title: Whangārei

text: The railway station lost its last scheduled passenger service on 15 September 1975, although a "with-car" (goods train with a carriage attached) service lasted until June 1976.


title: Whangārei

text: Restoration of the station by its Men's Shed occupant began in 2014 and was largely complete by 2020. Its Type C design was protected by a NZHPT Category II listing on 24 March 2006 (List Number 7646). The station was opened by the Minister for Railways, Gordon Coates, on 11 March 1925. Predecessor stations had been opened in 1880 and 1903. The 1880 station was about to the north, near Walton Street.


title: Whangārei

text: In 1929 the fastest train took 6hrs 14mins from Whangārei to Auckland. From 1956, railcars reduced the journey to 4hrs 10mins. In 1943 the distance was measured as .


title: Whangārei

text: The Whangārei Art Museum is located in the Town Basin. Artisan markets are held at the nearby Canopy Bridge.


title: Whangārei

text: The Hātea Loop walkway is an accessible, circular walkway which connects Town Basin, William Fraser Memorial Park,Te Matau a Pohe, Canopy Bridge, Clapham’s Clocks and Reyburn House gallery. The walkway offers marina views and various family friendly outdoor activities.


title: Whangārei

text: The Whangārei Theatre Company (formerly WOADS) has been staging theatre productions in Whangārei since 1946. They have currently made their home at the Riverbank Centre in the town basin.


title: Whangārei

text: Disruptive Performers (Theatre Group) was formed in 2019 and they staged their first production in November 2020.


title: Whangārei

text: Whangārei is home to many music organisations such as Whangārei Youth Music, the Northland Sinfonia, and Sistema Whangārei.


title: Whangārei

text: NorthTec, with its main campus located in the Whangārei suburb of Raumanga, is the chief provider of tertiary education in the Northland Region. It offers degrees, diplomas and certificates in a wide variety of academic, professional and technical fields. The degrees are nationally monitored for quality and so can lead to postgraduate study at universities and other institutions. NorthTec has around 23,000 students studying either part-time or full-time.


title: Whangārei

text: The University of Auckland maintains a campus in the city centre. There are also a number of private tertiary educational organisations that provide technical and vocational training.


title: Whangārei

text: There are several schools which offer secondary schooling education within the urban area. Most suburbs have their own primary school.


title: Whangārei

text: There are two intermediate schools (years 7–8) in the urban area. Several primary schools offer education from years 1–8.


title: Whangārei

text: Primary schools in the urban area include Hurupaki School, Kamo Primary School, Totara Grove School (formerly Kamo East School), Tikipunga Primary School, Otangarei School, Whau Valley School, Whangārei School, a contributing primary (years 1–6) school with a roll of 577, Maunu School, Horahora School, Morningside School, Manaia View School (formerly Raumanga Primary and Raumanga Middle schools, amalgamated), Raurimu Avenue School, and Onerahi School.


title: Whangārei

text: Pompallier Catholic College (opened in 1971) is a Catholic state integrated co-educational secondary school (years 7 to 13) with a roll of 560 and a decile ranking of 7, located in the suburb of Maunu. It is the only Catholic secondary school in Northland serving the wider district.


title: Whangārei

text: Saint Francis Xavier Catholic School, the city's Catholic primary school, located in the suburb of Whau Valley adjacent to the Catholic Parish.


title: Whangārei

text: Christian Renewal School is a composite state integrated co-educational secondary and primary (years 1–13) school with a roll of 201. Around 110 of those students are in high school (years 9–13), as of June 2018. The school was established in 1993 and integrated into the state system in 1997. The secondary half of the school is situated upstairs, and the primary downstairs. The school operates in the Christian Renewal buildings, beside the Renew Church work buildings and auditorium.


title: Whangārei

text: Excellere College, a Christian school (years 1–13) located in the northern suburb of Springs Flat. One half of the school is secondary, and the other half being primary. There are 205 students at this school.


title: Whangārei

text: The Whangārei Adventist Christian School, located at Whau Valley Road, has been operating for some 50 years and is the second oldest of the independent Christian schools in Whangārei as well. It was formerly called the Whangārei Seventhday Adventist School. Over 30 students attend the school, as of June 2018.


title: Whangārei

text: Blomfield Special School and Resource Centre provides education and care to students between the ages of five and twenty-one years, and has a roll of 68. The school operates from five locations, four in Whangārei and one in Kaitaia.


title: Whangārei

text: Whangārei is within the Northland District Health Board. The single primary health care organisation (PHO), Te Kaupapa Mahitahi Hauora Papa O Te Raki Trust, commonly known as Mahitahi Hauora, was created in 2019 through a process of coming together with the previous Northland PHOs. Whangārei Hospital (formerly Northland Base Hospital) is Northland DHB's largest and provides secondary specialist care to all of Northland. It has 246 inpatient beds, and is based in the suburb of Horahora.


title: Whangārei

text: Northpower owns and operates the local electricity distribution network servicing the city, with electricity supplied from Transpower's national grid at the Maungatapere substation southwest of the city. There is very little generation in Northland and Auckland, so most of the city's electricity is transmitted from the Waikato.


title: Whangārei

text: Natural gas arrived in Whangārei in 1983, with the completion of the high-pressure pipeline north from Auckland to the city, now operated by First Gas. First Gas also operates the gas distribution network within the city.


title: Whangārei

text: Whangārei is home to the Northland rugby union team, a professional side competing in the Bunnings NPC, the highest level of provincial rugby in New Zealand. They play out of Okara Park (currently known as "Toll Stadium" due to a sponsorship agreement), the largest stadium in the region, which also hosted two matches during Rugby World Cup 2011. The city also hosted a match on 3 June between a Provincial XV team (NZ Provincial Barbarians) and the British and Irish Lions during their 2017 tour.


title: Whangārei

text: Cobham Oval has hosted Black Caps one-day international cricket matches with the first taking place in 2012.


title: Whangārei

text: The football (soccer) club North Force who compete in the Lotto Sport Italia NRFL Division 1 are based in Whangārei.


title: Whangārei

text: Whangārei has a Field Hockey facility that hosted several international matches. Several hockey players from Northland have been selected for the Black Sticks Women since 2000.


title: Whangārei

text: Whangārei is home to the northernmost parkrun in New Zealand. This is a free, weekly, timed 5 km (3 mile), held every Saturday at 8am. The start and finish is under Te Matau o Pohe bridge.


title: Whangārei

text: The International Rally of Whangārei is based in the region with competitors from Australia, India, China, Japan, South East Asia and Pacific Islands racing on dirt roads in the districts surrounding Whangārei. It is the season opening event for both the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship and the New Zealand Rally Championship and is New Zealand's second largest international motorsport competition, second only to the world championship event, Rally New Zealand. Whangārei Speedway attracts drivers from outside the Northland region.


title: Whangārei

text: The Northland rugby league team, representing the Northland Region in New Zealand Rugby League competitions, is based in Whangārei. They currently compete in the Albert Baskerville Trophy as the Northern Swords. Between 2006 and 2007 they were part of the Bartercard Cup, playing under the name the Northern Storm. Northland was originally known as North Auckland and has previously used the nickname the Wild Boars.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: Polistes carnifex, commonly known as the executioner wasp, is a neotropical vespid wasp in the cosmopolitan genus "Polistes".


title: Polistes carnifex

text: It is a very large yellow and brown paper wasp with a mandible that contains teeth. It establishes small colonies, founded by solitary queens, which build nests under the eaves of buildings or suspended from branches. Foraging adults bring nectar and macerated prey back to the nest to feed to the developing larvae which are individually housed in separate cells in the nest.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: As its range includes only small portions of the English-speaking Americas, "P. carnifex" has only recently taken on an English vernacular name, but in the mid-2010s the name executioner wasp was proposed, a calque upon the Latin specific name "carnifex" "executioner, hangman". This name, and the species, were subsequently widely popularized by YouTube personality Coyote Peterson in a 2018 video describing the wasp's painful sting.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: In Paraguay, it is usually known in Guaraní as kava mainomby "hummingbird wasp", in reference to its great size; less commonly it is called kava alazán "brown wasp" (more usually "P. cavapyta"), or kava sa'yju "yellow wasp" (more usually "Agelaia multipicta" or "A. pallipes"). In the Mexican state of Guerrero, speakers of Malinaltepec refer to the executioner wasp and the closely-related "P. instabilis" as a’ma xtíya cháda "huarache-nest wasp", alluding to the flattened shape of the nests they build.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: In 1768 the HMS Endeavour left Plymouth on the first voyage of James Cook, reaching the harbour of Rio de Janeiro a few months later, in November. Here one of the passengers, the wealthy naturalist Joseph Banks, procured a female specimen of giant wasp, which made its way around the world to eventually arrive in England in 1771.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: Meanwhile, the Dane Johan Christian Fabricius had travelled to Uppsala University in 1762 to study under the celebrated Carolus Linnæus, and upon returning to Denmark two years later began to work on his first publication, the "Systema Entomologiæ", in which he attempted to list all known species of insects (which included spiders, crabs and other arthropods at the time) according to the new Linnaean system. By 1770 he had been appointed professor at the University of Copenhagen, and when in 1773 the University of Kiel (now German) had been ceded to Denmark, he was soon appointed professor there. By 1771 Fabricius began making yearly summer trips to London to study the collections that Banks and others had made in foreign lands, where he was able to study Banks' Brazilian specimen of wasp at Banks' London residence. In 1775 the 832 pages of the "Systema Entomologiæ" were finally published, and in this "Polistes carnifex" was scientifically described for the first time under the name "Vespa carnifex", using Banks' specimen as holotype. This specimen is now stored at the Natural History Museum, London.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: In 1802 Pierre André Latreille created the genus "Polistes", and in 1804 Fabricius moved this species from "Vespa" to the new genus.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: The authority citation of the species has erroneously been attributed to Henri Louis Frédéric de Saussure, who wrote some of the most important books on the subject of wasps.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: In 1853 de Saussure recognised that numerous taxa which had been described by others were synonyms of this species, and synonymised "P. onerata", "P. rufipennis", "P. transverso-strigata" and "P. valida" with "P. carnifex". He also synonymised "P. chlorostoma" and "P. major" to it, although both are now recognised as valid species.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: The genus "Polistes" is the largest genus in the family Vespidae and the only genus in the tribe Polistini. It is classified in the Polistinae, the paper wasps.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: Owain Richards in 1973, and again in 1978, classified "P. carnifex" in a monotypic subgenus he named "Onerarius". In a 1996 morphological study of most of the genus "Polistes", found this subgenus to cause the subgenus "Aphanilopterus" to be paraphyletic, and therefore synonymised "Onerarius" with the subgenus "Aphanilopterus". However, by 2018 he no longer followed his own taxonomic interpretation and continued to use Richards' "Onerarius".


title: Polistes carnifex

text: In 1857 de Saussure was the first to attempt to organise the American "Polistes" species, doing so on the basis of the form of the abdomen -either conical, with the first segment broad, and tapering to a compressed last segment, with a conical and somewhat elongated metathorax; or with the abdomen oval-shaped, the first segment ampulliform (shaped like a flask) and the metathorax more flat and its end less elongated. He placed "P. carnifex" in a third group with characteristics in between these two, together with "P. aurifer" and a new species he described from Nuevo México (a Mexican territory which had recently been conquered and annexed by the USA and at the time included everything in between modern California to east Texas), "P. comanchus".


title: Polistes carnifex

text: Among the species of "Polistes" which occur in Pará, Adolpho Ducke groups it with "P. canadensis", "P. goeldii" and "P. versicolor", based on the morphology of the mesopleuron.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: One of the hypothesized phylogenetic trees puts "P. carnifex" most closely related to "P. major" and more distantly related to the following species: "P. apachus", "P. aurifer", "P. bellicosus", "P. carolina", "P. metricus", "P. poeyi" ssp. "haitiensis" and "P. perplexus". However, there has not been a consensus with regard to the phylogeny of "P. carnifex" so no one phylogenetic tree can be termed correct.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: The holotype of "P. carnifex" ssp. "boliviensis" was collected by José Steinbach somewhere in Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia. It and three paratypes from Bolivia and Peru are stored in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: "P. carnifex" ssp. "rufipennis" was originally described as "P. rufipennis" by Pierre André Latreille from a collection made by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland during their celebrated journey of scientific exploration to the Americas. The single female specimen (the holotype) was collected somewhere in Venezuela. It was synonymised with this species by de Saussure in 1853. See the section "Description" below for more on this subspecies.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: The etymology of the specific epithet "carnifex" is from the Latin language, where it means an 'executioner' or a 'hangman', with the implied meanings of 'tormentor' or 'murderer', with the word used as an insult in the sense of 'scoundrel', 'villain' or 'rascal'. The Latin word "carnis", meaning 'meat', combined with the genitive plural suffix "-fex", derived from the word "facio", and meaning '-maker' (among a number of similar concepts), together give 'flesh-maker'. (Carnifex : Butcher)


title: Polistes carnifex

text: "Polistes carnifex" is the largest Neotropical wasp in the genus "Polistes" with a body length up to three centimetres. The normal size is 24-27mm, with a possible maximum of 33mm. Despite its size, it is a relatively non-aggressive insect.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: It is colored yellow with some brown stripes, these are partially blackish. The antennae are yellow with a darkened base. The head is yellow, the crown of the head being black and ending with reddish-brown stripes. The maxillae are reddish-brown, outlined in black. The thorax is yellow, the dorsal part black, but with a quartet of dark reddish-brown spots. The pronotum is totally or almost totally colored yellow. The abdomen is yellow, the second segment (tergite) darkened at the base. The wings are reddish-brown, or yellowish reddish-brown, and the feet are dark-colored.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: It can be grouped with a number of species which can be distinguished from other species within the genus "Polistes" by their lacking of a groove on the underside of its head called the epicnemial sulcus. "P. carnifex" can be distinguished among this group of wasps by its wide cheek plates. Also the first tergite is very compact, dorsally convex, and elevated vertically compared to the constriction where the abdomen is inserted into the thorax. Furthermore, the eyes do not touch the clypeus. Lastly, this is a very large wasp, with individuals always longer than 20mm. The first gastral segment (sternite) is less broad than long.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: Ducke states that the nests, with their relatively long and strong central petiole, are characteristic for the species, at least among the species in the genus of which the nest was known in his time.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: P. carnifex" ssp. "rufipennis appears to differ from the nominate type by the body and wings being colored a tan brown, almost chestnut. Latreille describes it as such, with the antennas and the last quarter of the tarsi being more yellowish. It is yellow above the jaws, the posterior (back) edge of the first segment of the thorax, the very end of the thorax, the area beyond the second scutellum, the posterior edges of the first three rings (tergites + sternites) of the abdomen and the entirety of the following ring, this yellow being in the form of bands on the front rings, and forming two large, united patches which extend laterally to the extreme end of the thorax. A part of the inferior and anterior sides, the outline of the scutellum, and the square segment above that which Latreille calls the "second scutellum" are a similar color, but fainter. The abdomen and wings are glossy. The length of the body of the creature is 26mm.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: As a member of the order Hymenoptera, "Polistes carnifex" has mandibles, which may be used to obtain wood fibers, build nests, or capture and macerate prey. The mandibles of "P. carnifex" are short. Yet, they are markedly wide at their base, with a length to basal width ratio of approximately 2:1. An external basal area stretches "from the basal margin ... to a point situated about half-way the mandible's length." "P. carnifex" also have teeth. "A convex distal posterior area ... is continuous with the posterior-most apical tooth and stays adjacent to a distal media area". This area is convex in "P. carnifex". In "P. carnifex", the third tooth's anterior edge is elongated, compared to in other species.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: Like most insects, the genitals of this species are very characteristic. The male wasp has a paramere that is two and a half times as long as wide at the middle, with the parameral spine about 1/6th of the length, and a shallow groove at its side. This spine is covered in very long and dense bristles and pointed apically. The paramere lobe is well developed and rounded, the lower part of the paramere is narrow, about 2/3 the width at the middle part.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: It has a slender aedeagus, with about 27 teeth distributed from the end to beginning of the expansion in the middle part of the aedeagus. The penis valve is weakly dilated, with a central entrance and a weakly bi-lobed appearance (the valve being a little more than 1/3 of the length of apical part of the aedeagus). The expansion of the middle part of the aedeagus is well developed and has a pointed apex. The lateral apodeme of the aedeagus is directed forward with a weak central projection and shorter than the rounded ventral process (projection), while the inferior (lower) portion of the aedeagus is weakly curved -appearing almost straight from the side.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: The digitus is slender, with a well-developed apical process which is about one and a half times longer than the base of the digitus and the same width from the base to the end. This end (apex) is pointed. The digitus has a band of obvious punctation around its base, and an anteroventral lobe that is short with a rounded end, and is covered in easily rubbed off (evanescent) bristles.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: The cuspis is slender, with an apex which is pointed and tapers abruptly, and covered in long and sparse bristles, with more bristles found at the edges of the sides, and with short bristles on the lower part. The punctation on the cuspis is only found on the lateral lobe.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: In Paraguay, according to the identification key provided by , the most similar species are "P. cavapyta", which has a completely yellow head and is banded with a rusty orange color, "P. lanio", which has extensive black coloration on the mesosoma (~thorax) and back of the metasoma (~abdomen), "P. canadensis", which has a red metasoma except some black in the sutures between the plates of the exoskeleton. The much smaller "P. major" is the only species in Paraguay with a similar color pattern.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: In Nicaragua, according to the key provided by , it is best distinguished from the most similar species of the region, "P. major", by its wide cheek plates, and the male genitals of both species are furthermore very characteristic.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: In Brazil, Ducke compares it to "P. claripennis", which has a similar coloration, but with a more pale yellow. This species is much smaller and lacks the wide cheeks of "P. carnifex".


title: Polistes carnifex

text: According to Joseph Charles Bequaert in 1936, many of the specimens labelled as "P. carnifex" in collections are "P. major", these two species being commonly confused. All published records from Cuba and Hispaniola are "P. major". See for example the description by William J. Fox of a specimen collected on San Esteban Island in the Gulf of California, Mexico.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: "Polistes carnifex" is native to Central and South America; its range extends from Arizona and southern Texas to Misiones Province in northern Argentina. In 1907 Ducke stated the species occurred in the Greater Antilles, but according to Bequaert in 1936, the species does not occur in the United States nor the Greater Antilles. In 1940 he was proven wrong however, when the first specimen from the United States was collected in Arizona by John J. duBois, this record first being published in 1955.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: In Mexico it has been recorded in the states of Baja California, Guerrero, Jalisco, Morelos, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Sinaloa, Sonora, Veracruz and Yucatan, as well as Mexico City.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: Bequaert states the species is not common anywhere. Ducke also states it is infrequently seen in Pará, Brazil.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: The species is found in coastal, humid, and open areas, such as in evergreen tropical forests. In tropical zones like Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina it is found in extensive wooded habitats without heavy rains.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: Before the 1970s little was known of the biology or behavior of "Polistes carnifex". "P. carnifex" is a species of paper wasp, thus, like other members of the subfamily Polistinae, it is an eusocial wasp.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: The nest is founded by a solitary queen which builds first cell and then further cells from macerated pulpy material. To create a colony, the queen enlarges a cell by introducing a ball of recently macerated pulp on her own. Using her mandibles, the queen loads the ball while holding the sides of the wall being constructed with her foretarsi. While completing this task, the queen moves her antennae in circles about her head, touching the parallel-lying opposite wall. The antennae-wall contact allows the queen to construct straight sides on the inner wall. She lays eggs and feeds the larvae, feeding them nectar and macerated prey. The female workers that emerge from the first cells then assist with the further building and development of the colony, and can themselves mate and lay eggs.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: "Polistes carnifex" is a social species and the nests consist of a number of horizontal papery cells in which the young are reared. The nests are built from wood pulp which the wasps chew into a plaster. In a study in Costa Rica, nests were found hanging from branches of various species of low thorny trees near an ephemeral swamp. Nests have been seen under the eaves of buildings. The nests are hanging and open-faced, supported by a single Petiole in the centre which is strengthened by a tough gelatinous material. Of the six nests measured by Corn, the maximum size for a nest of "P. carnifex" was approximately 9 cm in diameter. One nest in which one emergence at minimum occurred had an average length of 27.8 mm. Nests range in the adult population from 4 to 13 individuals. In one nest studied, there were 28 cells and this number remained constant for the duration of the observation (17 days). There was only one cell observed as being enlarged, which was on the periphery.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: The English naturalist Thomas Belt observed how a "Polistes carnifex" wasp which had found a large caterpillar, chewed it up and made half of it into a macerated ball. Picking this up, it hovered for a few seconds and then circled several times round the place among the dense foliage where the other half of the caterpillar lay. It then flew off but returned a couple of minutes later and quickly located the correct hole among the leaves. Making its way in among the foliage, it could not at first find the exact leaf on which the caterpillar lay. After several fruitless hunts interspersed with short circling flights, it finally located the dismembered prey and flew off with its trophy. Belt marvelled that the insect could use a mental process so similar to that a human might have used to remember the specific location of its prey.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: In Colombia, twenty-nine foraging wasps were observed returning to a particular nest with twenty-five loads of nectar, three loads of macerated prey and one of nest-building pulp. When a foraging wasp arrived, the highest ranking wasp present demanded food and then both fed the larvae. Each wasp pushed its head into a cell, drummed on the cell walls with its antennae and then deposited the food. The drumming noise could be heard a meter away by the researcher, and may have alerted the larvae to the presence of food.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: As a member of the order hymenoptera, "Polistes carnifex" is subject to worker policing. While the diploid female workers do not mate, they are able to lay unfertilized eggs that will develop into haploid males. The relatedness of a worker to her offspring is r=0.5, and her relatedness to the queen's sons is r=0.25. Similarly, the queen's relatedness to her own offspring is r=0.5, whereas the queen's relatedness to her workers' sons is r=0.25, thus the queen prefers to bear her own sons. The other workers are more closely related to the queen's offspring than to their sisters' offspring. The consequences of these differences is as follows: queens try to suppress the production of eggs by workers and workers have an incentive to suppress other workers from producing eggs. This phenomenon is known as "worker policing".


title: Polistes carnifex

text: In Costa Rica, male "Polistes carnifex" congregate on the top of ridges where they maintain territories. The males chase away other conspecific males from these territories which consist of groups of trees and shrubs with no nests. It is suggested that females only mate with males occupying such territories.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: Nests (hanging from low branches on thorny trees near a swamp) were sometimes found within about a meter of nests of a "Polybia" species and occasionally in similar close proximity to a "Mischocyttarus" nest. "Polybia" and "Mischocyttarus" are often associated in the same area; however, "Polistes carnifex" only occasionally was found in proximity. The association of "P. carnifex" with other species of social wasps has not been reported outside of Costa Rica. Some trees bore several nests of different wasp species while many other similar trees bore none, which suggests that there is a non-random distribution.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: In a study of six nests of "Polistes carnifex", in three cells there was an additional egg instead of the usual one, but these eggs appeared to be of "P. carnifex". The author of this study found no evidence of parasitism, however, the wasps are indeed parasitized by strepsipteran insects in the genus "Xenos". These obligate parasites infect the developing wasp larvae in the nest and are present within the abdomens of female wasps when they hatch out. Here they remain until they thrust through the cuticle and pupate (males) or release infective first-instar larvae onto flowers (females). These larvae are transported back to their nests by foraging wasps.


title: Polistes carnifex

text: Although not a particularly aggressive wasp species, it has garnered a reputation in many Latin American countries for its potent sting. The YouTube personality and wildlife educator Nathaniel "Coyote" Peterson has deliberately exposed himself to a variety of stinging insects for entertainment and educational purposes, and declared that the executioner wasp's sting is the most painful he has ever received, more painful than that of the bullet ant or the Asian giant hornet. Labeling it the "King of sting" in his video journey of the most painful stings from various insects. Peterson also said the sting can cause tissue necrosis around the site of the sting, saying, “My arm was swollen for days, and eventually a small hole rotted in my arm from the venom at the sting site."


title: Polistes carnifex

text: The authenticity of Peterson's claims have been called into question by fellow Youtuber Danny Berk, who accuses Peterson of exaggerating his pain response. Berk has released a video of himself being stung by an executioner wasp 7 times, with a considerably milder response. In the video he is shown experiencing mild pain and swelling that lasts less than an hour before subsiding.


title: Candy cane

text: A candy cane is a cane-shaped stick candy often associated with Christmastide, as well as Saint Nicholas Day. It is traditionally white with red stripes and flavored with peppermint, but they also come in a variety of other flavors and colors.


title: Candy cane

text: A record of the 1837 exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, where confections were judged competitively, mentions "stick candy". A recipe for straight peppermint candy sticks, white with colored stripes, was published in "The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-Cook, and Baker", in 1844. The earliest documentation of a "candy cane" is found in the short story "Tom Luther's Stockings", published in "Ballou's Monthly Magazine" in 1866. Although described as "mammoth", no mention of color or flavor was provided. "The Nursery" monthly magazine mentions "candy-canes" in association with Christmas in 1874, and "Babyland" magazine describes "tall, twisted candy canes" being hung on a Christmas tree in 1882.


title: Candy cane

text: A common folkloric story of the origin of candy canes says that in 1670, in Cologne, Germany, the choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral, wishing to remedy the noise caused by children in his church during the Living Crèche tradition of Christmas Eve, asked a local candy maker for some "sugar sticks" for them. In order to justify the practice of giving candy to children during worship services, he asked the candy maker to add a crook to the top of each stick, which would help children remember the shepherds who visited the infant Jesus. In addition, he used the white color of the converted sticks to teach children about the Christian belief in the sinless life of Jesus. From Germany, candy canes spread to other parts of Europe, where they were handed out during plays reenacting the Nativity. The candy cane became associated with Christmastide.


title: Candy cane

text: As with other forms of stick candy, the earliest canes were manufactured by hand. Chicago confectioners the Bunte Brothers filed one of the earliest patents for candy cane making machines in the early 1920s.


title: Candy cane

text: In 1919 in Albany, Georgia, Robert McCormack began making candy canes for local children and by the middle of the century, his company (originally the Famous Candy Company, then the Mills-McCormack Candy Company, and later Bobs Candies) had become one of the world's leading candy cane producers. Candy cane manufacturing initially required significant labor that limited production quantities; the canes had to be bent manually as they came off the assembly line to create their curved shape and breakage often ran over 20 percent. McCormack's brother-in-law, Gregory Harding Keller, was a seminary student in Rome who spent his summers working in the candy factory back home. In 1957, Keller, as an ordained Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Little Rock, patented his invention, the Keller Machine, which automated the process of twisting soft candy into spiral striping and cutting it into precise lengths as candy canes.


title: Candy cane

text: On Saint Nicholas Day celebrations, candy canes are given to children as they are also said to represent the crosier of the Christian bishop, Saint Nicholas; crosiers allude to the Good Shepherd, a name sometimes used to refer to Jesus of Nazareth.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: On January 15, 2022, Malik Akram, a 44-year-old British Pakistani armed with a pistol, took four people hostage in the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, United States, during a Sabbath service. Hostage negotiations ensued, during which Akram demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani national and alleged al-Qaeda operative imprisoned in nearby Fort Worth for attempted murder and other crimes. He released one hostage after six hours, and the remaining three hostages escaped eleven hours into the standoff. Tactical officers from the FBI Hostage Rescue Team subsequently entered the synagogue and fatally shot Akram.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: Congregation Beth Israel is a Reform Jewish synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, a suburb northeast of Fort Worth in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The congregation was initially a "chavurah" established in 1999 with 25 families; a religious school with 75 children was founded shortly afterward. After in its early years holding its services at rented facilities, Congregation Beth Israel opened a synagogue of its own in 2004. The congregation is smaller than other Jewish congregations in the area; at the time of the incident, the congregation had around 140 members. The synagogue's rabbi at the time of the crisis was Charlie Cytron-Walker, originally from Lansing, Michigan. He became the congregation's rabbi in 2006, and he is known for his work in interfaith relations. Cytron-Walker was already set to leave the congregation in June 2022 when the incident occurred.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: Clergy and staff at the synagogue had taken courses for a number of years through the FBI, the Anti-Defamation League, the Colleyville Police Department, and Secure Community Network in order to prepare for the possibility of an intruder. Cytron-Walker credited the information learned in the courses with saving the hostages' lives.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: Malik Faisal Akram was a 44-year-old British citizen originally from Blackburn, Lancashire, in North West England. He was born to a family originally from Jhelum, a city in Pakistani Punjab. As a youth, Akram was expelled from school for getting involved in fights, and his parents subsequently sent him to a military school in Pakistan. During negotiations, he said that he had six children. A brother of Akram said that he had undiagnosed mental health issues that were well known to the Blackburn community, and that three months prior to the incident, a younger sibling had died. He also said that Akram did not harbor any hatred towards Jewish people in the past and that "religious nuts" had radicalized his brother in 2003.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: In September 2001, Akram was banned from Blackburn's magistrates' court for threatening staff on a number of occasions, including on days when he was not due in court. His final threat was made on September 12, when he said that he wished that a court usher had been killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks the day before. Akram had a criminal record in the UK, which included a drug deal-linked assault, violent disorder, and driving offenses. A community organizer in Blackburn said that Akram served a custodial sentence in England.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: "The Times of London" reported that Akram had been referred to Prevent, a voluntary British counter-radicalization program, in 2016 and 2019 amid concerns about his views; it was unclear whether Akram took part in the program. After he spent six months in Pakistan in 2020, Akram was investigated by the MI5, the British security service. He was on a watchlist as a "subject of interest" in a four-week MI5 "short lead investigation"; by 2021, he was moved to a "former subject of interest" list, having been no longer considered a terrorist threat. Akram was not on any U.S. watchlists.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani national and alleged al-Qaeda operative, formerly dubbed "Lady al-Qaeda". She is currently being held in the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, a women's federal prison in Fort Worth, while serving an 86-year sentence for attempted murder and other crimes. After being on the U.S. most wanted fugitives list for five years, Siddiqui was arrested in 2008 by Afghan police in Afghanistan, carrying handwritten notes plotting a "mass casualty attack", along with explosive and poisonous substances, and a list of possible targets in New York City and methods.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: According to U.S. authorities, in 2001, Siddiqui married Ammar al-Baluchi, an accused al-Qaeda member and the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was the ringleader of the September 11 attacks. Siddiqui was convicted in a jury trial in a U.S. federal court in 2010 of attempting to kill a U.S. Army captain while in Afghan custody; armed assault; using and carrying a firearm; and three counts of assault on U.S. officers and employees.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: For years, Siddiqui has been a "cause célèbre" within Islamist and Islamic extremist militant circles and in Pakistan, where she is depicted as a martyr and heroine. The Islamist terrorist groups al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and the Islamic State (Daesh) have all unsuccessfully tried to negotiate Siddiqui's release at various times, as a condition for them releasing foreign hostages. The Islamic State sought to trade kidnapped American journalist James Foley for her; after the U.S. government declined, the Islamic State beheaded Foley.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: During her trial, Siddiqui made various antisemitic statements and asked that there not be any Jewish people on the jury, going so far as to demand genetic tests on jurors at one point, to determine if they were Jewish. She later claimed she was not against all "Israeli Americans". After her sentencing by the U.S. court for a crime against Americans, she said: "This is a verdict coming from Israel and not from America. That's where the anger belongs."


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: According to "The Daily Telegraph", Congregation Beth Israel is the nearest synagogue to where Siddiqui is being held.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: Akram entered the U.S. from the United Kingdom on December 27, 2021, two weeks prior to the incident, at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, listing a Queens hotel as his local address on a customs form. He was checked against law enforcement databases and did not raise any red flags. Investigators believe that Akram lied on his tourist visa waiver, which requires applicants to disclose criminal records.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: Akram then traveled to Dallas, Texas, apparently by air on December 31, 2021, and intermittently stayed in at least two local homeless shelters between January 2 and 11. While there, he was described, by an official at one of the shelters, as quiet and not being there long enough to build any relationships. On video dated January 2, Akram was captured being dropped off at one of the shelters by an unknown individual who stayed with him at the shelter for fifteen minutes and hugged him before departing. Investigators determined that Akram purchased a Taurus G2C handgun on the street from someone he met at the Union Gospel Mission Dallas, one of the shelters where he stayed. The handgun's last legal sale was recorded in early 2020, and it was reported stolen later that year.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: On January 5, Akram arrived at the Islamic Center of Irving to pray. He became belligerent when he was told he could not sleep inside the building due to city ordinances and mosque policy, and he was kicked out of the mosque. Mosque officials described him as behaving erratically, but without any indication of potential violence. Akram returned the next day to apologize, and the mosque allowed him to pray inside; officials said that he was like a different person on that day and that his demeanor was a "flip flop in the behavior in the extremes". His movements on January 12–15 were unclear.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: On the morning of January 15, 2022, Akram visited a Starbucks located less than a mile away from the Congregation Beth Israel, then he traveled to the synagogue by bicycle. At around 10:00 a.m., Akram entered Beth Israel by knocking on a locked glass door and posing as a homeless man seeking shelter. He was welcomed inside by Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, who made him a cup of hot tea. Cytron-Walker said after his rescue that he was not initially suspicious of Akram, but he was "curious" after some of his story did not add up. Cytron-Walker introduced Akram to Jeffrey R Cohen, the vice president on the synagogue's board of trustees, who said Akram was calm and on the phone at the time.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: During Sabbath prayer, Cytron-Walker turned his back on the congregation to pray towards Jerusalem, and he then heard a click, which turned out to be Akram's pistol. A yelling Akram then began taking hostages in the synagogue. A total of four hostages, including Cytron-Walker and Cohen, were held captive. As he was being taken hostage, Jeffrey R Cohen secretly dialed 9-1-1 and placed his phone down on its screen before moving as commanded. The Colleyville Police Department first received a 9-1-1 call reporting the situation at 10:41 a.m., and an officer responded to the scene minutes later.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: A report that hostages had been taken at Congregation Beth Israel was made public at around 11:30 a.m. via a tweet from the Colleyville Police Department, which said a SWAT team was on the scene. Police were later assisted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Texas Department of Public Safety. Law enforcement evacuated the neighborhood in the vicinity of the crime scene. Ultimately, more than 200 local, state, and federal law enforcement officers and agents responded to the scene, including a team of around 70 FBI hostage negotiators and rescue operatives who flew in from Quantico, Virginia.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: A livestream of the synagogue's services on its Facebook page streamed the ongoing situation, including the forceful taking of hostages. In the livestream, Akram could be heard speaking to authorities, who attempted to negotiate with him. At one point, Akram claimed (apparently falsely) to have a bomb. The livestream also streamed Akram saying that he had flown to the city where Siddiqui was imprisoned with the intent of taking hostages. He also said that he chose to take hostages in a synagogue because the U.S. "only cares about Jewish lives" and because "Jews control the world. Jews control the media. Jews control the banks."


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: During the incident, Akram demanded that Siddiqui be released from prison and referred to her as "sister". He believed Siddiqui was "framed". Siddiqui's lawyer said her client had no involvement in the incident. A brother of Akram's was involved in the negotiations, speaking to his brother from a Blackburn Greenbank police station, having been taken to its incident room to liaise with the FBI and negotiators. He later wrote that their whole family condemned Akram's actions. The brother urged him to release the hostages and surrender to police, but Akram said that he came to the synagogue with the intent to die, telling his brother that he intended to “go down as a martyr” and would be "coming back in a body bag”.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: A number of local faith leaders rushed to the synagogue to provide support, including prominent American Muslim imam and activist, Omar Suleiman, who offered to assist with hostage negotiations.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: During negotiations, Akram was emotionally unstable and agitated. He ranted against the U.S., Israel, and Jews; used antisemitic and anti-Israeli epithets; delivered a rambling condemnation of U.S. military conflicts overseas; and occasionally spoke in different languages. He boasted about his desire for martyrdom and addressed fellow jihadists. He threatened to kill the hostages, saying, "If anyone tries to enter this building, I'm telling you... everyone will die," and "I'm going to die. Don't cry about me..." At one point, Akram asked each hostage how many children they had, and then said to the hostage negotiator: "Do you want to have seven children lose their parent?" However, he also said "I don't wanna hurt 'em, yeah" in reference to the hostages. He allowed the hostages to call their families, and Jeffrey R Cohen was able to write a post on Facebook.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: Akram said he would shoot hostages unless he spoke to a Jewish leader in New York. Just after 12:00 p.m., Akram called Central Synagogue in New York City and twice demanded to speak to Senior Rabbi Angela Buchdahl. While on the phone with Buchdahl, he said that he had a bomb, and asked her to use her position of influence to secure Siddiqui's release. Buchdahl immediately contacted law enforcement. Authorities suspect Akram chose to call Buchdahl because of her leadership position of a synagogue in New York City, where Siddiqui was convicted.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: At around 12:30 p.m., the FBI took over hostage negotiations. At about 2:00 p.m., Facebook cut the livestream feed, but police were able to access the synagogue's closed-circuit television system and view the events in real time. Shortly after 5:00 p.m., Akram released one of the hostages. The man did not need medical attention.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: As the standoff reached ten hours, and Siddiqui remained unreleased, the situation became dire. Cytron-Walker said Akram grew "increasingly belligerent and threatening". However, Cytron-Walker, Cohen, and the third remaining hostage saw that Akram was out of position, knew an exit was nearby, and positioned themselves nearby, one by one. Akram then ordered them to get on their knees, and Cytron-Walker got him a cup of juice to drink. As Akram drank, Cytron-Walker yelled at the others to run and threw a chair at Akram while the others fled towards the exit. All three hostages escaped, and no shots were fired by Akram. Video taken outside the synagogue by WFAA just before 9:15 p.m. showed the hostages sprinting out of the building while being followed by Akram, who then withdrew into the building. Cytron-Walker credited security courses he had taken for helping the captives figure out the right moment to flee.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: After the hostages fled the building, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team was seen surrounding another part of the synagogue. At around 9:21 p.m., the FBI Hostage Rescue used a stun grenade to attempt to disorient Akram. Electricity was cut to the synagogue, and agents breached the building at around 9:22 p.m. Within seconds, the agents shot Akram multiple times, killing him.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: At around 9:30 p.m., after an 11-hour standoff, all remaining hostages were confirmed to have been recovered unharmed. After the synagogue was secured, the building was swept by the FBI's Evidence Response Team and bomb technicians. No explosives aside from police entry tools were found at the scene.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: The FBI's North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force coordinated the investigation. Immediately after the incident, an official initially said Akram's demands were "specifically focused on issues not connected to the Jewish community". The statement attracted criticism for downplaying antisemitism as a possible motive, given Akram's selection of a synagogue as a target, and Siddiqui's antisemitic beliefs. In an official FBI statement made on January 17, it said the incident was "a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted". British counterterrorism police are assisting the U.S. authorities. On January 21, the FBI said it was investigating the incident as a "federal hate crime" and an "act of terrorism".


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: The FBI believes that Akram acted alone, and Matthew DeSarno, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Dallas field office, said there was no indication that the man was part of any broader plan. DeSarno also said the investigation into the incident will have "global" reach, and he confirmed that the FBI Shooting Incident Review Team "will conduct a thorough, factual, and objective investigation of the events". A day after the incident, President Joe Biden said Akram was armed with guns, but his claim of being armed with a bomb was not true. Akram's motive for the hostage-taking was his anger over the U.S. imprisonment of Siddiqui; a U.S. official said that the hostage situation deteriorated in its final hours in part because Akram "became increasingly skeptical that the FBI would accede to his demands to free Siddiqui".


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: American and British investigators retrieved electronic data about Akram's movements and interests in the days before he came to the synagogue. Over the two weeks leading up to the incident, Akram's Internet search history revealed that he looked up information about influential rabbis, Siddiqui, gun stores, and pawnshops.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: The day after the incident, Akram's two teenage sons were apprehended in south Manchester, North West England, by officers from Counter Terror Policing North West. They were subsequently released without being charged. On January 20, two men were arrested in Manchester and Birmingham, West Midlands, as part of the investigation into the Colleyville incident. They were later released with no further action as of January 26. On January 25, two additional men were taken into custody in Manchester as part of the investigation. On January 27, one of them was released without being charged.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: On January 26, a 32-year-old Texas man was arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm; he is alleged to have sold Akram the Taurus G2C handgun used in the incident. The sale reportedly occurred on January 13, and the man had exchanged several phone calls with Akram within the two preceding days. The man reportedly told authorities that he believed Akram wanted to use the gun to intimidate someone who owed him money.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: Cytron-Walker expressed gratitude and thanks "for all of the vigils and prayers and love and support, all of the law enforcement and first responders who cared for us, all of the security training that helped save us."


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: Officials in the White House monitored the situation; President Joe Biden called it "an act of terror" and said, "We will stand against antisemitism and against the rise of extremism in this country." British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss condemned the incident, calling it an antisemitic act of terror. Livia Link, the Israeli Consul General in Houston, Texas, attended the scene, and the Israeli government established contact with U.S. law enforcement regarding the situation.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: "The Washington Post" reported that the incident had shaken Jewish communities in the U.S. and around the world, and "Haaretz" reported that Jewish leaders condemned an FBI official's initial suggestion that the incident may not have been antisemitic. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, recounting the series of recent attacks on American Jews, said a "bullseye is being drawn on the backs of Jews in the United States". Many synagogues and other Jewish institutions increased security measures. Jewish leaders also called for stronger turnout at synagogues as a show of defiance against antisemitism.


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: Many Muslim community leaders and Islamic organizations in Texas condemned the actions of the hostage-taker and expressed their support for the synagogue in the wake of the hostage incident. The Council on American–Islamic Relations, which has called for the release of Siddiqui and asserted that she is innocent, condemned the incident as "an act of pure evil" and expressed support and prayers with the people being held hostage in the synagogue. The attorney who represents Siddiqui said she had "absolutely no involvement with [the hostage crisis]" and that they condemn the incident. The Muslim community of Blackburn, the hometown of Akram, expressed their solidarity with the Jewish community and stated, "our sympathy goes out to the hostages and the rest of the Jewish community".


title: Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

text: During the aftermath of the hostage-taking, the Anti-Defamation League released a report documenting conspiracy theories and antisemitic responses to the crisis, including false claims that the incident was an inside job by the U.S. government. Supporters of the American radical right political conspiracy theory movement QAnon termed the survivors "crisis actors" and the incident a false flag operation. The document also criticized Islamophobic reactions to the incident, such as the use of the slur Paki. Far-right political commentator Gavin McInnes posted that "maybe we should consider cutting Islam out of our 'interfaith' communities", which the ADL denounced as Islamophobic. The ADL issued resources to counter hate and misinformation.


title: Wedding of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones

text: The wedding of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones took place on Friday, 6 May 1960 at Westminster Abbey in London. Princess Margaret was the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, while Antony Armstrong-Jones was a noted society photographer.


text: Princess Margaret met photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1958 at a dinner party at the Chelsea home of Lady Elizabeth Cavendish. The two had previously encountered each other when Armstrong-Jones was the photographer at the wedding of Margaret's friends, Lady Anne Coke and The Hon. Colin Tennant, in April 1956. In October 1959, Armstrong-Jones was invited to stay at Balmoral Castle. The public assumed he was there to photograph the royal family. They became engaged shortly after and on 26 February 1960, Clarence House announced the engagement. Armstrong-Jones presented the Princess with an engagement ring set with a ruby surrounded by a marguerite of diamonds. He had designed the ring himself after a rose in honour of Margaret's middle name.


text: Two days before the wedding, on 4 May, there was a white-tie ball at Buckingham Palace attended by the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury.


text: Margaret made her way with the Duke of Edinburgh from Clarence House in the Glass Coach, arriving at the church at 11:30. The wedding took place at Westminster Abbey and was conducted by The Most Rev. Dr. Geoffery Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury and The Very Rev. Eric Abbott, Dean of Westminster. It was the first royal wedding to be broadcast on television and had an estimated 300 million viewers, 20 millon of which from the UK. Richard Dimbleby, Jean Metcalfe, Anne Edwards, Brian Johnston, and Wynford Vaughan-Thomas covered the event for the BBC.


text: Armstrong-Jones's best man was Dr. Roger Gilliatt, son of the Queen's gynecologist. The Countess of Rosse, the groom's mother, had hoped he would choose his half-brother, Lord Oxmantown, as his best man. However, resentment of their mother's favouritism led him to reject this suggestion. On 19 March, it was announced he had chosen Jeremy Fry for the role, but Fry was convicted of "importuning for immoral purposes" after allegedly approaching a man for sex, so was replaced.


text: Prior to the service, works by Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Henry Purcell and William Henry Harris were played on the organ. The bride walked down the aisle to the hymn "Christ is Made the Sure Foundation" to the tune "Westminster Abbey" by Purcell. Throughout the service, anthems by Franz Schubert, William Byrd and Gustav Holst were sung. The recessional music, at the special request of the bride, was "Trumpet Tune and Airs" by Purcell.


text: The Princess wore a silk organza gown designed by Norman Hartnell. She accessorized with the Poltimore tiara, which she had purchased at auction a year earlier, and a diamond riviére of 34 old-cut diamonds given to the bride by her grandmother, Queen Mary. She carried a bouquet of white orchids. Hartnell also designed the outfits of The Queen and The Queen Mother.


text: Armstrong-Jones and all male members of the royal family, except for Lord Mountbatten, wore morning dress.


text: The wedding coincided with the 10th Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference held at Windsor Castle. As a result, many of the Commonwealth dignitaries attended the wedding.


text: Following a balcony appearance and a wedding breakfast for 150 guests at Buckingham Palace, the bride changed into her Victor Stiebel going-away outfit and they departed in an open Rolls-Royce. They spent their six-week honeymoon touring the Caribbean on HMY "Britannia". On 26 May, while away on honeymoon, Camilla Fry, wife of Jeremy Fry, gave birth to Armstrong-Jones's illegitimate daughter, Polly. Allegations of this were first raised in 2004 and confirmed when Armstrong-Jones agreed to take a paternity test.


text: On 6 October 1961, Armstrong-Jones was raised to the peerage as Earl of Snowdon and Viscount Linley, of Nymans in the County of Sussex, by Queen Elizabeth II. He became ""The Right Honourable" The Earl of Snowdon" and Princess Margaret became ""Her Royal Highness" The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon." The couple had two children, David (born 1961), now the 2nd Earl of Snowdon, and Sarah (born 1964).


text: The Snowdons separated in 1976, subsequently divorcing on 11 July 1978. It was the first divorce by a senior member of the royal family since that of Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse in 1901. On 15 December of that year, Snowdon remarried Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, separating in 2000. They had a daughter, Frances (b. 1979). On 30 April 1998, Snowdon fathered another illegitimate child, Jasper William Oliver Cable-Alexander.


text: After years of ill health, Princess Margaret, who never remarried, died on 9 February 2002, aged 71. Lord Snowdon died on 13 January 2017, aged 86.


title: Type II supernova

text: A Type II supernova (plural: "supernovae" or "supernovas") results from the rapid collapse and violent explosion of a massive star. A star must have at least 8 times, but no more than 40 to 50 times, the mass of the Sun () to undergo this type of explosion. Type II supernovae are distinguished from other types of supernovae by the presence of hydrogen in their spectra. They are usually observed in the spiral arms of galaxies and in H II regions, but not in elliptical galaxies; those are generally composed of older, low-mass stars, with few of the young, very massive stars necessary to cause a supernova.


title: Type II supernova

text: Stars generate energy by the nuclear fusion of elements. Unlike the Sun, massive stars possess the mass needed to fuse elements that have an atomic mass greater than hydrogen and helium, albeit at increasingly higher temperatures and pressures, causing correspondingly shorter stellar life spans. The degeneracy pressure of electrons and the energy generated by these fusion reactions are sufficient to counter the force of gravity and prevent the star from collapsing, maintaining stellar equilibrium. The star fuses increasingly higher mass elements, starting with hydrogen and then helium, progressing up through the periodic table until a core of iron and nickel is produced. Fusion of iron or nickel produces no net energy output, so no further fusion can take place, leaving the nickel–iron core inert. Due to the lack of energy output creating outward thermal pressure, the core contracts due to gravity until the overlying weight of the star can be supported largely by electron degeneracy pressure.


title: Type II supernova

text: When the compacted mass of the inert core exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit of about , electron degeneracy is no longer sufficient to counter the gravitational compression. A cataclysmic implosion of the core takes place within seconds. Without the support of the now-imploded inner core, the outer core collapses inwards under gravity and reaches a velocity of up to 23% of the speed of light, and the sudden compression increases the temperature of the inner core to up to 100 billion kelvins. Neutrons and neutrinos are formed via reversed beta-decay, releasing about 10 joules (100 foe) in a ten-second burst. The collapse of the inner core is halted by neutron degeneracy, causing the implosion to rebound and bounce outward. The energy of this expanding shock wave is sufficient to disrupt the overlying stellar material and accelerate it to escape velocity, forming a supernova explosion. The shock wave and extremely high temperature and pressure rapidly dissipate but are present for long enough to allow for a brief period during which the


title: Type II supernova

text: production of elements heavier than iron occurs. Depending on initial mass of the star, the remnants of the core form a neutron star or a black hole. Because of the underlying mechanism, the resulting supernova is also described as a core-collapse supernova.


title: Type II supernova

text: There exist several categories of Type II supernova explosions, which are categorized based on the resulting light curve—a graph of luminosity versus time—following the explosion. Type II-L supernovae show a steady (linear) decline of the light curve following the explosion, whereas Type II-P display a period of slower decline (a plateau) in their light curve followed by a normal decay. Type Ib and Ic supernovae are a type of core-collapse supernova for a massive star that has shed its outer envelope of hydrogen and (for Type Ic) helium. As a result, they appear to be lacking in these elements.


title: Type II supernova

text: Stars far more massive than the sun evolve in complex ways. In the core of the star, hydrogen is fused into helium, releasing thermal energy that heats the star's core and provides outward pressure that supports the star's layers against collapse - a situation known as stellar or hydrostatic equilibrium. The helium produced in the core accumulates there. Temperatures in the core are not yet high enough to cause it to fuse. Eventually, as the hydrogen at the core is exhausted, fusion starts to slow down, and gravity causes the core to contract. This contraction raises the temperature high enough to allow a shorter phase of helium fusion, which produces carbon and oxygen, and accounts for less than 10% of the star's total lifetime.


title: Type II supernova

text: In stars of less than eight solar masses, the carbon produced by helium fusion does not fuse, and the star gradually cools to become a white dwarf. If they accumulate more mass from another star, or some other source, they may become Type Ia supernovae. But a much larger star is massive enough to continue fusion beyond this point.


title: Type II supernova

text: The cores of these massive stars directly create temperatures and pressures needed to cause the carbon in the core to begin to fuse when the star contracts at the end of the helium-burning stage. The core gradually becomes layered like an onion, as progressively heavier atomic nuclei build up at the center, with an outermost layer of hydrogen gas, surrounding a layer of hydrogen fusing into helium, surrounding a layer of helium fusing into carbon via the triple-alpha process, surrounding layers that fuse to progressively heavier elements. As a star this massive evolves, it undergoes repeated stages where fusion in the core stops, and the core collapses until the pressure and temperature are sufficient to begin the next stage of fusion, reigniting to halt collapse.


title: Type II supernova

text: The factor limiting this process is the amount of energy that is released through fusion, which is dependent on the binding energy that holds together these atomic nuclei. Each additional step produces progressively heavier nuclei, which release progressively less energy when fusing. In addition, from carbon-burning onwards, energy loss via neutrino production becomes significant, leading to a higher rate of reaction than would otherwise take place. This continues until nickel-56 is produced, which decays radioactively into cobalt-56 and then iron-56 over the course of a few months. As iron and nickel have the highest binding energy per nucleon of all the elements, energy cannot be produced at the core by fusion, and a nickel-iron core grows. This core is under huge gravitational pressure. As there is no fusion to further raise the star's temperature to support it against collapse, it is supported only by degeneracy pressure of electrons. In this state, matter is so dense that further compaction would require electrons to occupy the same energy states. However, this is forbidden for identical fermion particles, such as the electron – a phenomenon called the Pauli exclusion principle.


title: Type II supernova

text: When the core's mass exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit of about , degeneracy pressure can no longer support it, and catastrophic collapse ensues. The outer part of the core reaches velocities of up to (23% of the speed of light) as it collapses toward the center of the star. The rapidly shrinking core heats up, producing high-energy gamma rays that decompose iron nuclei into helium nuclei and free neutrons via photodisintegration. As the core's density increases, it becomes energetically favorable for electrons and protons to merge via inverse beta decay, producing neutrons and elementary particles called neutrinos. Because neutrinos rarely interact with normal matter, they can escape from the core, carrying away energy and further accelerating the collapse, which proceeds over a timescale of milliseconds. As the core detaches from the outer layers of the star, some of these neutrinos are absorbed by the star's outer layers, beginning the supernova explosion.


title: Type II supernova

text: For Type II supernovae, the collapse is eventually halted by short-range repulsive neutron-neutron interactions, mediated by the strong force, as well as by degeneracy pressure of neutrons, at a density comparable to that of an atomic nucleus. When the collapse stops, the infalling matter rebounds, producing a shock wave that propagates outward. The energy from this shock dissociates heavy elements within the core. This reduces the energy of the shock, which can stall the explosion within the outer core.


title: Type II supernova

text: The core collapse phase is so dense and energetic that only neutrinos are able to escape. As the protons and electrons combine to form neutrons by means of electron capture, an electron neutrino is produced. In a typical Type II supernova, the newly formed neutron core has an initial temperature of about 100 billion kelvins, 10 times the temperature of the Sun's core. Much of this thermal energy must be shed for a stable neutron star to form, otherwise the neutrons would "boil away". This is accomplished by a further release of neutrinos. These 'thermal' neutrinos form as neutrino-antineutrino pairs of all flavors, and total several times the number of electron-capture neutrinos. The two neutrino production mechanisms convert the gravitational potential energy of the collapse into a ten-second neutrino burst, releasing about 10 joules (100 foe).


title: Type II supernova

text: Through a process that is not clearly understood, about 1%, or 10 joules (1 foe), of the energy released (in the form of neutrinos) is reabsorbed by the stalled shock, producing the supernova explosion. Neutrinos generated by a supernova were observed in the case of Supernova 1987A, leading astrophysicists to conclude that the core collapse picture is basically correct. The water-based Kamiokande II and IMB instruments detected antineutrinos of thermal origin, while the gallium-71-based Baksan instrument detected neutrinos (lepton number = 1) of either thermal or electron-capture origin.


title: Type II supernova

text: When the progenitor star is below about – depending on the strength of the explosion and the amount of material that falls back – the degenerate remnant of a core collapse is a neutron star. Above this mass, the remnant collapses to form a black hole. The theoretical limiting mass for this type of core collapse scenario is about . Above that mass, a star is believed to collapse directly into a black hole without forming a supernova explosion, although uncertainties in models of supernova collapse make calculation of these limits uncertain.


title: Type II supernova

text: The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory which describes three of the four known fundamental interactions between the elementary particles that make up all matter. This theory allows predictions to be made about how particles will interact under many conditions. The energy per particle in a supernova is typically 1–150 picojoules (tens to hundreds of MeV). The per-particle energy involved in a supernova is small enough that the predictions gained from the Standard Model of particle physics are likely to be basically correct. But the high densities may require corrections to the Standard Model. In particular, Earth-based particle accelerators can produce particle interactions which are of much higher energy than are found in supernovae, but these experiments involve individual particles interacting with individual particles, and it is likely that the high densities within the supernova will produce novel effects. The interactions between neutrinos and the other particles in the supernova take place with the weak nuclear force, which is believed to be well understood. However, the interactions between the protons and neutrons involve the strong nuclear force, which is much less well understood.


title: Type II supernova

text: The major unsolved problem with Type II supernovae is that it is not understood how the burst of neutrinos transfers its energy to the rest of the star producing the shock wave which causes the star to explode. From the above discussion, only one percent of the energy needs to be transferred to produce an explosion, but explaining how that one percent of transfer occurs has proven extremely difficult, even though the particle interactions involved are believed to be well understood. In the 1990s, one model for doing this involved convective overturn, which suggests that convection, either from neutrinos from below, or infalling matter from above, completes the process of destroying the progenitor star. Heavier elements than iron are formed during this explosion by neutron capture, and from the pressure of the neutrinos pressing into the boundary of the "neutrinosphere", seeding the surrounding space with a cloud of gas and dust which is richer in heavy elements than the material from which the star originally formed.


title: Type II supernova

text: Neutrino physics, which is modeled by the Standard Model, is crucial to the understanding of this process. The other crucial area of investigation is the hydrodynamics of the plasma that makes up the dying star; how it behaves during the core collapse determines when and how the shockwave forms and when and how it stalls and is reenergized.


title: Type II supernova

text: In fact, some theoretical models incorporate a hydrodynamical instability in the stalled shock known as the "Standing Accretion Shock Instability" (SASI). This instability comes about as a consequence of non-spherical perturbations oscillating the stalled shock thereby deforming it. The SASI is often used in tandem with neutrino theories in computer simulations for re-energizing the stalled shock.


title: Type II supernova

text: Computer models have been very successful at calculating the behavior of Type II supernovae when the shock has been formed. By ignoring the first second of the explosion, and assuming that an explosion is started, astrophysicists have been able to make detailed predictions about the elements produced by the supernova and of the expected light curve from the supernova.


title: Type II supernova

text: When the spectrum of a Type II supernova is examined, it normally displays Balmer absorption lines – reduced flux at the characteristic frequencies where hydrogen atoms absorb energy. The presence of these lines is used to distinguish this category of supernova from a Type I supernova.


title: Type II supernova

text: When the luminosity of a Type II supernova is plotted over a period of time, it shows a characteristic rise to a peak brightness followed by a decline. These light curves have an average decay rate of 0.008 magnitudes per day; much lower than the decay rate for Type Ia supernovae. Type II is subdivided into two classes, depending on the shape of the light curve. The light curve for a Type II-L supernova shows a steady (linear) decline following the peak brightness. By contrast, the light curve of a Type II-P supernova has a distinctive flat stretch (called a plateau) during the decline; representing a period where the luminosity decays at a slower rate. The net luminosity decay rate is lower, at 0.0075 magnitudes per day for Type II-P, compared to 0.012 magnitudes per day for Type II-L.


title: Type II supernova

text: The difference in the shape of the light curves is believed to be caused, in the case of Type II-L supernovae, by the expulsion of most of the hydrogen envelope of the progenitor star. The plateau phase in Type II-P supernovae is due to a change in the opacity of the exterior layer. The shock wave ionizes the hydrogen in the outer envelope – stripping the electron from the hydrogen atom – resulting in a significant increase in the opacity. This prevents photons from the inner parts of the explosion from escaping. When the hydrogen cools sufficiently to recombine, the outer layer becomes transparent.


title: Type II supernova

text: The "n" denotes narrow, which indicates the presence of narrow or intermediate width hydrogen emission lines in the spectra. In the intermediate width case, the ejecta from the explosion may be interacting strongly with gas around the star – the circumstellar medium. The estimated circumstellar density required to explain the observational properties is much higher than that expected from the standard stellar evolution theory. It is generally assumed that the high circumstellar density is due to the high mass-loss rates of the Type IIn progenitors. The estimated mass-loss rates are typically higher than per year. There are indications that they originate as stars similar to luminous blue variables with large mass losses before exploding. SN 1998S and SN 2005gl are examples of Type IIn supernovae; SN 2006gy, an extremely energetic supernova, may be another example.


title: Type II supernova

text: A Type IIb supernova has a weak hydrogen line in its initial spectrum, which is why it is classified as a Type II. However, later on the H emission becomes undetectable, and there is also a second peak in the light curve that has a spectrum which more closely resembles a Type Ib supernova. The progenitor could have been a massive star that expelled most of its outer layers, or one which lost most of its hydrogen envelope due to interactions with a companion in a binary system, leaving behind the core that consisted almost entirely of helium. As the ejecta of a Type IIb expands, the hydrogen layer quickly becomes more transparent and reveals the deeper layers.


title: Type II supernova

text: The classic example of a Type IIb supernova is SN 1993J, while another example is Cassiopeia A. The IIb class was first introduced (as a theoretical concept) by Woosley et al. in 1987, and the class was soon applied to SN 1987K and SN 1993J.


title: Re-Logic

text: Re-Logic is an American independent game developer and publisher based in Indiana. It was founded by Andrew Spinks in 2011. The company is best known for developing and publishing "Terraria", a 2D action-adventure sandbox video game. Re-Logic published "Pixel Piracy" and "Pixel Privateers", both were developed by Quadro Delta.


title: Re-Logic

text: Re-Logic was founded at the beginning of "Terraria"s development cycle, starting in January 2011, by Andrew Spinks. The game was released for Microsoft Windows on 16 May 2011 and received multiple updates later on. In February 2012, Re-Logic's developers announced that "Terraria" would be receiving one final bug-fix patch, but development resumed in 2013. At E3 2019, Re-Logic announced the final update to the game. Update 1.4 "Journey's End" was released on 16 May 2020. Re-Logic stated that they wanted to work on other projects after this update.


title: Re-Logic

text: "Terraria" has seen multiple console releases, which include the PlayStation 3 on 26 March 2013, Xbox 360 on 27 March 2013, the PlayStation Vita on 11 December 2013, the PlayStation 4 on 11 November 2014, the Xbox One on 14 November 2014, the Nintendo 3DS on 10 December 2015, and the Wii U in June 2016. The game was also released for iOS on 29 August 2013, for Android on 13 September 2013, and for Windows Phone on 12 September 2014.


title: Re-Logic

text: The company published "Pixel Piracy", a side-scrolling real-time strategy video game, for Windows, macOS, and Linux on 1 December 2013, for the PlayStation 4 on 16 February 2016, and for the Xbox One on 16 February 2016. On 21 February 2017 Re-Logic published "Pixel Privateers", a turn-based strategy video game for Windows.


title: Re-Logic

text: In February 2015, Re-Logic began development of "Terraria: Otherworld", a game set in the same universe as "Terraria". The game was announced in a teaser trailer on 16 February 2015, however, on 13 April 2018, the game was cancelled due it being far behind schedule and far from the vision Re-Logic had for it.


title: Re-Logic

text: In 2019, in response to the increasing number of games becoming exclusive to the Epic Games Store, Re-Logic's vice president Whitney Spinks asserted that no Re-Logic titles would become Epic Games Store exclusives, adding that the company would never "sell [their] souls" for any amount of money.


title: Re-Logic

text: In 2021, Andrew Spinks had a public falling out with Google over the unexplained suspension of Re-Logic/Spinks's Google account over three weeks prior, losing access to his YouTube channel, Gmail, and Google Drive. He announced that as a result, "Terraria" would not be coming to Stadia and that Re-Logic will not release any new projects on Google platforms in the future. A month later, Re-Logic settled with Google on the suspension of Spinks's Google account and confirms that Terraria will be heading to Stadia.


title: African Development Bank

text: The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) or (BAD) is a multilateral development finance institution headquartered in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, since September 2014. The AfDB is a financial provider to African governments and private companies investing in the regional member countries (RMC).


title: African Development Bank

text: The AfDB was founded in 1964 by the Organisation of African Unity, which is the predecessor of the African Union.


title: African Development Bank

text: The AfDB comprises three entities: The African Development Bank, the African Development Fund and the Nigeria Trust Fund.


title: African Development Bank

text: The AfDB's mission is to fight poverty and improve living conditions on the continent through promoting the investment of public and private capital in projects and programs that are likely to contribute to the economic and social development of the region.


title: African Development Bank

text: Following the end of the colonial period in Africa, a growing desire for more unity within the continent led to the establishment of two draft charters, one for the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity (established in 1963, later replaced by the African Union), and for a regional development bank.


title: African Development Bank

text: A draft accord was submitted to top African officials then to the Conference of Finance Ministers on the Establishment of an African Development Bank. This conference was convened by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Khartoum, Sudan, from 31 July to 4 August. It was here that the agreement establishing the African Development Bank (AfDB) was cosigned by twenty-three African governments on 4 August 1963. The agreement came into force on 10 September 1964. Mamoun Beheiry was elected as the founding president.


title: African Development Bank

text: The inaugural meeting of the Board of Governors of the Bank was held from 4 to 7 November 1964 in Lagos, Nigeria. The Bank's headquarters opened in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in March 1965 and the Bank's operations commenced on 1 July 1966.


title: African Development Bank

text: From February 2003 to September 2014, the Bank operated from its Temporary Relocation Agency in Tunis, Tunisia, owing to the prevailing political conflict in Ivory Coast during the Ivorian civil war at the time. The Bank was able to return to its original headquarters in Abidjan in late 2013 once the political crisis was over.


title: African Development Bank

text: By June 2015, over 1,500 staff had returned to the Bank's Abidjan headquarters out of the more than 1,900 total staff the Bank.


title: African Development Bank

text: Although, originally, only African countries were able to join the bank, since 1982 it has allowed the entry of non-African countries as well.


title: African Development Bank

text: Since its founding, AfDB has financed 2,885 operations, for a total of $47.5 billion. In 2003, it received an AAA rating from the major financial rating agencies and had a capital of $32.043 billion. In November 2019, the bank's capital was reported as $208 billion.


title: African Development Bank

text: The African Development Bank Group has two other entities: the African Development Fund (ADF) and the Nigeria Trust Fund (NTF).


title: African Development Bank

text: Established in 1972, the African Development Fund started operations in 1974. "The African Development Fund" United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) 2004, no longer available (2006). It provides development finance on concessional terms to low-income RMCs which are unable to borrow on the non-concessional terms of the AfDB. In harmony with its lending strategy, poverty reduction is the main aim of ADF activities. Twenty-four non-African countries along with the AfDB constitute its current membership. The largest ADF shareholder is the United Kingdom, with approximately 14% of the total working shares followed by United States with approximately 6.5 percent of the total voting shares, followed by Japan with approximately 5.4 percent. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was designated as the depositor bank for the fund according to telegraphs sent from the U.S. Embassy in Abidjan in 1976.


title: African Development Bank

text: The ADF's general operations are decided by a Board of Directors, six of which are appointed by the non-African member states and six designated by the AfDB from among the bank's regional Executive Directors.


title: African Development Bank

text: The ADF's sources are mainly contributions and periodic replacements by non-African member states. The fund is usually replenished every three years, unless member states decide otherwise. The total donations, at the end of 1996, amounted to $12.58 billion. The ADF lends at no interest rate, with an annual service charge of 0.75%, a commitment fee of 0.5%, and a 50-year repayment period including a 10-year grace period. The tenth United Kingdom replenishment of the ADF was in 2006.


title: African Development Bank

text: The Nigeria Trust Fund (NTF) was established in 1976 by the Nigerian government with an initial capital of $80 million. The NTF is aimed at assisting in the development efforts of the poorest AfDB members.


title: African Development Bank

text: The NTF uses its resources to provide financing for projects of national or regional importance which further the economic and social development of the low-income RMCs whose economic and social conditions require financing on non-conventional terms. In 1996, the NTF had a total resource base of $432 million. It lends at a 4% interest rate with a 25-year repayment period, including a five-year grace period. The loans can be used for concessional loan operations with long and short term maturity.


title: African Development Bank

text: The AfDB is controlled by a Board of Executive Directors, made up of representatives of its member countries. The voting power on the Board is split according to the size of each member's share, currently 60%-40% between African (or "regional") countries and “non-regional” member countries (“donors”). The largest African Development Bank shareholder is Nigeria with nearly 9 percent of the vote. All member countries of the AfDB are represented on the AfDB Board of Executive Directors.


title: African Development Bank

text: Dr. Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina is the 8th elected President of the African Development Bank Group, having taken the oath of office on September 1, 2015. He chairs the Boards of both the African Development Bank and the African Development Fund. Dr. Adesina served as Nigeria's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development from 2011 to 2015.


title: African Development Bank

text: Member governments are officially represented at the AfDB by their Minister of Finance, Planning or Cooperation who sits on the AfDB Board of Governors. The AfDB Governors meet once a year (at the Annual Meetings of the AfDB each May) to take major decisions about the institution's leadership, strategic directions and governing bodies. The Governors typically appoint a representative from their country to serve in the offices of the AfDB's Board of Executive Directors.


title: African Development Bank

text: Day-to-day decisions about which loans and grants should be approved and what policies should guide the AfDB's work are taken by the Board of Executive Directors. Each member country is represented on the Board, but their voting power and influence differs depending on the amount of money they contribute to the AfDB.


title: African Development Bank

text: In June 2020 the board of the AfDB agreed to a review of Adesina's management of the bank. Adesina is up for reelection in August 2020. Adesina was reelected unanimously for a second five-year term on August 27, 2020


title: African Development Bank

text: The African Development Bank uses a Unit of Account which is registered as ISO 4217, whose standard currency code is . It is not exchanged directly by individuals, it is used for accounting between state members.


title: African Development Bank

text: The primary function of AfDB is making loans and equity investments for the socio-economic advancement of the RMC. Second, the bank provides technical assistance for development projects and programs. Third, it promotes investment of public and private capital for development. Fourth, the bank assists in organizing the development policies of RMCs.


title: African Development Bank

text: The AfDB is also required to give special attention to national and multinational projects which are needed to promote regional integration.


title: African Development Bank

text: The AfDB promotes economic development and social progress of its RMCs in Africa and the bank commits approximately $3 billion annually to African countries. Its relatively small lending and tendency to follow in the footsteps of more prominent public institutions like the World Bank, implies that the African Development Bank has been receiving little interest from civil society organizations as well as academia.


title: African Development Bank

text: AfDB emphasizes the role of women along with education reforms, and lent its support to key initiatives such as debt alleviation for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).


title: African Development Bank

text: The Bank is currently based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast again. It employs approximately 1,865 employees as of 2016, and has 80 members: 54 countries in Africa and 26 American, European, and Asian countries.


title: African Development Bank

text: One of emerging views, repeatedly cited by the AfDB's board of directors and management, is that the AfDB should be more “selective” and “country-focused” in its operations. Though this policy has still to be clearly defined, it appears to be driving certain lending priorities. AfDB invests in financial inclusion and financial consumer protection in Ghana, Rwanda, and Zambia.


title: African Development Bank

text: The infrastructure sector, including power supply, water and sanitation, transport and communications, has traditionally received the largest share of AfDB lending. This focus was re-affirmed in the AfDB's 2003-2007 Strategic Plan, which identified infrastructure as a priority area for AfDB lending.


title: African Development Bank

text: In 2005, the AfDB approved 23 infrastructure projects for approximately $982 million, which totaled 40 percent of AfDB approvals that year. Given the increased attention to infrastructure development in Africa from donors and borrowers, it is likely that AfDB's infrastructure lending will increase significantly in the coming years. In 2007, infrastructure operations accounted for approximately 60 percent of the bank's portfolio.


title: African Development Bank

text: Regional integration infrastructure projects will be a key part of the AfDB's future business. According to the AfDB's "2005 Annual Report", regional economic blocs will make Africa “more competitive in the global market”, while transport and power interconnections between smaller African economies will help create larger markets in the continent. The AfDB's member countries claim that AfDB, as a multilateral institution, is particularly suited to support regional integration projects.


title: African Development Bank

text: The AfDB has been designated the lead agency to facilitate "NEPAD infrastructure initiatives", which are regional integration projects led by African Regional Economic Communities (RECs). Additionally, the AfDB hosts the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA). The ICA was established by G8 countries to coordinate and encourage infrastructure development in Africa, focusing on regional infrastructure development in particular. The AfDB helps to prepare projects so they may obtain financing from others sources through an initiative called the Infrastructure Project Preparation Facility (IPPF). So even if the AfDB is not directly involved in financing a particular infrastructure project, it may have helped to make it possible.


title: African Development Bank

text: To date, the bank's contribution in the fight against HIV/AIDS is estimated at over UA 500 million. The bank is among the initiating partners of "AIDS in Africa – Scenarios for the future," a project whose outcome will enable governments and development partners alike to make strategic choices of current and future development paths and define their activities accordingly in order to face the challenges posed by HIV/AIDS.


title: African Development Bank

text: Energy projects are likely to become a more important area of the AfDB's infrastructure work, given the lack of access to energy services across Africa and continued high oil prices affecting oil-importing countries. It is not clear if the AfDB's role in the energy sector will prioritize energy projects for domestic consumption or for export, although the AfDB has supported both in the past. The AfDB is currently drafting an energy policy and developing its contribution to the G8-mandated Clean Energy Investment Framework.


title: African Development Bank

text: Although there is no official statement or consensus to this effect, AfDB lending for agriculture, (non-infrastructure) rural development and social sectors, such as health and education, is reportedly likely to decrease over the coming years.


title: African Development Bank

text: In 2010, the African Development Institute became the focal point of the African Development Bank Group for capacity-building. The institute had been established in 1973 to enhance the effectiveness of the AfDB's funded operations. Its mandate was reoriented in 1992 and it was restructured in 2001.


title: African Development Bank

text: In response to the global coronavirus pandemic, the AfDB has increasingly focused on selling social bonds as a means to raise funds for poor countries to deal with the pandemic. Since the pandemic, it has issued four bonds, for a total of seven since 2017.


title: African Development Bank

text: The AfDB's financial standing has been restored from the near collapse of 1995, but its operational credibility remains a work-in-progress. A working group convened by the Center for Global Development, an independent Washington think tank, released a report in September 2006 that offered six recommendations for Bank's president and board of directors on broad principles to guide the Bank's renewal. The report contains six recommendations for management and shareholders as they address the urgent task of reforming Africa's development bank. Prominent among the recommendations is a strong focus on infrastructure.


title: African Development Bank

text: While the AfDB's lending had not expanded significantly in recent years, 2006 figures indicate that things may be changing. Between 2005 and 2006, the AfDB's lending activities increased by more than 30 percent to $3.4 billion. Over the same period, private sector operations doubled in value. The AfDB has specific mandates from the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and other international organizations to take the lead amongst financial and development institutions in areas such as infrastructure, regional integration, and banking and financial standards in Africa. These mandates have also increased the AfDB's profile in the media. The increased international emphasis on Africa's development needs in recent years (for example, surrounding the 2005 Gleneagles G8 Summit), and on the importance of infrastructure investment in Africa, has highlighted the role of the AfDB.


title: African Development Bank

text: Some research has indicated that a high percentage of respondents in African countries has a marked preference for additional aid from the African Development Bank, despite the fact its relatively low rating against most of the aid effectiveness criteria found to be important by donor recipients. This suggests that donor recipients in Africa views on the ‘multilateral donor of choice’ are informed by additional aid effectiveness criteria that are not commonly identified or reported against, though exactly what those criteria have not been discussed.


title: African Development Bank

text: In general, whereas there has been progress at all levels with regard to democracy, growth and restoring the macro-economic balances in Africa over the past fifteen years, half of sub-Saharan Africa lives on under one dollar a day, and AIDS is threatening the social fabric of the continent. The studies conducted by various organizations (including the African Development Bank and the World Bank) show that, with the exception of northern and southern Africa, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (reducing by half the number of persons living in poverty and without access to potable water by 2015) will in most cases not be attained. Nevertheless, these same studies indicate that the majority of the African countries can make notable progress to these ends.


title: African Development Bank

text: African Development Bank's (AfDB) 4th annual conference outside Africa held in India (Gandhinagar, Gujarat) on May 22–26, 2017, at an event inaugurated by India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Previous conferences outside Africa were in Spain, China, Portugal.


title: African Development Bank

text: Note: All countries in the African Union including Mauritania but excluding the SADR are eligible for NTF benefits.