title: Namibia

text: The HIV epidemic remains a public health issue in Namibia despite significant achievements made by the Ministry of Health and Social Services to expand HIV treatment services. In 2001, there were an estimated 210,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, and the estimated death toll in 2003 was 16,000. According to the 2011 UNAIDS Report, the epidemic in Namibia "appears to be leveling off." As the HIV/AIDS epidemic has reduced the working-aged population, the number of orphans has increased. It falls to the government to provide education, food, shelter and clothing for these orphans. A Demographic and Health Survey with an HIV biomarker was completed in 2013 and served as the fourth comprehensive, national-level population and health survey conducted in Namibia as part of the global Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) programme. The DHS observed important characteristics associated to the HIV epidemic:


title: Namibia

text: As of 2015, the Ministry of Health and Social Services and UNAIDS produced a Progress Report in which UNAIDS projected HIV prevalence among 15–49-year-olds at 13.3% [12.2–14.5%] and an estimated 210,000 [200,000–230,000] living with HIV.


title: Namibia

text: The malaria problem seems to be compounded by the AIDS epidemic. Research has shown that in Namibia the risk of contracting malaria is 14.5% greater if a person is also infected with HIV. The risk of death from malaria is also raised by approximately 50% with a concurrent HIV infection. The country had only 598 physicians in 2002.


title: Namibia

text: The most popular sport in Namibia is association football. The Namibia national football team qualified for the 1998, 2008 and 2019 editions of the Africa Cup of Nations, but has yet to qualify for the World Cup.


title: Namibia

text: The most successful national team is the Namibian rugby team, having competed in six separate World Cups. Namibia were participants in the 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019 Rugby World Cups. Cricket is also popular, with the national side having qualified for 2003 Cricket World Cup, 2021 ICC T20 World Cup and 2022 ICC Men's T20 World Cup. In December 2017, Namibia Cricket reached the final of the Cricket South Africa (CSA) Provincial One Day Challenge for the first time. In February 2018 Namibia hosted the ICC World Cricket League Division 2 with Namibia, Kenya, UAE, Nepal, Canada and Oman to compete for the final two ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier positions in Zimbabwe. Namibia also qualified the qualifiers of ICC T20 World Cup 2021 and entered the super 12 club.


title: Namibia

text: The most famous athlete from Namibia is Frankie Fredericks, sprinter in the 100 and 200 m events. He won four Olympic silver medals (1992, 1996) and also has medals from several World Athletics Championships. Golfer Trevor Dodds won the Greater Greensboro Open in 1998, one of 15 tournaments in his career. He achieved a career-high world ranking of 78th in 1998. Professional cyclist and Namibian Road Race champion Dan Craven represented Namibia at the 2016 Summer Olympics in both the road race and individual time trial. Boxer Julius Indongo is the unified WBA, IBF, and IBO world champion in the Light welterweight division. Another famous athlete from Namibia is ex-professional rugby player Jacques Burger. Burger played for Saracens and Aurillac in Europe, as well as gaining 41 caps for the national team.


title: Namibia

text: Although Namibia's population is fairly small, the country has a diverse choice of media; two TV stations, 19 radio stations (without counting community stations), 5 daily newspapers, several weeklies and special publications compete for the attention of the audience. Additionally, a mentionable amount of foreign media, especially South African, is available. Online media are mostly based on print publication contents. Namibia has a state-owned Press Agency, called NAMPA. Overall 300 journalists work in the country.


title: Namibia

text: The first newspaper in Namibia was the German-language "Windhoeker Anzeiger", founded 1898. During German rule, the newspapers mainly reflected the living reality and the view of the white German-speaking minority. The black majority was ignored or depicted as a threat. During South African rule, the white bias continued, with mentionable influence of the Pretoria government on the South West African media system. Independent newspapers were seen as a menace to the existing order, and critical journalists were often threatened.


title: Namibia

text: Current daily newspapers are the private publications "The Namibian" (English and other languages), "Die Republikein" (Afrikaans), "Allgemeine Zeitung" (German) and "Namibian Sun" (English) as well as the state-owned "New Era" (predominantly English). Except for the largest newspaper, "The Namibian", which is owned by a trust, the other mentioned private newspapers are part of Democratic Media Holdings. Other mentionable newspapers are the tabloid "Informanté" owned by TrustCo, the weekly "Windhoek Observer", the weekly "Namibia Economist", as well as the regional "Namib Times". Current affairs magazines include "Insight Namibia", "Vision2030 Focus magazine" and "Prime FOCUS". The "Sister Namibia" magazine stands out as the longest running NGO magazine in Namibia, while "Namibia Sport" is the only national sport magazine. Furthermore, the print market is complemented with party publications, student newspapers and PR publications.


title: Namibia

text: Radio was introduced in 1969, TV in 1981. The broadcasting sector today is dominated by the state-run Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC). The public broadcaster offers a TV station as well as a "National Radio" in English and nine language services in locally spoken languages. The nine private radio stations in the country are mainly English-language channels, except for Radio Omulunga (Oshiwambo) and Kosmos 94.1 (Afrikaans).


title: Namibia

text: Compared to neighbouring countries, Namibia has a large degree of media freedom. Over the past years, the country usually ranked in the upper quarter of the Press Freedom Index of Reporters without Borders, reaching position 21 in 2010, being on par with Canada and the best-positioned African country. The African Media Barometer shows similarly positive results. However, as in other countries, there is still mentionable influence of representatives of state and economy on media in Namibia. In 2009, Namibia dropped to position 36 on the Press Freedom Index. In 2013, it was 19th, 22nd in 2014 and 23rd in 2019, meaning that it is currently the highest ranked African country in terms of press freedom.


title: Namibia

text: Media and journalists in Namibia are represented by the Namibian chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa and the Editors' Forum of Namibia. An independent media ombudsman was appointed in 2009 to prevent a state-controlled media council.


title: Namibia

text: Namibia has free education for both primary and secondary education levels. Grades 1–7 are primary level, grades 8–12 are secondary. In 1998, there were 400,325 Namibian students in primary school and 115,237 students in secondary schools. The pupil-teacher ratio in 1999 was estimated at 32:1, with about 8% of the GDP being spent on education. Curriculum development, educational research, and professional development of teachers is centrally organised by the National Institute for Educational Development (NIED) in Okahandja. Among sub-Saharan African countries, Namibia has one of the highest literacy rates. According to CIA World Factbook, as of 2018 91.5% of the population age 15 and over can read and write.


title: Namibia

text: Most schools in Namibia are state-run, but there are some private schools, which are also part of the country's education system. There are four teacher training universities, three colleges of agriculture, a police training college, and three universities: University of Namibia (UNAM), International University of Management (IUM) and Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST). Namibia was ranked 100th in the Global Innovation Index in 2021.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Nicholas Caradoc Hoult (born 7 December 1989) is an English actor. His body of work includes supporting work in big-budget mainstream productions and starring roles in independent projects in both the American and the British film industries. He has received several accolades, including nominations for a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. He appeared in the 2012 edition of "Forbes" 30 Under 30.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult was drawn to acting from a young age and appeared in local theatre productions as a child. He made his screen debut at age seven in the 1996 film "Intimate Relations", and appeared in several television programmes between 1998 and 2001. His breakthrough came with the 2002 comedy-drama "About a Boy". He achieved wider recognition for his performance as Tony Stonem in the E4 teen series "Skins" (2007–2008). His transition to adult roles began with the 2009 drama film "A Single Man", for which he earned a BAFTA Rising Star Award nomination, and the fantasy film "Clash of the Titans" (2010). He played the mutant Hank McCoy in the 2011 superhero film "", a role he reprised in later instalments of the series.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult starred as a zombie in the romantic comedy "Warm Bodies" (2013), and had a supporting role in "" (2015). He starred in a number of independent films before portraying various historical figures such as Robert Harley in the black comedy "The Favourite" (2018), writer J. R. R. Tolkien in "Tolkien" (2019), and Peter III in the Hulu comedy-drama series "The Great" (2020–present). The lattermost earned him nominations for two Golden Globes and a Primetime Emmy Award. Hoult has since starred in the black comedy "The Menu" (2022).


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Outside of film, Hoult voiced Elliot in Lionhead Studios' 2010 action role-playing game "Fable III", appeared in the 2009 West End play "New Boy", and is involved in philanthropy, supporting such charitable organisations as Teenage Cancer Trust and Christian Aid.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Nicholas Caradoc Hoult was born on 7 December 1989 in Wokingham, Berkshire, to Glenis (née Brown), a piano teacher, and Roger Hoult, a commercial pilot. His middle name, Caradoc (pronounced /ka.ˈrɑː.dɔk/), is Welsh and translates to "The Beloved One". His paternal great-aunt was Dame Anna Neagle, a stage and film actress active in the 1930s and 1940s. He has three siblings: an elder brother who is a United States–based biology student; and two sisters, both of whom are actresses. Hoult spent most of his childhood at his family's residence in Sindlesham, an estate village in the borough of Wokingham. His older siblings were interested in acting and dancing from an early age, taking classes and attending auditions. As a child, he began accompanying them and developed his own interest in acting. He discussed his childhood and his relationship with his siblings in a 2011 interview with "The Guardian" saying, "[we were] pretty outdoorsy normal kids running around in the garden and making tree houses ... it was very normal".


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: During Hoult's childhood, his father was regularly working away from home and his brother was away attending school. As a result, he spent most of his time with his mother and sisters; he said being raised by women might have helped him "steer clear of some pitfalls that guys who didn't grow up with women would fall into". Hoult was educated at The Coombes Infant and Nursery School and then Arborfield Church of England Junior School. He practised ballet with his sisters and took part in productions of "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker" with the English National Ballet. Although he initially wanted to attain advanced level certificates in English, Biology, and Psychology, in 2002, aged 12, he decided instead to attend acting school at Sylvia Young Theatre School. At age 14, he left to attend the Church of England's secondary school Ranelagh School in Bracknell, Berkshire. Hoult played trombone as a child and was a member of the local choir.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult's acting potential was discovered at age three by a theatre director during a performance of a play that starred Hoult's brother. The director was impressed at Hoult's ability to "concentrate well" and offered him a role in his next theatre production "The Caucasian Chalk Circle". Hoult began attending auditions and at age five was cast in the 1996 drama "Intimate Relations", his first feature-film role. He later appeared in the television programmes "Casualty", "Silent Witness", "The Bill", "Judge John Deed", and "Doctors", among others. Hoult initially treated acting as a hobby rather than a potential career option; in a March 2009 interview with "The Daily Telegraph", he said he was not "in love with it ... I just enjoyed it. It was like playing for a football team. When you got a part it was great. And meeting new people. It was an exciting new world."


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult's next feature-film appearance came at age eleven in Chris and Paul Weitz's 2002 comedy-drama film "About a Boy". Hoult was initially reluctant to audition for the role as the casting process was a lengthy one and interfered with his schooling. He nonetheless decided to participate in the early rounds of auditions and was eventually cast in the role of Marcus, a "woolly-hatted, oddball son of a suicidal, hippy-ish single mother, [who] gets bullied horribly at school". "About a Boy" was a commercial success, grossing more than $130million worldwide and receiving praise by film critics. Hoult's portrayal of a lonely schoolboy was well-received; David Thomas, writing for "The Daily Telegraph", attributed the film's appeal and success to Hoult's performance. By the time the film was released, Hoult had left his junior school in Arborfield and began attending Sylvia Young Theatre School in London. He said the change was difficult; his time there was short and he preferred attending a regular school. He still did not want to pursue acting as a profession and at 14 he left Sylvia Young Theatre School in favour of Ranelagh School.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult starred in Richard E. Grant's semi-autobiographical film "Wah-Wah" (2005) as Ralph Compton, a boy who is forced to deal with the disintegration of his family. The film, set in Swaziland during the 1960s, chronicles the waning years of the Swaziland Protectorate. Hoult made his debut in Hollywood with Gore Verbinski's film "The Weather Man" (2005) as the son of a television weather presenter undergoing a mid-life crisis. The film and Hoult's performance went largely unnoticed. Both "Wah-Wah" and "The Weather Man" performed poorly at the box office.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult was a student at Sixth Form College Farnborough in 2006 when he was cast in the lead role of the television teenage-drama "Skins". He was initially sceptical of his ability to play Tony Stonem, a manipulative, egocentric anti-hero, and identified more closely with the supporting character Sid. The programme was a success and ran for seven series, only two of which Hoult appeared in. His performance was well received; the character was popular, and Hoult garnered widespread attention. "Skins" won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Philip Audience Award, and Hoult was nominated for the Golden Nymph Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series. Critic Elliott David lauded Hoult for his performance in a 2016 retrospective review, and wrote that he "maintain[ed] the inexplicable core of his character throughout". During his time on "Skins", Hoult felt overwhelmed by the attention he received and considered quitting acting altogether at one point. Instead, he left school at the end of "Skins" first series and chose to focus solely on acting.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult briefly appeared as Stefan Fredman in the pilot episode of the British television series "Wallander". He later made his West End theatre debut as Mark, the protagonist in William Sutcliffe's coming-of-age play "New Boy"; the production premiered at Trafalgar Studios and had record-breaking ticket sales, which was mostly attributed to Hoult's popularity among viewers of "Skins". The play was staged for a week in March 2009 because Hoult had committed to a part in the fantasy-adventure film "Clash of the Titans" (2010), filming for which was scheduled for mid-2010. Hoult's performance as Mark, a "ferociously bright and articulate but sexually confused sixth-former" received mixed responses from critics. Dominic Cavendish of "The Daily Telegraph" wrote that his performance was persuasive, but Lyn Gardner of "The Guardian" found him average and highlighted his inability to bring out the "unresolved sexual tension beneath [the] banter". "Clash of the Titans" was panned by critics but was a success at the box office, grossing nearly $500,000,000 worldwide.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult next appeared in Tom Ford's "A Single Man" (2009), after the actor originally cast in the role of Kenny Potter left the film a few days before filming commenced. Hoult had previously shown interest in the project and had sent a recorded audition tape; he was eventually chosen for the role of Kenny, a homosexual college student who helps a college professor deal with his grief. "A Single Man" was variously described by media outlets as the first adult role for Hoult, who described Kenny as a "spontaneous" character not simply defined by his sexuality. Because the role was his first as an American character, Hoult worked on his accent; Sukhdev Sandhu of "The Daily Telegraph" noted Ford's choice of casting British actors as Americans (Hoult and Matthew Goode) and vice versa (Julianne Moore). "A Single Man" opened to widespread acclaim despite reservations from critics about Ford's directorial abilities; it was a box-office success. The film earned Hoult a nomination for the BAFTA Rising Star Award at the 2010 ceremony. In 2010, Hoult voiced the character of Elliot in Lionhead Studios' action role-playing game "Fable III" (2010).


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult was cast as Nux in George Miller's action film ""; the project spent several years in development hell because plans for a fourth film in the "Mad Max" franchise encountered financial difficulties. Filming was planned for mid-2010, but heavy rain caused severe delays during pre-production in Australia. With no other immediate commitments, Hoult began to look for other prospects. He was eventually cast in the role of Hank McCoy / Beast for the "X-Men" film series owing to his ability to play somebody "gentle with a capability of being fierce". Before filming began on the 2011 Matthew Vaughn-directed instalment "", a prequel to the franchise's earlier films, Hoult familiarised himself with his character; he said he "formulated [his] own version of the Beast" and took inspiration from Kelsey Grammer's performance in the previous "X-Men: The Last Stand" because he wanted to emulate Grammer's charm and eloquence. Hoult learned to speak in a dialect similar to Grammer's without trying to imitate it. He also underwent physical training and gained weight to better suit his character. The film, which was widely praised by critics for its script and performances, performed moderately well at the box office, collecting about $353million against a production budget of $160million. Although it was the lowest-ranked production in the entire series in terms of revenue, Chris Aronson of 20th Century Fox deemed it "an excellent start to a new chapter of the franchise".


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: "Mad Max: Fury Road" was eventually filmed in 2012 in the Namibian desert. Miller had conceived Nux, a terminally ill slave, as a "quasi kamikaze pilot"; Hoult said of his character; "he's very enthusiastic and committed and affectionate but also kind of clumsy". Hoult shaved his head and followed a strict diet because his role required him to lose a lot of weight. He also talked about performing stunts in the film, describing the entire experience as "scary", but favourably compared the stunt crew and Miller's choice to incorporate real action sequences instead of using a green screen, saying it made the performance more believable because the actors are placed in a real situation. "Fury Road" opened to critical acclaim on 14 May 2015 and grossed more than $378million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film in the "Mad Max" franchise. The technical aspects and stunt sequences drew particular praise from film critics and it was credited for reviving interest in the series. Shalini Langer noted that while the real hero of the film was Charlize Theron, "[Hoult] is the closest in the acting department ... as Joe's 'war boy' chasing imagined glory". Hoult's "fabulously unhinged" performance was also praised by Robbie Collin of "The Daily Telegraph". Also in 2012, Hoult was included in the "Forbes" 30 under 30 list.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: In 2013, Hoult had starring roles in two major films; he first played a zombie named R in Jonathan Levine's romantic comedy "Warm Bodies", which was released on 1 February. An adaptation of Isaac Marion's novel of the same name, the film is presented from point of view of the central character, mostly through narration. Levine said he had difficulties finding a suitable actor to play R until he met Hoult, who was attracted to the project—which he described as "much more than a horror movie" owing to the use of multiple pop culture and literary allusions—and even more so to the role which "bowled [me] over". Hoult said he drew inspiration from "Edward Scissorhands" (1990) because he thought the central characters in both films share the same difficulties. To prepare for the role of a zombie, Hoult and the other actors practised with Cirque du Soleil performers; he said of the experience; "we would take our shoes off in a dance studio ... kind of grow out of the wall and make our bodies feel very heavy". The film garnered positive response from critics and audiences. Ben Kendrick praised Hoult for the restraint in a potentially Razzie-worthy role: "[he] brings a lot of life to R without stepping too far in the other direction [and although his] zombie mannerisms may come across a bit forced but, overall, his memorable moments outnumber (and outweigh) the awkward ones." Hoult was also described as "an extremely appealing actor, [who] is charm personified" in his role of the living-dead.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult's next film, Bryan Singer's 2013 fantasy adventure "Jack the Giant Slayer", failed at the box office and received mixed response from critics. He played the eponymous hero in the film, which is based on the British fairy tales "Jack the Giant Killer" and "Jack and the Beanstalk". Hoult's performance was poorly received by film critics Mary Pols, Justin Chang and Richard Roeper; Pols was critical of his "disconcerting" imitation of Hugh Grant and the other two dismissed him and his character as "bland" and "boring", respectively.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult then appeared in Jake Paltrow's science-fiction film "Young Ones" (2014). Set in a dystopian future where water is scarce, the film had Hoult play Flem Lever, a young man who is trying to claim the land owned by the film's central character Ernest Holm. Hoult thought the role was unlike any of his previous work and said his character's questionable choices throughout the film intrigued him. Hoult read novels written by S. E. Hinton to prepare for the role. The film was shot in a deserted location in South Africa; Hoult said filming in the hot weather conditions was difficult but the "beautiful" scenery helped to tell the story better. He said it also made him more conscious of environmental concerns. The film premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was met with mixed responses. Commentators highlighted the film's standout scenery but were critical of its plot. Keith Uhlich of "The A.V. Club" said Hoult was a poor fit for the story's "stoically retrograde machismo".


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult reprised his role as Beast in Bryan Singer's "", his other release of 2014. Hoult said playing the character was a freeing experience for him and that it was "fun to suddenly be able to break loose ... when you're wearing the makeup ... you can perform big ... you get to have two very different techniques, performances." He also said the lengthy make-up procedure could last up to three and a half hours. "X-Men: Days of Future Past" earned more than $747million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film in the series and in Hoult's career at that time.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: In 2015, Hoult had three other releasesthe feature film adaptation of Gillian Flynn's mystery novel "Dark Places"; Owen Harris' dark comedy "Kill Your Friends", based on the 2008 novel of the same name; and "Equals", a dystopian, science-fiction romantic drama directed by Drake Doremusall of which were critical failures and rank among the lowest-grossing films of his career. Response to Hoult's performance in "Equals" was relatively better; Peter Travers called him and his co-star Kristen Stewart "quietly devastating", and Katie Walsh, writing for "Los Angeles Times", said the duo were "finely matched both in their androgynous beauty and in their performances of a repressed humanity". Despite doubts about his contract with the franchise, Hoult returned for the 2016 film "". Upon release, the film became the third-ranked "X-Men" film in terms of worldwide box office collections, earning about $540million. It was also a top-grossing production outside the United States.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: The action film "Collide", which had Hoult star as a drug dealer, was released in the United States in February 2017 to a poor response from audiences and critics. The film garnered negative reviews; its dismal box office performance was attributed to poor marketing and multiple delays caused by the 2015 chapter 11 bankruptcy of its production company Relativity Media. "Forbes" Scott Mendelson analysed the film's failure and said Hoult did not necessarily have enough "star power" to draw audiences. He highlighted the misogyny and sense of entitlement in the entertainment industry, writing that director Eran Creevy and Hoult would get better offers despite the failure of films like "Collide", as opposed to the women and other minority groups, who are either ignored or stereotyped. Responses to Hoult's next film, the romance drama "Newness", were more enthusiastic. The production had its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival; it stars Hoult as one half of a Los Angeles-based couple who meet through online dating and begin an open relationship. Drake Doremus, the film's director, said Hoult's role was unlike his previous work; "a very complex and emotionally mature performance that we haven't seen yet".


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult starred in a series of biographical and historical films in 2017; he said he preferred playing characters that might help him improve as an actor and that the "actors I look up to started doing their best work in their early 30s and I'll be hitting that age ... I'm just trying to learn". He portrayed American author J. D. Salinger in Danny Strong's "Rebel in the Rye", which chronicles Salinger's life from his youth to the World War II era and the years preceding the publication of his debut novel, "The Catcher in the Rye". Hoult auditioned for the role because he was intrigued by the film's script and Salinger's enigmatic personality; "I didn't know he fought in the second world war and landed on D-Day: ... had intermittent PTSD or that he became interested in Vedanta philosophy and meditated and did yoga." To prepare for the role, Hoult read "The Catcher in the Rye" and biographies about Salinger. Hoult said the biggest challenge was to get a real understanding of Salinger's character; "everyone has an idea of [Salinger] in their mind ... you're creating a character that people have very strong feelings about. You can't prove to be right or wrong through impressions." "Rebel in the Rye" opened to a poor response from film critics. Carson Lund of "Slant" was largely unimpressed by Hoult's "feeble" performance and his inability to "reinvest the character with the complexities lost in the story's programmatic telling". RogerEbert.com's Matt Fagerholm wrote that although Hoult was capable of illuminating the insecurities and fixations of his character, he is never "quite believable as Salinger". Fagerholm ascribed the failure to the script, which left the character's key motivations "frustratingly muddled".


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult co-starred in "The Current War", a dramatisation of the feud between electrical pioneers Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Hoult was cast in the role of Nikola Tesla, for which he grew a moustache and attended science lessons about electromagnetism and dynamos. He lost weight for his role by following a strict diet. Response to "The Current War" was mixed; David Ehrlich of "IndieWire" described Hoult's performance as a tribute to David Bowie, who had previously played Tesla in "The Prestige" (2006). In a departure from biographical dramas, Hoult next starred as an American soldier in "Sand Castle", a production he described as a very different war film "in terms of the pacing and the emotion ... very under the surface, that futility-of-war idea". He recalled the filming experience in the Jordanian military bases practising clearing procedures: "we put on these masks, get given these guns, are put inside this pitch-black house ... try and hunt down these bad guys hiding inside. You're in all the gear ... the adrenaline starts pumping." Released on Netflix in 2017, the film garnered mixed reviews.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: In "The Favourite" (2018), a critically acclaimed period drama about Anne, Queen of Great Britain, Hoult played the supporting role of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer. He next voiced Fiver in the animated television miniseries adaptation of Richard Adams' 1972 novel "Watership Down". In 2019, Hoult portrayed author J. R. R. Tolkien in the biopic "Tolkien". He next reprised his role as Hank McCoy in the X-Men film "Dark Phoenix". Both "Tolkien" and "Dark Phoenix" were poorly received.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: The following year, Hoult began starring as Peter III of Russia in the Hulu comedy-drama series "The Great". The series and his performance received critical acclaim. He was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. In 2022, Hoult starred in the black comedy film "The Menu", alongside Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult will next play the titular role in the comedy-horror film "Renfield" and will have a voice role in the animated film "Garfield".


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: During his childhood, Hoult played basketball for the Reading-based team Reading Rockets, which played in the English Basketball League. He was later appointed as the club's ambassador. He also follows Formula One racing and has attended several Grand Prix events at Montreal, Singapore and Germany.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult is a philanthropist and supports numerous charities; he has been associated with organisations that support children. He was appointed the first National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) Young Person Ambassador, for supporting the charity's activities aimed at children and young people. Since 2009, he has also been involved with the Teenage Cancer Trust; he continues to visit patients supported by the organisation and has helped promote its awareness campaigns, including the sun-safety campaign "Shunburn". Hoult designed sweaters for Save the Children's and Selfish Mother's joint Christmas Jumper Day campaign. He encouraged customers to buy the festive collection and support the charitable cause, which he thought would bring a "real change to children's lives". He also donated a pair of shoes, which was auctioned by Small Steps Project, an organisation that helps homeless and malnourished children. Hoult was inducted into the NSPCC Hall of Fame in 2010 for his contributions to the campaign against child cruelty.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: Hoult visited Nairobi, Kenya, as a part of a Christian Aid project aimed at providing clean water and sanitation. During his stay he met local people and helped clean the locality. He said of his experience; "I met great people making the best of the situation ... it is heart-breaking in many ways to see the living conditions". Hoult also participated in the Rickshaw Run in January 2017, in which participants drove an auto rickshaw (also called a "tuk tuk") for across India to raise funds for Teenage Cancer Trust and World Wide Fund for Nature. He has also been associated with Jeans for Refugees, a project and fundraising initiative intended to help refugees around the world. He donated a signed pair of jeans to the organisation; profits from the campaign were donated to the refugee support agency International Rescue Committee.


title: Nicholas Hoult

text: For his role in "About a Boy" (2002), Hoult won the Best Youth Performance at the Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards and earned a nomination for Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer. He was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award for his role in "A Single Man" at the 2010 British Academy Film Awards. For his performance in "The Great", he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.


title: Macau

text: Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a population of about 680,000 and an area of , it is the most densely populated region in the world.


title: Macau

text: Formerly a Portuguese colony, the territory of Portuguese Macau was first leased to Portugal as a trading post by the Ming dynasty in 1557. Portugal paid an annual rent and administered the territory under Chinese sovereignty until 1887. Portugal later gained perpetual colonial rights in the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking. The colony remained under Portuguese rule until 1999, when it was transferred to China. Macau is a special administrative region of China, which maintains separate governing and economic systems from those of mainland China under the principle of "one country, two systems". The unique blend of Portuguese and Chinese architecture in the city's historic centre led to its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2005.


title: Macau

text: Originally a sparsely populated collection of coastal islands, Macau, often referred to as the "Las Vegas of the East", has become a major resort city and a top destination for gambling tourism, with a gambling industry seven times larger than that of Las Vegas. The city has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, US$43,770 in 2021, and its GDP per capita by purchasing power parity is one of the highest in the world. It has a very high Human Development Index, as calculated by the Macau government, and the fourth-highest life expectancy in the world. The territory is highly urbanised; two-thirds of the total land area is built on land reclaimed from the sea.


title: Macau

text: The first known written record of the name "Macau", rendered as "Ya/A Ma Gang" (), is found in a letter dated 20 November 1555. The local inhabitants believed that the sea goddess Matsu (alternatively called A-Ma) had blessed and protected the harbour and called the waters around A-Ma Temple using her name. When Portuguese explorers first arrived in the area and asked for the place name, the locals thought they were asking about the temple and told them it was "Ma Kok" (). The earliest Portuguese spelling for this was "Amaquão". Multiple variations were used until "Amacão / Amacao" and "Macão / Macao" became common during the 17th century. The 1911 reform of Portuguese orthography standardised the spelling "Macau"; however, the use of "Macao" persisted in English and other European languages.


title: Macau

text: The Macau Peninsula had many names in Chinese, including "Jing'ao" (), "Haojing" (), and "Haojing'ao" (). The islands Taipa, Coloane, and Hengqin were collectively called "Shizimen" (). These names would later become "Aomen" (), "Oumún" in Cantonese and translating as "bay gate" or "port gate", to refer to the whole territory.


title: Macau

text: During the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC), the region was under the jurisdiction of Panyu County, Nanhai Prefecture of the province of Guangdong. The region is first known to have been settled during the Han dynasty. It was administratively part of Dongguan Prefecture in the Jin dynasty (266–420 AD), and alternated under the control of Nanhai and Dongguan in later dynasties. In 1152, during the Song dynasty (960–1279 AD), it was under the jurisdiction of the new Xiangshan County. In 1277, approximately 50,000 refugees fleeing the Mongol conquest of China settled in the coastal area.


title: Macau

text: Macau did not develop as a major settlement until the Portuguese arrived in the 16th century. The first European visitor to reach China by sea was the explorer Jorge Álvares, who arrived in 1513. Merchants first established a trading post in Hong Kong waters at Tamão (present-day Tuen Mun), beginning regular trade with nearby settlements in southern China. Military clashes between the Ming and Portuguese navies followed the expulsion of the Tamão traders in 1521. Despite the trade ban, Portuguese merchants continued to attempt to settle on other parts of the Pearl River estuary, finally settling on Macau. In their first attempts at obtaining trading posts by force, the Portuguese were defeated by the Ming Chinese at the Battle of Tunmen in Tamão (or Tuen Mun) in 1521, where the Portuguese lost two ships; the Battle of Sincouwaan in Lantau Island where the Portuguese also lost two ships; in Shuangyu in 1548, where several Portuguese were captured; and near the Dongshan Peninsula in 1549, where two Portuguese junks and Galeote Pereira were captured. During these battles the Ming Chinese captured weapons from the defeated Portuguese which they then reverse engineered and mass-produced in China such as matchlock musket arquebuses which they named bird guns and Breech loading swivel guns which they named as Folangji (Frankish) cannon because the Portuguese were known to the Chinese under the name of Franks at this time. The Portuguese later returned to China peacefully and presented themselves under the name Portuguese instead of Franks in the Luso-Chinese agreement (1554) and rented Macau as a trading post from China by paying annual lease of hundreds of silver taels to Ming China. Luso-Canton trade relations were formally reestablished in 1554 and Portugal soon after acquired a permanent lease for Macau in 1557, agreeing to pay 500 taels of silver as annual land rent.


title: Macau

text: The initially small population of Portuguese merchants rapidly became a growing city. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Macau was created in 1576, and by 1583, the Senate had been established to handle municipal affairs for the growing settlement. Macau was at the peak of its prosperity as a major entrepôt during the late 16th century, providing a crucial connection in exporting Chinese silk to Japan during the "Nanban" trade period. Although the Portuguese were initially prohibited from fortifying Macau or stockpiling weapons, the Fortaleza do Monte was constructed in response to frequent Dutch naval incursions. The Dutch attempted to take the city in the 1622 Battle of Macau, but were repelled successfully by the Portuguese. Macau entered a period of decline in the 1640s following a series of catastrophic events for the burgeoning colony: Portuguese access to trade routes was irreparably severed when Japan halted trade in 1639, Portugal revolted against Spain in 1640, and Malacca fell to the Dutch in 1641.


title: Macau

text: Maritime trade with China was banned in 1644 following the Qing conquest under the "Haijin" policies and limited only to Macau on a lesser scale while the new dynasty focused on eliminating surviving Ming loyalists. While the Kangxi Emperor lifted the prohibition in 1684, China again restricted trade under the Canton System in 1757. Foreign ships were required to first stop at Macau before further proceeding to Canton. Qing authorities exercised a much greater role in governing the territory during this period; Chinese residents were subject to Qing courts and new construction had to be approved by the resident mandarin beginning in the 1740s. As the opium trade became more lucrative during the 18th century, Macau again became an important stopping point en route to China.


title: Macau

text: Following the First Opium War and the establishment of Hong Kong, Macau lost its role as a major port. Firecracker and incense production, as well as tea and tobacco processing, were vital industries in the colony during this time. Portugal was able to capitalise on China's postwar weakness and assert its sovereignty; the Governor of Macau began refusing to pay China annual land rent for the colony in the 1840s, and annexed Taipa and Coloane, in 1851 and 1864 respectively. Portugal also occupied nearby Lapa and Montanha, but these would be returned to China by 1887, when perpetual occupation rights over Macau were formalised in the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking. This agreement also prohibited Portugal from ceding Macau without Chinese approval. Despite occasional conflict between Cantonese authorities and the colonial government, Macau's status remained unchanged through the republican revolutions of both Portugal in 1910 and China in 1911. The Kuomintang further affirmed Portuguese jurisdiction in Macau when the Treaty of Peking was renegotiated in 1928.


title: Macau

text: During the Second World War, the Empire of Japan did not occupy the colony and generally respected Portuguese neutrality in Macau. However, after Japanese troops captured a British cargo ship in Macau waters in 1943, Japan installed a group of government "advisors" as an alternative to military occupation. The territory largely avoided military action during the war except in 1945, when the United States ordered air raids on Macau after learning that the colonial government was preparing to sell aviation fuel to Japan. Portugal was later given over US$20 million in compensation for the damage in 1950.


title: Macau

text: Refugees from mainland China swelled the population as they fled from the Chinese Civil War. Access to a large workforce enabled Macau's economy to grow as the colony expanded its clothing and textiles manufacturing industry, developed its tourism industry, and legalised casino gaming. However, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, residents dissatisfied with the colonial administration rioted in the 1966 12-3 incident, in which 8 people were killed and over 200 were injured. Portugal lost full control over the colony afterwards, and agreed to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for continued administration of Macau.


title: Macau

text: Following the 1974 Carnation Revolution, Portugal formally relinquished Macau as an overseas province and acknowledged it as a "Chinese territory under Portuguese administration". After China first concluded arrangements on Hong Kong's future with the United Kingdom, it entered negotiations with Portugal over Macau in 1986. They were concluded with the signing of the 1987 Joint Declaration on the Question of Macau, in which Portugal agreed to transfer the colony in 1999 and China would guarantee Macau's political and economic systems for 50 years after the transfer. In the waning years of colonial rule, Macau rapidly urbanised and constructed large-scale infrastructure projects, including the Macau International Airport and a new container port. Macau was transferred to China on 20 December 1999, after 442 years of Portuguese rule.


title: Macau

text: Following the transfer, Macau liberalised its casino industry (which previously operated under a government-licensed monopoly) to allow foreign investors, starting a new period of economic development. The regional economy grew by a double-digit annual growth rate from 2002 to 2014, making Macau one of the richest economies in the world on a per capita basis. Political debates have centred on the region's jurisdictional independence and the central government's adherence of "one country, two systems". While issues such as national security legislation have been controversial, Macanese residents generally have high levels of trust in the government.


title: Macau

text: Kwong and Wong explain this by comparing Macau to Hong Kong: "The case of Macau shows that the very small size of a ‘microstate’ helps central authorities to exercise political control, stifle political pluralism, and monopolize opinions, all of which strengthen regime persistence."


title: Macau

text: Macau is a special administrative region of China, with executive, legislative, and judicial powers devolved from the national government. The Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration provided for economic and administrative continuity through the transfer of sovereignty, resulting in an executive-led governing system largely inherited from the territory's history as a Portuguese colony. Under these terms and the "one country, two systems" principle, the Basic Law of Macao is the regional constitution. Because negotiations for the Joint Declaration and Basic Law began after transitional arrangements for Hong Kong were made, Macau's structure of government is very similar to Hong Kong's.


title: Macau

text: The Chief Executive is the head of government, and serves for a maximum of two five-year terms. The State Council (led by the Premier of China) appoints the Chief Executive after nomination by the Election Committee, which is composed of 400 business, community, and government leaders.


title: Macau

text: The Legislative Assembly has 33 members, each serving a four-year term: 14 are directly elected, 12 indirectly elected, and 7 appointed by the Chief Executive. Indirectly elected assemblymen are selected from limited electorates representing sectors of the economy or special interest groups. All directly elected members are chosen with proportional representation.


title: Macau

text: Twelve political parties had representatives elected to the Legislative Assembly in the 2017 election. These parties have aligned themselves into two ideological groups: the pro-establishment (the current government) and pro-democracy camps. Macau is represented in the National People's Congress by 12 deputies chosen through an electoral college, and 29 delegates in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference appointed by the central government.


title: Macau

text: Chinese national law does not generally apply in the region, and Macau is treated as a separate jurisdiction. Its judicial system is based on Portuguese civil law, continuing the legal tradition established during colonial rule. Interpretative and amending power over the Basic Law and jurisdiction over acts of state lie with the central authority, however, making regional courts ultimately subordinate to the mainland's socialist civil law system. Decisions made by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress can also override territorial judicial processes. In 2021, after similar actions were taken in Hong Kong following the protests associated with the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement, 21 candidates running for office in the territorial elections were disqualified as a result of allegedly failing to support the Basic Law, although no specific violations were noted by the territory's electoral commission.


title: Macau

text: The territory's jurisdictional independence is most apparent in its immigration and taxation policies. The Identification Department issues passports for permanent residents which differ from those issued by the mainland or Hong Kong, and the region maintains a regulated border with the rest of the country. All travellers between Macau and China and Hong Kong must pass border controls, regardless of nationality. Chinese citizens resident in mainland China do not have the right of abode in Macau and are subject to immigration controls. Public finances are handled separately from the national government, and taxes levied in Macau do not fund the central authority.


title: Macau

text: The Macao Garrison is responsible for the region's defence. Although the Chairman of the Central Military Commission is supreme commander of the armed forces, the regional government may request assistance from the garrison. Macau residents are not required to perform military service and the law also has no provision for local enlistment, so its defence force is composed entirely of nonresidents.


title: Macau

text: The State Council and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs handle diplomatic matters, but Macau retains the ability to maintain separate economic and cultural relations with foreign nations. The territory negotiates its own trade agreements and actively participates in supranational organisations, including agencies of the World Trade Organization and United Nations. The regional government maintains trade offices in Greater China and other nations.


title: Macau

text: Macau is not a member of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, despite Portuguese being one of its official languages. This is due to it not being a sovereign nation, but a subnational division of China. In 2006, during the II Ministerial meeting between China and Portuguese Speaking Countries, the CPLP Executive Secretary and Deputy ambassador Tadeu Soares invited the Chief Executive of the Government of the Macau Special Administrative Region, Edmund Ho, to request the Associate Observer status for Macau. The Government of Macau has yet to make this request. In 2016, Murade Murargy, then executive secretary of CPLP said in an interview that Macau's membership is a complicated question, since like the Galicia region in Spain, it is not an independent country, but only a part of China. However, the "Instituto Internacional de Macau" () and the University of São José are Consultative Observers of the CPLP.


title: Macau

text: The territory is divided into seven parishes. Cotai, a major area developed on reclaimed land between Taipa and Coloane, and areas of the Macau New Urban Zone do not have defined parishes. Historically, the parishes belonged to one of two municipalities (the Municipality of Macau or the Municipality of Ilhas) that were responsible for administering municipal services. The municipalities were abolished in 2001 and superseded by the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau in providing local services.


title: Macau

text: Macau is located on China's southern coast, west of Hong Kong, on the western side of the Pearl River estuary. It is surrounded by the South China Sea in the east and south, and neighbours the Guangdong city of Zhuhai to the west and north. The territory consists of Macau Peninsula, Taipa, and Coloane. A parcel of land in neighbouring Hengqin island that hosts the University of Macau also falls under the regional government's jurisdiction. The territory's highest point is Coloane Alto, above sea level.


title: Macau

text: Urban development is concentrated on peninsular Macau, where most of the population lives. The peninsula was originally a separate island with hilly terrain, which gradually became a tombolo as a connecting sandbar formed over time. Both natural sedimentation and land reclamation expanded the area enough to support urban growth. Macau has tripled its land area in the last century, increasing from in the late 19th century to in 2018.


title: Macau

text: Cotai, the area of reclaimed land connecting Taipa and Coloane, contains many of the newer casinos and resorts established after 1999. The region's jurisdiction over the surrounding sea was greatly expanded in 2015, when it was granted an additional of maritime territory by the State Council. Further reclamation is currently underway to develop parts of the Macau New Urban Zone. The territory also has control over part of an artificial island to maintain a border checkpoint for the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge.


title: Macau

text: Macau has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen "Cwa"), characteristic of southern China. The territory is dual season dominant – summer (May to September) and winter (November to February) are the longest seasons, while spring (March and April) and autumn (October) are relatively brief periods. The summer monsoon brings warm and humid air from the sea, with the most frequent rainfall occurring during the season. Typhoons also occur most often then, bringing significant spikes in rainfall. During the winter, northern winds from the continent bring dry air and much less rainfall. The highest and lowest temperatures recorded at the Macao Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau are on both 2 July 1930 and 6 July 1930 and on 26 January 1948.


title: Macau

text: The Statistics and Census Service estimated Macau's population at 667,400 at the end of 2018. With a population density of 21,340 people per square kilometre, Macau is the most densely populated region in the world. The overwhelming majority (88.7 per cent) are Chinese, many of whom originate from Guangdong (31.9 per cent) or Fujian (5.9 per cent). The remaining 11.6 per cent are non ethnic Chinese minorities, primarily Filipinos (4.6 per cent), Vietnamese (2.4 per cent), and Portuguese (1.8 per cent). Several thousand residents are of Macanese heritage, native-born multiracial people with mixed Portuguese ancestry. Of the total population (excluding migrants), 49.4 per cent were born in Macau, followed by 43.1 per cent in Mainland China. A large portion of the population are Portuguese citizens, a legacy of colonial rule; at the time of the transfer of sovereignty in 1999, 107,000 residents held Portuguese passports.


title: Macau

text: The predominant language is Cantonese, a variety of Chinese originating in Guangdong. It is spoken by 87.5 per cent of the population, 80.1 per cent as a first language and 7.5 per cent as a second language. Only 2.3 per cent can speak Portuguese, the other official language; 0.7 per cent are native speakers, and 1.6 per cent use it as a second language. Increased immigration from mainland China in recent years has added to the number of Mandarin speakers, making up about half of the population (50.4 per cent); 5.5 per cent are native speakers and 44.9 per cent are second language speakers. Traditional Chinese characters are used in writing, rather than the simplified characters used on the mainland. English is considered an additional working language and is spoken by over a quarter of the population (27.5 per cent); 2.8 per cent are native speakers, and 24.7 per cent speak English as a second language. Macanese Patois, a local creole generally known as "Patuá", is now spoken only by a few in the older Macanese community.


title: Macau

text: According to the Government Information Bureau, 80 per cent of the population practices Buddhism, 6.7 per cent follow Christianity and 13.7 per cent follow other religion. Folk practices are also common among the citizens. According to Pew Research Center, Chinese folk religions have the most adherents (58.9 per cent) and are followed by Buddhism (17.3 per cent) and Christianity (7.2 per cent), while 15.4 per cent of the population profess no religious affiliation at all. Small minorities adhering to other religions (less than 1 per cent), including Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam, are also resident in Macau.


title: Macau

text: Life expectancy in Macau was 81.6 years for males and 87.7 years for females in 2018, the fourth highest in the world. Cancer, heart disease, and respiratory disease are the territory's three leading causes of death. Most government-provided healthcare services are free of charge, though alternative treatment is also heavily subsidised.


title: Macau

text: Migrant workers living in Macau account for over 25 per cent of the entire workforce. They largely work in lower wage sectors of the economy, including construction, hotels, and restaurants. As a growing proportion of local residents take up employment in the gaming industry, the disparity in income between local and migrant workers has been increasing. Rising living costs have also pushed a large portion of nonresident workers to live in Zhuhai.


title: Macau

text: Macau has a capitalist service economy largely based on casino gaming and tourism. It is the world's 83rd-largest economy, with a nominal GDP of approximately MOP433 billion (US$53.9 billion). Although Macau has one of the highest per capita GDPs, the territory also has a high level of wealth disparity. Macau's gaming industry is the largest in the world, generating over MOP195 billion (US$24 billion) in revenue and about seven times larger than that of Las Vegas. Macau's gambling revenue was $37 billion in 2018.


title: Macau

text: The regional economy is heavily reliant on casino gaming. The vast majority of government funding (79.6 per cent of total tax revenue) comes from gaming. Gambling as a share of GDP peaked in 2013 at over 60 per cent, and continues to account for 49.1 per cent of total economic output. The vast majority of casino patrons are tourists from mainland China, making up 68 per cent of all visitors. Casino gaming is illegal in both the mainland and Hong Kong, giving Macau a legal monopoly on the industry in China. Revenue from Chinese high rollers has been falling and was forecast to fall as much as 10% more in 2019. Economic uncertainty may account for some of the drop, but alternate Asian gambling venues do as well. For example, Chinese visitors to the Philippines more than doubled between 2015 and 2018, since the City of Dreams casino opened in Manila.


title: Macau

text: Casino gambling was legalised in 1962 and the gaming industry initially operated under a government-licensed monopoly granted to the Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau. This licence was renegotiated and renewed several times before ending in 2002 after 40 years. The government then allowed open bidding for casino licences to attract foreign investors. Along with an easing of travel restrictions on mainland Chinese visitors, this triggered a period of rapid economic growth; from 1999 to 2016, Macau's gross domestic product multiplied by 7 and the unemployment rate dropped from 6.3 to 1.9 per cent. The Sands Macao, Wynn Macau, MGM Macau, and Venetian Macau were all opened during the first decade after liberalisation of casino concessions. Casinos employ about 24 per cent of the total workforce in the region. "Increased competition from casinos popping up across Asia to lure away Chinese high rollers and tourists" in Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Nepal, the Philippines, Australia, Vietnam and the Russian Far East led in 2019 to the lowest revenues in three years.


title: Macau

text: Export-oriented manufacturing previously contributed to a much larger share of economic output, peaking at 36.9 per cent of GDP in 1985 and falling to less than 1 per cent in 2017. The bulk of these exports were cotton textiles and apparel, but also included toys and electronics. At the transfer of sovereignty in 1999, manufacturing, financial services, construction and real estate, and gaming were the four largest sectors of the economy. Macau's shift to an economic model entirely dependent on gaming caused concern over its overexposure to a single sector, prompting the regional government to attempt re-diversifying its economy.


title: Macau

text: The government traditionally had a non-interventionist role in the economy and taxes corporations at very low rates. Post-handover administrations have generally been more involved in enhancing social welfare to counter the cyclical nature of the gaming industry. Economic growth has been attributed in large part to the high number of mainlander visits to Macau, and the central government exercises a role in guiding casino business growth through its control of the flow of tourists. The Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement formalised a policy of free trade between Macau and mainland China, with each jurisdiction pledging to remove remaining obstacles to trade and cross-boundary investment.


title: Macau

text: Due to a lack of available land for farming, agriculture is not significant in the economy. Food is exclusively imported to Macau and almost all foreign goods are transshipped through Hong Kong.


title: Macau

text: Macau has a highly developed road system, with over of roads. Automobiles drive on the left (unlike in both mainland China and Portugal), due to historical influence of the Portuguese Empire. Vehicle traffic is extremely congested, especially in the oldest part of the city, where streets are the narrowest. Public bus services operate over 80 routes, supplemented by free hotel shuttle buses that also run routes to popular tourist attractions and downtown locations. About 1,500 black taxicabs are licensed in the territory. The Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge, opened in 2018, provides a direct link with the eastern side of the Pearl River estuary. Cross-boundary traffic to mainland China may also pass through border checkpoints at the Portas do Cerco, Lótus Bridge, and Qingmao Port.


title: Macau

text: Macau International Airport serves over 8 million passengers each year and is the primary hub for local flag carrier Air Macau. Ferry services to Hong Kong and mainland China operate out of ferry terminals such as Taipa Ferry Terminal. Daily helicopter service is also available to Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Phase 1 of the territory's first rail network, the Macau Light Rapid Transit, began operations in December 2019. The Taipa line connects 11 metro stations throughout Taipa and Cotai.


title: Macau

text: Macau is served by one major public hospital, the Hospital Conde S. Januário, and one major private hospital, the Kiang Wu Hospital, both located in Macau Peninsula, as well as a university associated hospital called Macau University of Science and Technology Hospital in Cotai. In addition to hospitals, Macau also has numerous health centres providing free basic medical care to residents. Consultation in traditional Chinese medicine is also available.


title: Macau

text: None of the Macau hospitals are independently assessed through international healthcare accreditation. A Western-style medical school was opened in Macau in 2019 by the Macau University of Science and Technology, with an annual intake of 50 students. Local nurses are trained at the Macao Polytechnic University and the Kiang Wu Nursing College of Macau. Currently there are no training courses in midwifery in Macau. A study by the University of Macau, commissioned by the Macau SAR government, concluded that Macau is too small to have its own medical specialist training centre.


title: Macau

text: The Fire Services Bureau is responsible for ambulance service (Ambulância de Macau). The Macau Red Cross also operates ambulances (Toyota HiAce vans) for emergency and non-emergencies to local hospitals with volunteer staff. The organisation has a total of 739 uniformed firefighters and paramedics serving from 7 stations in Macau.


title: Macau

text: The Health Bureau in Macau is mainly responsible for coordinating the activities between the public and private organisations in the area of public health, and assure the health of citizens through specialised and primary health care services, as well as disease prevention and health promotion. The Macau Centre for Disease Control and Prevention was established in 2001, which monitors the operation of hospitals, health centres, and the blood transfusion centre in Macau. It also handles the organisation of care and prevention of diseases affecting the population, sets guidelines for hospitals and private healthcare providers, and issues licenses.


title: Macau

text: Education in Macau does not have a single centralised set of standards or curriculum. Individual schools follow different educational models, including Chinese, Portuguese, Hong Kong, and British systems. Children are required to attend school from the age of five until completion of lower secondary school, or at age 15. Of residents aged 3 and older, 69 per cent completed lower secondary education, 49 per cent graduated from an upper secondary school, 21 per cent earned a bachelor's degree or higher. Mandatory education has contributed to an adult literacy rate of 96.5 per cent. While lower than that of other developed economies, the rate is due to the influx of refugees from mainland China during the post-war colonial era. Much of the elderly population were not formally educated due to war and poverty.


title: Macau

text: Most schools in the territory are private institutions. Out of the 77 non-tertiary schools, 10 are public and the other 67 are privately run. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Macau maintains an important position in territorial education, managing 27 primary and secondary schools. The government provides 15 years of free education for all residents enrolled in publicly run schools, and subsidises tuition for students in private schools. Students at the secondary school level studying in neighbouring areas of Guangdong are also eligible for tuition subsidies.


title: Macau

text: The vast majority of schools use Cantonese as the medium of instruction, with written education in Chinese and compulsory classes in Mandarin. A minority of private schools use English or Portuguese as the primary teaching language. Portuguese-Chinese schools mainly use Chinese, but additionally require mandatory Portuguese-language classes as part of their curriculum.


title: Macau

text: Macau has ten universities and tertiary education institutes. The University of Macau, founded in 1981, is the territory's only public comprehensive university. The Kiang Wu Nursing College of Macau is the oldest higher institute, specialising in educating future nursing staff for the college's parent hospital. The University of Saint Joseph, Macau University of Science and Technology, and the City University of Macau were all established in subsequent years. Five other institutes specialise in specific vocations or provide continuing education.


title: Macau

text: The mixing of Chinese and Portuguese culture and religious traditions for more than four centuries has left Macau with an inimitable collection of holidays, festivals and events. The biggest event of the year is the Macau Grand Prix each November, when the main streets of the Macau Peninsula are converted to a racetrack bearing similarities with the Monaco Grand Prix. Other annual events include Macau Arts festival in March, the International Fireworks Display Contest in September, the International Music festival in October and/or November, and the Macau International Marathon in December.


title: Macau

text: The Lunar Chinese New Year is the most important traditional festival, and celebration normally takes place in late January or early February. The Pou Tai Un Temple in Taipa is the place for the Feast of Tou Tei, the Earth god, in February. The Procession of the Passion of Our Lord is a well-known Roman Catholic rite and journey, which travels from Saint Austin's Church to the cathedral, also taking place in February.


title: Macau

text: The A-Ma Temple, which honours the Goddess Matsu, is in full swing in April with many worshipers celebrating the A-Ma festival. In May, it is common to see dancing dragons at the Feast of the Drunken Dragon and twinkling-clean Buddhas at the Feast of the Bathing of Lord Buddha. In Coloane Village, the Taoist god Tam Kong is also honoured on the same day. Dragon Boat Festival is brought into play on Nam Van Lake in June and Hungry Ghosts' festival, in late August and/or early September every year. All events and festivities of the year end with Winter Solstice in December.


title: Macau

text: Macau preserves many historical properties in the urban area. Its historic centre, which includes some twenty-five historic locations, was officially listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO on 15 July 2005 during the 29th session of the World Heritage Committee, held in Durban, South Africa.


title: Macau

text: However, the Macao government is criticised for ignoring the conservation of heritage in urban planning. In 2007, local residents of Macao wrote a letter to UNESCO complaining about construction projects around world heritage Guia Lighthouse (Focal height ), including the headquarter of the Liaison Office (). UNESCO then issued a warning to the Macau government, which led former Chief Executive Edmund Ho to sign a notice regulating height restrictions on buildings around the site. In 2015, the New Macau Association submitted a report to UNESCO claiming that the government had failed to protect Macao's cultural heritage against threats by urban development projects. One of the main examples of the report is that the headquarter of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government, which is located on the Guia foothill and obstructs the view of the Guia Fortress (one of the world heritages symbols of Macao). One year later, Roni Amelan, a spokesman from UNESCO Press service, said that the UNESCO has asked China for information and is still waiting for a reply. In 2016, the Macau government approved an -tall construction limit for the residential project, which reportedly goes against the city's regulations on the height of buildings around world heritage site Guia Lighthouse.


title: Macau

text: Food in Macau is mainly based on both Cantonese and Portuguese cuisine, drawing influences from Indian and Malay dishes as well, reflecting a unique cultural and culinary blend after centuries of colonial rule. Portuguese recipes were adapted to use local ingredients, such as fresh seafood, turmeric, coconut milk, and adzuki beans. These adaptations produced Macanese variations of traditional Portuguese dishes including "caldo verde", minchee, and "cozido à portuguesa". While many restaurants claim to serve traditional Portuguese or Macanese dishes, most serve a mix of Cantonese-Portuguese fusion cuisine. "Galinha à portuguesa" is an example of a Chinese dish that draws from Macanese influences, but is not part of Macanese cuisine. "Cha chaan teng", a type of fast casual diner originating in Hong Kong that serves that region's interpretation of Western food, are also prevalent in Macau. "Pastel de nata", pork chop buns, and almond biscuits are popular street food items.


title: Macau

text: Despite its small area, Macau is home to a variety of sports and recreational facilities that have hosted a number of major international sporting events, including the 2005 East Asian Games, the 2006 Lusophony Games, and the 2007 Asian Indoor Games.


title: Macau

text: The territory regularly hosts the Macau Grand Prix, one of the most significant annual motorsport competitions that uses city streets as the racetrack. It is the only street circuit that hosts Formula Three, touring car, and motorcycle races in the same event. The Guia Circuit, with narrow corner clearance and a winding path, is considered an extremely challenging course and a serious milestone for prospective Formula One racers.


title: Macau

text: Macau represents itself separately from mainland China with its own sports teams in international competitions. The territory maintains its own National Olympic Committee, but does not compete in the Olympic Games. International Olympic Committee rules specify that new NOCs can only be admitted if they represent sovereign states (Hong Kong has participated in the Olympics since before the regulation change in 1996).


title: Macau

text: Macau is part of the Union of Luso-Afro-Americo-Asiatic Capital Cities from 28 June 1985, establishing brotherly relations with the following cities:


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: Operation Barbarossa (; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after Frederick Barbarossa ("red beard"), a 12th-century Holy Roman emperor and German king, put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goal of conquering the western Soviet Union to repopulate it with Germans. The German aimed to use some of the conquered people as forced labour for the Axis war effort while acquiring the oil reserves of the Caucasus as well as the agricultural resources of various Soviet territories. Their ultimate goal was to create more (living space) for Germany, and the eventual extermination of the indigenous Slavic peoples by mass deportation to Siberia, Germanisation, enslavement, and genocide.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: In the two years leading up to the invasion, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. Following the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, the German High Command began planning an invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940 (under the codename Operation Otto). Over the course of the operation, over 3.8 million personnel of the Axis powers—the largest invasion force in the history of warfare—invaded the western Soviet Union along a front, with 600,000 motor vehicles and over 600,000 horses for non-combat operations. The offensive marked a massive escalation of World War II, both geographically and with the Anglo-Soviet Agreement and the formation of the Allied coalition including the Soviet Union.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: The operation opened up the Eastern Front, in which more forces were committed than in any other theater of war in human history. The area saw some of history’s largest battles, most horrific atrocities, and highest casualties (for Soviet and Axis forces alike), all of which influenced the course of World War II and the subsequent history of the 20th century. The German armies eventually captured some five million Soviet Red Army troops. The Nazis deliberately starved to death or otherwise killed 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, and millions of civilians, as the "Hunger Plan" worked to solve German food shortages and exterminate the Slavic population through starvation. Mass shootings and gassing operations, carried out by the Nazis or willing collaborators, murdered over a million Soviet Jews as part of the Holocaust.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: The failure of Operation Barbarossa reversed the fortunes of Nazi Germany. Operationally, German forces achieved significant victories and occupied some of the most important economic areas of the Soviet Union (mainly in Ukraine) and inflicted, as well as sustained, heavy casualties. Despite these early successes, the German offensive stalled in the Battle of Moscow at the end of 1941, and the subsequent Soviet winter counteroffensive pushed the Germans about back. The Germans had confidently expected a quick collapse of Soviet resistance as in Poland, but the Red Army absorbed the German "Wehrmacht"s strongest blows and bogged it down in a war of attrition for which the Germans were unprepared. The "Wehrmacht"s diminished forces could no longer attack along the entire Eastern Front, and subsequent operations to retake the initiative and drive deep into Soviet territory—such as Case Blue in 1942 and Operation Citadel in 1943—eventually failed, which resulted in the "Wehrmacht"s defeat.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: According to a Germanic medieval legend, revived in the 19th century by the nationalistic tropes of German Romanticism, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa—who drowned in Asia Minor while leading the Third Crusade—is not dead but asleep along with his knights in a cave in the Kyffhäuser mountains in Thuringia and is going to awaken in the hour of Germany's greatest need and restore Germany to its former glory. The theme of Barbarossa had long been used by the Nazis as part of their political imagery. Originally, the invasion of the Soviet Union was codenamed "Operation Otto" (alluding to Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Great's expansive campaigns in Eastern Europe), but Hitler had the name changed to "Operation Barbarossa" in December 1940. Hitler had in July 1937 praised Barbarossa as the emperor who first expressed Germanic cultural ideas and carried them to the outside world through his imperial mission. For Hitler, the name Barbarossa signified his belief that the conquest of the Soviet Union would usher in the Nazi "Thousand-Year Reich".


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: As early as 1925, Adolf Hitler vaguely declared in his political manifesto and autobiography "Mein Kampf" that he would invade the Soviet Union, asserting that the German people needed to secure ('living space') to ensure the survival of Germany for generations to come. On 10 February 1939, Hitler told his army commanders that the next war would be "purely a war of ['worldviews']... totally a people's war, a racial war". On 23 November, once World War II had already started, Hitler declared that "racial war has broken out and this war shall determine who shall govern Europe, and with it, the world". The racial policy of Nazi Germany portrayed the Soviet Union (and all of Eastern Europe) as populated by non-Aryan ('sub-humans'), ruled by Jewish Bolshevik conspirators. Hitler claimed in "Mein Kampf" that Germany's destiny was to "turn to the East" as it did "600 years ago" (see ). Accordingly, it was a partially secret but well-documented Nazi policy to kill, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations and repopulate the land west of the Urals with Germanic peoples, under Generalplan Ost. The Nazis' belief in their ethnic superiority pervades official records and pseudoscientific articles in German periodicals, on topics such as "how to deal with alien populations".


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: While older histories tended to emphasize the myth of the "clean "Wehrmacht"", upholding its honor in the face of Hitler's fanaticism, the historian Jürgen Förster notes that "In fact, the military commanders were caught up in the ideological character of the conflict, and involved in its implementation as willing participants." Before and during the invasion of the Soviet Union, German troops were heavily indoctrinated with anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic, and anti-Slavic ideology via movies, radio, lectures, books, and leaflets. Likening the Soviets to the forces of Genghis Khan, Hitler told Croatian military leader Slavko Kvaternik that the "Mongolian race" threatened Europe. Following the invasion, many "Wehrmacht" officers told their soldiers to target people who were described as "Jewish Bolshevik subhumans", the "Mongol hordes", the "Asiatic flood", and the "Red beast". Nazi propaganda portrayed the war against the Soviet Union as both an ideological war between German National Socialism and Jewish Bolshevism, and a racial war between the disciplined Germans and the Jewish, Romani, and Slavic . An 'order from the Führer' stated that the paramilitary SS , which closely followed the "Wehrmacht"s advance, were to execute all Soviet functionaries who were "less valuable Asiatics, Gypsies and Jews". Six months into the invasion of the Soviet Union, the had already murdered more than 500,000 Soviet Jews, a figure greater than the number of Red Army soldiers killed in combat during that time. German army commanders cast the Jews as the major cause behind the "partisan struggle". The main guideline for German troops was "Where there's a partisan, there's a Jew, and where there's a Jew, there's a partisan", or "The partisan is where the Jew is". Many German troops viewed the war in Nazi terms and regarded their Soviet enemies as sub-human.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: After the war began, the Nazis issued a ban on sexual relations between Germans and foreign slave workers. There were regulations enacted against the ('Eastern workers') that included the death penalty for sexual relations with a German. Heinrich Himmler, in his secret memorandum, "Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East" (dated 25 May 1940), outlined the Nazi plans for the non-German populations in the East. Himmler believed the Germanization process in Eastern Europe would be complete when "in the East dwell only men with truly German, Germanic blood".


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: The Nazi secret plan ('General Plan for the East'), prepared in 1941 and confirmed in 1942, called for a "new order of ethnographical relations" in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe. It envisaged ethnic cleansing, executions, and enslavement of the populations of conquered countries, with very small percentages undergoing Germanization, expulsion into the depths of Russia, or other fates, while the conquered territories would be Germanized. The plan had two parts: the ('small plan'), which covered actions to be taken during the war, and the ('large plan'), which covered policies after the war was won, to be implemented gradually over 25 to 30 years.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: A speech given by General Erich Hoepner demonstrates the dissemination of the Nazi racial plan, as he informed the 4th Panzer Group that the war against the Soviet Union was "an essential part of the German people's struggle for existence" (), also referring to the imminent battle as the "old struggle of Germans against Slavs" and even stated, "the struggle must aim at the annihilation of today's Russia and must, therefore, be waged with unparalleled harshness". Hoepner also added that the Germans were fighting for "the defense of European culture against Moscovite–Asiatic inundation, and the repulse of Jewish Bolshevism ... No adherents of the present Russian-Bolshevik system are to be spared." Walther von Brauchitsch also told his subordinates that troops should view the war as a "struggle between two different races and [should] act with the necessary severity". Racial motivations were central to Nazi ideology and played a key role in planning for Operation Barbarossa since both Jews and communists were considered equivalent enemies of the Nazi state. Nazi imperialist ambitions rejected the common humanity of both groups, declaring the supreme struggle for to be a ('war of annihilation').


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. A secret protocol to the pact outlined an agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union on the division of the eastern European border states between their respective "spheres of influence", Soviet Union and Germany would partition Poland in the event of an invasion by Germany, and the Soviets would be allowed to overrun Finland, Estonia, Latvia and the region of Bessarabia. On 23 August 1939 the rest of the world learned of this pact but were unaware of the provisions to partition Poland. The pact stunned the world because of the parties' earlier mutual hostility and their conflicting ideologies. The conclusion of this pact was followed by the German invasion of Poland on 1 September that triggered the outbreak of World War II in Europe, then the Soviet invasion of Poland that led to the annexation of the eastern part of the country. As a result of the pact, Germany and the Soviet Union maintained reasonably strong diplomatic relations for two years and fostered an important economic relationship. The countries entered a trade pact in 1940 by which the Soviets received German military equipment and trade goods in exchange for raw materials, such as oil and wheat, to help the Nazis war effort by circumventing the British blockade of Germany.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: Despite the parties' ostensibly cordial relations, each side was highly suspicious of the other's intentions. For instance, the Soviet invasion of Bukovina in June 1940 went beyond their sphere of influence as agreed with Germany. After Germany entered the Axis Pact with Japan and Italy, it began negotiations about a potential Soviet entry into the pact. After two days of negotiations in Berlin from 12 to 14 November 1940, Germany presented a written proposal for a Soviet entry into the Axis. On 25 November 1940, the Soviet Union offered a written counter-proposal to join the Axis if Germany would agree to refrain from interference in the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, but Germany did not respond. As both sides began colliding with each other in Eastern Europe, conflict appeared more likely, although they did sign a border and commercial agreement addressing several open issues in January 1941. According to historian Robert Service, Joseph Stalin was convinced that the overall military strength of the Soviet Union was such that he had nothing to fear and anticipated an easy victory should Germany attack; moreover, Stalin believed that since the Germans were still fighting the British in the west, Hitler would be unlikely to open up a two front war and subsequently delayed the reconstruction of defensive fortifications in the border regions. When German soldiers swam across the Bug River to warn the Red Army of an impending attack, they were shot as enemy agents. Some historians believe that Stalin, despite providing an amicable front to Hitler, did not wish to remain allies with Germany. Rather, Stalin might have had intentions to break off from Germany and proceed with his own campaign against Germany to be followed by one against the rest of Europe.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: Stalin's reputation as a brutal dictator contributed both to the Nazis' justification of their assault and their faith in success due to the fact that many competent and experienced military officers had been killed in Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s, leaving the Red Army with an inexperienced leadership compared to that of their German adversary. The Nazis often emphasized the Soviet regime's brutality when targeting the Slavs with propaganda. They also claimed that the Red Army was preparing to attack the Germans, and their own invasion was thus presented as a pre-emptive strike.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: Hitler also utilized the rising tension between the Soviet Union and Germany over territories in the Balkans as one of the pretexts for the invasion. While no concrete plans had yet been made, Hitler told one of his generals in June 1940 that the victories in Western Europe finally freed his hands for a "final showdown" with Bolshevism. With the successful end to the campaign in France, General Erich Marcks was assigned the task of drawing up the initial invasion plans of the Soviet Union. The first battle plans were entitled "Operation Draft East" (colloquially known as the "Marcks Plan"). His report advocated the A-A line as the operational objective of any invasion of the Soviet Union. This assault would extend from the northern city of Arkhangelsk on the Arctic Sea through Gorky and Rostov to the port city of Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga on the Caspian Sea. The report concluded that—once established—this military border would reduce the threat to Germany from attacks by enemy bombers.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: Although Hitler was warned by many high-ranking military officers, such as Friedrich Paulus, that occupying Western Russia would create "more of a drain than a relief for Germany's economic situation", he anticipated compensatory benefits such as the demobilization of entire divisions to relieve the acute labor shortage in German industry, the exploitation of Ukraine as a reliable and immense source of agricultural products, the use of forced labor to stimulate Germany's overall economy and the expansion of territory to improve Germany's efforts to isolate the United Kingdom. Hitler was further convinced that Britain would sue for peace once the Germans triumphed in the Soviet Union, and if they did not, he would use the resources gained in the East to defeat the British Empire.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: Hitler received the final military plans for the invasion on 5 December 1940, which the German High Command had been working on since July 1940 under the codename "Operation Otto". Upon reviewing the plans, Hitler formally committed Germany to the invasion when he issued on 18 December 1940, where he outlined the precise manner in which the operation was to be carried out. Hitler also renamed the operation to "Barbarossa" in honor of medieval Emperor Friedrich I of the Holy Roman Empire, a leader of the Third Crusade in the 12th century. The Barbarossa Decree, issued by Hitler on 30 March 1941, supplemented the Directive by decreeing that the war against the Soviet Union would be one of annihilation and legally sanctioned the eradication of all Communist political leaders and intellectual elites in Eastern Europe. The invasion was tentatively set for May 1941, but it was delayed for over a month to allow for further preparations and possibly better weather.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: According to a 1978 essay by German historian Andreas Hillgruber, the invasion plans drawn up by the German military elite were substantially coloured by hubris, stemming from the rapid defeat of France at the hands of the "invincible" "Wehrmacht" and by traditional German stereotypes of Russia as a primitive, backward "Asiatic" country. Red Army soldiers were considered brave and tough, but the officer corps was held in contempt. The leadership of the "Wehrmacht" paid little attention to politics, culture, and the considerable industrial capacity of the Soviet Union, in favour of a very narrow military view. Hillgruber argued that because these assumptions were shared by the entire military elite, Hitler was able to push through with a "war of annihilation" that would be waged in the most inhumane fashion possible with the complicity of "several military leaders", even though it was quite clear that this would be in violation of all accepted norms of warfare.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: Even so, in autumn 1940, some high-ranking German military officials drafted a memorandum to Hitler on the dangers of an invasion of the Soviet Union. They argued that the eastern territories (Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic countries) would only end up as a further economic burden for Germany. It was further argued that the Soviets, in their current bureaucratic form, were harmless and that the occupation would not benefit Germany politically either. Hitler, solely focused on his ultimate ideological goal of eliminating the Soviet Union and Communism, disagreed with economists about the risks and told his right-hand man Hermann Göring, the chief of the "Luftwaffe", that he would no longer listen to misgivings about the economic dangers of a war with the USSR. It is speculated that this was passed on to General Georg Thomas, who had produced reports that predicted a net economic drain for Germany in the event of an invasion of the Soviet Union unless its economy was captured intact and the Caucasus oilfields seized in the first blow; Thomas revised his future report to fit Hitler's wishes. The Red Army's ineptitude in the Winter War against Finland in 1939–40 also convinced Hitler of a quick victory within a few months. Neither Hitler nor the General Staff anticipated a long campaign lasting into the winter and therefore, adequate preparations such as the distribution of warm clothing and winterization of important military equipment like tanks and artillery, were not made.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: Further to Hitler's Directive, Göring's Green Folder, issued in March 1941, laid out the agenda for the next step after the anticipated quick conquest of the Soviet Union. The Hunger Plan outlined how entire urban populations of conquered territories were to be starved to death, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and urban space for the German upper class. Nazi policy aimed to destroy the Soviet Union as a political entity in accordance with the geopolitical ideals for the benefit of future generations of the "Nordic master race". In 1941, Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg—later appointed Reich Minister of the Occupied Eastern Territories—suggested that conquered Soviet territory should be administered in the following ('Reich Commissionerships'):


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: German military planners also researched Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia. In their calculations, they concluded that there was little danger of a large-scale retreat of the Red Army into the Russian interior, as it could not afford to give up the Baltic countries, Ukraine, or the Moscow and Leningrad regions, all of which were vital to the Red Army for supply reasons and would thus, have to be defended. Hitler and his generals disagreed on where Germany should focus its energy. Hitler, in many discussions with his generals, repeated his order of "Leningrad first, the Donbas second, Moscow third"; but he consistently emphasized the destruction of the Red Army over the achievement of specific terrain objectives. Hitler believed Moscow to be of "no great importance" in the defeat of the Soviet Union and instead believed victory would come with the destruction of the Red Army west of the capital, especially west of the Western Dvina and Dnieper rivers, and this pervaded the plan for Barbarossa. This belief later led to disputes between Hitler and several German senior officers, including Heinz Guderian, Gerhard Engel, Fedor von Bock and Franz Halder, who believed the decisive victory could only be delivered at Moscow. They were unable to sway Hitler, who had grown overconfident in his own military judgment as a result of the rapid successes in Western Europe.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: The Germans had begun massing troops near the Soviet border even before the campaign in the Balkans had finished. By the third week of February 1941, 680,000 German soldiers were gathered in assembly areas on the Romanian-Soviet border. In preparation for the attack, Hitler had secretly moved upwards of 3 million German troops and approximately 690,000 Axis soldiers to the Soviet border regions. Additional "Luftwaffe" operations included numerous aerial surveillance missions over Soviet territory many months before the attack.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: Although the Soviet High Command was alarmed by this, Stalin's belief that Nazi Germany was unlikely to attack only two years after signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact resulted in slow Soviet preparation. This fact aside, the Soviets did not entirely overlook the threat of their German neighbor. Well before the German invasion, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko referred to the Germans as the Soviet Union's "most important and strongest enemy", and as early as July 1940, the Red Army Chief of Staff, Boris Shaposhnikov, produced a preliminary three-pronged plan of attack for what a German invasion might look like, remarkably similar to the actual attack. Since April 1941, the Germans had begun setting up Operation Haifisch and Operation Harpune to substantiate their claims that Britain was the real target. These simulated preparations in Norway and the English Channel coast included activities such as ship concentrations, reconnaissance flights and training exercises.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: The reasons for the postponement of Barbarossa from the initially planned date of 15 May to the actual invasion date of 22 June 1941 (a 38-day delay) are debated. The reason most commonly cited is the unforeseen contingency of invading Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941. Historian Thomas B. Buell indicates that Finland and Romania, which weren't involved in initial German planning, needed additional time to prepare to participate in the invasion. Buell adds that an unusually wet winter kept rivers at full flood until late spring. The floods may have discouraged an earlier attack, even if they occurred before the end of the Balkans Campaign.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: The importance of the delay is still debated. William Shirer argued that Hitler's Balkan Campaign had delayed the commencement of Barbarossa by several weeks and thereby jeopardized it. Many later historians argue that the 22 June start date was sufficient for the German offensive to reach Moscow by September. Antony Beevor wrote in 2012 about the delay caused by German attacks in the Balkans that "most [historians] accept that it made little difference" to the eventual outcome of Barbarossa.


title: Operation Barbarossa

text: The Germans deployed one independent regiment, one separate motorized training brigade and 153 divisions for Barbarossa, which included 104 infantry, 19 panzer and 15 motorized infantry divisions in three army groups, nine security divisions to operate in conquered territories, four divisions in Finland and two divisions as reserve under the direct control of OKH. These were equipped with 6,867 armored vehicles, of which 3,350–3,795 were tanks, 2,770–4,389 aircraft (that amounted to 65 percent of the "Luftwaffe"), 7,200–23,435 artillery pieces, 17,081 mortars, about 600,000 motor vehicles and 625,000–700,000 horses. Finland slated 14 divisions for the invasion, and Romania offered 13 divisions and eight brigades over the course of Barbarossa. The entire Axis forces, 3.8 million personnel, deployed across a front extending from the Arctic Ocean southward to the Black Sea, were all controlled by the OKH and organized into Army Norway, Army Group North, Army Group Center and Army Group South, alongside three "Luftflotten" (air fleets, the air force equivalent of army groups) that supported the army groups: Luftflotte 1 for North, Luftflotte 2 for Center and Luftflotte 4 for South.