The appointment of U Thant of Burma as the U.N.'s Acting Secretary General -- at this writing, the choice appears to be certain -- offers further proof that in politics it is more important to have no influential enemies than to have influential friends.

With the neutralists maintaining pressure for one of their own to succeed Mr. Hammarskjold, U Thant emerged as the only possible candidate unlikely to be waylaid by a veto.

U Thant of course, will hold office until the spring of 1963, when Mr. Hammarskjold's term would have come to an end.

the West may or not remain satisfied with the kind of neutralism that U Thant represents.

If Af are the projections associated with the primary decomposition of T, then each Af is a polynomial in T, and accordingly if a linear operator U commutes with T then U commutes with each of the Af, i.e., each subspace Af is invariant under U.

Near Q, both curves can be represented by analytic functions of U.

In a neighborhood of Q the difference between these functions is also a single-valued, analytic function of U.

The restrained gyro-stabilized platform with reasonable response characteristics operates with an approximate equation of motion, neglecting transient effects, as follows: Af where U is a torque applied about the output axis of the controlling gyro.

Lincoln's assassination was the first assassination of a U. S. president and sent the nation into mourning.

Lincoln has been consistently ranked by scholars and the public as one of the three greatest U. S. presidents.

In 1846, Lincoln was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives, where he served one two-year term.

Lincoln also supported the Wilmot Proviso, which, if it had been adopted, would have banned slavery in any U. S. territory won from Mexico.

Lincoln disapproved of slavery, and the spread of slavery to new U. S. territory in the west.

Douglas ' provision, which Lincoln opposed, specified settlers had the right to determine locally whether to allow slavery in new U. S. territory, rather than have such a decision restricted by the national Congress.

In late 1854, Lincoln ran as a Whig for the U. S. Senate seat from Illinois.

After the state Republican party convention nominated him for the U. S. Senate in 1858, Lincoln delivered his House Divided Speech, drawing on: " A house divided against itself cannot stand.

The stage was then set for the campaign for statewide election of the Illinois legislature which would, in turn, select Lincoln or Douglas as its U. S. senator.

Douglas said that Lincoln was defying the authority of the U. S. Supreme Court and the Dred Scott decision.

The U. S. Navy illegally intercepted a British merchant ship the Trent on the high seas and seized two Confederate envoys ; Britain protested vehemently while the U. S. cheered.

He argued before and during his election that the eventual extinction of slavery would result from preventing its expansion into new U. S. territory.

Anthropologists ' involvement with the U. S. government, in particular, has caused bitter controversy within the discipline.

Austin is the capital of the U. S. state of Texas.

The world's smallest known vertebrate, Paedophryne amauensis, sitting on a Dime ( United States coin ) | U. S. dime, 17. 91mm, for scale

The land went through several administrative changes before becoming an organized ( or incorporated ) territory on May 11, 1912, and the 49th state of the U. S. on January 3, 1959.

Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U. S. states combined .< ref >

* U. S. House Committee on Agriculture – Glossary of agricultural terms, programs and laws

* Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, U. S. law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability

* Anti-Deficiency Act, U. S. law that prohibits the federal government from incurring debts not authorized by Congress

In the U. S. federal court system, criminal defendants must file a notice of appeal within 10 days of the entry of either the judgment or the order being appealed, or the right to appeal is forfeited.

Many U. S. jurisdictions title their appellate court a court of appeal or court of appeals.

However, Paris ignored the powerful developments in quantitative studies underway in the U. S. and Britain, which reshaped economic, political and demographic research in those countries, while France fell behind.

" Amazing Grace " came to be an emblem of a religious movement and a symbol of the U. S. itself as the country was involved in a great political experiment, attempting to employ democracy as a means of government.

Johnson's reconstruction policies failed to promote the rights of the Freedmen ( newly freed slaves ), and he came under vigorous political attack from Republicans, ending in his impeachment by the U. S. House of Representatives ; he was acquitted by the U. S. Senate.

Most major powers repudiated Cold War assassination tactics, though many allege that this was merely a smokescreen for political benefit and that covert and illegal training of assassins continues today, with Russia, Israel, the U. S., Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and other nations accused of still regularly engaging in such operations.

* CNN A short article on the U. S. policy banning political assassination since 1976 from CNN. com / Law Center, November 4, 2002.

Clinton's political opponents charge that to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War during his college years, he used the political influence of a U. S. Senator, who employed him as an aide.

Plans in the U. S. and Russia for successors to the current strategic bomber force remain only paper projects, and political and funding pressures suggest that they are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

Brazilian foreign policy has recently aimed to strengthen ties with other South American countries, engage in multilateral diplomacy through the United Nations and the Organization of American States, and act at times as a countervailing force to U. S. political and economic influence in Latin America.

The successful American businessman and investor Warren Buffett was quoted in the Associated Press ( January 20, 2006 ) as saying " The U. S trade deficit is a bigger threat to the domestic economy than either the federal budget deficit or consumer debt and could lead to political turmoil ...

However, his next films, The Great Dictator ( 1940 ), a parody on Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini that ended in a dramatic speech criticising the blind following patriotic nationalism, and Monsieur Verdoux ( 1947 ), which criticised war and capitalism, as well as his first European film A King in New York ( 1957 ), which ridiculed the U. S. House Un-American Activities Committee, were more clearly political and caused controversy.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Cuba openly supported the black nationalist and Marxist-oriented Black Panther Party of the U. S. Many members found their way into Cuba for political asylum, where Cuba welcomed them after they had been convicted of crimes in the U. S.

In recent years, a growing Tex-Mex polka band trend from Mexican immigrants ( i. e. Conjunto or Norteño ) has influenced much of new Chicano folk music, especially in large market Spanish language radio stations and on television music video programs in the U. S. The band Quetzal is known for its political songs.

Other more recent political figures educated at Columbia include U. S President Barack Obama, Associate Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former U. S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former chairman of the U. S. Federal Reserve Bank Alan Greenspan, U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and U. S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr .. Dwight D. Eisenhower served as the thirteenth president of Columbia University from 1948 to 1953.

" Commonwealth " is also used in the U. S. to describe the political relationship between the United States and the overseas unincorporated territories:

He suggested that it arose from four trends: weak national parties and strong political representation of individual districts, the large U. S. military establishment after World War II, big corporate money financing election campaigns, and globalization tilting the balance away from workers.

* Bella Abzug ( 1942 ), Feminist ; political activist ; U. S. Representative, 1971 – 1977

The Jay Treaty of 1795 aligned the U. S. more with Britain less with France, leading to political polarization at home