title: Brand management

text: The split between commodities/food services and technology is not a matter of chance: both industrial sectors rely heavily on sales to the individual consumer who must be able to rely on cleanliness/quality or reliability/value, respectively. For this reason, industries such as agricultural (which sells to other companies in the food sector), student loans (which have a relationship with universities/schools rather than the individual loan-taker), and electricity (which is generally a controlled monopoly) have less prominent and less recognized branding. Brand value, moreover, is not simply a fuzzy feeling of "consumer appeal," but an actual quantitative value of good will under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Companies will rigorously defend their brand name, including prosecution of trademark infringement. Occasionally trademarks may differ across countries.


title: Brand management

text: Among the most highly visible and recognizable brands is the script and logo for Coca-Cola products. Despite numerous blind tests indicating that Coke's flavor is not preferred, Coca-Cola continues to enjoy a dominant share of the cola market. Coca-Cola's history is so replete with uncertainty that a folklore has sprung up around the brand, including the (refuted) myth that Coca-Cola invented the red-dressed Santa-Claus which is used to gain market entry in less capitalistic regions in the world such as the former Soviet Union and China, and such brand-management stories as "Coca-Cola's first entry into the Chinese market resulted in their brand being translated as 'bite the wax tadpole'". Brand management science is replete with such stories, including the Chevrolet 'Nova' or "it doesn't go" in Spanish, and proper cultural translation is useful to companies entering new markets.


title: Brand management

text: Modern brand management also intersects with legal issues such as 'genericization of trademark.' The 'Xerox' Company continues to fight heavily in media whenever a reporter or other writer uses 'xerox' as simply a synonym for 'photocopy.' Should usage of 'xerox' be accepted as the standard American English term for 'photocopy,' then Xerox's competitors could successfully argue in court that they are permitted to create 'xerox' machines as well. Yet, in a sense, reaching this stage of market domination is itself a triumph of brand management, in that becoming so dominant typically involves strong profit.


title: Brand management

text: Brand associations refers to a set of information nodes held in memory that form a network of associations and are linked to a key variable. For example, variables such as "brand image, brand personality, brand attitude, brand preference" are nodes within a network that describes the sources of "brand-self congruity." In another example, the variables "brand recognition" and "brand recall" form a linked network that describes the consumer's "brand awareness" or "brand knowledge."


title: Brand management

text: Brand attitude refers to the "buyer's overall evaluation of a brand with respect to its perceived ability to meet a currently relevant motivation".


title: Brand management

text: Brand Trust refers to whether customers expect the brand to do what is right. 81% of consumers from different markets identified this as a deciding factor in their purchases.


title: Brand management

text: Brand awareness refers to the extent to which consumers can identify a brand under various conditions. Marketers typically identify two distinct types of brand awareness; namely "brand recognition" and "brand recall."


title: Brand management

text: Brand Recognition refers to how easily the consumers can associate a brand based on the company's logo, slogan, color scheme, or other visual element, without seeing the company's name.


title: Brand management

text: Brand equity Within the literature, it is possible to identify two distinct definitions of brand equity. Firstly an accounting definition suggests that brand equity is a measure of the financial value of a brand and attempts to measure the net additional inflows as a result of the brand or the value of the intangible asset of the brand. A different definition comes from marketing where brand equity is treated as a measure of the strength of consumers' attachment to a brand; a description of the associations and beliefs the consumer has about the brand.


title: Brand management

text: Brand image refers to an image an organization wants to project; a psychological meaning or meaning profile associated with a brand.


title: Brand management

text: Brand loyalty refers to the feelings of attachment a consumer forms with a brand. It is a tendency of consumers to purchase repeatedly from a specific brand.


title: Brand management

text: Brand personality refers to "the set of human personality traits that are both applicable to and relevant for brands".


title: Brand management

text: Self-brand congruity draws on the notion that consumers prefer brands with personalities that are congruent with their own; consumers tend to form strong attachments with brands where the brand personality matches their own.


title: Brand management

text: Brand preference refers to "consumers' predisposition towards certain brands that summarize their cognitive information processing towards brand stimuli".


title: Brand management

text: Brand orientation refers to "the degree to which the organization values brands and its practices are oriented towards building brand capabilities". It is a deliberate approach to working with brands, both internally and externally. The most important driving force behind this increased interest in strong brands is the accelerating pace of globalization. This has resulted in an ever-tougher competitive situation on many markets. A product's superiority is in itself no longer sufficient to guarantee its success. The fast pace of technological development and the increased speed with which imitations turn up on the market have dramatically shortened product lifecycles. The consequence is that product-related competitive advantages soon risk being transformed into competitive prerequisites. For this reason, increasing numbers of companies are looking for other, more enduring, competitive tools – such as brands.


title: Brand management

text: Brand management aims to create an emotional connection between products, companies and their customers and constituents. Brand managers & Marketing managers may try to control the brand image.


title: Brand management

text: Brand managers create strategies to convert a suspect to prospect, prospect to buyer, buyer to customer, and customer to brand advocates.


title: Brand management

text: "By Appointment to His Royal Majesty" was a registered and limited list of approved brands suitable for supply to the Royal British family.


title: Brand management

text: On the other end of the extreme, luxury and high-end premium brands may create advertisements or sponsor teams merely for the "overall feeling" or goodwill generated. A typical "no-brand" advertisement might simply put up the price (and indeed, brand managers may patrol retail outlets for using their name in discount/clearance sales), whereas on the other end of the extreme a perfume brand might be created that does not show the actual use of the perfume or Breitling may sponsor an aerobatics team purely for the "image" created by such sponsorship. Space travel and brand management for this reason also enjoys a special relationship.


title: Brand management

text: "Nation branding" is a modern term conflating foreign relations and the idea of a brand. An example is Cool Britannia of the 1990s.


title: Brand management

text: Even though social media has changed the tactics of marketing brands, its primary goals remain the same; to attract and retain customers. However, companies have now experienced a new challenge with the introduction of social media. This change is finding the right balance between empowering customers to spread the word about the brand through viral platforms, while still controlling the company's own core strategic marketing goals. Word-of-mouth marketing via social media, falls under the category of viral marketing, which broadly describes any strategy that encourages individuals to propagate a message, thus, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Basic forms of this are seen when a customer makes a statement about a product or company or endorses a brand. This marketing technique allows users to spread the word on the brand which creates exposure for the company. Because of this, brands have become interested in exploring or using social media for commercial benefit.


title: Brand management

text: Brands with heritage are not simply associated with antiquated organizations; rather, they actively extol values and position themselves in relation to their heritage. Brands offer multiple benefits to organizations at various market levels, reflecting the entire experiential process afforded to consumers. In the case of voluntary organizations if they can unlock their brand heritage and it will improve volunteer engagement, to the extent that organizations 'with a long history, core values, positive track record, and use of symbols possess, whether consciously or not, an inherent advantage in an increasingly competitive landscape'. In the context of tourism preconceived notions of brand heritage stimulate the increased experience of existential authenticity, increasing satisfaction with the visitor experience. For consumer goods the communication of continuity of the brand promise can increase perceived brand authenticity.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: The Serbian Despotate () was a medieval Serbian state in the first half of the 15th century. Although the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 is generally considered the end of medieval Serbia, the Despotate, a successor of the Serbian Empire and Moravian Serbia, lasted for another 60 years, experiencing a cultural and political renaissance before it was conquered by the Ottomans in 1459. Before its conquest the Despotate was a tributary state of the neighbouring Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire, and Kingdom of Hungary, all of which considered it to be part of their sphere of influence.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: After 1459, political traditions of the Serbian Despotate continued to exist in exile, in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, with several titular despots of Serbia, who were appointed by kings of Hungary. The last titular Despot of Serbia was Pavle Bakić, who fell in the Battle of Gorjani.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: After Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović was killed in the Battle of Kosovo on June 28, 1389, his son Stefan Lazarević succeeded him. Being a minor, his mother Princess Milica ruled as his regent. A wise and diplomatic woman, she managed to balance the Ottoman threat as the Ottoman Empire was in a turmoil after the Battle of Kosovo and the killing of Sultan Murad I. She married her daughter, Olivera, to his successor, Sultan Bayezid I.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: After the battle, in 1390 or 1391 depending on source, Serbia became a vassal Ottoman state, and Stefan Lazarević was obliged to participate in battles if ordered by the Ottoman sultan. He did so in the Battle of Rovine in May 1395 against the Wallachian prince Mircea I and the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396 against the Hungarian king Sigismund. After that, Sultan Bayezid awarded Stefan with the majority of the Vuk Branković's land on Kosovo, as Branković sided with the Hungarian king at Nicopolis.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: When Timur's army entered the Ottoman realm, Stefan Lazarević participated in the Battle of Ankara in 1402, in which the Ottomans were defeated and their leader Bayezid was captured. Returning to Serbia, Stefan visited Constantinople where the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos granted him the title of despot. In previous years, this title would mean that the despot would rule some vassal state; however, as the Byzantine Empire was too weak to assert such a rule and Serbia was not its vassal state, Stefan Lazarević took this title as the personal style of the Serbian monarchs.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: Already in Constantinople, Stefan had a dispute with his nephew Đurađ Branković, son of Vuk Branković who was accompanying him and was arrested by the Byzantine authorities. Đurađ would later succeed Stefan. Stefan's brother Vuk Lazarević was also in his escort and as they were returning over the Kosovo, they were attacked by the Branković army at Tripolje, near the Gračanica monastery. Vuk headed the Lazarević army, which was victorious, but reaching Novo Brdo, the brothers had a quarrel and Vuk went to the Ottoman side, to the new sultan (actually co-ruler with his three brothers) Suleyman (I) Çelebi.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: Counting on unrest within the Ottoman Empire (Ottoman Interregnum), in early 1404 Stefan accepted vassalage to the Hungarian king Sigismund, who awarded him with Belgrade, the Mačva region, and the fort of Golubac, until then in possession of the Kingdom of Hungary, so Belgrade became a capital of Serbia for the second time in history after King Dragutin.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: The next few years are marked by events in Stefan's personal life. He managed to liberate his sister and Bayezid's widow Olivera. In 1404 he made peace with his brother Vuk, in 1405 he married Caterina Gattilusio, daughter of Francesco II Gattilusio, ruler of the island of Lesbos. Also in 1405 his mother Milica died.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: In 1408 brothers disputed again and Vuk, together with sultan Suleyman and the Branković family, attacked Stefan in early 1409. Being besieged at Belgrade, Stefan agreed to give southern part of Serbia to his brother and to accept again Ottoman vassalage. Suleyman's brother Musa rebelled against him and Stefan took Musa's side in the battle of Kosmidion in 1410, near Constantinople. Musa's army was defeated and Suleiman sent Vuk and Đurađ Branković's brother Lazar to come to Serbia before Stefan returned, but they both were captured by Musa's sympathizers and were executed in July 1410. Through Constantinople, where Emperor Manuel II confirmed his despotic rights, Stefan returned to Belgrade and annexed Vuk's lands.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: In 1410 King Sigismund of Hungary seized several territories in north-eastern Bosnia. As a reward for Stefan Lazarević's help and loyalty, he transferred Srebrenica with its surroundings to the Serbian Despotate in 1411 or 1412.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: When Musa became self-proclaimed sultan in European part of the Ottoman Empire, he attacked Serbia in early 1412 but was defeated by Stefan near Novo Brdo in Kosovo. Stefan then invited the ruler of the Anatolian part of the empire, sultan Mehmed Çelebi to attack Musa together. Securing Hungarian help, they attacked Musa on 5 July 1413 at the Battle of Çamurlu, near the Vitosha mountain (modern Bulgaria) and defeated him, with Musa being killed in the battle. As a reward, Stefan received the town of Koprijan near Niš and the Serbian-Bulgarian area of Znepolje. For next twelve years, Stefan remained in good relations with Mehmed, which made the recovery of medieval Serbia possible.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: On 28 April 1421, Stefan's nephew and ruler of Zeta, Balša III died without an heir, bequeathing before death his lands to his uncle. With this and territorial gains from the Kingdom of Hungary (Belgrade, Srebrenica, etc.), Serbia restored majority of its ethnic territories it occupied before the Battle of Kosovo.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: In 1425, the Ottoman Empire invaded Serbia, burning and pillaging across the Southern Morava valley. At the same time, the King of Bosnia attempted to conquer Srebrenica back from the Serbs, but failed. Despot Stefan fought back the invasion and initiated negotiations with the Sultan, after which the Ottoman troops left Serbia. Still, this attack was an ominous sign of things to come.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: The rule of the poet, thinker and artist Stefan Lazarević, was a period of renewed artistic development in Serbia. Stefan Lazarević himself was a poet, writing one of the major medieval Serbian literary works, "Slovo ljubve" ('The word of love') and one of the largest libraries in the Balkans at that period.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: Apart from political stability as a result of Stefan's ability to keep a distance from both the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, stability was also helped by the very rich silver mines, Srebrenica and Novo Brdo, some of the wealthiest in Europe at that time. Belgrade, at that time became one of the largest cities in Europe, numbering over 100,000 people. The rule and deeds of despot Stefan Lazarević were described by his contemporary, the learned writer Constantine of Kostenets, who wrote the ""Life of Despot Stefan Lazarević"" ( 1430).


title: Serbian Despotate

text: As despot Stefan had no children of his own, already in 1426 he bequeathed the Despotate to his nephew, Đurađ Branković, who succeeded him upon his death on July 19, 1427. Already the second most important figure in the Despotate for the last 15 years, he was confirmed as despot by the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus in 1429.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: As an immediate result of Stefan's death, Serbia had to return Belgrade to the Kingdom of Hungary, but kept Mačva. As the southern wealthy cities (like Novo Brdo) were too close to the Ottomans to be declared new capitals, Đurađ decided to build a new one, the magnificent fortress of Smederevo on the Danube, close to the border of the Kingdom of Hungary. Constructed 1428–30, Smederevo was a source of many future misinterpretations of the history, especially concerning Đurađ's wife Jerina. With Jerina's Greek nationality and the influence her brothers had with the new despot, people began to dislike her, and attributed to her many vicious and evil characteristics, including building Smederevo for capricious reasons. In folk poetry she's been dubbed "Prokleta Jerina" (the Damned Jerina), but none of this has been confirmed by actual historical sources.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: Immediately after becoming the ruler of Serbia, in the summer of 1427, Đurađ was faced with the challenge of an Ottoman invasion. The Ottomans occupied Kruševac and Niš, the Dubočica region including Leskovac, and most of the Toplica region. They withdrew after unsuccessfully besieging Novo Brdo for several months.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: King Tvrtko II of Bosnia came into conflict with the Bosnian noble family of Zlatonosovići in November 1430, over alleged cooperation between Vukašin Zlatonosović and the Serbian Despotate. This conflict ended with the death of Vukašin and the complete annihilation of the Zlatonosović family, but directly led into another conflict with Serbia itself. In the spring of 1433, Despot Đurađ annexed parts of Usora, together with the trade outpost Zvonik and fortress Teočak.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: Đurađ married his daughter Katarina to Ulrich II of Celje in 1433, a close cousin of the Hungarian Queen, in an effort to secure better relations with Serbia's northern neighbor. His other daughter Mara, he had to marry to Sultan Murad II. This marriage was arranged in 1433, but Đurađ delayed it until 1435 when the Ottomans threatened him with invasion. After the marriage took place, Murad swore to continue the peace between the Ottoman Empire and Serbia.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: However, this oath would be broken two years later. The Ottoman Empire invaded and started pillaging inside Serbia's borders in 1437. Đurađ negotiated an unfavorable peace with the Sultan by giving him the town of Braničevo. In 1438 the Sultan attacked again. This time, the Despot had to let them seize Ždrelo and Višesav: the peace that followed was not longer than the previous one.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: In 1439 the Ottoman army, headed by the sultan Murad II himself, again attacked and sacked Serbia. Despot Đurađ fled to Hungary in May 1439, leaving his son Grgur Branković and Jerina's brother Thomas Kantakouzenos to defend Smederevo. After three months of siege, Smederevo fell on August 18, 1439, while Novo Brdo resisted conquest for two entire years, falling on June 27, 1441. At that point the only free part of the Despotate that remained was Zeta. The latter, however, was soon attacked by the Venetians and by Voivode Stefan Vukčić Kosača. The last of Đurađ's cities in the region were conquered in March 1442.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: In Hungary, Đurađ Branković managed to talk Hungarian leaders into expelling the Ottomans, so a broad Christian coalition of Hungarians (under John Hunyadi), Serbs (under Despot Đurađ) and Romanians (under Vlad II Dracul) advanced into Serbia and Bulgaria in September 1443. The large Christian army that crossed the Danube in early autumn of 1443 was made up of around 25,000 soldiers from Hungary and Poland, over 8,000 Serbian cavalry and foot soldiers, and 700 Bosnian horsemen. Serbia was fully restored by the Peace of Szeged on August 15, 1444. Its borders were the same as before 1437, with the exception of the southern part of Zeta, which remained under Venice, and fort Golubac, which was returned to Serbia even though it was lost much earlier, in 1427.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: King Tomaš of Bosnia started another war with Despot Đurađ in 1446 and managed to take Srebrenica. However, in September 1448, the Bosnians were defeated by a Serbian army led by Thomas Kantakouzenos, who reconquered Srebrenica and also took Višegrad.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: The difficulty Despot Đurađ had in maintaining balance between two strong powers can be illustrated by the fact that in 1447–48 despot Đurađ provided funds to the Byzantines to repair the city walls of Constantinople, but being officially an Ottoman vassal, he had to send a thousand soldiers to help Sultan Mehmed II conquer Constantinople in May 1453.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: The new Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II, who would later be called the Conqueror, returned the regions of Toplica and Dubočica to Serbia in 1451 as a token of good will. On that occasion, Mehmed II and Đurađ negotiated the prolonging of their peace treaty.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: Without formally declaring an end to the peace treaty, Sultan Mehmed II invaded Serbia in mid-July 1454. Much of central Serbia fell, but the capital was well-prepared and the Ottomans, upon hearing that Hunyadi would cross the Danube to reinforce the Serbs, soon lifted their siege of Smederevo. The Sultan retreated back to Sofia with loot and slaves, leaving most of his army at Kruševac. A smaller Serbian army under Voivode Nikola Skobaljić, which was in Dubočica, cut off from the north, defeated an Ottoman army near Leskovac on September 24, while the main army under Đurađ Branković, together with Hungarian force led by Hunyadi, crushed the Ottomans at Kruševac, capturing their commander, Firuz-bey.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: But these successes only bought little time. Nikola Skobaljić's resistance, which due to his army's low numbers came to be respected by the Turks themselves, was crushed by another Ottoman force on November 16 and he was executed. In the early spring of 1455, the Sultan continued his invasion of Serbia. This time, the Ottomans focused on taking southern Serbia first. Novo Brdo was besieged with heavy cannons and fell on June 1, 1455, after forty days of resistance. The rest of southern Serbia was occupied soon after that. At the same time, Despot Đurađ was trying to convince the Hungarians to launch another crusade, but returned empty-handed to Smederevo. In early 1456, he accepted a peace treaty with the Sultan, and southern Serbia remained in Ottoman hands.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: A few months after the peace treaty, the Ottoman Empire attacked again. Both Smederevo and Belgrade, which were the primary target of the Turks, successfully resisted, but the countryside was devastated even further. Despot Đurađ Branković died on December 24, 1456.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: Despot Lazar Branković, the only one of Đurađ's sons not to be blinded by the Ottomans, succeeded his father. Sensing that Serbia is too weak to defeat a future Ottoman incursion on the battlefield, he managed to make a deal with sultan Mehmed II on January 15, 1457. According to this deal, he was granted back most of his father's lands and a promise that Serbia will not be disturbed by the Ottomans until Lazar's death. Lazar in turn had to pay a tribute, which was reduced because he no longer had the rich mines of Novo Brdo. Temporarily relieved of the southern threat, Lazar turned to the north and Hungarian internal battles, which he joined on the side of King Ladislaus, managing to capture the town of Kovin and several other towns on the left bank of the Danube in 1457.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: Immediately after death of their mother Jerina on May 3, 1457, the younger generation of the Branković family broke out in a conflict of succession. Seeking rights for his bastard son Vuk, blind Grgur Branković fled to the Ottoman Empire, together with Mara and Thomas Kantakouzenos. Lazar's brother, blind Stefan Branković, took his side and stayed with him. Despot Lazar suddenly died on January 20, 1458.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: As despot Lazar Branković had no sons, a three-member regency was formed after his death. It included Lazar's brother, the blind Stefan Branković, Lazar's widow Helena Palaiologina and Grand Duke Mihailo Anđelović. Mihailo Anđelović, whose brother was the Ottoman Grand Vizier Mahmud-pasha Anđelović, began to plot with the Ottomans behind the backs of Stefan and Helena. In March, he brought a small detachment of Ottoman soldiers into Smederevo to reinforce his own bid for the Despotate. But the soldiers unexpectedly raised the Ottoman flag on the ramparts and started shouting the Sultan's name. The enraged citizens of Smederevo rose up against Anđelović on March 31, taking him prisoner and capturing or killing most of the Ottoman detachment. Stefan Branković, who was proclaimed the new Despot, together with Helena Palaiologina, took control of Smederevo and the Despotate.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: During the chaos that surrounded Lazar's death and the split in the provisional regency, King Stjepan Tomaš of Bosnia attacked the Despotate's holdings west of the Drina river and conquered most of them, leaving only Teočak in the Despotate's hands. Mihail Silagyi likewise seized most of Lazar's towns north of the Danube. Immediately after Mihailo Anđelović's failed coup, the Ottomans began another invasion of Serbia. Although they would not make any significant territorial gains until 1459, this was the beginning of the end for the Serbian Despotate. Stefan Branković ruled until 8 April 1459, when he was overthrown by a plot between Helena Palaiologina and King Tomaš, whose son briefly ruled as the new Despot.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: Stjepan Tomašević lost two countries to the Ottomans: Serbia in 1459 and Bosnia in 1463. His appointment as new despot was highly unpopular but pushed hard by his father, King Stjepan Tomaš of Bosnia. By this time Serbia was reduced to only a strip of land along the Danube. Sultan Mehmed II decided to conquer Serbia completely and arrived at Smederevo; the new ruler did not even try to defend the city. After negotiations, Bosnians were allowed to leave the city and Serbia was officially conquered by Turks on June 20, 1459.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: In 1404 Hungarian King Sigismund lend parts of Syrmia, Banat and Bačka to Serbian Despot Stefan Lazarević for governing, later succeeded by Đurađ Branković. After the Ottoman Empire conquered Serbian Despotate in 1459, the Hungarian rulers renewed the legacy of Despots to the House of Branković in exile, later to the noble family of Berislavići Grabarski, who continued to govern most of Syrmia until the Ottoman conquest but territory has been in theory still under administration of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. The residence of the despots was Kupinik (modern Kupinovo). The Despots from the Branković dynasty were: Vuk Grgurević-Branković (1471–1485), Đorđe Branković (1486–1496) and Jovan Branković (1496–1502).


title: Serbian Despotate

text: Last titular despots were: Ivaniš Berislavić (1504–1514), Stjepan Berislavić (1520–1535), Radič Božić (1527–1528, Zapolya faction's pretender), and Pavle Bakić (1537).


title: Serbian Despotate

text: In the Serbian Despotate, there were several noble offices with important duties and roles in the state's central administration, under the Despot as the monarch and chief authority.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: In 1410, Despot Stefan Lazarević enacted an administrative reform dividing the territory of the Despotate into districts. A district was called a Vlast (Serbian Cyrillic: Власт), and each Vlast was governed in the Despot's name by a Voivode. This reform, made necessary by the increasing threat of Turkish invasion, gave those Voivodes an authority over both civilian and military matters in their respective districts. The Vlasts were retained by the Despotate until its fall.


title: Serbian Despotate

text: Documents have been preserved about the Vlasts in Smederevo, Novo Brdo, Nekudim, Ostrovica, Golubac, Borač, Petrus, Lepenica, Kruševac, Ždrelo; west of the Drina, there were four Vlasts: Teočak, Tišnica, Zvonik and Srebrenica. After its incorporation into the Serbian Despotate in 1421, Zeta was organized as a single large Vlast. with its Voivode seated in Bar, later moving to Podgorica (1444) and finally Medun.


title: FLAGS register

text: The FLAGS register is the status register that contains the current state of a x86 CPU. The size and meanings of the flag bits are architecture dependent. It usually reflects the result of arithmetic operations as well as information about restrictions placed on the CPU operation at the current time. Some of those restrictions may include preventing some interrupts from triggering, prohibition of execution of a class of "privileged" instructions. Additional status flags may bypass memory mapping and define what action the CPU should take on arithmetic overflow.


title: FLAGS register

text: The carry, parity, adjust, zero and sign flags are included in many architectures. The adjust flag used to be called auxiliary carry bit in 8080 and half-carry bit in the Zilog Z80 architecture.


title: FLAGS register

text: In the i286 architecture, the register is 16 bits wide. Its successors, the EFLAGS and RFLAGS registers, are 32 bits and 64 bits wide, respectively. The wider registers retain compatibility with their smaller predecessors.


title: FLAGS register

text: Note: The mask column in the table is the AND bitmask (as hexadecimal value) to query the flag(s) within FLAGS register value.


title: FLAGS register

text: All FLAGS registers contain the condition codes, flag bits that let the results of one machine-language instruction affect another instruction. Arithmetic and logical instructions set some or all of the flags, and conditional jump instructions take variable action based on the value of certain flags. For example, codice_1 (Jump if Zero), codice_2 (Jump if Carry), and codice_3 (Jump if Overflow) depend on specific flags. Other conditional jumps test combinations of several flags.


title: FLAGS register

text: FLAGS registers can be moved from or to the stack. This is part of the job of saving and restoring CPU context, against a routine such as an interrupt service routine whose changes to registers should not be seen by the calling code. Here are the relevant instructions:


title: FLAGS register

text: The lower 8 bits of the FLAGS register is also open to direct load/store manipulation by SAHF and LAHF (load/store AH into flags).


title: FLAGS register

text: The ability to push and pop FLAGS registers lets a program manipulate information in the FLAGS in ways for which machine-language instructions do not exist. For example, the codice_4 and codice_5 instructions clear and set the direction flag (DF), respectively; but there is no instruction to complement DF. This can be achieved with the following assembly code:


title: FLAGS register

text: By manipulating the FLAGS register, a program can determine the model of the installed processor. For example, the alignment flag can only be changed on the 486 and above. If the program tries to modify this flag and senses that the modification did not persist, the processor is earlier than the 486.


title: FLAGS register

text: Starting with the Intel Pentium, the CPUID instruction reports the processor model. However, the above method remains useful to distinguish between earlier models.


title: Joseph Kearns

text: Joseph Sherrard Kearns (February 12, 1907 – February 17, 1962) was an American actor, who is best remembered for his role as George Wilson ("Mr. Wilson") on the CBS television series "Dennis the Menace" from 1959 until his death in 1962. He was also a prolific radio actor, and provided the voice of the Doorknob in the 1951 animated Disney film, "Alice in Wonderland".


title: Joseph Kearns

text: Joseph Sherrard Kearns was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, the only child of Joseph Albert Kearns, a wool buyer, and Cordelia Marie Peterson, a concert pianist, from whom he derived his love of music. Kearns was 29 years old when his father died, at which time he and his mother moved to California. He and his family were devout Mormons, whose ancestors were Mormon pioneers.


title: Joseph Kearns

text: His first acting experience was in 1916 when he joined "The Rising Generation", a vaudeville troupe of eleven children that toured for 14 months. He studied at the University of Utah, teaching a course in theatrical make-up to fund his tuition. After graduating from college, he briefly tried his hand at wool buying and worked for his father for a year. Kearns traveled the West as a representative of Howell, Jones and Donnell of Boston. His wool-buying career came to an abrupt end when Kearns purchased five boxcars full of black wool from a breed called Karakul for $8,000. The problem was that black wool could not be dyed and no one knew how to use it in those days. After this fiasco, Kearns gladly gave up the wool business and pursued a show business career.


title: Joseph Kearns

text: Kearns joined the staff of radio station KSL in Salt Lake City in 1930 remaining there until 1936 when he moved to Los Angeles. He began his acting career in radio in the 1930s (playing the Crazyquilt Dragon in the serial "The Cinnamon Bear"), becoming active during the 1940s, with appearances on the shows "The Adventures of Sam Spade", "Burns and Allen", "The Whistler", and dozens of other shows. On "Suspense", he was almost a mainstay, heard regularly as the host "The Man in Black" in the early years, announcing many episodes in the later run, and playing supporting and occasional lead roles in hundreds of shows throughout the series' tenure in Hollywood, from judges to kindly old-timers to cowards. He also appeared on "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", playing various different characters including Professor Moriarty and even Dr. Watson.


title: Joseph Kearns

text: Kearns played Ed, the security guard for Jack Benny's underground money vault, on "The Jack Benny Program". The running gag was that Benny had kept Ed on duty at the vault's door so long that the guard was not conversant with current events. When Benny informed him that "The War" (World War II) had ended, Ed asked whether the "North" or the "South" had won, assuming that the American Civil War was the war to which Benny had referred. He played numerous parts on the Benny show, including an IRS Agent ("NO ONE yells at a tax collector, Mr. Benny!"). He appeared in regular roles on "The Mel Blanc Show" (as the cantankerous father of Mel's on-air girlfriend, Betty, played by Mary Jane Croft) and "The Harold Peary Show" as Old Doc Yak-Yak. He also played numerous comedic parts on Judy Canova's radio show, including her "dumb boyfriend", Lukey.


title: Joseph Kearns

text: Kearns made his film debut in "Hard, Fast and Beautiful" (1951). He was the voice of the Doorknob in Disney's animated film, "Alice in Wonderland" (1951). Kearns appeared in other movies, making his final film appearance as the crime photographer in "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959).


title: Joseph Kearns

text: On television, Kearns reprised his radio roles on "The Jack Benny Program" and also appeared with Eve Arden and Richard Crenna in "Our Miss Brooks" (1953–55), first as Assistant Superintendent Michaels and later (in eight episodes) as Superintendent Stone, a role that he had played on radio. He appeared on "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" a total of 11 times, "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" a total of 16 times, "I Love Lucy", "My Little Margie", "Perry Mason", "I Married Joan", "Willy", "December Bride", "It's a Great Life", "Angel", "Gunsmoke", and "General Electric Theater".


title: Joseph Kearns

text: In 1959, he appeared as criminologist Edward Langley in the "Perry Mason" episode, "The Case of the Perjured Parrot".


title: Joseph Kearns

text: Kearns' final role was as George Wilson, the grouchy, cantankerous neighbor on CBS's "Dennis the Menace" based on the comic strip by Hank Ketcham. After his death, Kearns was replaced in the cast by Gale Gordon, who played George Wilson's brother John. Kearns and Gordon had worked together prior to "Dennis the Menace", on the old radio show "The Cinnamon Bear" and in the 1956 film "Our Miss Brooks". In the last episode that aired before Kearns' death, episode 89 entitled "Where There's a Will", the story dealt with Mr. Wilson making out a will and explaining that Dennis would inherit his gold watch when he dies. The last episode Kearns filmed was titled "The Man Next Door", episode 100, and shown on May 6, 1962, three months after his death. There were references to George being 'back east' in subsequent shows.


title: Joseph Kearns

text: Kearns never married nor had any children. Describing himself as a night owl who hated to get up early in the morning, Kearns enjoyed cooking, reading novels, writing, traveling, going to the movies, and playing cards in his spare time. He was a member of the exclusive Société des Gentilhommes Chefs de Cuisine, a club for gentlemen chefs. The members traded original recipes with other club members. Kearns also wrote plays and scripts for his various radio shows. His favorite hobby was playing the organ.


title: Joseph Kearns

text: Kearns, who was musically trained by his mother, had played the pipe organ for a Los Angeles theatre in the 1930s. He purchased a Hammond organ and installed it in a studio apartment that he designed and built in the 1940s. He later purchased a larger 18-rank Wurlitzer organ that had been designed for Warner Brothers in 1929. He then designed and built a soundproof -story home around the organ. Kearns delighted in playing the organ for his guests.


title: Joseph Kearns

text: Kearns suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on February 11, 1962, during the third season of "Dennis the Menace" and was hospitalized in a coma, but never regained consciousness and died on February 17, 1962, five days after his 55th birthday. His death may have been attributed to the Metrecal diet he was on, as he had reportedly lost 40 pounds in six weeks. He was buried at the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte (English: Palace of Vaux-le-Vicomte) is a Baroque French château located in Maincy, near Melun, southeast of Paris in the Seine-et-Marne department of Île-de-France.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: Built between 1658 and 1661 for Nicolas Fouquet, Marquis de Belle Île, Viscount of Melun and Vaux, the superintendent of finances of Louis XIV, the château was an influential work of architecture in mid-17th-century Europe. At Vaux-le-Vicomte, the architect Louis Le Vau, the landscape architect André Le Nôtre and the painter-decorator Charles Le Brun worked together on a large-scale project for the first time. Their collaboration marked the beginning of the Louis XIV style combining architecture, interior design and landscape design. The garden's pronounced visual axis is an example of this style.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: Once a small château between the royal residences of Vincennes and Fontainebleau, the estate of Vaux-le-Vicomte was purchased in 1641 by Nicolas Fouquet, an ambitious 26-year-old member of the Parlement of Paris. Fouquet was an avid patron of the arts, attracting many artists with his generosity.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: When Fouquet became King Louis XIV's superintendent of finances in 1656, he commissioned Le Vau, Le Brun and Le Nôtre to renovate his estate and garden to match his grand ambition. Fouquet's artistic and cultivated personality subsequently brought out the best in the three.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: To secure the necessary grounds for the elaborate plans for Vaux-le-Vicomte's garden and castle, Fouquet purchased and demolished three villages. The displaced villagers were then employed in the upkeep and maintenance of the gardens. It was said to have employed 18 thousand workers and cost as much as 16 million livres.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The château and its patron became for a short time a focus for fine feasts, literature and arts. The fabulist and poet Jean de La Fontaine and the playwright Molière were among the artists close to Fouquet. At the inauguration of Vaux-le-Vicomte, a Molière play was performed, along with a dinner event organized by François Vatel and an impressive firework show.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The château was lavish, refined and dazzling to behold, but those characteristics proved tragic for its owner: the king had Fouquet arrested shortly after a famous fête that took place on 17 August 1661, where Molière's play 'Les Fâcheux' debuted. The celebration had been too impressive and the superintendent's home too luxurious. Fouquet's intentions were to flatter the king: part of Vaux-le-Vicomte was actually constructed specifically for the king, but Fouquet's plan backfired. Jean-Baptiste Colbert led the king to believe that his minister's magnificence was funded by the misappropriation of public funds. Colbert, who then replaced Fouquet as superintendent of finances, arrested him. Later, Voltaire was to sum up the famous fête: "On 17 August, at six in the evening Fouquet was the King of France: at two in the morning he was nobody." La Fontaine wrote describing the fête and shortly afterwards penned his "Elégie aux nymphes de Vaux".


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: After Fouquet was arrested and imprisoned for life and his wife exiled, Vaux-le-Vicomte was placed under sequestration. The king seized, confiscated or purchased 120 tapestries, the statues and all the orange trees from Vaux-le-Vicomte. He then sent the team of artists (Le Vau, Le Nôtre and Le Brun) to design what would be a much larger project than Vaux-le-Vicomte, the palace and gardens of Versailles.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: Madame Fouquet recovered her property 10 years later and retired there with her eldest son. In 1705, after the death of her husband and son, she decided to put Vaux-le-Vicomte up for sale.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: Marshal Claude Louis Hector de Villars became the new owner without first seeing the château. In 1764, the Marshal's son sold the estate to the Duke of Praslin, whose descendants maintained the property for over a century. It is sometimes mistakenly reported that the château was the scene of a murder in 1847, when Charles de Choiseul-Praslin killed his wife in her bedroom. He did so at their Paris residence, rather than at Vaux-le-Vicomte.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: In 1875, after thirty years of neglect, the estate was sold to in a public auction. "He came for the [Charles] Le Brun paintings, especially those on the ceiling of the Chambre des Muses – he loved art," according to descendant Alexandre de Vogüé. The château was empty, some of the outbuildings had fallen into ruin and the gardens were completely overgrown. Restoration and refurbishment began under the direction of the architect Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur, assisted by the landscape architect Elie Lainé. When Sommier died in 1908, the château and the gardens had recovered their original appearance. His son, Edme Sommier, and his daughter-in-law completed the task. His descendants continue to preserve the château, which remains privately owned.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: Since 1967, the owner has been Patrice de Vogüé, Alfred Sommier's great-grandson, who received it as a wedding present, with his wife Cristina, the Count and Countess de Vogüé. By that time, the estate contained only a few pieces that had originally been owned by Fouquet. For some time, the family occupied the first floor, and then the refurbished stables, of this largest private château in France with its 1,235 acres of gardens.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: In 1968, the property was opened for public tours. A major restoration was completed starting in 1976 and it was continuing in 2017; the roof repair alone took six years. The Baroque ceiling in the Chambre des Muses, "decorated by Charles Le Brun's workshop", was restored in 2016–2017 and was first shown to the public in March 2017. The business is now administered by their three sons: Alexandre, Jean-Charles and Ascanio de Vogüé. "We don’t care about the aristocratic part of this life," said Alexandre de Vogüé, but they are determined to continue the preservation. "We have a ten-year plan, detailing what to do and when; a plan that includes a project of infrastructure restoration, restoration of the garden, and smaller projects; all with anticipated costs next to it. We make this list public for our donors, and people can sponsor a special project, such as restoring a statue in the garden," Alexandre told a reporter in 2017.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: Approximately 300,000 visitors arrive each year, 75% of them from France. Recognized by the state as a "monument historique", the property is open most of the year, but closed for approximately two months in winter, 6 January to 22 March in 2019, for example. During the Christmas season, major decorations are installed: 150 trees, 10,000 items and 4,000 metres of garlands and lights, as well as a giant illuminated squirrel and angel, in 2018.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The château is situated near the northern end of a 1.5-km long north–south axis with the entrance front facing north. Its elevations are perfectly symmetrical to either side of this axis. Somewhat surprisingly the interior plan is also nearly completely symmetrical with few differences between the eastern and western halves. The two rooms in the centre, the entrance vestibule to the north and the oval salon to the south, were originally an open-air loggia, dividing the château into two distinct sections. The interior decoration of these two rooms was therefore more typical of an outdoor setting. Three sets of three arches, those on the entrance front, three more between the vestibule and the salon, and the three leading from the salon to the garden are all aligned and permitted the arriving visitor to see through to the central axis of the garden even before entering the château. The exterior arches could be closed with iron gates and only later were filled in with glass doors and the interior arches with mirrored doors. Since the loggia divided the building into two-halves, there are two symmetrical staircases on either side of it, rather than a single staircase. The rooms in the eastern half of the house were intended for the use of the king, those in the western were for Fouquet. The provision of a suite of rooms for the king was normal practice in aristocratic houses of the time, since the king travelled frequently.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: Another surprising feature of the plan is the thickness of the main body of the building ("corps de logis"), which consists of two rows of rooms running east and west. Traditionally, the middle of the "corps de logis" of French châteaux consisted of a single row of rooms. Double-thick "corps de logis" had already been used in "hôtels particuliers" in Paris, including Le Vau's Hôtel Tambonneau, but Vaux was the first château to incorporate this change. Even more unusual, the main rooms are all on the ground floor rather than the first floor (the traditional "piano nobile"). This accounts for the lack of a grand staircase or a gallery, standard elements of most contemporary châteaux. Also noteworthy are corridors in the basement and on the first floor, which run the length of house, providing privacy to the rooms they access. Up to the middle of the 17th century, corridors were essentially unknown. Another feature of the plan, the four pavilions, one at each corner of the building, is more conventional.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: Vaux-le-Vicomte was originally planned to be constructed in brick and stone, but after the mid-century, as the middle classes began to imitate this style, aristocratic circles began using stone exclusively. Rather late in the design process, Fouquet and Le Vau switched to stone, a decision that may have been influenced by the use of stone at François Mansart's Château de Maisons. The service buildings flanking the large "avant-cour" to the north of the house remained in brick and stone, and other structures preceding them were in rubble-stone and plaster, a social ranking of building materials that would be common in France for a considerable length of time thereafter.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The main château is constructed entirely on a moated platform, reached via two bridges, both aligned with the central axis and placed on the north and south sides. The moat is a picturesque holdover from medieval fortified residences, and is again a feature that Le Vau may have borrowed from Maisons. The moat at Vaux may also have been inspired by the previous château on the site, which Le Vau's work replaced.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The bridge over the moat on the north side leads from the "avant-cour" to an ample forecourt, flanked by raised terraces on either side, a layout evoking the "cour d'honneur" of older aristocratic houses in which the entrance court was enclosed by anterior wings, typically housing kitchens and domestic quarters. Le Vau's terraces even terminate in larger squares suggesting former pavilions. In more modern residences, like Vaux, it had become the custom to put these facilities in the basement, so these structures were no longer needed. This U-shaped plan of the house with the terraces is a device that again recalls Maisons, where Mansart intended "to indicate that his château was conceived in a noble tradition of French design while at the same time emphasizing its modernity in comparison to predecessors."


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The entrance front of the main château is characteristically French, with the two lateral pavilions flanking a central "avant-corps", again reminiscent of Mansart's work at Maisons. Le Vau supplements these with two additional receding volumes between the pavilions and the central mass. All of these elements are further emphasized with steep pyramidal caps. Such steep roofs were inherited from medieval times and, like brick, were rapidly going out of fashion. Le Vau would never use them again. The overall effect at Vaux, according to Andrew Ayers, is "somewhat disparate and disorderly". Moreover, as David Hanser points out, Le Vau's elevation violates several rules of pure classical architecture. One of the most egregious is the use of two, rather than three, bays in the lateral pavilions, resulting in the uncomfortable placement of the pediments directly over the central pilaster. Ayers does concede however that, "although rather ungainly, the entrance facade at Vaux is nonetheless picturesque, in spite, or perhaps because, of its idiosyncrasies."


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The garden front of the main château is considered more successful. The enormous, double-height Grand Salon that substantially protrudes from the "corps de logis" clearly dominates the southern elevation. The salon is covered by a huge slate dome surmounted with an imposing lantern and is fronted with a two-storey portico that is almost identical to one at the Hôtel Tambonneau. The use of a central oval salon is an innovation adopted by Le Vau from Italy. Although he himself had never been there, he undoubtedly knew from drawings and engravings of examples in buildings, such as the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, and had already used one to great effect at his Château du Raincy. At Le Raincy the salon spans the "corps de logis" and projects on both sides, but at Vaux, because of the double row of rooms, it is preceded by the vestibule on the entrance side, "thus delaying and dramatizing the visitor's discovery of this, the centrepiece of the house." The lateral pavilions of the garden facade project only slightly but are three bays wide with traditional tall slate roofs like those on the entrance front, effectively balancing the central domed salon.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The château rises on an elevated platform in the middle of the woods and marks the border between unequal spaces, each treated in a different way. This effect is more distinctive today, as the woodlands are more mature, than it was in the seventeenth century when the site had been farmland, and the plantations were new.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: Le Nôtre's garden was the dominant structure of the great complex, stretching nearly a mile and a half (3 km), with a balanced composition of water basins and canals contained in stone curbs, fountains, gravel walks, and patterned parterres that remains more coherent than the vast display Le Nôtre was to create at Versailles.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The site was naturally well-watered, with two small rivers that met in the park; the canalized bed of one forms the Grand Canal, which leads to a square basin.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: Le Nôtre created a magnificent scene to be viewed from the house, using the laws of perspective. Le Nôtre used the natural terrain to his advantage. He placed the canal at the lowest part of the complex, thus hiding it from the main perspectival point of view. Past the canal, the garden ascends a large open lawn and ends with the Hercules column added in the 19th century. Shrubberies provided a picture frame to the garden that also served as a stage for royal fêtes.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: Le Nôtre employed an optical illusion called "anamorphosis abscondita" (which might be roughly translated as 'hidden distortion') in his garden design in order to establish decelerated perspective. The most apparent change in this manner is of the reflecting pools. They are narrower at the closest point to the viewer (standing at the rear of the château) than at their farthest point; this makes them appear closer to the viewer. From a certain designed viewing point, the distortion designed into the landscape elements produces a particular forced perspective and the eye perceives the elements to be closer than they actually are. That point, for Vaux-le-Vicomte, is at the top of the stairs at the rear of the château. Standing atop the grand staircase, one begins to experience the garden with a magnificent perspectival view. The anamorphosis abscondita creates visual effects, which are not encountered in nature, making the spectacle of gardens designed in this way extremely unusual to the viewer (who experiences a tension between the natural perspective cues in his peripheral vision and the forced perspective of the formal garden). The perspective effects are not readily apparent in photographs, either, making viewing the gardens in person the only way of truly experiencing them.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: From the top of the grand staircase, this gives the impression that the entire garden is revealed in one single glance. Initially, the view consists of symmetrical rows of shrubbery, avenues, fountains, statues, flowers and other pieces developed to imitate nature: the elements exemplify the Baroque desire to mold nature to fit its wishes, thus using nature to imitate nature. The centrepiece is a large reflecting pool flanked by grottos holding statues in their many niches. The grand sloping lawn is not visible until one begins to explore the garden, when the viewer is made aware of the optical elements involved and discovers that the garden is much larger than it looks. Next, a circular pool, previously seen as ovular due to foreshortening, is passed and a canal that bisects the site is revealed, as well as a lower level path. As the viewer continues on, the second pool shows itself to be square and the grottos and their niched statues become clearer. However, when one walks towards the grottos, the relationship between the pool and the grottos appears awry. The grottos are actually on a much lower level than the rest of the garden and separated by a wide canal that is over half a mile (almost a kilometre) long. According to Allen Weiss, in "Mirrors of Infinity", this optical effect is a result of the use of the tenth theorem of Euclid's "Optics", which asserts that "the most distant parts of planes situated below the eye appear to be the most elevated".


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: In Fouquet's time, interested parties could cross the canal in a boat, but walking around the canal provides a view of the woods that mark what is no longer the garden and shows the distortion of the grottos previously seen as sculptural. Once the canal and grottos have been passed, the large sloping lawn is reached and the garden is viewed from the initial viewpoint's vanishing point, thus completing the circuit as intended by Le Nôtre. From this point, the distortions create the illusion that the gardens are much longer than they actually are. The many discoveries made as one travels through the dynamic garden contrast with the static view of the garden from the château.


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The château buildings and grounds have been used in at least 13 productions, a full 70, in fact, according to the owners. For example, the property was used as the California home of the main villain Hugo Drax (played by Michael Lonsdale) in the 1979 James Bond film "Moonraker". It can also be seen in the background in the 1998 film "The Man in the Iron Mask". In addition, the château appeared in several episodes of "The Revolution", which is a documentary television series about the American Revolutionary War that was broadcast by History Channel in 2006. "Australia's Next Top Model" had a fashion shoot at the château for its 7th Cycle (Episode 02), televised in August 2011. A confused retelling of the Vaux-le-Vicomte story was given by character Little Carmine Lupertazzi in season 4 of HBOs "The Sopranos". More recently, it featured as the Palace of Versailles for BBC/Canal+ production of the TV drama series "Versailles".


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The second most expensive wedding was held at the palace in 2004. Vanisha Mittal, daughter of British-Indian steel industrialist billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, held her wedding to Amit Bhatia, a British-Indian economist and businessman, at the château following their engagement ceremony at the Palace of Versailles. Kylie Minogue was paid $330,000 to sing at the wedding and the ceremony was followed by fireworks launched from the Eiffel Tower. According to a report in India Today,"over 35 craftsmen were flown in from Mumbai to erect a mandap on a pond in the sprawling gardens of the estate. Elephants made of fiberglass, minarets and a huge reception hall done up in pink were also put up. A lotus was designed in the pond and petals of all colour and shape scattered over it. Craftsmen were jetted in from India and florists from the Netherlands".


title: Vaux-le-Vicomte

text: The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte is the setting of Victoria's Secret first short film, "Victoria’s Secret Holiday 2016: A Very Private Affair.", featuring Stella Maxwell, Elsa Hosk, Taylor Hill, Romee Strijd, Sara Sampaio, Josephine Skriver and Jasmine Tookes.


title: March of the Penguins

text: March of the Penguins (French La Marche de l'empereur ; ) is a 2005 French feature-length nature documentary directed and co-written by Luc Jacquet, and co-produced by Bonne Pioche and the National Geographic Society. The documentary depicts the yearly journey of the emperor penguins of Antarctica. In autumn, all the penguins of breeding age (five years old and over) leave the ocean, which is their normal habitat, to walk inland to their ancestral breeding grounds. There, the penguins participate in a courtship that, if successful, results in the hatching of a chick. For the chick to survive, both parents must make multiple arduous journeys between the ocean and the breeding grounds over the ensuing months.


title: March of the Penguins

text: It took one year for the two isolated cinematographers Laurent Chalet and Jérôme Maison to shoot the documentary, which was shot around the French scientific base of Dumont d'Urville in Adélie Land.


title: March of the Penguins

text: "March of the Penguins" was released in France on 26 January 2005 by Buena Vista International and in the United States by Warner Independent Pictures on 24 June 2005. The documentary won the 2006 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. On 1 June 2010, a home video release in France included the movie in the Disneynature collection. A direct sequel titled "" (aka "March of the Penguins 2: The Call") was released in France in 2017 by Disneynature. It was released in the United States exclusively on Hulu on 23 March 2018.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The emperor penguins use a particular spot as their breeding ground because it is on ice that is solid year round with no danger of the ice becoming too soft to support the colony that exists. At the end of Antarctic summer, the breeding ground is only a few hundred meters away from the open water where the penguins can feed. However, by the end of winter, the breeding ground is over away from the nearest open water. To reach it, all the penguins of breeding age must traverse this great distance.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The penguins practice serial monogamy within each breeding season. The female lays a single egg, and the co-operation of the parents is needed if the chick is to survive. After the female lays the egg, she transfers it to the feet of the waiting male with minimal exposure to the elements, as the intense cold could kill the developing embryo. The male tends to the egg when the female returns to the sea, now even farther away, both to feed herself and to obtain extra food for feeding her chick when she returns. He has not eaten in two months and by the time she leaves the hatching area, he will have lost a third of his body weight.


title: March of the Penguins

text: For an additional two months, the males huddle together for warmth, and incubate their eggs. They endure temperatures approaching , and their only source of water is snow that falls on the breeding ground. When the chicks hatch, the males have only a small meal to feed them, and if the female does not return, they must abandon their chick and return to the sea to feed themselves. By the time they return, they have lost half their weight and have not eaten for four months. The chicks are also at risk from predatory birds such as northern giant petrels.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The mother penguins come back and feed their young, while the male penguins go all the way back to sea (70 miles) to feed themselves. This gives the mothers time to feed their young ones and bond with them. Unfortunately, a fierce storm arrives and some of the chicks perish.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The death of a chick is tragic, but it does allow the parents to return to the sea to feed for the rest of the breeding season. When a mother penguin loses its young in a fierce storm, it sometimes attempts to steal another mother's chick. When the other parent returns, it can recognize the chick only from its unique call. Many parents die on the trip, killed by exhaustion or by predators (such as the leopard seal), dooming their chicks back at the breeding ground.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The ingenious fight against starvation is a recurring theme throughout the documentary. In one scene, near-starving chicks are shown taking sustenance out of their father's throat sacs, 11th-hour nourishment in the form of a milky, protein-rich substance secreted from a sac in the father's throat to feed their chicks in the event that circumstances require.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The parents must then tend to the chick for an additional four months, shuttling back and forth to the sea to provide food for their young. As spring progresses, the trip gets progressively easier as the ice melts and the distance to the sea decreases, until finally the parents can leave the chicks to fend for themselves.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The DVD version includes a 54-minute film entitled "Of Penguins and Men" made by the film crew Laurent Chalet and Jérôme Mason about the filming of "March of the Penguins".


title: March of the Penguins

text: Director and film crew spent more than 13 months at the Dumont d'Urville Station, where the Institut polaire français Paul-Émile Victor is based. Although the penguins' meeting place, one of four in Antarctica, was known to be near, the day on which it occurs is not known, so they had to be ready every day. Fortunately, the gathering that year was huge – more than 1,200 penguins, compared with the norm of a few hundred.


title: March of the Penguins

text: For cameras to operate at −40°, they had to use film and to load all the film for the day, as it was impossible to reload outside. Because of the isolation from any film studios, remembering each shot was necessary to ensure continuity and to make sure that all the necessary sequences were finished.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The main challenge of making the documentary was the weather with temperatures between −50 and −60 °C (−58 and −76 °F). At dawn, the film crew would spend half an hour putting on six layers of clothes, and on some days they could not spend more than three hours outside. They worked in winds with gusts up to 125 miles per hour, "which in some ways is worse than the cold temperatures" according to director Jaquet.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The style of the documentary differs considerably between the original French version and some of the international versions.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The original French-language release features a romanticized first-person narrative as if the story is being told by the penguins themselves. The narration alternates between a female (Romane Bohringer) and a male (Charles Berling) narrator speaking the alternate roles of the female and male penguin, and as the chicks are born, their narration is handled by child actor Jules Sitruk. This style is mimicked in some of the international versions. For example, in the Hungarian version, actors Ákos Kőszegi, Anna Kubik, and Gábor Morvai provide the voices of the penguins, and the German version as seen in German movie theaters (and in the televised broadcast in April 2007 on channel ProSieben) uses the voices of Andrea Loewig, Thorsten Michaelis, and Adrian Kilian for the "dubbed dialog" of the penguins. This style of narration is also used in the Danish and Cantonese DVD versions.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The French release was handled by Buena Vista International France, a division of Walt Disney Studios. Disney also attempted to get US distribution rights to the film, but their bid ultimately failed; the English-language distribution rights were later acquired at the Sundance documentary festival in January 2005 by Adam Leipzig of National Geographic Films, who had forged a distribution partnership with Warner Bros. Pictures via their Warner Independent Pictures label. In contrast to the French version, their English release uses a more traditional third-person narrative by a single voice, actor Morgan Freeman. Similarly, the Austrian channel ORF 1 used for their broadcast in April 2007, the alternate version available on the German "Special Edition" DVD which uses a documentary narration voiceover spoken by the German actor Sky Du Mont. Other releases' narrators include the Dutch version, narrated by Belgian comedian Urbanus; the Indian version, narrated in Hindi and English by Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan, is titled Penguins: A Love Story; the Polish version, narrated by Polish actor Marek Kondrat; and the Swedish version, narrated by Swedish actor Gösta Ekman. The Filipino version is narrated by actress Sharon Cuneta and translated by Chris Martinez and Eugene Evasco; it is entitled Penguin, Penguin, Paano Ka Ginawa? (English: "Penguin, Penguin, How Were You Made?") with the English title as the subtitle. The Filipino title is similar to that of a Philippine novel and film, "Bata, Bata, Paano Ka Ginawa?" (English: "Child, Child, How Were You Made?")


title: March of the Penguins

text: Another difference between the various international versions involves the music. The original version uses an original experimental soundtrack by electronic music composer Émilie Simon, whereas the English-language version replaces it with an instrumental score by Alex Wurman. The Hindi version happens to use the music from the French version.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The first screening of the documentary was at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States on 21 January 2005. It was released in France the next week, on 26 January, where it earned a 4-star rating from AlloCiné, and was beaten at the box office only by "The Aviator" during its opening week.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The original French version was released in the Canadian province of Québec. Subsequently, Warner Bros and National Geographic's English-language version was released in the rest of North America on 24 June 2005, drawing huge praise from most critics who found it both informative and charming. "March of the Penguins" has an approval rating of 94% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 184 reviews, and an average rating of 7.82/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Only the most hardened soul won't be moved by this heartwarming doc". Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 79 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The documentary also proved popular with moviegoers, distinguishing itself as one of the most successful documentaries of the season on a per-theatre basis: it became the second most successful documentary released in North America, after "Fahrenheit 9/11", grossing over $77 million in the United States and Canada (in nominal dollars, from 1982 to the present.) It grossed over $127 million worldwide. It is the only movie from Warner Independent to be rated G by the MPAA.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The French version of the documentary was released on DVD in France by Buena Vista Home Entertainment France on 26 July 2005 with a Blu-Ray release from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment France on 31 October 2008. It was later reissued on DVD on 1 June 2010 as a Disneynature product. The DVD extras address some of the criticisms the documentary had attracted, most notably by reframing the documentary as a scientific study and adding facts to what would otherwise have been a family film. This Region 2 release featured no English audio tracks or subtitles.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The English version was released on DVD in the United States by Warner Home Video on 29 November 2005. It was never released on VHS by Warner Home Video, due to A Very Long Engagement being the last VHS by Warner Independent. It however spawned a VHS in French locations, such as French Canadian regions. It was later released on Blu-Ray by Warner on 27 March 2007. Neither release contains the French language version of the movie.


title: March of the Penguins

text: An extra on the DVD issue was the controversial 1948 Bugs Bunny cartoon "Frigid Hare", in which Bugs visits the South Pole and meets a young penguin fleeing an Inuk hunter. The cartoon is not frequently seen because of its stereotypical depiction of the Inuk hunter, but it was included here uncut and uncensored. This is substituted in the American release with "8 Ball Bunny", likewise uncut and uncensored. The American release also includes an episode of "Crittercam" that highlighted the emperor penguins.


title: March of the Penguins

text: In November 2006, the documentary was adapted into a video game by DSI Games for the Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PS2 platforms. It features "Lemmings"-like gameplay.


title: March of the Penguins

text: A 2005 French ad for the movie shows a man describing the movie to a coworker while referring to the penguins as "emperors", which results in the coworker imagining hundreds of Napoleons travelling through Antarctica.


title: March of the Penguins

text: In 2007, a direct-to-DVD parody written and directed by Bob Saget called "Farce of the Penguins" was released. It is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson and features other stars providing voice-overs for the penguins. Although the film uses footage from actual nature documentaries about penguins, the parody was not allowed to include footage from "March of the Penguins" itself.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The documentary attracted some political and social commentary in which the penguins were viewed anthropomorphically as having similarities with, and even lessons for, human society. Michael Medved praised the documentary for promoting conservative family values by showing the value of stable parenthood. Medved's comments provoked responses by others, including Andrew Sullivan, who pointed out that the penguins are not in fact monogamous for more than one year, in reality practicing serial monogamy. Matt Walker of "New Scientist" pointed out that many emperor penguin "adoptions" of chicks are in fact kidnappings, as well as behaviours observed in other penguin species, such as ill treatment of weak chicks, prostitution, and ostracism of rare albino penguins. "For instance, while it is true that emperor penguins often adopt each other's chicks, they do not always do so in a way the moralisers would approve of." Sullivan and Walker both conclude that trying to use animal behavior as an example for human behavior is a mistake.


title: March of the Penguins

text: The director, Luc Jacquet, has condemned such comparisons between penguins and humans. Asked by the "San Diego Union Tribune" to comment on the documentary's use as "a metaphor for family values – the devotion to a mate, devotion to offspring, monogamy, self-denial", Jaquet responded: "I condemn this position. I find it intellectually dishonest to impose this viewpoint on something that's part of nature. It's amusing, but if you take the monogamy argument, from one season to the next, the divorce rate, if you will, is between 80 to 90 percent... the monogamy only lasts for the duration of one reproductive cycle. You have to let penguins be penguins and humans be humans."


title: March of the Penguins

text: Some of the controversy over this may be media driven. Rich Lowry, editor of "National Review", reported in the magazine's blog that the BBC "have been harassing me for days over "March of the Penguins" ... about what, I'm not sure. I think to see if I would say on air that penguins are God's instruments to pull America back from the hell-fire, or something like that. As politely as I could I told her, 'Lady, they're just birds.'"


title: March of the Penguins

text: Another controversy involves those who feel that the emperor penguin's behavior can be viewed as an indication of intelligent design, and those who consider it to be an example of evolution by natural selection in action. Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, is quoted as saying, "Supporters of intelligent design think that if they see something they don't understand, it must be God; they fail to recognise that they themselves are part of evolution. It appeals to ignorance, which is why there is a lot of it in American politics at the moment." Author Susan Jacoby claims in her 2008 book, "The Age of American Unreason" (page 26), that the distributors of the movie deliberately avoided using the word "evolution" in order to avoid backlash from the American religious right, and writes, "As it happens, the emperor penguin is literally a textbook example, cited in college-level biology courses, of evolution by means of natural selection and random mutation. ... The financial wisdom of avoiding any mention of evolution was borne out at the box office ..."


title: March of the Penguins

text: "March of the Penguins 2: The Next Step" () was released by Disneynature in France on 15 February 2017, with narration by Lambert Wilson. The film was alternatively titled "March of the Penguins 2: The Call".


title: March of the Penguins

text: Skipping a theatrical release in the US, the film was released as a Hulu exclusive on 23 March 2018, with Morgan Freeman reprising his role as narrator. It was later released on DVD in the UK by Lionsgate Films on 5 November.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Nigeria is the second largest oil and gas producer in Africa. Crude oil from the Niger delta basin comes in two types: light, and comparatively heavy – the lighter has around 36 gravity while the heavier has 20–25 gravity. Both types are paraffinic and low in sulfur. Nigeria's economy and budget have been largely supported from income and revenues generated from the petroleum industry since 1960. Statistics as at February 2021 shows that the Nigerian oil sector contributes to about 9% of the entire GDP of the nation. Nigeria is the largest oil and gas producer in Africa, a major exporter of crude oil and petroleum products to the United States of America. In 2010, Nigeria exported over one million barrels per day to the United States, representing 9% of the U.S. total crude oil and petroleum products imports and over 40% of Nigeria exports.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: The need for holistic reforms in the petroleum industry, ease of doing business, and encouragement of local contents in the industry birthed the Petroleum Industry Bill by the Goodluck Jonathan administration on July 18, 2008.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: The history of oil exploration in Nigeria goes back to 1903, when the Nigerian Bitumen Corporation conducted exploratory work in the country. At the onset of World War I, the firm's operations were stopped. Due to lack of technological and financial resources of small oil companies, large and strong other oil companies took over the exploration of commercial oil in the country. Thereafter, licenses were given to D'Arcy Exploration Company and Whitehall Petroleum, but neither company found oil of commercial value and they returned their licenses in 1923. A new license covering was given to Shell D'arcy Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, a consortium of Shell and BP (then known as Anglo-Iranian). The company began exploratory work in 1937.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: The association was granted license to explore oil all over the territory of Nigeria but the acreage allotted to the company in the original license was reduced in 1951 and then, between 1955 and 1957. Drilling activities started in 1951 with the first test well drilled in Owerri area. Oil was discovered in non-commercial quantities at Akata, near Eket in 1953. Prior to the Akata find, the company had spent around £6 million on exploratory activities in the country. In the pursuit of commercially available petroleum, Shell-BP found oil in Oloibiri, Nigeria, in 1956. Other important oil wells discovered during the period were Afam and Bomu in Ogoni territory. Production of crude oil began in 1957, and in 1960, a total of 847,000 tonnes of crude oil was exported. Towards the end of the 1950s, non-British firms were granted license to explore for oil: Mobil in 1955, Tenneco in 1960, Gulf Oil, later Chevron in 1961, Agip in 1962, and Elf in 1962. Prior to the discovery of oil, Nigeria (like many other African countries) strongly relied on agricultural exports to supply its economy. Many Nigerians thought the developers were looking for palm oil. But after nearly 50 years searching for oil in the country, Shell-BP discovered oil at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta. The first oil field began production in 1958.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: After that, the economy of Nigeria might have been expected to experience strong growth. However, competition for the profits from oil created a great level of terror and conflict for those living in the region. Many citizens of Nigeria believe that they have not been able to see the economic benefits of oil companies in the state. Additionally, Nigerian government officials have remained majority shareholders in the profits created by the production of Nigerian oil, leading to government capturing of nearly all oil production, and citizens are not seeing socio-economic benefits, and insist that oil companies should compensate people.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: As of 2000, oil and gas exports accounted for more than 98% of export earnings and about 83% of federal government revenue, as well as generating more than 14% of its GDP. It also provides 95% of foreign exchange earnings, and about 65% of government budgetary revenues .


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Nigeria's proven oil reserves are estimated by the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) at between , but other sources claim that there could be as much as . Its reserves make Nigeria the tenth most petroleum-rich nation and by far, the most affluent in Africa. In mid-2001, its crude oil production was averaging around per day. It is expected that the industry will continue to be profitable based on an average benchmark oil price of $85-$90 per barrel.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Nearly all of the country's primary reserves are concentrated in around the delta of the Niger River, but off-shore rigs are also prominent in the well-endowed coastal region. Nigeria is one of the few major oil-producing nations still capable of increasing its oil output. Unlike most of the other OPEC countries, Nigeria is not projected to exceed peak production until at least 2009. The reason for Nigeria's relative unproductivity is primarily OPEC's regulations on production, to regulate prices at the international market. More recently, production has been disrupted intermittently by the protests of the Niger Delta's inhabitants, who feel they are being exploited.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Nigeria has a total of 159 oil fields and 1481 wells in operation according to the Department of Petroleum Resources. The most productive region of the nation is the coastal Niger Delta Basin in the Niger Delta or "South-south" region, which encompasses 78 of the 159 oil fields. Most of Nigeria's oil fields are small and scattered, and in 1990, these small unproductive fields accounted for 62.1% of all Nigerian production. This contrasts with the sixteen largest fields, which produced 37.9% of Nigeria's petroleum at that time.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: As a result of the numerous small fields, an extensive and well-developed pipeline network has been engineered to transport the crude oil. Also because of the lack of highly productive fields, money from the jointly operated (with the federal government) companies is constantly directed towards petroleum exploration and production.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Nigeria's petroleum is classified mostly as "light" and "sweet", as the oil is largely free of sulfur. Nigeria is the largest producer of sweet oil in OPEC. This sweet oil is similar in composition to the petroleum extracted from the North Sea. This crude oil is known as "Bonny light". Names of other Nigerian crudes, all of which are named according to export terminal, are Qua Ibo, Escravos blend, Brass River, Forcados, and Pennington Anfan.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: As recently as 2010, Nigeria provided about 10% of overall U.S. oil imports and ranked as the fifth-largest source for oil imports in the U.S. However, Nigeria ceased exports to the US in July 2014, because of the impact of shale production in America; India is now the largest consumer of Nigerian oil.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: There are six petroleum exportation terminals in the country. Shell owns two, while Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, and Agip own one each. Shell also owns the Forcados Terminal, which is capable of storing of crude oil in conjunction with the nearby Bonny Terminal. Mobil operates primarily out of the Qua Iboe Terminal in Akwa Ibom State, while Chevron owns the Escravos Terminal located in Delta State and has a storage capacity of . Agip operates the Brass Terminal in Brass, a town southwest of Port Harcourt and has a storage capacity of . Texaco operates the Pennington Terminal.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: As of 2005, oil companies in Africa investigated offshore production as an alternative area of production. Deepwater production mainly involved underwater drilling that exists or more below the surface of the water to expand the possible sources for finding new oil reserves. As of 2005, 50% more oil could be extracted through deep water drilling, than before.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: In 2003, the amount of oil extracted from Nigeria was expected to expand from to in 2010. Deepwater drilling for oil is especially attractive to oil companies because the Nigerian government has very little share in these activities and it is more difficult for the government to regulate the offshore activities of the companies.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: The deepwater extraction plants are less disturbed by local militant attacks and seizures, due to civil conflicts, and sabotage. These advancements offer more resources and alternatives to extract the oil from the Niger Delta, with less exposure to conflict than the operations on land. As of 2014, an open-air market for illegal crude oil operates off the Niger Delta, called the Togo Triangle.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: As of 2021, Angola and Nigeria were the largest oil producers in Africa. In Nigeria, the deepwater sector still has a large avenue to expand and develop. The Agbami oilfields hit full production in 2005, at a day. Operated by Chevron's Star Deep and a company called Famfa, Agbami is only one off-shore concession; there are others named Akpo, Bonga and Erha.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Natural gas reserves are well over , the gas reserves are three times as substantial as the crude oil reserves. The biggest natural gas initiative is the Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas Company, which is operated jointly by several companies and the states. It began exploration and production in 1999. Chevron is also attempting to create the Escravos Gas Utilization project, which will be capable of producing gas reserves per day. In 2008, the government prepared a Gas Master Plan that was intended to promote natural gas production and encourage the supply of natural gas to domestic power stations so as to help alleviate the country's electricity shortages.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: There is also an export gas pipeline known as the West African Gas Pipeline in the works, but it has encountered numerous setbacks. The pipeline would allow for transportation of natural gas to Benin, Ghana, Togo, and Cote d'Ivoire. The majority of Nigeria's natural gas is flared off and it is estimated that Nigeria loses 18.2 million US$ daily from the loss of the flared gas.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: A decade from 1979 to 1989, petrol consumption in Nigeria increased from 2.3 million metric tons (MMT) to 4.4 MMT, an average annual increase of 7.5%. In 1989, petrol consumption grew by 12.8%. Nigeria's total petroleum refining capacity currently is per day, however, only per day was allotted during the 1990s. Subsequently, crude oil production for refineries was reduced further to as little as per day, during the regime of Sanni Abacha. There are four major oil refineries: the Warri Refinery and Petrochemical Plant, which can process of crude per day, the New Port Harcourt Refinery, which can produce per day (there is also an 'Old' Port Harcourt Refinery with negligible production), as well as the now defunct Kaduna Refinery. The Port Harcourt and Warri Refineries both operate at only 30% capacity. The Dangote Refinery, expected to open during the fourth quarter of 2022 will have a daily refining capacity of , increasing Nigeria's refining capacity to over per day.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer and has been a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries since 1971. The Nigerian economy is heavily dependent on the oil sector, which, accounts for over 95 percent of export earnings and about 40 percent of government revenues, according to the International Monetary Fund. In 2011, Nigeria produced about per day,According to the International Energy Agency, well below its oil production capacity of over per day, .


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Nigeria is an important oil supplier to the United States. For the last nine years, the United States has imported between 9-11 percent of its crude oil from Nigeria; however, United States import data for the first half of 2012 show that Nigerian crude is down to a 5 percent share of total United States crude imports. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2011, approximately 33 percent of Nigeria's crude exports were sent to the United States, making Nigeria its fourth largest foreign oil supplier.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Although total crude imports into the United States are falling, imports from Nigeria have declined at a steeper rate, according to the International Energy Agency. The main reasons underlying this trend are that some Gulf Coast refiners have reduced Nigerian imports in favor of domestically-produced crude, and that two refineries in the U.S. East Coast, which were significant buyers of Nigerian crude, were idled in late 2011.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: As a result, Nigerian crude as a share of total United States imports has fallen to 5 percent in the first half of 2012, down from 10 and 11 percent in the first half of 2011 and 2010, respectively, according to the International Energy Agency. According to the CIA World Factbook, Nigeria's main export partners are the United States, India, Brazil, Spain, France, and the Netherlands. Shell has been working in Nigeria since 1936, and currently dominates gas production in the country, as the Niger Delta, which contains most of Nigeria's gas resources, also houses most of Shell's hydrocarbon assets.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Prior to its official amalgamation into the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria by the military forces of the British Empire in 1914, the territory of Nigeria was a loose collection of autonomous states, villages, and ethnic communities. Many of these established themselves as pillars of art, trade, and politics in West Africa as late as the 19th century; four of these cultural entities, the Hausa-Fulani, the Igbo (sometimes spelled "Ibo"), the Yoruba and the Efik grew extremely prominent in the region before the arrival of foreigners, dictated British colonial policies, and dominate national politics in Nigeria to this day.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: The modern Hausa and Fulani societies in northern Nigeria are the cultural successors of the Sokoto Caliphate, a theocratic state founded by Muslim reformer empire-maker Uthman dan Fodio in 1817. Geographically isolated in the north, the Caliphate was governed by Islamic laws as prescribed by dan Fodio's "Kitab al-Farq" and maintained greater links commercially and culturally to North Africa and the Arab states than to West Africa and the Atlantic.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: By contrast, the Yoruba, the Igbo and the Efik in the south had regularly experienced contact with Europeans since at least the 16th century. A minority of southerners converted to Christianity even prior to the establishment of permanent British control, but the majority followed traditional indigenous religions, worshipping myriad deities with vast domains spanning both cosmic and terrestrial spheres.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Coastal Nigerians established thriving trade both regionally and abroad, fashioning the coast into a hub for products like palm oil, a good sought after by rapidly industrialising Europe, while also serving as key source for the slave trade prior to its international banning (the region came to be known as the Slave Coast as a result).


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: The Niger Delta region, which is roughly synonymous with the Niger Delta province in location and the contemporary heart of the petroleum industry, is and was a zone of dense cultural diversity and is currently inhabited by roughly forty ethnic groups speaking an estimated 250 dialects. Some of the more relevant ethnic groups in the western part of the Niger Delta region include the Ijaw, Itsekiri, and Ogoni. The Ijaw (sometimes spelled "Ijo"), the fourth most populous tribe in Nigeria and by far the largest in the Delta region, lived during late medieval times in small fishing villages within the inlets of the delta; however by the 16th century, as the slave trade grew in importance, Ijaw port cities like Bonny and Brass developed into major trading states which served as major exporters of fish and other goods regionally. Other states such as those of Itsekiri domain of Warri sprang up at this time as well.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: The eastern Niger Delta region has the Efik people (Annang / Efik / Ibibio who are all related with a common language and ancestors who were all referred to as Efik or Calabar people in early Nigerian history). Their capital city of Calabar, located at the coastal southeast of Nigeria (eastern Niger Delta) served as the major trading and shipping center during the pre-colonial and colonial period. Calabar also served as the first capital of Nigeria and the point of entry of Western religion and Western education into southeastern Nigeria. The combined population of the Ibibio, Annang, and Efik people is the fourth largest language group in Nigeria.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Even before the combination of British control over all of present-day Nigeria's borders in 1914 from the protectorates of Southern and Northern Nigeria, British forces had begun imposing drastic political and economic policies on the Nigerian people which would lead to important consequences in the future. Originally this was done primarily through the government-owned Royal Niger Company. The company was crucial in securing most of Nigeria's major ports and monopolised coastal trade; this resulted in the severing of the ties which had linked the area to the flourishing West African regional trade network, in favour of the exportation of cheap natural resources and cash crops to industrialising nations. Most of the population eventually abandoned food production for such market-dependent crops (peanuts and cotton in the north, palm oil in the east, and cocoa in the west). From the beginning, divide and rule tactics were employed by both traders and administrators, highlighting ethno-religious differences and playing groups against one another. After 1914, the north was permitted a system of indirect rule under authoritarian leaders, while in the south the British exercised control directly.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Interest in Nigerian oil originated in 1914 with an ordinance making any oil and mineral under Nigerian soil legal property of the Crown. By 1938 the colonial government had granted the state-sponsored company, Shell (then known as Shell D'Arcy) a monopoly over the exploration of all minerals and petroleum throughout the entire colony. Commercially viable oil was discovered by Shell in 1956 roughly west of the soon-to-be oil capital of Port Harcourt at Oloibiri, now in Bayelsa State; initially a 50–50 profit sharing system was implemented between the company and the government. Until the late 1950s concessions on production and exploration continued to be the exclusive domain of the company, then known as Shell-BP. However, other firms became interested and by the early 1960s Mobil, Texaco, and Gulf had purchased concessions.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: In October 1960 Nigeria gained full independence from Britain with the British monarch continuing to preside as Head of State, but the country quickly altered its relationship with its former colonizers by declaring Nigeria a republic of three federated states (the Eastern, Western and Northern Regions). But the flaring of ethnic tensions assured that this new republic would be short-lived, as on 15 January 1966, a small group of army officers consisting mostly of southeastern Igbos, staged a successful coup d'état against the civilian government. The federal military government which assumed power under General Aguiyi-Ironsi was unable to quiet ethnic tensions or produce a constitution acceptable to all sections of the country. In fact, its efforts to abolish the federal structure exacerbated the growing unrest and led to another coup, led by largely northern officers in July of the same year. This second coup established the regime of Major General Yakubu Gowon. Subsequently, the massacre of thousands of Igbo in the north prompted hundreds of thousands to return to the southeast, where increasingly strong Igbo secessionist sentiment emerged under the leadership of the Igbo military governor Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu.