title: Andrej Plenković

text: In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Plenković completed a programme to become a diplomat, and in 1992, passed the consultation exam at the diplomatic academy. Plenković passed the Bar in 2002. At the law faculty of the University of Zagreb, he finished his Masters in International public and private law and got the title of Master of Science in 2002 by defending his Masters thesis by the title of "Subjectivity of EU and development of the common foreign and security policy" under the tutorage of Professor Budislav Vukas, a judge of International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: From 1994 to 2002, Plenković worked at different positions within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Among other things as a chief of the department of European integration, adviser of minister for European affairs, and member of the negotiation team on the Treaty on Stabilisation and Accession.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: From 2002 to 2005, Plenković was a deputy chief of Croatian mission for the European Union in Brussels. He was in charge of the coordination of political activities of the mission and he worked on networking with the officials of the European Commission, Council, Parliament and other permanent representations of various member states. He was working on Croatian application for membership in the European Union in 2002, and in 2003, making pressure for the status of candidate country in 2004 and for the opening of the accession negotiations in 2005.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: From 2005 to 2010, Plenković was serving as the deputy ambassador in France where he was in charge of political and organizational issues.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: During his diplomatic career, Plenković participated in numerous symposiums, seminars and programs on international and European law, international, foreign relations and foreign policy and management.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Appointed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Gordan Jandroković, Plenković worked as a state secretary for European integration during the government of Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor. He had a prominent role in the campaign for a referendum on EU membership. Together with numerous media appearances, Plenković held dozens of lectures on joining the European Union in all Croatian counties.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: As a state secretary, Plenković also performed the duties of the political director for EU affairs, co-chair of the Stabilisation and Association Croatia–EU, national coordinator for the Danube Strategy of the European Union and co-chairman of the duties of the international commissions (Bavaria-Croatia, Croatia-Baden-Württemberg, Croatia-Flanders). He was on a board member of the Foundation for Civil Society Development, president of the Organizing Committee of the Croatia Summit in 2010 and 2011, and secretary of the Organizing Committee of the pastoral visit of the Pope Benedict XVI in 2011.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: In 2011, after seventeen years of professional work in diplomacy, Plenković joined the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). From December 2011 to July 2013, he was a Croatian Democratic Union member in the Croatian Parliament. He was elected in the 7th electoral district. Plenković was also a deputy member of delegation of the Croatian Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, and a member of a group of friendship with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, France, Malta and Morocco. Prior to the referendum, Plenković held series of lectures on the European Union at the party rallies across Croatia and participated in numerous public debates, TV and radio shows. He is a member of the HDZ central committee, city committee Zagreb, regional committee Črnomerec, basic branch Jelenovac and the committee for foreign and European affairs.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: By decision of the Croatian Parliament from April 2012 until July 2013, Plenković was one of the twelve Croatian observers in the European Parliament. In his capacity as an observer member in the European Parliament, he supported the completion of the ratification process of the Treaty on Croatian accession to the European Union, the positive reports and resolutions on Croatia and the appropriate allocation of EU funds to Croatia in the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2014–2020.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: As a HDZ candidate on the joint list for the first Croatian elections to the European Parliament, which were held on 14 April 2013, he actively participated in the election campaign. He participated in the drafting of the HDZ programme for the European elections, "a Croatian voice in Europe", adopted by the presidency of the party led by President Tomislav Karamarko. The program was based on the main principles of the platform of the European People's Party and its program documents, as well as the priorities of Croatia in the European Union from the perspective of the HDZ. He was elected to the winning coalition list, where he received the highest number of preferential votes among the HDZ candidates.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Between 2013 and 2014, Plenković was a member of the Committee on Budgets. From 2014, he served as vice-chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs and a member of the parliament's delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly. He led the parliament's monitoring mission during the Ukrainian parliamentary election in 2014.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: In addition to his committee assignments, Plenković was a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on SMEs; the European Parliament Intergroup on Wine, Spirits and Quality Foodstuffs; the European Parliament Intergroup on Youth Issues; and the European Parliament Intergroup on Disability.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Plenković was elected president of the HDZ on 17 July 2016, in a sign it was distancing itself from ultra-conservative elements. In the 2016 parliamentary election, he led his party to an unexpected victory. The opposition SDP-led People's Coalition conceded defeat after winning only 54 seats in Parliament. Its leader, former prime minister Zoran Milanović, ruled out running for reelection to his party's chairmanship, effectively also ruling out any possible attempts to form a governing majority, thus allowing the HDZ to begin talks with the Bridge of Independent Lists (Most), its junior partner in the outgoing government led by the non-partisan prime minister Tihomir Orešković. Most set out seven conditions for entering into a government with any party and Plenković began discussions lasting several weeks with Most representatives. Plenković also held talks with the 8 representatives of national minorities, as HDZ and Most would not have a majority without their support. Over the next few weeks several other parties, including the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), proceeded to give their support to a government led by Plenković. However, it is widely viewed that HSS chairman Krešo Beljak agreed to give Plenković the support of his five party's MPs and "100 days of peace before turning into the sharpest opposition" in order to calm tensions resulting from a dispute between him and HSS MEP Marijana Petir, who had called for HSS to enter the centre-right government to be formed by HDZ and Most instead of remaining a part of the People's Coalition as an opposition party. The dispute escalated and Beljak proceeded to suspend over 100 members of the party, including Petir. Plenković further received the support of the Bandić Milan 365 party, one out of two Croatian Party of Pensioners MPs and one former member of Human Blockade. He formally received 91 signatures of support from MPs on 10 October 2016, far more than the necessary 76, and presented them to President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, who named him prime minister-designate and gave him thirty days time until 9 November to form a government.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Plenković was confirmed as the 12th Prime Minister of Croatia along with his cabinet of 20 ministers by a vote of 91 in favor, 45 against and 3 abstentions among 151 members of Parliament on 19 October 2016. His government received the support of MPs belonging to the HDZ-HSLS-HDS coalition, Bridge of Independent Lists, Bandić Milan 365, HSS, HDSSB, SDSS and 5 representatives of other national minorities. Plenković presented his cabinet as "the government that knows how to bring about changes", and stressed out social dialogue, economic growth stimulation, and a tax reform as the government's priorities.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: On 27 April 2017, Plenković dismissed three of his government ministers representing the Bridge of Independent Lists, the junior partner in the governing coalition, over their reluctance to support a vote of confidence in finance minister Zdravko Marić, whom Most accuses of withholding certain information relating to an ongoing crisis involving one of Croatia's largest firms, Agrokor, where Marić had worked a few years previously. Namely, Most consider that Marić had knowledge of irregularities occurring in the way Agrokor paid its suppliers and had chosen to not reveal that information to protect the firm he formerly worked for. On 28 April, the last remaining government minister from Most, public administration minister Ivan Kovačić, resigned his post and Most announced its withdrawal from the ruling coalition. HDZ started to gather signatures from members of Parliament to push through a vote of no confidence in the speaker of Parliament Božo Petrov, who was also the president of Most at the time. At the same time, HDZ announced that it would seek to form a new governing majority in Parliament, bypassing Most. With Most deciding to withdraw its parliamentary support for the Plenković cabinet, Božo Petrov resigned as speaker on 5 May and was succeeded by Gordan Jandroković of the HDZ. Now without the support of Most, the HDZ-dominated cabinet was left without a clear parliamentary majority and the possibility of yet another early parliamentary election, the third in 18 months, taking place was extremely heightened. However, the government crisis was ultimately resolved on 9 June 2017 when 5 out of 9 members of Parliament representing the Croatian People's Party (HNS) agreed to enter a coalition with the HDZ, while the other four MPs (among them Vesna Pusić and Anka Mrak Taritaš) decided to leave HNS and form a new political party called the Civic Liberal Alliance (GLAS). The Plenković cabinet underwent a reshuffle, with HNS being given the portfolios of Science and Education and Construction and Spatial Planning.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Since May 2017, Plenković has been constantly named the most negative politician in Croatia by monthly polls conducted by the Promocija Plus and IPSOS PULS agencies. However, by December 2017, he was also named the third most popular politician, while his party enjoyed considerable rating advantage over all other political parties in Croatia.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Following a deal with the HNS, the government introduced an education reform starting with a pilot program in the 2018/2019 school year.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: The renewable energy tariff was raised in August 2017 to stimulate the production of renewable energy, which is the source of 28% of the country's energy demand. The move also resulted in increased electricity bills.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: The Croatian Parliament ratified the convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, known as the Istanbul Convention, in April 2018. Though there was a split within the HDZ over ratifying the convention, the Plenković cabinet unanimously supported it.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: In October 2018, the government introduced a pension reform bill that would penalise early retirement and set the retirement age to 67 starting from 2033, instead of 2038 as defined by a 2014 law. The move sparked large protests from trade unions. They launched a referendum initiative against the law and collected more than 700,000 signatures. Instead of calling a referendum, the government backed down and lowered the retirement age back to 65.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: A nationwide strike of teachers in primary and secondary schools started on 10 October 2019, following the government’s refusal to increase their wages by 6%. The strike halted all classes in schools. The strike lasted until 2 December, when teachers’ unions and the government agreed to a gradual increase in wages of 6% by 2021.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: The new government introduced a tax reform starting from January 2017 and set the reduction of the budget deficit as the main goal of the 2017 budget. The initial tax reform proposal from Zdravko Marić, the finance minister who retained his position from the previous cabinet, caused some disagreements between the two member-parties of the ruling coalition, the HDZ and the Most. The modified proposal included a reduction in corporate income tax from 20% to 18% for large companies and 12% for small and mid-level companies. Personal income tax rates were changed from 12%, 25% and 40% into tax rates of 24% and 36%. Discontent over the tax reform was voiced by trade unions, as well as in the tourism sector because the VAT for their services was raised from 13% to 25%.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: On 30 October 2017, Plenković declared that Croatia plans to join the Eurozone within seven to eight years. In December 2017, the government increased the minimum wage by 5% for 2018 and adopted several new laws, including the allocation of the income tax revenue entirely to local administrative units and lower payments to the state when purchasing used cars. The introduction of a property tax, which received a negative public reaction, was postponed indefinitely.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Croatia's general government recorded a surplus of €424.5 million in 2017 or 0.9% of GDP, attributed to an increase in income from taxes related to manufacturing and imports, and a reduction in interest payments. The debt-to-GDP ratio decreased by 2.7 percentage points from 2016, to 77.5%, and GDP growth was 2.9%. Negative migration and population trends continued in 2017, with a record high number of emigrants since joining the EU. The Croatian Employers' Association said that reforms stalled following the income tax cuts in early 2017, causing a slower economic growth. A March 2018 report by the European Commission also stressed out the lack of structural reforms, particularly in fiscal policy, the social benefits system, and the pension system.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: All three major credit rating agencies improved Croatia's rating in 2018. The International Monetary Fund commended the government for positive macroeconomic indicators and called for a "sizable restructuring of public administration".


title: Andrej Plenković

text: After attending his first European Council summit on 20 October 2016, in an address to the Croatian Parliament, Plenković said that "there is no need for Croatia to build border fences". Plenković's first official foreign visit was to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina on 28 October 2016. Plenković said that his government will support Bosnia and Herzegovina on its path towards membership in the European Union. Discussions were held regarding the political rights of Bosnian Croats, mostly in terms of bringing their political rights to the level enjoyed by Bosniaks and Bosnian Serbs. In November, he visited Ukraine where he met with Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman. Plenković expressed support for a peaceful reintegration of the areas of Ukraine under the control of pro-Russian rebels. The two governments established a working group to share Croatia's experience with the reintegration of eastern Slavonia in 1998. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs commented that the visit "raised serious concerns in Russia".


title: Andrej Plenković

text: On 29 June 2017, the Arbitral Tribunal on the border dispute between Slovenia and Croatia ruled in favour of Slovenia regarding its access to international waters. The decision was welcomed by the Slovenian Government, and dismissed by the Croatian Government as not legally binding. Croatia withdrew from the arbitration process in 2015, during the premiership of Zoran Milanović, after a leaked tape showed the Slovenian judge in the case exchanging confidential information with Slovenian officials. Plenković called for bilateral talks to resolve the issue, while Slovenia insists on the implementation of the arbitral decision. The European Commission announced that it will remain neutral in the border dispute.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: After the final verdict in the war crimes trial against former high-ranking officials of Herzeg-Bosnia, followed by the suicide of Slobodan Praljak, Plenković stated that Praljak's suicide illustrated the "deep moral injustice towards the six Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croatian people". The ICTY prosecutors and its president criticized the statements from Croatian officials and called on them to accept the court's findings. Plenković later said that his country accepted the verdict and expressed "regrets and condolences very clearly for all the victims of the crimes mentioned in this verdict".


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Plenković endorsed the incumbent Dragan Čović in the 2018 election for the Croat member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Following the election of Željko Komšić as the Croat member of the presidency, largely due to votes in majority Bosniak areas, Plenković criticized Komšić's victory: "We are again in a situation where members of one constituent people ... are electing a representative of another, the Croat people". Komšić responded that the Croatian Government is undermining Bosnia and Herzegovina and its sovereignty. Komšić also announced that Bosnia and Herzegovina might sue Croatia over the construction of the Pelješac Bridge. The construction of the bridge, paid largery with EU funding, began on 30 July 2018 to connect Croatia's territory and was supported by Komšić's main election opponent Dragan Čović.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Plenković affirmed the government's support for the Global Compact for Migration. Interior Minister Davor Božinović represented Croatia at the adoption of the agreement, after President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović announced she would not participate at the conference.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Along with Latvian Prime Minister Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš, Plenković represented the governments ruled by the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) in the negotiations on new appointments to top posts in the European Union following the 2019 European elections, including the European Council, European Commission and the European Central Bank.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Commentators mostly described Plenković's political positions as pro-European and moderate, and his election as an exception in a eurosceptic trend in Europe. Some observers described his positions as moderate conservative, or simply as conservative.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Plenković described his policy as "devoid of extremes and populism", and his political views as centre-right.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Plenković is married to lawyer Ana Maslać, with whom he has a son Mario. In early November 2016, it was reported that the couple are expecting their second child, a daughter Mila. In late March 2022, the couple welcomed their third child, a son Ivan.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: Besides his native Croatian, Plenković speaks English, French and Italian fluently, and is conversant in German.


title: Andrej Plenković

text: He lived mainly in Slovenia, as well as in Zagreb, Croatia. He worked as a university professor at the University of Maribor and at Alma Mater Europaea, where he was the head of Strategic communication management doctoral study program.


title: Izabel Goulart

text: Maria Izabel Goulart Dourado (born 23 October 1984) is a Brazilian fashion model. She is best known as having been one of the Victoria's Secret Angels from 2005 to 2008 and for her work with "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue" and Armani Exchange.


title: Izabel Goulart

text: Goulart was born in São Carlos, São Paulo. She is of Portuguese and Italian descent and has four brothers and one sister. Goulart once said, "the hardest part about being [a Victoria's Secret Angel] is I spend time away from my mom's food and away from my home with my five siblings". School was a particularly rough time for Goulart, as she was made fun of for her skinny build and was called names such as "giraffe".


title: Izabel Goulart

text: While shopping for groceries with her mother at age 14, a hairstylist suggested that she should become a model. She moved to the state capital, São Paulo, and started modeling, moving to France shortly afterwards to develop her career. Goulart returned to São Paulo in August 2001 (aged 16), where she joined former agency Success. Her career in the Brazilian fashion world was launched by Ney Alves, currently the director of Major Models Brazil.


title: Izabel Goulart

text: During Goulart's first ever fashion show appearance, she experienced a wardrobe malfunction when her top fell open. The incident made many Brazilian newspapers. She eventually put this event behind her and returned to the runway to model collections for A-list designers such as Alberta Ferretti, Bill Blass, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Isabel Marant, Givenchy, Altuzarra, Oscar de la Renta, Valentino, Balmain, Jil Sander, Chanel, Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren, Emilio Pucci, Dolce and Gabbana, Emanuel Ungaro, Loewe, Roberto Cavalli and Stella McCartney, among others.


title: Izabel Goulart

text: In 2005, Goulart appeared on the covers of the April edition of "Marie Claire" France and, in December, "Vogue" Brazil. She first appeared in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in 2005, the year she was contracted as an Angel. She received a star on the Hollywood "Walk of Fame" prior to the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2007. Although she is no longer an Angel, Goulart walked in every Victoria's Secret Fashion Show from 2005 to 2016. In 2008, she replaced fellow Victoria's Secret Angel Alessandra Ambrosio as the face of A/X Armani Exchange and she was featured in three seasonal print campaigns for the label.


title: Izabel Goulart

text: In 2010, Goulart appeared on the cover of the October issue for "GQ Mexico", "Vogue" Brasil and appeared in a campaign for Avon. In the same year, she was voted the best international top model by the magazine "Glamour" Mexico.


title: Izabel Goulart

text: In 2011, Goulart appeared in the "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue". She can be seen in the spring/summer 2011 campaign for Dolce and Gabbana, the Pre-Fall 2011 campaign for Givenchy, Yamamay's 10th Anniversary Collection and the Fall/Winter 2011 campaign for DKNY Jeans. The same year, she ranked number 100 in "FHM" magazine's list of the 100 Sexiest Women In The World. She also appeared on one of the four covers of Elle Brasil.


title: Izabel Goulart

text: In February 2012, she was photographed by Dusan Reljin for "Vogue" Spain, and later that year by Mario Testino, again for "Vogue" Spain, in an editorial entitled "Las majas", which also featured Alessandra Ambrosio, Doutzen Kroes, Miranda Kerr and Isabeli Fontana. In November, she was recognised as "Fashion Personality of the Year" by the Brazilian magazine "Isto é Gente", and she also appeared on the cover of "Glamour" Brazil in December 2012.


title: Izabel Goulart

text: In February 2013 she appeared on the cover of one of the four issues of "Vogue" Brasil, together with Bette Franke, Magdalena Frackowiak, and Mirte Maas.


title: Izabel Goulart

text: In mid-2013, she became the face of MAC Cosmetics Tropical Taboo range and she was photographed by Zee Nunes for the October edition of "Vogue" Brazil in an editorial entitled "Olympiada Fashion". Later that year she appeared in a campaign for Agua De Coco promoting its spring/summer 2014 beachwear collection. She also appeared on the cover of "GQ" Portugal in December 2013, after she was elected as the magazine's "International Woman of the Year" in May of that year.


title: Izabel Goulart

text: In 2007, Goulart won the Cool Magazine's "Toshiba Cool Planet Award" in the category of "Best Model". As a Victoria's Secret Angel, she was chosen as one of "People" magazine's annual "100 Most Beautiful People in the World" in May 2007.


title: Izabel Goulart

text: Goulart, whose youngest brother, Guilherme, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 1, does charitable work, helping hospitals in her native Brazil to raise money to provide free insulin for diabetic children in need. She also has taken an active role with the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) at the University of Miami, a recognized leader in cure-focused research. In 2009, Goulart became the DRI's international ambassador and in that role helps to promote the work of the DRI throughout her travels.


title: Izabel Goulart

text: In 2006, she began dating Brazilian businessman Marcelo H. L. da Costa. The couple were engaged in 2009, but ended their relationship after eight years. In 2015, she began dating German footballer Kevin Trapp, the goalkeeper for Eintracht Frankfurt. On 5 July 2018, they became engaged.


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: The IMSA SportsCar Championship, currently known as the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship under sponsorship, is a sports car racing series based in the United States and Canada and organized by the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA). It is a result of a merger between two existing North American sports car racing series, the American Le Mans Series and Rolex Sports Car Series. At its inception, the name was United SportsCar Championship, which subsequently changed to IMSA SportsCar Championship in 2016. Rolex SA's Tudor brand was the championship's title sponsor in 2014 and 2015, and since 2016 WeatherTech has served as title sponsor.


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: The season begins with its premier race, the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the last weekend of January and ends with the Petit Le Mans, another North American Endurance Cup race, in early October.


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: On September 5, 2012, it was announced that the Grand-Am Road Racing sanctioning body would merge with the Braselton-based International Motor Sports Association, and as such, both bodies would merge their premiere sports car series, the Rolex Sports Car Series and American Le Mans Series respectively, with plans to debut in 2014. On November 20, 2012, the merger committee announced that SME Branding were selected to develop the name, logo and identity of the new series.


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: On January 8, 2013, the two series' announced a preliminary class structure for the new merged series. Grand-Am's Daytona Prototype category and IMSA's P2 would combine into a single-prototype class, with allowances for the unique DeltaWing to also compete in the new class. The Le Mans Prototype Challenge class of single spec cars from the American Le Mans Series would continue as is, although the cars were to switch to Grand-Am's Continental Tires. The GT class of the American Le Mans Series would remain unchanged, while Grand-Am's GT class will form another GT class, and be combined with the American Le Mans GTC category. The only category of cars not represented in the new series is the American Le Mans Series' P1 category.


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: The reveal date for the new series was March 14, 2013 at the Chateau Élan Hotel and Conference Center at Sebring International Raceway, two days before the 12 Hours of Sebring. American Le Mans CEO Scott Atherton announced the new sanctioning body would remain IMSA while Ed Bennett revealed the new titles for the series' five classes. SME Branding Senior Partner Ed O'Hara then announced the new United SportsCar Racing title and logo, a name submitted through a contest won by Louis Satterlee of Florida, a racer in the Florida Karting Championship Series.


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: On August 9, 2013, Fox Sports 1 announced it had signed a TV contract with IMSA to televise the entire USCC season between 2014 and 2018.


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: Later, on September 12, 2013, Tudor was announced as the title sponsor for the series, which was named the United SportsCar Championship. On August 8, 2015, WeatherTech was announced as the new title sponsor for the series, renaming the series to the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, starting with the 2016 season.


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: Beginning with the 2019 season, the series is covered exclusively by NBC Sports in the United States. The NBC broadcast network will air nine hours of coverage annually, with the majority of the coverage airing on NBCSN. CNBC and the NBC Sports app will provide supplemental coverage. Beginning with 2022, USA Network replaced NBCSN as the cable home to the series.


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: Originally based on a Canadian series before being acquired by Grand-Am, the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge (originally known as Grand-Am Cup) is a production-based touring car series. The series is split into two classes known as Grand Sport (GS), intended for large capacity GT-style cars, and Street Tuner (ST), consisting of smaller sedans and coupes, some of which are front-wheel drive. The IMSA Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge until 2013 supported some Rolex Series races but also headlined some of its own dates. This series continued with the United SportsCar Championship after the merger and is somewhat comparable to the old Trans Am Series.


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: There are five classes in the IMSA SportsCar Championship series, featuring three sports prototype categories and two grand tourer classes:


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: Some races may only use selected classes of cars, for example: Any class car may be permitted entry into the Rolex 24, while at the Grand Prix of Long Beach only the Daytona Prototype International (DPI) and GT Le Mans (GTLM) are entered. LMP2 and GTLM classes are compatible with regulations for the 24 Hours of Le Mans.


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: There were three classes formerly used in the IMSA SportsCar Championship series, featuring two sports prototype categories and one grand tourer class:


title: IMSA SportsCar Championship

text: Note: Introduced in 2019 this Cup Trophy is only eligible for GTD Class (GT Daytona) Drivers, Teams & Manufacturers


The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is the second book in the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" comedy science fiction "trilogy" by Douglas Adams, and is a sequel. It was originally published by Pan Books as a paperback in 1980. The book was inspired by the song "Grand Hotel" by British rock band Procol Harum. The book title refers to "Milliways", the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, one of the settings of the book. Elements of it are adapted from the radio series, primarily the Secondary Phase, although Milliways itself, Arthur and Ford's final fate come from Fits the Fifth and Sixth of the Primary Phase.


title: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

text: Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, and Zaphod Beeblebrox leave the planet Magrathea on the "Heart of Gold". A Vogon ship bribed by Gag Halfrunt and a group of psychiatrists, fearful that the discovery of the Ultimate Question will end their profession, intercepts and fires at them. Meanwhile, Arthur gets frustrated that the ship is unable to produce any beverages beyond an undrinkable tea-like liquid. He gives a lengthy description of tea, causing Eddie the Shipboard Computer to become CPU-bound and unable to fight the Vogon ship off. Desperate, Zaphod decides to hold a séance to call up his great-grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth to rescue them. The elder Zaphod scolds his descendant and sends him on a quest to find The Ruler of the Universe in order to solve the political and economic instability plaguing the universe. He transports Zaphod and Marvin to Ursa Minor Beta, the tropical home planet of the offices of the Hitchhiker's Guide's publisher Megadodo Publications, and leaves the others on the depowered ship in a black void.


text: Acting on a thought from the portion of his brain unaffected by his lobotomy, Zaphod goes looking for Zarniwoop, the Guide's lead editor, though his staff insist he has been out on an intergalactic cruise. A man named Roosta takes Zaphod to Zarniwoop's offices. Frogstar fighters arrive and attack the building, towing it to one of their home planets, Frogstar World B, a planet whose society collapsed through an economic process called the "Shoe Event Horizon" which rendered its economy unable to support any enterprises besides shoe stores. The planet eventually became the site of the Total Perspective Vortex, a device that drives those who experience it mad due to showing them their insignificance compared to the infinite universe. Following Roosta's instructions and escaping through Zarniwoop's office's windows, Zaphod is caught by Gargravarr, a disembodied mind undergoing a trial separation from his body, who takes Zaphod to be exposed to the Vortex. However, Zaphod is unfazed by the Vortex, suggesting to a perplexed Gargravarr that it showed Zaphod that he was the most important being in the universe.


text: Left on his own, Zaphod eventually finds a long-abandoned spaceliner whose passengers have been forcibly kept in 900 years of suspended animation by the autopilot after the collapse of their civilization until a new one could develop to load the ship with lemon-scented paper napkins. On the ship he discovers Zarniwoop, who reveals that Zaphod stepped into a computer simulation of the universe when he walked into his office, allowing Zaphod to survive the Vortex since the universe was designed for his benefit. Zarniwoop further reveals that the "Heart of Gold" had been microscopically shrunk and placed in Zaphod's pocket so that they can use it to find the true ruler of the universe, whom Zarniwoop has located. However, Zaphod abandons Zarniwoop, reunites with Ford, Arthur, and Trillian, and escapes to the nearest restaurant. This turns out to be the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, built atop the ruins of Frogstar World B and existing in a time bubble near the end of the universe, which it offers its guests spectacular views of. At the restaurant they meet Ford's old acquaintance Hotblack Desiato, a member of the rock band Disaster Area, which is known for making the loudest sound in the universe and only perform their concerts remotely from an orbiting spaceship. During their dinner, Zaphod receives a telephone call from Marvin, who has been stranded on the planet for billions of years and is now working as a valet in the restaurant's parking lot.


text: Zaphod suggests they leave, trying to steal a sleek, all-black spacecraft next to Hotblack Desiato's limoship. With their ship on complete autopilot and unable to wrest the controls away from it, an agitated Zaphod admits that he still wants to solve the Question to the Ultimate Answer. Marvin abruptly tells them that the question is imprinted in Arthur's brainwaves, but they are distracted before they can ask further. They learn that the ship is actually an unmanned stunt ship for Disaster Area, which is programmed to fall into a local sun to create solar flares in synchronization with the climax of the band's concert. They discover a partially installed emergency teleporter without a guidance system and Zaphod volunteers Marvin to stay behind and operate it so the others can escape. Zaphod and Trillian find themselves back aboard the "Heart of Gold" under Zarniwoop's control, where he is using the ship's Improbability Drive to penetrate the Unprobability Field that is protecting the home planet of the Ruler of the Universe. On an unpopulated planet, they find the Ruler who has no idea he is the ruler, is not convinced of a broader universe outside of his home, and is even skeptical if anything around him exists. While an enraged Zarniwoop tries to reason with the Ruler, Zaphod and Trillian strand him and make their escape in the "Heart of Gold".


text: Meanwhile, Arthur and Ford find themselves aboard Ark Fleet Ship B, which is loaded with 15 million passengers from the planet Golgafrincham and is commanded by an inept captain who is only concerned with taking baths. Although the Golgafrinchans were ostensibly evacuated to escape a planetary disaster, in actuality the disaster was made up by the Golgafrinchans to divest themselves of a useless third of their population, later going extinct from a pandemic caused by dirty telephone receivers after they expelled all telephone sanitizers. The Ark crash-lands into a swamp on an undeveloped planet. Arthur and Ford leave to search for a signal from any passing spaceship, traveling for hundreds of miles around the continent. Along the way the planet's primitive yet friendly hominid-like inhabitants usher them away from their home settlements and leave them fruit. After finding a glacier with a Magrathean inscription honoring Slartibartfast, they realize they are on pre-historic Earth in 2,000,000 BC, that the hominids are Neanderthals, that they have traveled across Europe from the future site of Arthur's home city of Islington in Great Britain to Norway, and that the Golgafrinchans are the ancestors of the modern human race.


text: They return to the Golgafrinchans, only to find that they have been too preoccupied with trying to form council meetings about documentary-making, fiscal policy, searching for hot springs for the captain's baths, and declaring war on uninhabited continents to bother with trying to discover fire, invent the wheel, or solve pressing issues. Ford tries to warn them that they will be annihilated in 2 million years, but they ignore him. Desperate, Arthur tries to teach the Neanderthals, who have been mysteriously wasting away since the Ark's arrival, through a makeshift Scrabble set. When one of the Neanderthals spells out the word "forty-two" with the letter tiles, Ford realizes that the Neanderthals were part of the matrix of Deep Thought's computer to determine the Ultimate Question and that the Golgafrinchans are interfering with the machination by displacing them. However, they also remember Marvin's claim that the Ultimate Question was embedded in Arthur's mind. Hoping that remnants of the programming exist in Arthur's subconscious, they have Arthur pull out tiles at random from the Scrabble set, only to discover that the Question is "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?" Ford thinks this explains why the universe is a giant "cock-up", and the two resign to make the best of their life on prehistoric Earth. They go on a date with two Golgafrinchan women, and Arthur throws his copy of the "Hitchhiker's Guide" in the river.


text: There have been three audiobook recordings of the novel. The first was an abridged edition, recorded in 1981 by Stephen Moore, best known for playing the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in the radio series, LP adaptations, and in the TV series. In 1990, Adams himself recorded an unabridged edition, later re-released by New Millennium Audio in the United States and available from BBC Audiobooks in the United Kingdom. In 2006, actor Martin Freeman, who had played Arthur Dent in the 2005 movie, recorded a new unabridged edition of the audiobook.


text: Greg Costikyan reviewed "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" in "Ares Magazine" #13 and commented that ""The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" tries to do much of the same thing, but some of the zest seems to be missing; the ideas are fewer, the happenings less dramatic. The author seems sometimes to be straining for the same effects he effortlessly achieved in "Hitchhiker"."


title: Kepler-442b

text: Kepler-442b (also known by its Kepler object of interest designation "KOI-4742.01") is a confirmed near-Earth-sized exoplanet, likely rocky, orbiting within the habitable zone of the K-type main-sequence star Kepler-442, about from Earth in the constellation of Lyra.


title: Kepler-442b

text: The planet orbits its host star at a distance of about with an orbital period of roughly 112.3 days. It has a mass of around 2.3 and has a radius of about 1.34 times that of Earth. It is one of the more promising candidates for potential habitability, as its parent star is at least 40% less massive than the Sun – thus, it can have a lifespan of about 30 billion years or so.


title: Kepler-442b

text: The planet was discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft using the transit method, in which it measures the dimming effect that a planet causes as it crosses in front of its star. NASA announced the confirmation of the exoplanet on 6 January 2015.


title: Kepler-442b

text: Kepler-442b is a super-Earth, an exoplanet with a mass and radius bigger than Earth's but smaller than the ice giants Uranus and Neptune. It has an equilibrium temperature of . It has a radius of 1.34 . Because of its radius, it is likely to be a rocky planet with a solid surface. The mass of the exoplanet is estimated to be 2.36 . The surface gravity on Kepler-442b would be 30% stronger than Earth, assuming a rocky composition similar to that of Earth.


title: Kepler-442b

text: The planet orbits a (K-type) star named Kepler-442. The star has a mass of 0.61 and a radius of 0.60 . It has a temperature of and is around 2.9 billion years old, with some uncertainty. In comparison, the Sun is 4.6 billion years old and has a temperature of . The star is somewhat metal-poor, with a metallicity (Fe/H) of −0.37, or 43% of the solar amount. Its luminosity () is 12% that of the Sun.


title: Kepler-442b

text: The star's apparent magnitude, or how bright it appears from Earth's perspective, is 14.76. Therefore, it is too dim to be seen with the naked eye.


title: Kepler-442b

text: Kepler-442b orbits its host star with an orbital period of 112 days. It has an orbital radius of about (slightly larger than the distance of Mercury from the Sun, which is approximately ). It receives about 70% of Earth's sunlight from the Sun.


title: Kepler-442b

text: The planet is in the habitable zone of its star, a region where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. It is one of the most Earth-like planets yet found in size and temperature. It is just outside the zone (around ) in which tidal forces from its host star would be enough to fully tidally lock it. As of July 2018, Kepler-442b was considered the most habitable non-tidally-locked exoplanet discovered.


title: Kepler-442b

text: K-type main-sequence stars are smaller than the Sun and live longer, remaining on the main sequence for 18 to 34 billion years compared to the Sun's estimated lifespan of 10 billion years. Despite these properties, the small M-type and K-type stars can threaten life. Because of their high stellar activity at the beginning of their lives, they emit strong solar winds. The duration of this period is inversely linked to the size of the star. However, because of the uncertainty of the age of Kepler-442, it is likely it may have passed this stage, making Kepler-442b potentially more suitable for habitability.


title: Kepler-442b

text: Because Kepler-442b is closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun, the planet will probably rotate much more slowly than Earth; its day could be weeks or months long (see Tidal effects on rotation rate, axial tilt, and orbit). This is reflected in its orbital distance, just outside of the point where the tidal interactions from its star would be strong enough to tidally lock it. Kepler-442b's axial tilt (obliquity) is likely tiny, in which case it would not have tilt-induced seasons as Earth and Mars do. Its orbit is probably close to circular (eccentricity 0.04), so it will also lack eccentricity-induced seasonal changes like Mars.


title: Kepler-442b

text: One review essay in 2015 concluded that Kepler-442b, Kepler-186f, and Kepler-62f were likely the best candidates for being potentially habitable planets. Also, according to an index developed in 2015, Kepler-442b is even more habitable than Earth. Going by this index, Earth has a rating of 0.829, but Kepler-442b has a rating of 0.836. This is uncertain because Kepler-442b's atmosphere and surface are unknown, but this would be possible.


title: Kepler-442b

text: In 2009, NASA's Kepler spacecraft was completing observing stars on its photometer, the instrument it uses to detect transit events when a planet crosses in front of and dims its host star for a brief and roughly regular period. In this last test, Kepler observed 50,000 stars in the Kepler Input Catalog, including Kepler-442; the telescope sent the preliminary light curves to the Kepler science team for analysis, who chose prominent planetary companions from the bunch for follow-up at observatories. Observations for the potential exoplanet candidates took place between 13 May 2009 and 17 March 2012. After observing the respective transits, which for Kepler-442b occurred roughly every 113 days (its orbital period), the scientists eventually concluded that a planetary body was responsible for the periodic 113-day transits. The discovery, along with the unique planetary systems of the stars Kepler-438 and Kepler-440, was announced on 6 January 2015.


title: Kepler-442b

text: At nearly distant, Kepler-442b is too remote and its star too far for current telescopes or the next generation of planned telescopes to determine its mass or whether it has an atmosphere. The Kepler spacecraft focused on a single small region of the sky. Still, next-generation planet-hunting space telescopes, such as TESS and CHEOPS, will examine nearby stars throughout the sky.


title: Kepler-442b

text: The James Webb Space Telescope and future large ground-based telescopes can then study nearby stars with planets to analyze atmospheres, determine masses, and infer compositions. Additionally, the Square Kilometer Array would significantly improve radio observations over the Arecibo Observatory and Green Bank Telescope.


title: Riga International Airport

text: Riga International Airport (; ) is the international airport of Riga, the capital of Latvia, and the largest airport in the Baltic states with direct flights to 76 destinations as of November 2019. It serves as a hub for airBaltic, SmartLynx Airlines and RAF-Avia, and as one of the base airports for Wizz Air. The Latvian national carrier airBaltic is the largest carrier that serves the airport, followed by Ryanair. The airport is located in the Mārupe Municipality west of Riga, approximately 10 km from its city centre.


title: Riga International Airport

text: The airport was built in 1973 as an alternative to Spilve Airport, which had become outdated. It is a state-owned joint-stock company, with the owner of all shares being the government of Latvia. The holder of the state capital share is Latvia's Ministry of Transport.


title: Riga International Airport

text: Renovation and modernization of the airport was completed in 2001, coinciding with the 800th anniversary of the founding of the city. In 2006 and 2016, the new north terminal extensions were opened. A maintenance, repair and overhaul facility was opened in the autumn of 2006, to be run as a joint venture between two local companies: Concors and SR-Technik. In 2010, the first dedicated business aviation terminal of the Baltics opened at the airport.


title: Riga International Airport

text: Riga had nonstop flights to the United States between 2005 and 2017. Uzbekistan Airways employed Boeing 767s on a Tashkent-New York City service via the Latvian capital. However, once the carrier acquired Boeing 787s and began to fly directly from Uzbekistan to America, it decided to eliminate the Riga-New York City sector.


title: Riga International Airport

text: The airport features a single, two-storey passenger terminal building which has been expanded and upgraded to modern standards several times in recent years. The landside consists of a main hall containing a single row of 36 check-in counters as well as some shops and the security area on the upper floor while the arrivals area, baggage reclaim and some service counters are located on the ground floor below. The airside features departure areas B and C split up into two piers with the former original, smaller boarding area "A" now only used for some arrivals. Both piers feature overall eight stands with jetbridges plus four walk-boarding stands from the upper level as well as several more gates for bus boarding on their ground levels. The B pier is used for Schengen Area departures and arrivals, while the C pier is for non-Schengen Area departures and arrivals. The terminal features outlets by Narvesen, Costa Coffee, and TGI Fridays amongst others, as well as a single airport lounge.


title: Riga International Airport

text: The airport has a single runway in directions "18/36", which is 3,200 m in length and equipped with ILS CAT II.


title: Riga International Airport

text: Both airBaltic and the Latvian Civil Aviation Agency maintain their head offices at Riga International Airport.


title: Riga International Airport

text: Riga Airport is accessible by bus line 22 and mini bus line 322, operated by Rīgas Satiksme, which runs between Riga city centre and the airport. Moreover, there are international bus connections from the airport to cities in Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Russia and Belarus.


title: Riga International Airport

text: Riga Airport can be reached by car via the highway P133 which connects the airport with European route E22. The airport has 3 car parking areas, with ~1500 parking spaces, offering both short- and long-term parking.


title: Riga International Airport

text: An airport train station is included as part of the Rail Baltica project. A contract for construction design was signed on 20 March 2018.


title: Predator: Hunting Grounds

text: Predator: Hunting Grounds is a multiplayer video game developed by IllFonic and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows. It is part of the "Predator" franchise, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising his role as Alan "Dutch" Schafer ("Predator"), Alice Braga reprising her role as Isabelle ("Predators"), and Jake Busey reprising his role as Sean Keyes ("The Predator").


title: Predator: Hunting Grounds

text: Set in the remote jungles of the world, it tasks a team of four elite operatives with completing paramilitary operations before a single Predator can find and eliminate them. The game was released on April 24, 2020.


title: Predator: Hunting Grounds

text: "Predator: Hunting Grounds" was the first "Predator" video game in a decade, following the "Predators"-themed mobile games from Angry Mob and Gameloft released in 2010, and the first full title for consoles since 2005's "" (although several other games featuring the Yautja were released in the interim).


title: Predator: Hunting Grounds

text: "Predator: Hunting Grounds" is an asymmetrical multiplayer video game taking place in remote jungle locations. One player controls the Predator, while 4 others play as a team of special operations operators known as "Fireteam Voodoo" on a mission to collect intel or eliminate a drug lord until being forced to fight the Predator. The chief element is to either avoid being hunted by the Predator or capture and kill the Predator who in turn will be controlled by the player.


title: Predator: Hunting Grounds

text: Objectives for Fireteam Voodoo include neutralizing computer-controlled NPC enemies, sabotaging their shipments and retrieving important VIP targets from them, as well as other special tasks. The game's maps offer various tactical opportunities for Fireteam players, from working together as a cohesive unit to splitting their force to reach their objectives. While this element of the game plays out, another player takes control of the Predator and tries to wipe out all of the special forces team members. If the human players manage to kill the Predator, their operation will be taken over by the Other Worldly Life Forms Program (OWLF) and they will be instructed to guard the body against hostiles until they can be extracted.


title: Predator: Hunting Grounds

text: The game includes a lootcrate system known a "Field Lockers", which are unlocked during gameplay and grant various appearance and weapon customization options for both Fireteam and Predator characters, including the flintlock pistol of Raphael Adolini. Field Lockers are randomized and can contain duplicate items, in which case the duplicate item will be converted to additional XP. As well as being a reward for increasing in rank, Field Lockers can also be purchased, either using "Veritanium", a form of in-game currency that can be earned through gameplay or found hidden within the game map. Items may also be purchased directly for Veritanium, although some of the rarer items can be many times more expensive than a single Field Locker.


title: Predator: Hunting Grounds

text: "Predator: Hunting Grounds" was announced at the State of Play presentation in May 2019. It was noted that the game will allow cross-play between Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4. The beta version of the game was released on 27 March 2020 which was available until 29 March, with the full game released on 24 April 2020.


title: Predator: Hunting Grounds

text: "Predator: Hunting Grounds" received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.


title: Predator: Hunting Grounds

text: Tomas Franzese of Inverse reviewed the beta calling it the "worst Sony game of this generation", that the "game feels like a mess", visually outdated and unpolished. Jonathon Dornbush of IGN, who also played the trial weekend, noted the excessive wait times to get in to a game and said he hopes that IllFonic "can find a better balance to making the other objectives a bit more interesting".


title: Predator: Hunting Grounds

text: The PlayStation 4 version of "Predator: Hunting Grounds" was the tenth-bestselling retail game during its first week of release in Japan, selling 9,172 copies.


title: Percent sign

text: The percent sign (sometimes per cent sign in British English) is the symbol used to indicate a percentage, a number or ratio as a fraction of 100. Related signs include the permille (per thousand) sign and the permyriad (per ten thousand) sign (also known as a basis point), which indicate that a number is divided by one thousand or ten thousand, respectively. Higher proportions use parts-per notation.


title: Percent sign

text: English style guides prescribe writing the percent sign following the number without any space between (e.g. 50%). However, the International System of Units and ISO 31-0 standard prescribe a space between the number and percent sign, in line with the general practice of using a non-breaking space between a numerical value and its corresponding unit of measurement.


title: Percent sign

text: It is often recommended that the percent sign only be used in tables and other places with space restrictions. In running text, it should be spelled out as "percent" or "per cent" (often in newspapers). For example, not "Sales increased by 24% over 2006" but "Sales increased by 24 percent over 2006".


title: Percent sign

text: Prior to 1425 there is no known evidence of a special symbol being used for percentage. The Italian term "per cento", "for a hundred", was used as well as several different abbreviations (e.g. "per 100", "p 100", "p cento", etc.). Examples of this can be seen in the 1339 arithmetic text (author unknown) depicted below. The letter p with its descender crossed by a horizontal or diagonal strike (ꝑ in Unicode) conventionally stood for per, por, par, or pur in Medieval and Renaissance palaeography.


title: Percent sign

text: At some point a scribe of some sort used the abbreviation "pc" with a tiny loop or circle (depicting the ending "-o" used in Italian ordinals, as in , , etc.; it is analogous to the English "-th" as in "25th"). This appears in some additional pages of a 1425 text which were probably added around 1435. This is shown below (source, "Rara Arithmetica" p. 440).


title: Percent sign

text: The "pc" with a loop eventually evolved into a horizontal fraction sign by 1650 (see below for an example in a 1684 text) and thereafter lost the "per".


title: Percent sign

text: Names for the percent sign include percent sign (in ITU-T), mod, grapes (in hacker jargon) , and the humorous double-oh-seven (in INTERCAL).


title: Percent sign

text: In computing, the percent character is also used for the modulo operation in programming languages that derive their syntax from the C programming language, which in turn acquired this usage from the earlier B.


title: Percent sign

text: In the textual representation of URIs, a % immediately followed by a 2-digit hexadecimal number denotes an octet specifying (part of) a character that might otherwise not be allowed in URIs (see percent-encoding).


title: Percent sign

text: In SQL, the percent sign is a wildcard character in "LIKE" expressions, for example codice_3 will fetch all records whose names start with "".


title: Percent sign

text: In TeX (and therefore also in LaTeX) and PostScript, and in GNU Octave and MATLAB, a % denotes a line comment.


title: Percent sign

text: In many programming languages' string formatting operations (performed by functions such as codice_4 and codice_5), the percent sign denotes parts of the template string that will be replaced with arguments. (See printf format string.) In Python and Ruby the percent sign is also used as the string formatting operator.


title: Percent sign

text: In the command processors COMMAND.COM (DOS) and CMD.EXE (OS/2 and Windows), %1, %2... stand for the first, second... parameters of a batch file. %0 stands for the specification of the batch file itself as typed on the command line. The % sign is also used similarly in the FOR command.


title: Percent sign

text: Because these uses give the percent sign special meaning, the sequence %% (two percent signs) is used to represent a literal percent sign, so that:


title: Percent sign

text: In linguistics, the percent sign is prepended to an example string to show that it is judged well-formed by some speakers and ill-formed by others. This may be due to differences in dialect or even individual idiolects. This is similar to the asterisk to mark ill-formed or reconstructed strings, the question mark to mark strings where well-formedness is unclear, and the number sign to mark strings that are syntactically well-formed but semantically nonsensical.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Paxos is a family of protocols for solving consensus in a network of unreliable or fallible processors.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Consensus is the process of agreeing on one result among a group of participants. This problem becomes difficult when the participants or their communications may experience failures.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Consensus protocols are the basis for the state machine replication approach to distributed computing, as suggested by Leslie Lamport and surveyed by Fred Schneider. State machine replication is a technique for converting an algorithm into a fault-tolerant, distributed implementation. Ad-hoc techniques may leave important cases of failures unresolved. The principled approach proposed by Lamport et al. ensures all cases are handled safely.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: The Paxos protocol was first submitted in 1989 and named after a fictional legislative consensus system used on the Paxos island in Greece, where Lamport wrote that the parliament had to function "even though legislators continually wandered in and out of the parliamentary Chamber". It was later published as a journal article in 1998.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: The Paxos family of protocols includes a spectrum of trade-offs between the number of processors, number of message delays before learning the agreed value, the activity level of individual participants, number of messages sent, and types of failures. Although no deterministic fault-tolerant consensus protocol can guarantee progress in an asynchronous network (a result proved in a paper by Fischer, Lynch and Paterson), Paxos guarantees safety (consistency), and the conditions that could prevent it from making progress are difficult to provoke.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Paxos is usually used where durability is required (for example, to replicate a file or a database), in which the amount of durable state could be large. The protocol attempts to make progress even during periods when some bounded number of replicas are unresponsive. There is also a mechanism to drop a permanently failed replica or to add a new replica.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: The topic predates the protocol. In 1988, Lynch, Dwork and Stockmeyer had demonstrated the solvability of consensus in a broad family of "partially synchronous" systems. Paxos has strong similarities to a protocol used for agreement in "viewstamped replication", first published by Oki and Liskov in 1988, in the context of distributed transactions. Notwithstanding this prior work, Paxos offered a particularly elegant formalism, and included one of the earliest proofs of safety for a fault-tolerant distributed consensus protocol.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Reconfigurable state machines have strong ties to prior work on reliable group multicast protocols that support dynamic group membership, for example Birman's work in 1985 and 1987 on the virtually synchronous gbcast protocol. However, gbcast is unusual in supporting durability and addressing partitioning failures.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Most reliable multicast protocols lack these properties, which are required for implementations of the state machine replication model.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Paxos protocols are members of a theoretical class of solutions to a problem formalized as uniform agreement with crash failures.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Lower bounds for this problem have been proved by Keidar and Shraer. Derecho, a C++ software library for cloud-scale state machine replication, offers a Paxos protocol that has been integrated with self-managed virtually synchronous membership. This protocol matches the Keidar and Shraer optimality bounds, and maps efficiently to modern remote DMA (RDMA) datacenter hardware (but uses TCP if RDMA is not available).


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In order to simplify the presentation of Paxos, the following assumptions and definitions are made explicit. Techniques to broaden the applicability are known in the literature, and are not covered in this article.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In general, a consensus algorithm can make progress using formula_1 processors, despite the simultaneous failure of any formula_2 processors: in other words, the number of non-faulty processes must be strictly greater than the number of faulty processes. However, using reconfiguration, a protocol may be employed which survives any number of total failures as long as no more than F fail simultaneously. For Paxos protocols, these reconfigurations can be handled as separate "configurations".


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Paxos describes the actions of the processors by their roles in the protocol: client, acceptor, proposer, learner, and leader. In typical implementations, a single processor may play one or more roles at the same time. This does not affect the correctness of the protocol—it is usual to coalesce roles to improve the latency and/or number of messages in the protocol.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Quorums express the safety (or consistency) properties of Paxos by ensuring at least some surviving processor retains knowledge of the results.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Quorums are defined as subsets of the set of Acceptors such that any two Quorums share at least one member. Typically, a Quorum is any majority of participating Acceptors. For example, given the set of Acceptors {A,B,C,D}, a majority Quorum would be any three Acceptors: {A,B,C}, {A,C,D}, {A,B,D}, {B,C,D}. More generally, arbitrary positive weights can be assigned to Acceptors; in that case, a Quorum can be defined as any subset of Acceptors with the summary weight greater than half of the total weight of all Acceptors.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Each attempt to define an agreed value "v" is performed with proposals which may or may not be accepted by Acceptors. Each proposal is uniquely numbered for a given Proposer. So, e.g., each proposal may be of the form "(n, v)", where "n" is the unique identifier of the proposal and "v" is the actual proposed value. The value corresponding to a numbered proposal can be computed as part of running the Paxos protocol, but need not be.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In order to guarantee "safety" (also called "consistency"), Paxos defines three properties and ensures the first two are always held, regardless of the pattern of failures:


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Note that Paxos is "not" guaranteed to terminate, and thus does not have the liveness property. This is supported by the Fischer Lynch Paterson impossibility result (FLP) which states that a consistency protocol can only have two of "safety", "liveness", and "fault tolerance". As Paxos's point is to ensure fault tolerance and it guarantees safety, it cannot also guarantee liveness.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In most deployments of Paxos, each participating process acts in three roles; Proposer, Acceptor and Learner. This reduces the message complexity significantly, without sacrificing correctness:


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: By merging roles, the protocol "collapses" into an efficient client-master-replica style deployment, typical of the database community. The benefit of the Paxos protocols (including implementations with merged roles) is the guarantee of its safety properties.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: This protocol is the most basic of the Paxos family. Each "instance" (or "execution") of the basic Paxos protocol decides on a single output value. The protocol proceeds over several rounds. A successful round has 2 phases: phase 1 (which is divided into parts "a" and "b") and phase 2 (which is divided into parts "a" and "b"). See below the description of the phases. Remember that we assume an asynchronous model, so e.g. a processor may be in one phase while another processor may be in another.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Note that consensus is achieved when a majority of Acceptors accept the same "identifier number" (rather than the same "value"). Because each identifier is unique to a Proposer and only one value may be proposed per identifier, all Acceptors that accept the same identifier thereby accept the same value. These facts result in a few counter-intuitive scenarios that do not impact correctness: Acceptors can accept multiple values, a value may achieve a majority across Acceptors (with different identifiers) only to later be changed, and Acceptors may continue to accept proposals after an identifier has achieved a majority. However, the Paxos protocol guarantees that consensus is permanent and the chosen value is immutable.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Notice that a Proposer in Paxos could propose "I am the leader," (or, for example, "Proposer X is the leader"). Because of the agreement and validity guarantees of Paxos, if accepted by a Quorum, then the Proposer is now known to be the leader to all other nodes. This satisfies the needs of leader election because there is a single node believing it is the leader and a single node known to be the leader at all times.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: The following diagrams represent several cases/situations of the application of the Basic Paxos protocol. Some cases show how the Basic Paxos protocol copes with the failure of certain (redundant) components of the distributed system.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Note that the values returned in the "Promise" message are "null" the first time a proposal is made (since no Acceptor has accepted a value before in this round).


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In the diagram below, there is 1 Client, 1 Proposer, 3 Acceptors (i.e. the Quorum size is 3) and 2 Learners (represented by the 2 vertical lines). This diagram represents the case of a first round, which is successful (i.e. no process in the network fails).


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: The simplest error cases are the failure of an Acceptor (when a Quorum of Acceptors remains alive) and failure of a redundant Learner. In these cases, the protocol requires no "recovery" (i.e. it still succeeds): no additional rounds or messages are required, as shown below (in the next two diagrams/cases).


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In the following diagram, one of the Acceptors in the Quorum fails, so the Quorum size becomes 2. In this case, the Basic Paxos protocol still succeeds.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In the following case, one of the (redundant) Learners fails, but the Basic Paxos protocol still succeeds.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In this case, a Proposer fails after proposing a value, but before the agreement is reached. Specifically, it fails in the middle of the Accept message, so only one Acceptor of the Quorum receives the value. Meanwhile, a new Leader (a Proposer) is elected (but this is not shown in detail). Note that there are 2 rounds in this case (rounds proceed vertically, from the top to the bottom).


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: The most complex case is when multiple Proposers believe themselves to be Leaders. For instance, the current leader may fail and later recover, but the other Proposers have already re-selected a new leader. The recovered leader has not learned this yet and attempts to begin one round in conflict with the current leader. In the diagram below, 4 unsuccessful rounds are shown, but there could be more (as suggested at the bottom of the diagram).


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In the following case, one Proposer achieves acceptance of value V1 by one Acceptor before failing. A new Proposer prepares the Acceptors that never accepted V1, allowing it to propose V2. Then V2 is accepted by all Acceptors, including the one that initially accepted V1.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In the following case, one Proposer achieves acceptance of value V1 of one Acceptor before failing. A new Proposer prepares the Acceptors that never accepted V1, allowing it to propose V2. This Proposer is able to get one Acceptor to accept V2 before failing. A new Proposer finds a majority that includes the Acceptor that has accepted V1, and must propose it. The Proposer manages to get two Acceptors to accept it before failing. At this point, three Acceptors have accepted V1, but not for the same identifier. Finally, a new Proposer prepares the majority that has not seen the largest accepted identifier. The value associated with the largest identifier in that majority is V2, so it must propose it. This Proposer then gets all Acceptors to accept V2, achieving consensus.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In the following case, one Proposer achieves acceptance of value V1 of two Acceptors before failing. A new Proposer may start another round, but it is now impossible for that proposer to prepare a majority that doesn't include at least one Acceptor that has accepted V1. As such, even though the Proposer doesn't see the existing consensus, the Proposer's only option is to propose the value already agreed upon. New Proposers can continually increase the identifier to restart the process, but the consensus can never be changed.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: A typical deployment of Paxos requires a continuous stream of agreed values acting as commands to a distributed state machine. If each command is the result of a single instance of the Basic Paxos protocol, a significant amount of overhead would result.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: If the leader is relatively stable, phase 1 becomes unnecessary. Thus, it is possible to skip phase 1 for future instances of the protocol with the same leader.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: To achieve this, the round number is included along with each value which is incremented in each round by the same Leader. Multi-Paxos reduces the failure-free message delay (proposal to learning) from 4 delays to 2 delays.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In the following diagram, only one instance (or "execution") of the basic Paxos protocol, with an initial Leader (a Proposer), is shown. Note that a Multi-Paxos consists of several instances of the basic Paxos protocol.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In this case, subsequent instances of the basic Paxos protocol (represented by "I+1") use the same leader, so the phase 1 (of these subsequent instances of the basic Paxos protocol), which consist of the Prepare and Promise sub-phases, is skipped. Note that the Leader should be stable, i.e. it should not crash or change.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: A common deployment of the Multi-Paxos consists in collapsing the role of the Proposers, Acceptors and Learners to "Servers". So, in the end, there are only "Clients" and "Servers".


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: The following diagram represents the first "instance" of a basic Paxos protocol, when the roles of the Proposer, Acceptor and Learner are collapsed to a single role, called the "Server".


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In the subsequent instances of the basic Paxos protocol, with the same leader as in the previous instances of the basic Paxos protocol, the phase 1 can be skipped.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: A number of optimisations can be performed to reduce the number of exchanged messages, to improve the performance of the protocol, etc. A few of these optimisations are reported below.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Cheap Paxos extends Basic Paxos to tolerate F failures with F+1 main processors and F auxiliary processors by dynamically reconfiguring after each failure.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: This reduction in processor requirements comes at the expense of liveness; if too many main processors fail in a short time, the system must halt until the auxiliary processors can reconfigure the system. During stable periods, the auxiliary processors take no part in the protocol.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: "With only two processors p and q, one processor cannot distinguish failure of the other processor from failure of the communication medium. A third processor is needed. However, that third processor does not have to participate in choosing the sequence of commands. It must take action only in case p or q fails, after which it does nothing while either p or q continues to operate the system by itself. The third processor can therefore be a small/slow/cheap one, or a processor primarily devoted to other tasks."


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: An example involving three main acceptors, one auxiliary acceptor and quorum size of three, showing failure of one main processor and subsequent reconfiguration:


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Fast Paxos generalizes Basic Paxos to reduce end-to-end message delays. In Basic Paxos, the message delay from client request to learning is 3 message delays. Fast Paxos allows 2 message delays, but requires that (1) the system be composed of "3f+ 1" acceptors to tolerate up to "f" faults (instead of the classic 2f+1), and (2) the Client to send its request to multiple destinations.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Intuitively, if the leader has no value to propose, then a client could send an "Accept!" message to the Acceptors directly. The Acceptors would respond as in Basic Paxos, sending "Accepted" messages to the leader and every Learner achieving two message delays from Client to Learner.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: If the leader detects a collision, it resolves the collision by sending "Accept!" messages for a new round which are "Accepted" as usual. This coordinated recovery technique requires four message delays from Client to Learner.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: The final optimization occurs when the leader specifies a recovery technique in advance, allowing the Acceptors to perform the collision recovery themselves. Thus, uncoordinated collision recovery can occur in three message delays (and only two message delays if all Learners are also Acceptors).


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Generalized consensus explores the relationship between the operations of the replicated state machine and the consensus protocol that implements it. The main discovery involves optimizations of Paxos when conflicting proposals could be applied in any order. i.e., when the proposed operations are commutative operations for the state machine. In such cases, the conflicting operations can both be accepted, avoiding the delays required for resolving conflicts and re-proposing the rejected operations.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: This concept is further generalized into ever-growing sequences of commutative operations, some of which are known to be stable (and thus may be executed). The protocol tracks these sequences ensuring that all proposed operations of one sequence are stabilized before allowing any operation non-commuting with them to become stable.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In order to illustrate Generalized Paxos, the example below shows a message flow between two concurrently executing clients and a replicated state machine implementing read/write operations over two distinct registers A and B.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Since codice_1 commutes with both codice_2 and codice_3, one possible permutation equivalent to the previous order is the following:


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: The above message flow shows us that Generalized Paxos can leverage operation semantics to avoid collisions when the spontaneous ordering of the network fails. This allows the protocol to be in practice quicker than Fast Paxos. However, when a collision occurs, Generalized Paxos needs two additional round trips to recover. This situation is illustrated with operations WriteB and ReadB in the above schema.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: In the general case, such round trips are unavoidable and come from the fact that multiple commands can be accepted during a round. This makes the protocol more expensive than Paxos when conflicts are frequent. Hopefully two possible refinements of Generalized Paxos are possible to improve recovery time.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Paxos may also be extended to support arbitrary failures of the participants, including lying, fabrication of messages, collusion with other participants, selective non-participation, etc. These types of failures are called Byzantine failures, after the solution popularized by Lamport.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Byzantine Paxos introduced by Castro and Liskov adds an extra message (Verify) which acts to distribute knowledge and verify the actions of the other processors:


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Fast Byzantine Paxos introduced by Martin and Alvisi removes this extra delay, since the client sends commands directly to the Acceptors.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Note the "Accepted" message in Fast Byzantine Paxos is sent to all Acceptors and all Learners, while Fast Paxos sends "Accepted" messages only to Learners):


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: The failure scenario is the same for both protocols; Each Learner waits to receive F+1 identical messages from different Acceptors. If this does not occur, the Acceptors themselves will also be aware of it (since they exchanged each other's messages in the broadcast round), and correct Acceptors will re-broadcast the agreed value:


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: With the emergence of very high speed reliable datacenter networks that support remote DMA (RDMA), there has been substantial interest in optimizing Paxos to leverage hardware offloading, in which the network interface card and network routers provide reliability and network-layer congestion control, freeing the host CPU for other tasks. The Derecho C++ Paxos library is an open-source Paxos implementation that explores this option.


title: Paxos (computer science)

text: Derecho offers both a classic Paxos, with data durability across full shutdown/restart sequences, and vertical Paxos (atomic multicast), for in-memory replication and state-machine synchronization. The Paxos protocols employed by Derecho needed to be adapted to maximize asynchronous data streaming and remove other sources of delay on the leader's critical path. So doing enables Derecho to sustain the full bidirectional RDMA data rate. In contrast, although traditional Paxos protocols can be migrated to an RDMA network by simply mapping the message send operations to native RDMA operations, doing so leaves round-trip delays on the critical path. In high-speed RDMA networks, even small delays can be large enough to prevent utilization of the full potential bandwidth.


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany is a book by American journalist William L. Shirer in which the author chronicles the rise and fall of Nazi Germany from the birth of Adolf Hitler in 1889 to the end of World War II in Europe in 1945. It was first published in 1960 by Simon & Schuster in the United States. It was a bestseller in both the United States and Europe, and a critical success outside Germany; in Germany, criticism of the book stimulated sales. The book was feted by journalists, as reflected by its receipt of the National Book Award for non-fiction,


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: The book is based upon captured Nazi documents, the available diaries of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, of General Franz Halder, and of the Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, evidence and testimony from the Nuremberg trials, British Foreign Office reports, and the author's recollection of his six years in Germany (from 1934 to 1940) as a journalist, reporting on Nazi Germany for newspapers, the United Press International (UPI), and CBS Radio. The work was written and initially published in four parts, but a larger one-volume edition has become more common.


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" is Shirer's comprehensive historical interpretation of the Nazi era, positing that German history logically proceeded from Martin Luther to Adolf Hitler; and that Hitler's ascension to power was an expression of German national character, not of totalitarianism as an ideology that was internationally fashionable in the 1930s. The author summarised his perspective: "[T]he course of German history ... made blind obedience to temporal rulers the highest virtue of Germanic man, and put a premium on servility." This reportorial perspective, the "Sonderweg" (special path or unique course) interpretation of German history, was then common in American scholarship. Yet, despite extensive references, some academic critics consider its interpretation of Nazism to be flawed. The book also includes (identified) speculation, such as the theory that SS Chief Heinrich Müller afterward joined the NKVD of the USSR.


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: The editor for the book was Joseph Barnes, a foreign editor of the "New York Herald Tribune", a former editor of "PM", another New York newspaper, and a former speechwriter for Wendell Willkie. Barnes was an old friend of Shirer. The manuscript was very late and Simon & Schuster threatened to cancel the contract several times; each time Barnes would win a reprieve for Shirer. The original title of the book was "Hitler's Nightmare Empire" with "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" as the sub-title. The title and cover had already been sent out in catalogs when Robert Gottlieb decided that both title and cover had to go. Nina Bourne decided that they should use the sub-title as the title and art director Frank Metz designed the black jacket bearing the swastika. Initially bookstores across the country protested displaying the swastika and threatened not to stock the book. The controversy soon blew over and the cover shipped with the symbol.


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: In the U.S., where it was published on October 17, 1960, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" sold more than one million hardcover copies, two-thirds via the Book of the Month Club, and more than one million paperback copies. It won the 1961 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the Carey–Thomas Award for non-fiction.


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: In 1962, the "Reader's Digest" magazine serialization reached some 12 million additional readers. In a "New York Times Book Review", Hugh Trevor-Roper praised it as "a splendid work of scholarship, objective in method, sound in judgment, inescapable in its conclusions."


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: The book sold well in Britain, France, Italy, and in West Germany, because of its international recognition, bolstered by German editorial attacks.


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: Both its recognition by journalists as a great history book and its popular success surprised Shirer as the publisher commissioned a first printing of merely 12,500 copies. More than fifteen years after the end of the Second World War, neither Shirer nor the publisher anticipated much popular interest in Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) or Nazi Germany (1933–45).


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: Nearly all journalists praised the book. Many scholars acknowledged Shirer's achievement but some condemned it. The harshest criticism came from those who disagreed with the "Sonderweg" or "Luther to Hitler" thesis. In West Germany, the Sonderweg interpretation was almost universally rejected in favor of the view that Nazism was simply one instance of totalitarianism that arose in various countries. Gavriel Rosenfeld asserted in 1994 that "Rise and Fall" was unanimously condemned by German historians in the 1960s, and considered dangerous to relations between America and West Germany, as it might inflame anti-German sentiments in the United States.


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: Klaus Epstein listed what he contended were "four major failings": a crude understanding of German history; a lack of balance, leaving important gaps; no understanding of a modern totalitarian regime; and ignorance of current scholarship of the Nazi period.


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: Elizabeth Wiskemann concluded in a review that the book was "not sufficiently scholarly nor sufficiently well written to satisfy more academic demands... It is too long and cumbersome... Mr Shirer, has, however compiled a manual... which will certainly prove useful."


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: Nearly 36 years after the book's publication, controversial LGBT activist Peter Tatchell criticized the book's treatment of the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. In the philosopher Jon Stewart's anthology "The Hegel Myths and Legends" (1996), "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" is listed as a work that has propagated "myths" about the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: In 2004 the historian Richard J. Evans, author of "The Third Reich Trilogy" (2003–2008), conceded that "Rise and Fall" is a "readable general history of Nazi Germany" and that "there are good reasons for [its] success." Evans contended that Shirer worked outside the academic mainstream and that Shirer's account was not informed by the historical scholarship of the time.


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: A television adaptation was broadcast in the United States on the ABC television network in 1968, consisting of a one-hour episode aired each night over three nights.


title: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

text: The book has been reprinted many times since it was published in 1960. The 1990 edition contained an afterword whereby Shirer gave a brief discourse on how his book was received when it was initially published and the future for Germany during German reunification in the atomic age. The 2011 edition contains a new introduction by Ron Rosenbaum. Current in-print editions are:


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: Cologne Bonn Airport () is the international airport of Germany's fourth-largest city Cologne, and also serves Bonn, former capital of West Germany. With around 12.4 million passengers passing through it in 2017, it is the seventh-largest passenger airport in Germany and the third-largest in terms of cargo operations. By traffic units, which combines cargo and passengers, the airport is in fifth position in Germany. As of March 2015, Cologne Bonn Airport had services to 115 passenger destinations in 35 countries. The airport is named after Cologne native Konrad Adenauer, the first post-war Chancellor of West Germany.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: The airport is located in the district of Porz and is surrounded by the "Wahner Heide" nature reserve. The airport is centrally located in the Cologne Bonn Region southeast of Cologne city centre and northeast of Bonn. Cologne Bonn Airport is one of the country's few 24-hour airports and serves as a hub for Eurowings, FedEx Express and UPS Airlines as well as a focus city for several leisure and low-cost airlines. It is also a host of the German and European space agencies DLR and EAC, part of ESA, which train astronauts there for space explorations.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: Cologne Bonn airport is only south of larger Düsseldorf Airport, the main airport of Rhine-Ruhr, and also competes with Frankfurt Airport, Germany's major international airport, which can be reached from Cologne within 47 minutes by the ICE high-speed train. The airport is jointly owned by the City of Cologne (31.12%), the Federal Republic of Germany (30.94%), the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (30.94%), the City of Bonn (6.06%) and two counties: Rhein-Sieg-Kreis (0.59%) and Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis (0.35%).


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: In 1938 the first airfield was built on site for the German Luftwaffe. After World War II the British military took over and expanded the airport (as RAF Wahn). A 1,866 m runway was built in this period. In 1950 the airport was opened for civilian air traffic to serve both Cologne and West Germany's then new capital, Bonn, superseding the former Cologne Butzweilerhof Airport.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: The first scheduled international route was London-Cologne/Bonn-Berlin operated by BEA, inaugurated on 1 January 1951. A second and third runway was opened in 1954 and 1961 subsequently. In the same year, Lufthansa inaugurated the first scheduled intercontinental service from Cologne/Bonn to New York City.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: The new passenger terminal - which still exists today as Terminal 1 - was inaugurated in 1970. The airport's passenger and freight facilities have been extended substantially during the 1970s. In 1978, the airport handled more than 2 million passengers for the first time.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: Cologne Bonn Airport was chosen by United Parcel Service (UPS) in 1986 as the location for their European hub. TNT Express followed in 1988.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: By 1990, the airport handled 3 million passengers per year. In the mid-1990s the airport started another major expansion program. Several new parking lots, a new control tower and a second terminal were built, and in 2004 a new long-distance railway station connecting the airport with InterCityExpress trains was opened.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: Coinciding with the start of several low-cost airlines in Germany, Cologne/Bonn opened new capacities. This enabled the airport to make competitive offers to the airlines. Consequently, Germanwings and TUIfly started operations from Cologne/Bonn as their hub in the fall of 2002. As a result, the number of passengers in 2003 rose by 43% compared to 2002. These airlines were joined by easyJet in late 2003 and Wizz Air in June 2006.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: Also, the Canadian Forces began to use the airport as a staging area to move troops and supplies in support of humanitarian missions and possible anti-terrorism roles.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: In 2006 the Brazilian airline BRA provided a twice a week connection to Rio de Janeiro–Galeão, which was discontinued in April 2007 due to problems with the airline. Also in 2006 a daily transatlantic flight to New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport by Continental Airlines was established, operating with a Boeing 757-200. This route was discontinued on 4 September 2008 due to a reduction in passenger numbers.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: Low-cost carriers Ryanair and Norwegian Air Shuttle began service to Cologne/Bonn in May 2012. In April 2014 Ryanair announced the opening of their fifth German base at Cologne/Bonn Airport for October 2014. In December 2014, Lufthansa announced it would base Eurowings' new long-haul operations at Cologne Bonn Airport with flights to Florida, Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean to start by the end of 2015. Meanwhile, Condor cancelled their service to Varadero after only one season due to the expected competition. In February 2018, Eurowings announced the relocation of all long-haul operations from Cologne consisting of four Airbus A330 aircraft to Düsseldorf Airport by late October 2018 leaving the airport without any long-haul passenger routes again.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: The older Terminal 1 is a 1970s building that sports large surfaces of bare concrete in its design. It features a u-shaped main building with shops, restaurants, check-in and service facilities and a visitors deck on its roof as well as the star-shaped piers B and C with five aircraft stands each plus a central airside hall between them added in 2004 with joint security-check facilities, more shops and restaurants as well as three additional stands. All ten stands at both piers feature jet bridges while the other three use walk-boarding. Also several bus-boarding stands are available at the apron. Terminal 1 is used by Eurowings, which occupy most of the landside check-in facilities, Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines. Terminal 1 features its own direct connection to the railway station.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: Construction of Terminal 2 began in June 1997, and operations at the terminal commenced on 21 June 2000. It is located to the north of Terminal 1. Both feature separate check-in facilities but are connected through a landside walkway. As part of a plan-approval procedure the airport is currently seeking approval for building an airside connection between both terminals. Terminal 2 is a modern-style rectangular building made out of glass and steel which is equipped with eight stands with jet bridges as well as several stands for bus-boarding. It is used by several airlines such as Ryanair and Iran Air. Terminal 2 is also directly connected to the airports' railway station via the basement level. The terminal hosts an interdenominational prayer room on its base level.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: Cologne Bonn Airport is a major cargo hub in the world mainly due to its function as a hub for FedEx Express and UPS Airlines, which operates 140 flights per week at the airport alone.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: The German Air Force's Executive Transport Wing is based on the south-western side of the airport, adjacent to the Wahn Air Force Barracks. The military part of the airport is also used by the Canadian Forces as an operational support hub.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: Cologne/Bonn Airport station is a 4-track railway station on a loop off the Cologne–Frankfurt high-speed line that connects Cologne Bonn Airport to long-distance trains at least once an hour per direction, most of them ICE services. The station lies directly across both terminals under a large glass roof and features direct connections to the basement of Terminal 2 as well as the check-in area at Terminal 1-C. The S-Bahn line "S 19" to Düren and regional train line "RE 6" to Minden (Westfalen) connect the airport station with via Cologne Main Station. "RB 27 and RE 8" between Mönchengladbach and Koblenz calls at the airport station as well.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: The airport has its own exit (named "Flughafen") on motorway A59 which links it to the city centres of Cologne and Bonn as well as the Ruhrgebiet.


title: Cologne Bonn Airport

text: Local bus lines also connect the airport with Cologne (route "161") and Bonn (route "SB60"). On 28 October 2015, a new coach terminal opened and is used for remote bus services to other German cities and many other European countries.


title: Mozzy

text: Timothy Cornell Patterson (born June 24, 1987), known professionally as Mozzy, is an American rapper from Oak Park, Sacramento, California. He is signed with CMG, Interscope Records, Blackmarket Records.


title: Mozzy

text: He started rapping in 2004 under the name Lil Tim. He eventually changed his stage name to Mozzy in 2012. He received little attention until the release of his 2015 album "Bladadah", which was ranked as the 22nd best rap album of 2015 by "Rolling Stone" and which gave him the "best run" of 2015 according to "Complex" Magazine.


title: Mozzy

text: Mozzy grew up on 4th Avenue, in Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood. His parents were not in his life, so he was raised by his grandmother Brenda Patterson-Usher, a Black Panther party member, who owned several homes throughout Oak Park. Mozzy attended Sacramento High School, but eventually dropped out and earned a GED. He worked various local jobs until he decided to pursue his music career full-time in 2010.