. Opinion forming on a particular issue can be dealt with by posting an article on the internet and getting feedback from the public. The ability to download photographs from the internet can help media relations. The use of television, cinema, radio, and internet can help with business sponsorship; getting more coverage in a variety of ways. PR on the Internet also includes a new set of assumptions, with response speeds measured in seconds, not hours, and a â€Å"through the looking glass† distortion that can make a single person on an Internet newsgroup more potent than the entire public relations department of a major corporation. â€Å"Nobody is small on the Web,† says Alan Wallace, a principal at Santa Monica-based Inter Active Agency, a brash, two-year-old firm dedicated to the proposition that PR agencies not already on the Internet are already out of business. Source: Richard Rapaport, PR finds a cool new tool. Forbes, Oct 6, 1997 v160 n7 pS100(6) The internet has clearly made the workload easier to handle for PR firms, however there is also a negative aspect about this tool; there are scarier implications that surround the world of internet, such as the reality, that corporate status can be savaged as dissatisfied customers and shareholders exchange comments on the World Wide Web. It can all occur without the companies’ knowledge, if they are not monitoring, and contributing to the forum, message boards and chat rooms it can end up as a damaging mix of rumours and misrepresentation, and severe consequences can follow, as Quigley Cold-Eeze discovered (appendix (iii)). When a company faces a crisis, there has never been a more powerful or potentially more destructive tool than the internet, according to Text 100 managing director Katie Kemp: â€Å"Once it gets on the net, you lose control of it. † Source: Haymarket Publishing Ltd, PR makes its way to IT boardrooms, Marketing, May 27, 1999 p59(2) PR agencies that have the technical expertise can set up monitoring services. Edelman Technology, the high-tech sector of Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, assists the complex needs of technology corporations large and small. Staffed by IT specialists in key global markets, Edelman is among the leading industry players in the area of high-tech PR. Edelman has a system called I-Wire which monitors the internet, checking on 55,000 user groups and bulletin boards. It means that if there’s trouble, the team responsible can take action. â€Å"As technologies converge and the pace of development slows, competition for press coverage will intensify,† says Lewis. â€Å"Agencies with little knowledge of journalism and poor technical expertise will be exposed. Weak stories will fail, and so will weak agencies. â€Å"

Space design considerations for an architecture school

And teaching staff in newly approved Institution / Program. Then it gives detailed time schedule for processing of applications . Page- 72 : It provides further information about Unapproved Institutions, detailed points to be carried out Action in case of violation of Regulations. It provides objectives , eligibility , processing fee and procedure for approval, conditions for approval regarding Collaboration & Twining Program between Indian and Foreign Universities or Institutions in the field of Technical Education, Research and Training .Peg 73- 81 : It gives information about the program , duration and eligibility for students o be considered while giving admission to under graduate degree program, Post Graduate Degree and Post Graduate Diploma Programs (Full Time), Diploma Program, Post Diploma Programs . Page- 107 : It lists the approved Nomenclature of Courses of 400 courses taught under CACTI. It gives information in tabular form regarding the Norms for Intake & Peggy-111 .Num ber of Courses / Divisions in the Technical Institutions of under graduate level, Post Graduate Degree and Post Graduate Diploma Level, Private Limited or Public Limited Company/laundry Establishing Diploma or UnderGraduate or Post Graduate Institute. Peg 12- : it describes the Norms for Land requirement and Building Space for Technical Institution , like the land requirement in acres in Other than Rural places(Competent Authority to certify that the place is not located in a rural area) and Rural Places as defined by Competent Authority.It gives detailed requirements of built-up area divided in 1 . Instructional area (NINA, carpet area in sq. M. ), Administrative area (DAD, carpet area in sq. M. ), Amenities area (AMA, carpet area in sq. 2. Circulation area (CIA) is equal to 0. 250 (NINA+DAD+AMA). M. ). , 3. Total built up area in sq. M. Is equal to (NINA+DAD+AMA)

Democracy essays

Democracy essays It is a tendency to practice democracy over the world. There are lots of governments in the world which are trying their best to promote a sense of democracy for their nationals. Obviously, we can find that there are still some areas in Hong Kong where we cannot have freedom, such as freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and so on .In order to make such a change, therefore, it is more than urgent to propagate democracy in our society. For us to do this , the best way is that we should cultivate such a sense in our youngsters who are ,as it has always been said, the future pillars of our society. As we all know, our future masters are still in school, the target, therefore, should be set on students in their campus life. Therefore, we should consider what the meaning of democracy is. No one can doubt the meaning that a democratic society is a society in which people can have their own opinions, choices, speeches to choose anything freely and are not disturbed by any persons. As we know more about democratic system in school, we will have democratic society in Hong Kong sooner or later. Organizing a students union has its undeniable role in promoting democracy in school. As the students can cast their votes to decide which the best union is. They will cater for the students?needs. In the short run, it can ensure that their own ballots would influence the election results and their votes would be respected in that it can have our just and equal system in school. What is also worth noticing is that by offering an opportunity for the students to express their own views, it is a good idea that students can enjoy freedom of press. For example, students can write articles to express what they think and what they need that they may be fulfilled by the school. Furthermore, the school authority should examine their opinions one by one, and give the responses seriously. ...

Brief History of the Declaration of Independence

Brief History of the Declaration of Independence Since April 1775, loosely organized groups of American colonists had been fighting British soldiers in an attempt to secure their rights as loyal British subjects. By the summer of 1776, however, a majority of Americans were pushing – and fighting for full independence from Britain. In reality, the Revolutionary War had already begun with the Battles of Lexington and Concord  and the Siege of Boston  in 1775.  The American Continental Congress turned a five-man committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin to pen a formal statement of the colonists’ expectation and demands to be sent to King George III. In Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The Declaration of Independence. The following is a brief chronicle of events leading up to the official adoption of the Declaration of Independence. May 1775 The Second Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia. A petition for redress of grievances, sent to King George III of England by the First Continental Congress in 1774, remains unanswered. June - July 1775 Congress establishes the Continental Army, a first national monetary currency and a post office to serve the United Colonies. August 1775 King George declares his American subjects to be engaged in open and avowed rebellion against the Crown. The English Parliament passes the American Prohibitory Act, declaring all American sea-going vessels and their cargo the property of England. January 1776 Colonists by the thousands buy copies of Thomas Paines Common Sense, stating the cause of American independence. March 1776 Congress passes the Privateering (piracy) Resolution, allowing colonists to arm vessels in order to cruize [sic] on the enemies of these United Colonies. April 6, 1776 American seaports were opened to trade and cargo from other nations for the first time. May 1776 Germany, through a treaty negotiated with King George, agrees to hire mercenary soldiers to help put down any potential uprising by American colonists. May 10, 1776 Congress passes the Resolution for the Formation of Local Governments, allowing colonists to establish their own local governments. Eight colonies agreed to support American independence. May 15, 1776 The Virginia Convention passes a resolution that the delegates appointed to represent this colony in General Congress be instructed to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent states. June 7, 1776 Richard Henry Lee, Virginias delegate to the Continental Congress, presents the Lee Resolution reading in part: Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. June 11, 1776 Congress postpones consideration of the Lee Resolution and appoints the Committee of Five to draft a final statement declaring the case for Americas independence. The Committee of Five is composed of: John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Robert R. Livingston of New York and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. July 2, 1776 By the votes of 12 of the 13 colonies, with New York not voting, Congress adopts the Lee Resolutions and begins consideration of the Declaration of Independence, written by the Committee of Five. July 4, 1776 Late in the afternoon, church bells ring out over Philadelphia heralding the final adoption of the Declaration of Independence. August 2, 1776 The delegates of the Continental Congress sign the clearly printed or engrossed version of the Declaration. Today Faded but still legible, the Declaration of Independence, along with the Constitution and Bill of Rights, is enshrined for public display in the rotunda of the National Archives and Records Building in Washington, D.C. The priceless documents are stored in an underground vault at night and are constantly monitored for any degradation in their condition.