The news of Inakaye . . .

The biggest news is the election of a new first Minister.

His name Guy Piccioto, and he became first Minister on january 1st, 1910. He is from Mariston and this is the first time that a first Minister has been elected from a city other than Auen.

below . . . MARISTON (notice the two business districts, the south one is downtown and the north one is Marias. Mariston is about to beat out Duluth as largest city in Inakaye)

Since the Political system of Inakaye has never been explained, let's take a quick look at the governing system.

Inakaye is a sort of decentralized republic. Each city elects a council, and each city council elects Ministers to a federal parliament, and this federal parliment elects a first Minister, who is the leader of the Inakaye Government. This means that only members of cities (settlements with a population of 12,000 or more) are represented by the federal government. This has not been a problem in the past because, 90% of Inakaye's population was within city boundaries, and because the federal government did not interfere with the affairs of smaller towns.

For the majority of Inakaye's history, there have only been three cities. Auen, Duluth, and Mariston. However, over the past two decades and the huge influx of immigrants from simnation, many of the smaller towns have reached the city landmark. Some of these being Holbrook, Greenecliff, and Arnett. See below map.

The most recent town to become a city is of course Solace Bay. Unfortunately, Solace bay was too slow in it's city application and missed the deadline for being able to elect a minister to parliment for the period of 1910-1912. It will have to wait until November 1911 to elect a minister.

Each city gets 1 minister at 12,000 inhabitants, and then another minister for every 10,000 after up to a limit of 10 ministers at 102,000 inhabitants.

There are currently 35 ministers in the Parliment, and this number will theoretically increase as Inakaye grows. below is the Parliament building and the Auen City Hall.

In it's history up to this point the Federal government has only been concerned with foreign affairs, and national and regional land issues. It has stayed out of the legislation and politics of individual cities and towns. And has kept its distance from economics, education, and transportation concerns. In this way Inakaye is quite like a group of small city states, where the individual cities are more powerful than the federal government.

However, now each region is quite upset at First Minister Piccioto for his desire to begin a national post office. This will require each residence to be given an address, for the nation to be parceled into postal zones and for each zone to be given a post office. Many citizens of Inakaye, see this as a huge invasion of privacy and an attempt at the federal government to start interfering in the lives the citizens.

Minister Piccioto responds to these outcries with his most recent press release, "I find it interesting that our citizens see this as an invasion of privacy, but think nothing of the fact that comminucation between citizens from separate settlements is almost impossible anywhere than the three cities. I find it necessary to bring our Nation up to date with the rest of the world with this seemingly rudimentary government service. Once the ordeal of creating this post office is complete I imagine that each citizen will enjoy its benifits, and forget their complaints."

Construction has nearly finished of the National Inakaye Post Office in Auen (The interior still needs to be furnished), and surveyors are scouring the country and laying out the boundaries of the post zones. Soon, each zone will receive funds to construct its own post office, and these offices will go about registering each person's address within its zone. Below is a picture of the First minister being served a celebratory lunch on the roof of the newly constructed Post office building in downtown Auen. It is pretty windy today, I hope his seabass doesn't blow away . . .

In other news, the first non-stop airplane flight was made from Auen to Duluth.

The Gregg's flyer, piloted by Alden Greggory himself made record distance Inakayan flight of 585 kilometers to Duluth from Auen in just under five hours setting a world record for average airspeed at 110.5 km/hr.

He was greeted in Duluth with much fanfare and has been awarded the Inakaye Federated Science award for his achievement, and for putting Inakaye on the world stage for technology. A grant is being given to him by Minister Piccioto to develop a plane that could be used to be an express courier service between the three cities. The minister hopes to keep Inakaye at the lead of the aeronautical technology race that has been going on world wide since the Wrightsim brothers made their historical first flight in 1903.

Also a huge map of the country has been made. You can see it here . . .

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/7814/scaleimageofinakayelabe.jpg