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French Southern Territories
The French Southern Territories (French: Terres australes françaises), or alternatively the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (French: Terres australes et antarctiques françaises, abbreviated TAAF), full name Territory of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (French: Territoire des Terres australes et antarctiques françaises), consist of:
- a group of volcanic islands in the southern Indian Ocean, southeast of Africa, approximately equidistant between Africa, Antarctica and Australia;
- the Scattered Islands in the Indian Ocean.
Pedantically, the French Southern and Antarctic Lands includes Adélie Land where French sovereignty is not recognized internationally. The Re.ViCa view is that no country "owns" any part of Antarctica, and since there is no known e-learning there, this is a reasonable approach for this wiki.
The territory has no permanent population; the population consists of military personnel, civilian officials, scientific researchers and support staff. Some of the territory's exclusive economic zone is of great importance for fishing.
The French Southern Territories (including Adelie Land) have formed a territoire d'outre-mer (an overseas territory) of France since 1955. Formerly, they were administered from Paris by an administrateur supérieur assisted by a secretary-general; since December 2004, however, their administrator has been a préfet, with headquarters in Saint-Pierre on Réunion Island.
The domain code for this territory is TF. Surprisingly, there are a large number of web sites in this domain and 16 hits for the search [e-learning site:tf] including for the International Open University. Such a large number of hits could raise some questions about management of the domain.