Mauritius in the context of "Rodrigues solitaire"

The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) is a British Overseas Territory situated in the Indian Ocean. The territory comprises the seven atolls of the Chagos Archipelago with over 1,000 individual islands, many very small, amounting to a total land area of 60 square kilometres (23 square miles). The largest and most southerly island is Diego Garcia, 27 square kilometres (10 square miles), the site of a Joint Military Facility of the United Kingdom and the United States. Official administration is remote from London, though the local capital is often regarded as being on Diego Garcia.

Mauritius claimed that the British government separated the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius, creating a new colony, the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). However, this was disputed by the United Kingdom, who said that the Chagos Islands had no historical or cultural ties to Mauritius, and that they were only governed during the colonial period from Mauritius (2191 km or 1361 miles away) as an administrative convenience. Mauritius further claimed that to avoid accountability to the United Nations for its continued colonial rule, the UK falsely claimed that the Chagos had no permanent population.

The Dravidian languages are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, primarily in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia.

The most commonly spoken Dravidian languages are (in descending order) Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam, all of which have long literary traditions.Smaller literary languages are Tulu and Kodava.Together with several smaller languages such as Gondi, these languages cover the southern part of India and the northeast of Sri Lanka, and account for the overwhelming majority of speakers of Dravidian languages.Malto and Kurukh are spoken in isolated pockets in eastern India.Kurukh is also spoken in parts of Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. Brahui is mostly spoken in the Balochistan region of Pakistan, Iranian Balochistan, Afghanistan and around the Marw oasis in Turkmenistan. During the British colonial period, Dravidian speakers were sent as indentured labourers to Southeast Asia, Mauritius, South Africa, Fiji, the Caribbean, and East Africa. There are more-recent Dravidian-speaking diaspora communities in the Middle East, Europe, North America and Oceania.

Seychelles (/seɪˈʃɛl(z)/ , /ˈseɪʃɛl(z)/; French: [sɛʃɛl] or [seʃɛl]), officially the Republic of Seychelles (French: République des Seychelles; Seychellois Creole: Repiblik Sesel), is an island country and archipelagic state consisting of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city, Victoria, is 1,500 kilometres (800 nautical miles) east of mainland Africa. Nearby island countries and territories include the Maldives, Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, and the French overseas departments of Mayotte and Réunion to the south; and the Chagos Archipelago to the east.Seychelles is the smallest country in Africa as well as the least populated sovereign African country, with an estimated population of 100,600 in 2022.

Seychelles was uninhabited prior to being encountered by Europeans in the 16th century. It faced competing French and British interests until it came under full British control in the early 19th century. Since proclaiming independence from the United Kingdom in 1976, it has developed from a largely agricultural society to a market-based diversified economy, characterised by service, public sector, and tourism activities. From 1976 to 2015, nominal GDP grew nearly 700%, and purchasing power parity nearly 1600%. Since the late 2010s, the government has taken steps to encourage foreign investment.

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) is a regional economic community in Africa with twenty-one member states stretching from Tunisia to Eswatini. COMESA was formed in December 1994, replacing a Preferential Trade Area which had existed since 1981. Nine of the member states formed a free trade area in 2000 (Djibouti, Egypt, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe), with Rwanda and Burundi joining the FTA in 2004, the Comoros and Libya in 2006, Seychelles in 2009, Uganda in 2012 and Tunisia in 2018.

COMESA is one of the pillars of the African Economic Community.

A tort is a civil wrong, other than breach of contract, that causes a claimant to suffer loss or harm, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act. Tort law can be contrasted with criminal law, which deals with criminal wrongs that are punishable by the state. While criminal law aims to punish individuals who commit crimes, tort law aims to compensate individuals who suffer harm as a result of the actions of others. Some wrongful acts, such as assault and battery, can result in both a civil lawsuit and a criminal prosecution in countries where the civil and criminal legal systems are separate. Tort law may also be contrasted with contract law, which provides civil remedies after breach of a duty that arises from a contract. Obligations in both tort and criminal law are more fundamental and are imposed regardless of whether the parties have a contract.

While tort law in civil law jurisdictions largely derives from Roman law, common law jurisdictions derive their tort law from customary English tort law. In civil law jurisdictions based on civil codes, both contractual and tortious or delictual liability is typically outlined in a civil code based on Roman Law principles. Tort law is referred to as the law of delict in Scots and Roman Dutch law, and resembles tort law in common law jurisdictions in that rules regarding civil liability are established primarily by precedent and theory rather than an exhaustive code. However, like other civil law jurisdictions, the underlying principles are drawn from Roman law. A handful of jurisdictions have codified a mixture of common and civil law jurisprudence either due to their colonial past (e.g. Québec, St Lucia, Mauritius) or due to influence from multiple legal traditions when their civil codes were drafted (e.g. Mainland China, the Philippines, and Thailand). Furthermore, Israel essentially codifies common law provisions on tort.

Réunion (/riːˈjuːnjən/; French: [la ʁe.ynjɔ̃] ; Reunionese Creole: La Rényon; known as Île Bourbon before 1848) is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas department and region of France. Part of the Mascarene Islands, it is located approximately 679 kilometres (367 nautical miles) east of the island of Madagascar and 175 kilometres (94 nmi) southwest of the island of Mauritius. As of January 2025, it had a population of 896,175. Its capital and largest city is Saint-Denis.

Before the arrival of French colonial subjects and immigrants in the 17th century, Réunion was an uninhabited island. Its tropical climate led to the development of a plantation economy focused primarily on sugar; slaves from East Africa were imported as fieldworkers, followed by Malays, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Indians as indentured laborers. Today, the greatest proportion of the population is of mixed descent, while the predominant language is Réunion Creole, though French remains the sole official language.

The Tamils (/ˈtæmɪlz, ˈtɑː-/ TAM-ilz, TAHM-), also known by their demonym Tamilar, are a Dravidian ethnic group who natively speak the Tamil language and trace their ancestry mainly to the southern part of the Indian subcontinent. Tamil is one of the longest-surviving languages, with over two thousand years of written history, dating back to the Sangam period (between 300 BCE and 300 CE).

Tamils constitute about 5.7% of the Indian population and form the majority in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Puducherry. They also form significant proportions of the populations in Sri Lanka (15.3%), Malaysia (7%) and Singapore (5%). Tamils have migrated world-wide since the 19th century CE and a significant population exists in South Africa, Mauritius, Fiji, as well as other regions such as the Southeast Asia, Middle East, Caribbean and parts of the Western World.

Between 20 May and 21 October 1883, the volcanic island of Krakatau, located in the Sunda Strait, erupted. On 27 August, the island had its most significant eruption, which destroyed over 70% of the island and its surrounding archipelago, afterwards collapsing itself into a caldera. The 27 August eruption had an estimated Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 6, and is one of the deadliest and most destructive volcanic events in recorded history; the third explosion of that day, which occurred at 10:02 am, remains the loudest known sound in history.

The explosion was heard 3,110 kilometres (1,930 mi) away in Perth, Western Australia, and Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 kilometres (3,000 mi) away. The acoustic pressure wave circled the globe more than three times. At least 36,417 deaths are attributed to the eruption and the tsunamis it created. Significant additional effects were felt worldwide in the days and weeks after the volcano's eruption. Additional seismic activity was reported until February 1884, but any reports after October 1883 were dismissed by Rogier Verbeek's subsequent investigation into the eruption.

Representation of the People Act is a stock short title used in Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Mauritius, Pakistan, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom and Vanuatu for legislation dealing with the electoral system. Representation of the People Acts is a collective title for legislation relating to representation of the people, including Rating Acts and other Registration Acts. The title was first used in the United Kingdom in the Representation of the People Act 1832 and was adopted in other countries of, or formerly part of, the British Empire through the spread of the Westminster parliamentary system.

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the local mean time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, counted from midnight. At different times in the past, it has been calculated in different ways, including being calculated from noon; as a consequence, it cannot be used to specify a particular time unless a context is given. The term "GMT" is also used as one of the names for the time zone UTC+00:00 and, in UK law, is the basis for civil time in the United Kingdom.

Because of Earth's uneven angular velocity in its elliptical orbit and its axial tilt, noon (12:00:00) GMT is rarely the exact moment the Sun crosses the Greenwich Meridian and reaches its highest point in the sky there. This event may occur up to 16 minutes before or after noon GMT, a discrepancy described by the equation of time. Noon GMT is the annual average (the arithmetic mean) moment of this event, which accounts for the word "mean" in "Greenwich Mean Time".