Aluf

Aluf (Hebrew: אלוף‎, lit. "champion") is the term used in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for officers who in other countries would have the rank of general, air marshal, or admiral. In addition to the aluf rank itself, there are four other ranks which are derivatives of the word. Together, they constitute the five highest ranks in the IDF.

Etymology

The term aluf comes from the Bible: the Edomites used it as a rank of nobility, while the later books of the Tanakh use it to describe Israelite captains, as well e.g. Zachariah 9:7, 12:5-6, and later for example Psalms 55:13 it is used as a general term for teacher. It comes from a Semitic root meaning "thousand", making an "aluf" the one who commands a thousand people. Strong however connects the word used to describe the Dukes of Edom, to a different root "alf" denoting a teacher and the root for the animal 'ox' from which the letter Aleph itself is derived, rather than eleph thousand, however they both comprise the same 3 letters.

Rank order of aluf and its derivatives

TAT European Airlines

Transport Aérien Transrégional was a French regional airline with its head office on the grounds of Tours Val de Loire Airport in Tours. It was formed in 1968 as Touraine Air Transport (TAT) by M. Marchais.Air France acquired a minority stake in the airline in 1989. Between 1993 and 1996 the company was gradually taken over by British Airways. It subsequently merged with Air Liberté. The merged entity was sold on to the SAir Group in 2001, which in turn merged it with AOM.

History

Touraine Air Transport commenced scheduled operations in 1968. The airline acquired its first Beech 99 Airliner twin-engined turboprop passenger airliner in June 1971 and used this type to commence French internal services. These aircraft remained in operation with TAT until 1975.

During the 1970s TAT began building up a comprehensive network of regional, short-haul domestic and international scheduled routes, as a result of being taken over in 1973 by Société Auxiliare de Services et Materiel Aéronautiques (SASMAT), the owner of rival French regional airline Rousseau Aviation, as well as the subsequent mergers with regional rivals Taxi Avia France and Air Paris. The resulting regional network served 30 provincial points in France and neighbouring European countries from Paris Orly, Lyons Satolas, Lille and St. Brieuc, respectively.

TAT2

TAT2 could refer to :

TAT-12/13

TAT-12/13 is a ring cable system consisting of the 12th and 13th consortia transatlantic telephone cables, in operation from 1996, initially carrying 2 × 5 Gbit/s.

This was the first TAT cable to use a ring structure, involving two stretches of cable across the ocean floor, which explains why two numbers (12 and 13) were used. All later cables also use a ring structure, but only use one number (TAT-14 etc.). The cable connected between Long Island (at Shirley, New York), USA; Green Hill, Rhode Island, USA; Porthcurno, UK; Bude, UK; and Penmarch, France.

The cable was constructed for US$740 million and was supplied jointly by AT&T Submarine Systems, Inc (now TE Subcom owned by TE Connectivity), STC Submarine Systems (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent) and Alcatel Submarcom. Ring switching equipment was provided by the Toshiba Corporation in each of the four cable stations.

The cables in this system were the first on the trans-Atlantic route to make use of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers.

The TAT-12/13 consortia removed the cable from normal commercial service on 31 December 2008.