title: Crazy Eddie

text: The predecessor to Crazy Eddie was a consumer electronics shop called Sight And Sound. It was a property of ERS Electronics, a company owned by Sam M. Antar, his son Eddie Antar, and Eddie's cousin Ronnie Gindi. Sight And Sound, located on Kings Highway in Brooklyn, began operation in 1969 and offered electronics at regular prices. Due to his aggressive sales techniques, Eddie quickly became known as "Crazy Eddie", but within eighteen months the shop (as well as Eddie and Ronnie) was nearly bankrupt. Eddie bought out Gindi's one-third ownership stake of Sight And Sound, and Sam M. Antar retained his one-third stake but left the day-to-day operations to Eddie. In 1971, the Sight And Sound store on Kings Highway was renamed Crazy Eddie. Eddie continued his sales tactics with the renamed Crazy Eddie shop, but this time was successful. Eventually, Eddie closed that location and relocated the business to a bigger shop, just a few blocks from Sight And Sound's old location. In 1973, Antar opened the second Crazy Eddie location in Syosset, New York. A third followed during 1975, located in Manhattan. That year, Antar established a corporate main office in Brooklyn, New York. By 1977, two more stores had been opened, with one located on East Fordham Road in The Bronx and the other being the first Crazy Eddie location in New Jersey, located on the southbound side of Route 17 in Paramus.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Crazy Eddie stores were famous in the New York metro area for their advertisements, which featured Jerry Carroll as the star. The relationship between the two sides began in 1972, when Carroll was a radio disc jockey known as “Dr. Jerry” at WPIX-FM. Antar had paid for an on-air ad and Carroll read the chain’s slogan “his prices are insane” in an exaggerated and frenetic manner. When Antar heard Carroll’s delivery, he telephoned the radio station and told Carroll to say the line the same way every time he read it.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: In 1975, Carroll began appearing in television commercials for Crazy Eddie. For most of the next fifteen years Carroll performed commercials in the same frenetic manner he had for radio. One of his more memorable promotions was for Crazy Eddie's annual "Christmas in August" sale, where he would dress in a Santa suit and do the commercial while stagehands threw fake snowballs at him. Carroll also had a trademark look in each commercial, wearing a blue suit with a lighter blue turtleneck shirt in almost all of his appearances (even during later years). Carroll even appeared in a Spanish-language Crazy Eddie advertisement, although he did not have a speaking role; instead, his appearance consisted of him holding a radio to his ear as he walked behind the commercial's spokesman, stopping only to wave at the camera several times.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: During the 1980s, more than 7,500 unique radio and television ads were broadcast in the tri-state area. Carroll's acting became so identified with the company that many people thought he was actually Crazy Eddie; Crazy Eddie even made a commercial to this effect with Carroll as a Superman-styled superhero named Crazy Eddie. Warner Communications, the parent company of the distributor of the "Superman" movie series, found the commercial to be problematic and sued the chain trying to stop it. At the time, Warner also was the parent company of the Atari video game company, and its largest customer for systems and games was Crazy Eddie. Therefore, in retaliation for the lawsuit, Eddie said that if Warner was going to sue for the commercial, he would stop selling Atari products in his stores. The suit was eventually settled.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: The commercials were so memorable that HBO's news parody series "Not Necessarily the News" created a parody television commercial featuring a caricature of Oliver North (from the infamous Iran–Contra affair), known as "Crazy Ollie", selling used weapons at bargain prices. An early Eddie's commercial parody appeared on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" on January 22, 1977 in the Dan Aykroyd creation, "Crazy Ernie". Carroll and the commercials became significantly cultural during the 1980s, with the commercials sometimes appearing in the background of contemporary motion pictures. An example is the frightening first sight of a television receiver with a typical Jerry Carroll commercial on screen by Daryl Hannah's mermaid character in Ron Howard's 1984 comedy "Splash".


title: Crazy Eddie

text: the makers of Yoplait yogurt signed him to do a commercial for their product in 1985. Playing up his character and the Crazy Eddie chain, he was dressed in his usual blue sport coat and light blue turtleneck shirt and standing among racks of electronic equipment while sampling the company’s product and then singing its praises in French.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Crazy Eddie also was known to have in-store appearances by notable rock acts, including all four members of Queen in their Manhattan location on Tuesday, July 27, 1982 (prior to their performance that evening at Madison Square Garden).


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Almost from the beginning, Crazy Eddie's management engaged in various forms of fraud. The Antars deliberately falsified their books to reduce (or eliminate) their taxable income. They also paid employees off the books, and regularly skimmed thousands of dollars (in cash) earned at the shops. For every $5 Crazy Eddie reported as income, $1 was taken by the Antars. In 1979, the Antars began depositing much of this money—hundreds of thousands of dollars—in Israeli bank accounts. The Antar family skimmed an estimated $3 to $4 million per year at the height of their fraud. In one offshore bank account, the family deposited more than $6 million between 1980 and 1983.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: By 1983, it was becoming more and more difficult to hide the millions of illicit dollars. The Antars decided that the way to cover up their growing fraud was to take the company public. In preparation, Eddie initiated a scheme in 1979 to skim less each year. Since more income was actually being reported, this had the effect of showing drastically increasing profit margins. While the company's actual profits (taking into account skimmed profits) from 1980 to 1983 increased approximately 13%, reported profits increased nearly 171%.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Despite the misgivings of people closely associated with Crazy Eddie, the company held its initial public offering on September 13, 1984 (former symbol: CRZY). Shares of the company sold initially for $8. By early 1986, Crazy Eddie stock was trading at more than $75 per share (split adjusted).


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Eddie recruited his cousin, Sam E. Antar (known as Sammy), to assist the company with its fraud. Sammy earned a degree in accounting in 1980, and served his apprenticeship with Penn and Horowitz, Crazy Eddie's auditor. In 1986, he was named chief financial officer of the company. Sammy was informed that there was a $3 million deficit from the previous year's inventory fraud that needed to be hidden. Additionally, he was instructed to find ways to show a 10% growth in sales. One of Sammy's major schemes was a money laundering operation later known as the Panama Pump—money that the Antars had deposited in Israeli banks was transferred to bank accounts in Panama. These accounts, opened using false names, then drafted payments to Crazy Eddie. This money was largely used to inflate same-store sales totals for the company.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: As a public company, Eddie, Sammy, and others engaged in increasing amounts of inventory fraud to increase reported profits and inflate the value of Crazy Eddie stock. For the fiscal year ended March 1, 1985, Crazy Eddie falsified inventories by $3 million. The next fiscal year, that amount increased to between $10 and $12 million.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Only months after Crazy Eddie's IPO, Antar's marriage to his wife, Debbie, became unstable as a result of frequent arguments. He then commenced an affair with another, younger woman, also named Debbie. The trysting pair were caught by Eddie's wife and sister on New Year's Eve 1984. Crazy Eddie's troubles began almost immediately afterward; the scam had relied extensively on family members helping keep the appearance that it was an immensely successful company.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: By 1987, Sammy Antar's goal was no longer to show greater profitability, but rather to disguise previous frauds. During fiscal year 1987, they falsified inventories between $22.5 and $28 million. In addition, Crazy Eddie booked $20 million in phony debit memos or charge backs to vendors that reduced accounts payable.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: As the company's fraud became more difficult to disguise, the public perception of Crazy Eddie as a commercial success began to change. By October 1986, the company's stock value had decreased to $17.50 per share. During December, Eddie announced his resignation as president and CEO. In April 1987, it was announced that Eddie had in fact retained his role as president but had dismissed, among others, his father Sam M. Antar. But by then Eddie Antar had already cashed out his share of Crazy Eddie stock, worth between $25 million and $30 million.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: By the spring of 1987, the company's stock cost less than $10 a share. Additionally, earnings decreased 20% from the previous year. The franchise did show a 34% sales increase, but this was mainly the result of 13 new store openings. In May 1987, Eddie began proceedings to make the company a privately held company again.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Before that could happen, Houston-based businessman Elias Zinn and management consultant Victor Palmieri initiated a hostile takeover. With Palmieri's backing, Zinn purchased $17.5 million worth of Crazy Eddie stock, which represented 7.5% of the outstanding shares. Once rumors of a takeover started, financial analysts began to examine more closely Crazy Eddie's financial situation. What they discovered was that while most stockholders of the company had lost money since 1984, Eddie had sold 6.5 million shares worth $74 million. A flurry of stockholder lawsuits were filed against the Antar family.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Eddie and Sammy Antar briefly attempted to counter-offer Zinn's takeover, but Zinn quickly topped their funds. The Antars' bid was ended, and Zinn became the new owner of Crazy Eddie on November 6, 1987. He immediately dismissed the rest of the Antar family from any important jobs. When Palmieri's financial analysts completed their preliminary audit a few weeks after the takeover, they estimated that Crazy Eddie's inventory was short by $40 to $50 million. The final figure was $80 million.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: By June 1988, Crazy Eddie's suppliers were demanding the liquidation of the company, so they could recover money owed to them; in 1989 they got their wish. The closing of Crazy Eddie began in March 1989, as the company shuttered 17 of its 43 stores. On June 6, 1989, Crazy Eddie was served with a petition by five of its creditors, who had not been paid a total of $860,000 they were owed, which sought to have the company forced into bankruptcy. The company originally planned to fight the petition and file for dismissal, but 15 days later Crazy Eddie voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Company president and CEO Peter Martosella cited problems created by the creditors' position (which he termed "ill-advised"), but said business would be conducted as usual at the remaining 26 stores and that Crazy Eddie was still a strong franchise. The company vowed to stay in business, but, despite Martosella's assertions, Crazy Eddie continued to falter. By the autumn of 1989, sales were continuing to decrease and stores were unable to keep items stocked due to lack of supplier interest in the company. Faced with these facts, Crazy Eddie management decided that the chain was not worth saving. Soon after Crazy Eddie began going-out-of-business sales, but store supply remained minimal even when leftover merchandise from stores that had shuttered was sent to others that were still in operation. By the end of 1989 the remaining 26 Crazy Eddie locations closed and the chain ceased to exist. During a period of three years, Crazy Eddie had gone from one of the most lucrative retailers in the United States, trading at $75 per share, to bankruptcy and liquidation.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: In the meantime, a longtime Crazy Eddie associate named Arnie Spindler, who quit the company after Eddie dismissed his father Sam, brothers Allen and Mitchell and others after a family dispute, had provided investigators with information concerning Crazy Eddie's fraudulent business practices. Spindler implicated Eddie and Sammy, but stated the rest of the family was innocent, though subpoenas were served to the entire Antar family.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Based on information gathered during its investigation, the SEC charged Eddie Antar with securities fraud and illegal insider trading on September 6, 1989. In January 1990, a Federal district judge ordered Antar to repatriate more than $50 million he had transferred illegally to Israel. He was also ordered to appear in court to explain what had happened with the money. When he failed to appear, an arrest warrant was issued. Eddie surrendered to U.S. Marshals a week later, but was released and ordered to appear at a second hearing. When he failed to appear at that hearing, a second arrest warrant was issued and his assets were frozen.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Eddie fled to Israel using a fake passport and the alias David Jacob Levi Cohen, and purchased a townhouse in the city of Yavne. After Eddie fled the country, Sammy offered to testify for Federal prosecutors in exchange for immunity. Sammy pleaded guilty to three felonies. He avoided jail time in exchange for his testimony, however, and was instead sentenced to six months of house arrest, 1,200 hours of community service, three years of probation, and was levied more than $10,000 in fines. As of 2009, Sammy was an adviser for government agencies and businesses investigating fraud.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Eddie was arrested in June 1992 on federal racketeering conspiracy charges and was extradited to the United States in January 1993. He pleaded not guilty and his trial began in June 1993, and was prosecuted jointly by U.S. Attorneys Paul Weissman and Michael Chertoff. On July 20, Eddie was found guilty of seventeen counts of fraud. His brother, Mitchell, was found guilty of three counts, and acquitted on two. Eddie was sentenced to 12½ years in prison. The Antars' lawyers immediately filed an appeal, citing what they believed was bias on the part of the presiding judge. In April 1995, the verdicts against Eddie and Mitchell were overturned by a Federal appeals panel. Chertoff, calling Eddie "the Darth Vader of capitalism", vowed to begin a new trial.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Eddie Antar eventually pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in May 1996. In February 1997, he was sentenced to eight years in prison. He was also ordered to pay more than $150 million in fines, in addition to the more than $1 billion in judgments against him resulting from various civil suits. Efforts to recover additional money from the Antar family on behalf of defrauded stockholders were completed in 2012.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Soon after the chain closed in 1989, a New Jersey-based investment group led by Alex Adjmi bought the rights to the Crazy Eddie trademark and announced in January 1990 that it had purchased the leases on Crazy Eddie's Brooklyn flagship store and another in East Brunswick, New Jersey. The intent of the Adjmi group was to reopen the chain, but nothing ever came of the attempt.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: In 1998, the grandchildren of Eddie, Allen and Mitchell Antar, revived the chain with a shop in Wayne, New Jersey, and as an online Internet venture, crazyeddieonline.com. The revived company retained the slogan "His prices are insane" and re-hired Jerry Carroll, who by this time had founded his own advertising agency, as spokesman. Despite plans to expand the chain to a potential 10 stores, the new Crazy Eddie did not expand beyond the Wayne store and in 1999 the only shop of the revived chain closed.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: Eddie returned to the company in 2001, which by this time had been doing business solely as an Internet and buy-by-telephone business for more than a year. He reinitiated the Web site as crazyeddie.com and once again hired Jerry Carroll to do its advertising. By 2004, crazyeddie.com had disappeared again, and after a brief attempt to revive the online retailer in 2005, Crazy Eddie ceased to exist once again. The Crazy Eddie trademark and associated intellectual property were then acquired by Texas-based company Trident Growth Fund. In July 2006, Trident attempted to auction the brand and the domain name crazyeddie.com on eBay, but the reserve price was not met.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: On March 3, 2009, it was announced that Brooklyn-based businessman Jack Gemal had bought the rights to the Crazy Eddie name and quickly began a new online Crazy Eddie venture at pricesareinsane.com. Gemal was also reported to be scouting retail space for new Crazy Eddie retail locations, stating that he wanted to open 50 locations during the next two years. This online venture performed business in the same manner as Crazy Eddie's other online stores, selling appliances and other electronics through the Internet. However, Gemal was never able to find the retail space he sought to reinitiate the Crazy Eddie store chain, and in 2012, the online business ended. The pricesareinsane.com site no longer exists, and as of 2018, the Crazy Eddie trademark is listed as abandoned.


title: Crazy Eddie

text: On September 10, 2016, Eddie Antar died at the age of 68. A funeral home in Ocean Township, New Jersey confirmed the death. Although Antar had been suffering from liver cancer, an official cause was not given. CNBC Commentator and journalist Herb Greenberg remarked that Antar's death was the "end of an era".


title: Crazy Eddie

text: On August 23, 2022, a book detailing the rise and fall of Crazy Eddie was released. Titled "Retail Gangster" and written by journalist Gary Weiss, the book chronicles, in significant detail, how Eddie Antar was able to build his business into one of the most profitable in the country and the illicit means he employed. The book also pays attention to the advertising campaign featuring Jerry Carroll, whose death in 2020 went completely unreported.


title: Bastille Day (2016 film)

text: Bastille Day (released as The Take in North America and on international home release) is a 2016 action thriller film co-written and directed by James Watkins. It is a Luxembourgish, French and American venture produced by Anonymous Content, Vendôme Pictures, TF1 Films Production and StudioCanal. The film stars Idris Elba, Richard Madden, Charlotte Le Bon, Eriq Ebouaney and José Garcia. The film was released in the United Kingdom on 22 April 2016 and 13 July 2016 in France, and on 18 November 2016 in the United States.


title: Bastille Day (2016 film)

text: On the eve of Bastille Day in Paris, American drifter and pickpocket Michael Mason steals a woman's handbag, not knowing that it contains explosives. After taking the cash from the bag, he discards it, caught unwittingly on CCTV as he does so. The bag then detonates and kills four people. Upon being captured by CIA agent Sean Briar, who is being reprimanded for irresponsible conduct on the job, Mason protests that he is not a terrorist, and tells Briar that the bag contained a cellphone owned by a woman named Zoé. The bomb was set up by a group of corrupt policemen led by Rafi Bertrand, all of them members in the French special force RAPID who intend to pull a robbery at the Bank of France. Zoé was told to plant the bomb at the office of the French Nationalist Party (as part of a diversion for the heist), but after seeing the night cleaning crew arrive, she was unwilling to kill innocents and so abandoned the plan. Zoé's boyfriend Jean, one of the conspirators, allows her to escape, realizing that his compatriots will kill her.


title: Bastille Day (2016 film)

text: The group tracks Zoé's phone to Briar's and Mason's location. Briar engages the conspirators, who subdue him, while Mason escapes. Bertrand's team proceeds to plant fake evidence at a mosque and stir up a nationwide uproar among its Islamic population, using agitating hashtags on the Internet. Chased by the French authorities and Bertrand's forces, Mason is picked up by Briar, who has come to believe his story and intends to clear the case with his help, even against the orders of his superiors. They track Zoé to the hideout of her friend Paul and his motorcycle gang, but the gang firebombs their car to cover their escape. Appropriating another car, they track Paul down to the bar where he works, and Mason instigates a brawl, during which he steals Paul's identity card.


title: Bastille Day (2016 film)

text: Mason and Briar use the card to find out Paul's address, where Zoé is hiding, and manage to gain her cooperation. Zoé leads them to Jean's apartment, where they find his body and an ID and badge identifying him as a police officer. Briar informs his colleague, Karen Dacre, who confers with her French contact, DGSI Director Victor Gamieux, about taking Mason and Zoé into protective custody. However, Gamieux, actually the mastermind of the heist conspiracy, kills Dacre after obtaining the information he needs and sends a pickup team consisting of his henchmen. Briar, Mason and Zoe manage to pick up clues about the men's true allegiance and fight their way out of the deathtrap. Now realizing Gamieux's hand in the game, the three head toward the Bank of France.


title: Bastille Day (2016 film)

text: When a crowd of protestors masses at the front of the bank – as the conspirators have intended – Gamieux assigns Bertrand's RAPID team to the building to provide interior security, thus facilitating the digital robbery of its entire monetary reserves (half a billion euros). Upon arriving at the bank, Briar disguises himself as a RAPID officer and manages to gain access to the building before he is found out. Hearing of his predicament over their stolen police van's radio, Zoe and Mason start a riot among the protestors, who storm the bank and overpower the RAPID troopers closing in on Briar. Briar subsequently infiltrates the vault and engages Bertrand and his remaining henchman. Bertrand escapes with the USB flash drive on which the money has been downloaded, but Briar contacts Mason, who steals the flash drive from Bertrand. Upon noticing the theft, Bertrand takes Zoe hostage. Gamieux, trying to salvage his plan, commands a squad of policemen to shoot and kill Bertrand, and Mason escapes with the flash drive. Zoé survives.


title: Bastille Day (2016 film)

text: Some time later, Mason, working with Briar and French law enforcement, meets with Gamieux on the pretense of trading the flash drive for a passport and a ride out of the country, leading to the latter's arrest.


title: Bastille Day (2016 film)

text: On 11 November 2013, Idris Elba joined the cast of the film. On 2 October 2014, Richard Madden joined the cast. On 18 May 2014, Focus Features acquired the rights to distribute the film in North America. Principal photography began on 13 October 2014 in Paris, and ended on 17 December 2014.


title: Bastille Day (2016 film)

text: In the United Kingdom, StudioCanal scheduled the film to be released on 19 February 2016. However, following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, the film was delayed. "Bastille Day" was released simultaneously in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden on 22 April 2016. In France, the film was released on 13 July 2016 to coincide with the dates in the story. Following the 2016 Nice truck attack, Studiocanal pulled the film from theatres on 17 July 2016, citing it as a "sign of respect for the victims and their families."


title: Bastille Day (2016 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 48% based on 80 reviews, with an average rating of 5.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Bastille Day" proves Idris Elba is an action hero in waiting – specifically, waiting for a script that deserves his talents." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 48 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Peter Asher

text: Peter Asher, (born 22 June 1944) is an English guitarist, singer, manager and record producer. He came to prominence in the 1960s as a member of the pop music vocal duo Peter and Gordon before going on to a successful career as a manager and record producer, helping to foster the recording careers of James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt among others. As of 2018, he tours alongside Jeremy Clyde of Chad and Jeremy in a new duo entitled Peter and Jeremy, where they perform hits from both of their respective catalogues. In 2019, Asher published a book "The Beatles from A to Zed" about his personal reminiscences about the band.


title: Peter Asher

text: Asher was born at the Central Middlesex Hospital to Richard and Margaret Asher, "née" Eliot. His father was a consultant in blood and mental diseases at the Central Middlesex Hospital, as well as being a broadcaster and the author of notable medical articles. Asher's mother was a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. One of her pupils there was George Martin. Asher is the brother of Clare Asher, a radio actress and school inspector, and Jane Asher.


title: Peter Asher

text: When he was eight years old, he began working as a child actor, and appeared in the film "The Planter's Wife", and the stage play "Isn't Life Wonderful". At the age of nine, Asher played the central juvenile part in the 1953 film version of "Isn't Life Wonderful!", along stars Cecil Parker and Donald Wolfitt. In 1955 he played the youngest brother, "Johnny", in "Escapade", based on Roger MacDougall's play. The film starred John Mills and Alastair Sim. He also appeared in the ITV series "The Adventures of Robin Hood".


title: Peter Asher

text: In 1956, Asher appeared as a 12-year-old in "The Talking Head", one of the short films in the series of "Colonel March of Scotland Yard", starring Boris Karloff.


title: Peter Asher

text: While attending the independent Westminster School as a day boy, he first met fellow pupil Gordon Waller (1945–2009), and they began playing and singing together as a duo in cafes. In 1962, they began working formally as Peter and Gordon. Their first (and biggest) hit was the 1964 Lennon/McCartney song "A World Without Love". Asher's sister Jane was, in the mid-1960s, the girlfriend of Paul McCartney. Through this connection, Asher and Waller were often given unrecorded Lennon/McCartney songs to perform.


title: Peter Asher

text: After Peter and Gordon disbanded in 1968, Asher took charge of the A&R department at the Beatles' Apple Records label, where he signed a then-unknown James Taylor and agreed to produce the singer-songwriter's debut solo album. The album was not a success, but Asher was so convinced that Taylor held great potential that he resigned his post at Apple to move to the United States and work as Taylor's manager. Asher produced Paul Jones' rendition of the Bee Gees' "And the Sun Will Shine" which was released as a single (only in the UK). He also produced a number of Taylor's recordings from 1970 to 1985, including "Sweet Baby James, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, JT" and "Flag".


title: Peter Asher

text: In the early 1970s, Asher also managed the country rock band, Country, which recorded for Atlantic Records through its subsidiary Clean Records, featuring Michael Fondiler and Tom Snow, who has since become a songwriter. For a time, Asher also managed James Taylor's sister Kate Taylor. When she decided to leave the business, she recommended him to Linda Ronstadt at which point Asher became Ronstadt's manager. Asher achieved his greatest success producing a long string of multi-platinum albums for James Taylor, including "Sweet Baby James", "JT" and "Flag", and for Linda Ronstadt, including "Heart Like a Wheel"; "Simple Dreams"; "Living in the USA"; "What's New"; "Canciones De Mi Padre"; and "Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind".


title: Peter Asher

text: The Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood was opened on 23 September 1973 by Elmer Valentine and Lou Adler along with original partners David Geffen, Elliot Roberts and Peter Asher.


title: Peter Asher

text: Asher also played a role in shaping the Californian rock sound prominent during the 1970s, producing records for Ronstadt, J. D. Souther, Andrew Gold and Bonnie Raitt. In 1976, Asher and Waller reformed for the annual New York "Beatlefest" and played a few other dates. In the 1980s, Asher also worked on hit albums for artists as diverse as Cher and 10,000 Maniacs.


title: Peter Asher

text: In February 1995, Asher was named Senior Vice-President, Sony Music Entertainment. At the beginning of 2002, Asher left Sony and returned full-time to the management of artists' careers as co-President of Sanctuary Artist Management. In January 2005 he was named President, the position he held until September 2006, when he resigned. In 2007 Asher joined forces with his friend Simon Renshaw (who manages the Dixie Chicks) at the company Simon founded, Strategic Artist Management. Strategic has grown into a dominant force in the entertainment industry, now managing artists in many fields of endeavour beyond just music – one of Asher's clients is Pamela Anderson. Asher also reunited with James Taylor as the producer of the "Live at the Troubadour" reunion album recorded in 2007, with Carole King and Taylor's original band.


title: Peter Asher

text: During 2005 and 2006, Peter and Gordon reformed for occasional concerts. However, Waller died in 2009 and in its obituary, "The Times" observed that "Waller was thought more handsome than the slightly nerdish looking Asher".


title: Peter Asher

text: Asher had been quoted as saying that actor Mike Myers has said he had patterned his Austin Powers character after Asher's appearance, although Elizabeth Hurley, who co-starred in "Austin Powers", said the original model was broadcaster Simon Dee.


title: Peter Asher

text: In 2011, Asher was the executive producer of the "" compilation album and also music supervisor, producer, and co-host of the "" PBS Pledge Special. Performed and filmed in front of a live audience the Buddy Holly tribute concert aired as PBS Pledge Special in December 2011 and May and June 2012. The Special received the highest 2012 Silver Telly Award in the Category of TV Programs, Segments, or Promotional Pieces.


title: Peter Asher

text: Asher was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to the British music industry.


title: Peter Asher

text: In May 2017, Asher debuted a weekly, hour-long series on the brand-new Sirius XM Radio station for The Beatles called "From Me To You". He also announced with commentary the Top 100 Beatles countdown "All Together Now" on The Beatles Channel that first aired on Sirius XM Radio on the Labor Day Weekend in 2017, and is frequently replayed.


title: Peter Asher

text: Since 2016, Peter Asher has been playing shows, including one at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, as part of a duo with Albert Lee that showcases songs from both their careers. He currently resides in Venice, California.


title: Peter Asher

text: Asher had a short-lived relationship with singer Millie Small, also known as Millie, who sang "My Boy Lollipop".


title: Fairy chess piece

text: A fairy chess piece, variant chess piece, unorthodox chess piece, or heterodox chess piece is a chess piece not used in conventional chess but incorporated into certain chess variants and some chess problems. Compared to conventional pieces, fairy pieces vary mostly in the way they move, but they may also follow special rules for capturing, promotions, etc. Because of the distributed and uncoordinated nature of unorthodox chess development, the same piece can have different names, and different pieces can have the same name in various contexts. Most are symbolised as inverted or rotated icons of the standard pieces in diagrams, and the meanings of these "wildcards" must be defined in each context separately. Pieces invented for use in chess variants rather than problems sometimes instead have special icons designed for them, but with some exceptions (the princess, empress, and occasionally amazon), many of these are not used beyond the individual games for which they were invented.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: The earliest known forms of chess date from the 7th century in Persia (chatrang) and India chaturanga. They had different rules from the modern game. The game was then transmitted to the Arabs, then to the Europeans, and for several centuries, it was played with those ancient rules. For example, the queen was once able to move only a single square diagonally, and the bishop was leaping two squares diagonally. The change of rules occurred in Spain in the end of the 15th century when the queen and the bishop were given the moves they have today. In the old Muslim manuscripts those two pieces were referred as a "ferz" (meaning advisor) and "fil" (meaning elephant). The queen is still called "ferz" in Russian and Ukrainian and the bishop is still called alfil (from "al fil", with the article) in Spanish. Due to the piece's change in movement, the ferz and the alfil are now considered non-standard chess pieces. As those who created modern chess in the 15th century, modern chess enthusiasts still often create their own variations of the rules and the way the pieces move. Pieces which move differently from today's standard rules are called "variant" or "fairy" chess pieces.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: The names of fairy pieces are not standardised, and most do not have standard symbols associated with them. Most are typically represented in diagrams by rotated versions of the icons for normal pieces. This article uses common names for the pieces described whenever possible, but these names sometimes differ between circles associated with chess problems and circles associated with chess variants.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Many of the simplest fairy chess pieces do not appear in the orthodox game, but they usually fall into one of three classes. There are also compound pieces that combine the movement powers of two or more different pieces.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: A leaper is a piece that moves directly to a square a fixed distance away. A leaper captures by occupying the square on which an enemy piece sits. The leaper's move cannot be blocked (unlike elephant and horse in Xiangqi and Janggi) – it "leaps" over any intervening pieces – so the check of a leaper cannot be parried by interposing. Leapers are not able to create pins, but are effective forking pieces. A leaper's move that is not orthogonal (i.e. horizontal or vertical) nor diagonal is said to be "hippogonal".


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Moves by a leaper may be described using the distance to their landing square – the number of squares orthogonally in one direction and the number of squares orthogonally at right angles. For instance, the orthodox knight is described as a (1,2)-leaper or a (2,1)-leaper. The table to the right shows common (but by no means standard) names for the leapers reaching up to 4 squares, together with the letter used to represent them in Betza notation, a common notation for describing fairy pieces.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Although moves to adjacent squares are not strictly "leaps" by the normal use of the word, they are included for generality. Leapers that move only to adjacent squares are sometimes called "step movers" in the context of shogi variants.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: In shatranj, a Persian forerunner to chess, the predecessors of the bishop and queen were leapers: the alfil is a (2,2)-leaper (moving two squares diagonally in any direction), and the ferz a (1,1)-leaper (moving one square diagonally in any direction). The wazir is a (0,1)-leaper (an "orthogonal" one-square leaper). The dabbaba is a (0,2)-leaper. The 'level-3' leapers are the threeleaper (0,3), camel (1,3), zebra (2,3), and tripper (3,3). The giraffe, stag, and antelope are level-4 leapers (1,4), (2,4), and (3,4). Many of these basic leapers appear in Tamerlane chess.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: A rider, or ranging piece, is a piece that moves an unlimited distance in one direction, provided there are no pieces in the way. Each basic rider corresponds to a basic leaper, and can be thought of as repeating that leaper's move in one direction until an obstacle is reached. If the obstacle is a friendly piece, it blocks further movement; if the obstacle is an enemy piece, it may be captured, but it cannot be jumped over.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: There are three riders in : the rook is a (0,1)-rider; the bishop is a (1,1)-rider; and the queen combines both patterns. Sliders are a special case of riders which can only move between geometrically contiguous cells. All of the riders in orthodox chess are examples of sliders.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Riders can create both pins and skewers. One popular fairy chess rider is the nightrider, which can make an unlimited number of knight moves in any direction (like other riders, it cannot change direction partway through its move). The names of riders are often obtained by taking the name of its base leaper and adding the suffix "rider". For example, the zebrarider is a (2,3)-rider. A nightrider can be blocked only on a square one of its component knight moves falls on: if a nightrider starts on a1, it can be blocked on b3 or c2, but not on a2, b2, or b1. It can only travel from a1 to c5 if the intervening square b3 is unoccupied.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Some generalised riders do not follow a straight path. The Aanca from the historical game of Grant Acedrex is such a "bent rider": it takes its first step like a ferz and continues "outward" from that destination like a rook. The unicorn, from the same game, takes its first step like a knight and continues outward from that destination like a bishop. The "rose", which is used in chess on a really big board, traces out a path of knight moves on an approximate regular octagon: from e1, it can go to g2, h4, g6, e7, c6, b4, c2, and back to e1. The "crooked bishop" or "boyscout" follows a zigzag: starting from f1, its path could take it to e2, f3, e4, f5, e6, f7, and e8 (or g2, f3, g4, f5, g6, f7, and g8).


title: Fairy chess piece

text: A "limited ranging piece" moves like a rider, but only up to a specific number of steps. An example is the "short rook" from Chess with different armies: it moves like a rook, but only up to a distance of 4 squares. From a1, it can travel in one move to b1, c1, d1, or e1, but not f1. A rider's corresponding leaper can be thought of as a limited ranging piece with a range of 1: a wazir is a rook restricted to moving only one square at a time. The "violent ox" and "flying dragon" from dai shogi (an ancient form of Japanese chess) are a range-2 rook and a range-2 bishop respectively.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: There are other possible generalisations as well; the "picket" from Tamerlane chess moves like a bishop, but "at least" two squares (thus it cannot stop on the square next to it, but it can be blocked there.) These are in general called "ski"-pieces: the picket is a ski-bishop. A "skip"-rider skips over the first and then every odd cell in its path: it cannot be blocked on the squares it skips. Thus a "skip-rook" would be a dabbabarider, and a "skip-bishop" would be an alfilrider. A "slip"-rider is similar, but skips over the "second" and then every "even" cell in its path.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: In some shogi variants (variants of Japanese chess), there are also "area moves". These are similar to limited ranging pieces in that the pieces with such moves repeat one kind of basic step up to a fixed number of times, and must stop when they capture. However, unlike other riders, they may change direction during their move, and do not have a fixed path shape like riders or bent riders do.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: A hopper is a piece that moves by jumping over another piece (called a hurdle). The hurdle can be any piece of any color. Unless it can jump over a piece, a hopper cannot move. Note that hoppers generally capture by taking the piece on the destination square, "not" by taking the hurdle (as is the case in checkers). The exceptions are locusts which are pieces that capture by hopping over its victim. They are sometimes considered a type of hopper.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: There are no hoppers in Western chess. In xiangqi (Chinese chess), the cannon captures as a hopper along rook lines (when not capturing, it is a (0,1)-rider which cannot jump, the same as a rook); in janggi (Korean chess), the cannon is a hopper along rook lines when moving or capturing. The grasshopper moves along the same lines as a queen, hopping over another piece and landing on the square immediately beyond it. Yang Qi includes the diagonal counterpart of the cannon, the vao, which moves as a bishop and captures as a hopper along bishop lines.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Compound pieces combine the powers of two or more pieces. The queen may be considered the compound of a rook and a bishop. The king of standard chess combines the ferz and wazir (ignoring restrictions on check and checkmate). The alibaba combines the dabbaba and alfil, while the squirrel can move to any square 2 units away (combining the knight and alibaba). The phoenix combines the wazir and alfil, while the kirin combines the ferz and dabbaba: both appear in chu shogi, an old Japanese chess variant that is still sometimes played today.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: An amphibian is a combined leaper with a larger range than any of its components, such as the frog, a (1,1)-(0,3)-leaper. Although the (1,1)-leaper is confined to one half of the board, and the (0,3)-leaper to one ninth, their combination can reach any square on the board.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: When one of the combined pieces is a knight, the compound may be called a knighted piece. The archbishop, chancellor, and amazon are three popular compound pieces, combining the powers of minor orthodox chess pieces. They are the knighted bishop, knighted rook, and knighted queen respectively. When one of the combined pieces is a king, the compound may be called a crowned piece. The crowned knight combines the knight with the king's moves. The dragon king of shogi is a crowned rook (rook + king), while the dragon horse is a crowned bishop (bishop + king). The knighted compounds show that a compound piece may not fall into any of the three basic categories from above: a princess slides for its bishop moves (and can be blocked by obstacles in those directions), but leaps for its knight moves (and cannot be blocked in those directions). (The names "princess" and "empress" are common in the problemist tradition: in chess variants involving these pieces they are often called by other names, such as "archbishop" and "chancellor" in Capablanca chess, or "cardinal" and "marshal" in Grand Chess, respectively.) Combinations of known pieces with the falcon from falcon chess are named winged pieces, in Complete Permutation Chess not only winged knight, bishop, rook, and queen are featured, but also winged marshal, winged cardinal, and winged amazon.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Marine pieces are compound pieces consisting of a rider or leaper (for ordinary moves) and a locust (for captures) in the same directions. Marine pieces have names alluding to the sea and its myths, e.g., nereide (marine bishop), triton (marine rook), mermaid (marine queen), and poseidon (marine king). Examples named for non-mythical sea creatures include the seahorse (marine knight), dolphin (marine nightrider), anemone (marine guard or mann), and prawn (marine pawn).


title: Fairy chess piece

text: In addition to combining the powers of pieces, pieces can also be modified by restricting them in certain ways: for example, their power might only be used for moving, only for capturing, only forwards, only backwards, only sideways, only on their first move, only on a specific square, only against a specific piece, and so on. The "horse" in xiangqi (Chinese chess) is a knight that cannot leap: it can be blocked on the square orthogonally adjacent to it. The "stone general" from dai shogi is a ferz that can only move forwards (and therefore is trapped when it reaches the end of the board).


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Such restrictions may themselves be combined. The "gold general" from shogi (Japanese chess) is the combination of a wazir and a forward-only ferz; the "silver general" from shogi is the combination of a ferz and a forward-only wazir. The pawn has the power of a wazir, but only forward and for movement; the power of a ferz, but only forward and for capturing; the power of a rook with a limited range of 2 squares, but only forward and on its first move; the power of promotion to a more powerful piece, but only on its last rank; and the power to capture an enemy pawn "en passant", but only immediately after it has moved two squares past it on an adjacent file. A piece that moves and captures differently, like the pawn, is called "divergent".


title: Fairy chess piece

text: There are some powerful notation systems, described below, that can more succinctly represent arbitrary combinations of the basic restrictions of basic pieces.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: All of the above pieces move once per turn and capture by replacement (i.e., moving to their victim's square and replacing it) except in the case of the "en passant" capture. A "shooting" piece (as in Rifle Chess) does "not" capture by replacement (it stays in place when making a capture). Such a shooting capture is termed "igui" "stationary feeding" in the old Japanese variants where it is common. Baroque chess has many examples of pieces that do not capture by replacement, such as the "withdrawer", a piece which captures an adjacent piece by moving directly "away" from it.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: The lion in chu shogi, as do the pieces in Marseillais chess, can move "twice per turn": such pieces are common in the old Japanese variants of chess, termed shogi variants, where they are called "lion moves" after the simplest example. The lion is a king with the power to move twice per turn: thus it can capture a piece and "then" move on, possibly capturing another, or returning to its original square. When a double-moving piece captures and then returns to its original square, it acts like a shooting piece.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Some classes of pieces come from a certain game, and will have common characteristics. Examples are the pieces from xiangqi, a Chinese game similar to chess. The most common are the "leo", "pao" and "vao" (derived from the Chinese cannon) and the "mao" (derived from the horse). Those derived from the cannon are distinguished by moving as a hopper when capturing, but otherwise moving as a rider.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Pieces from xiangqi are usually circular disks, labeled or engraved with a Chinese character identifying the piece. Pieces from shogi (Japanese chess) are usually wedge-shaped chips, with kanji characters identifying the piece.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Fairy pieces vary in the way they move, but some may also have other special characteristics or powers. The joker (in one of its definitions) mimics the last move made by the opponent. So for example, if White moves a bishop, Black can follow by moving the joker as a bishop. The orphan has no movement powers of its own, but moves like any enemy piece attacking it: so if a rook attacks an orphan, the orphan now has the movement powers of the rook, but those are lost if the enemy rook moves away. Orphans can use these relayed powers to attack each other, creating a chain.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: A royal piece is one which must not be allowed to be captured. If a royal piece is threatened with capture and cannot avoid capture the next move, then the game is lost (a generalization of checkmate). In orthodox chess, the kings are royal. In fairy chess any other piece may instead be royal, and there may be more than one, or none at all (in which case the winning condition must be some other goal, such as capturing all of the opponent's pieces or promoting a pawn). Tamerlane chess and chu shogi allow multiple royals to be created via promotion. With multiple royal pieces the game can be won by capturing one of them (absolute royalty), or capturing all of them (extinction royalty). The rules can also impose a limit to the number of royals that are allowed to be left in check. In Spartan chess, Black has two kings, and they may not "both" be left in check even though they can not both be captured in one turn. In "Rex Multiplex", a fairy chess condition, pawns can promote to king: a move that checks multiple kings at once is illegal "unless" all the checks can be resolved on the next move; checkmate happens when a move "checkmates" all kings of the opposite colour. (A player may not expose any of their kings to check or checkmate, even if it is to resolve checks or checkmates on other attacked kings.)


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Pieces, when moving, can also create effects (temporary or permanent) on themselves or on other pieces. In knight relay chess, a knight grants any friendly piece it protects the ability to move like a knight. This ability is temporary and expires when the piece is no longer protected by a knight. In Andernach chess, a piece that moves or captures changes its colour; in "volage", a genre of fairy chess problems, a piece changes colour the "first" time it moves from a light square to a dark square (vice versa), after which its colour is fixed. In Madrasi chess, two pieces of the same kind but different colour attacking each other temporarily "paralyse" each other: neither may move until the mutual attack is broken by an outside piece. The "basilisk" from Ralph Betza's Nemoroth inflicts a permanent form of this paralysis (but paralysed pieces may be pushed by the "go away", another piece in the game, so they are only prevented from moving of their own accord); the "ghast" from the same game restricts friendly pieces within two squares of it to moves that take them geometrically further from it, and "compels" enemy pieces to do so (similar to the compulsion of resolving check in orthodox chess). The "immobiliser" from Baroque chess immobilises any piece next to it; the "fire demon" from tenjiku shogi and "poison flame" from ko shogi capture any enemy pieces that end the turn next to them. The "teaching king" and "Buddhist spirit" from maka dai dai shogi are "contagious"; any piece that captures a teaching king or a Buddhist spirit becomes one. (This can be considered as a kind of forced promotion.)


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Pieces may promote to other pieces, as the pawn automatically does in orthodox chess on the last rank: the pawn has a choice of what it promotes to. In xiangqi, pawns automatically promote as soon as they cross the river in the middle of the board, but this promotion is fixed and only gives them the power to move sideways as well as forward. In shogi, the pawn is not the only piece that can promote; promotion can occur if a move takes place partly or wholly in the last three ranks from the player's viewpoint, and is optional unless the piece could not move further, but a piece's promotion is fixed. In dai dai shogi, promotion (again fixed depending on the piece) happens when a piece that can promote makes a capture, and may not be refused.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Pieces may also have restrictions on where they can go. In xiangqi, the "general" and "advisors" may not leave their "palaces" (a 3×3 section of the board for each player). The topology of the board can also be changed, and some pieces may respect it while others ignore it. In Tamerlane chess, only a king, prince, or adventitious king may enter the opponent's citadel, and only the adventitious king may enter its "own" citadel. In cylindrical chess, the left and right edges are joined to each other so a rook can continue to the right from h1 and end up on a1. It would be possible to have both cylindrical pieces and normal pieces on the same board.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Pieces may also have restriction on how they can be captured. An iron piece may not be captured at all. There are other possibilities, like a piece that can be captured by "some" pieces but not others, which is common in ko shogi (e.g. a shield unit is invulnerable to bows and guns). In Ralph Betza's "Jupiter" army, the Jovian bishop is a Nemesis ferz: it cannot capture, it cannot increase its distance from the enemy king, and it may not be captured (except possibly by the enemy king itself; Betza vacillated on this point).


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Such special characteristics of pieces are normally not included in the notations describing the movement of fairy pieces, and are usually explained separately.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Some three-dimensional chess variants also exist, such as Raumschach, along with pieces that take advantage of the extra dimension on the board.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: In his book "The Oxford History of Board Games" David Parlett used a notation to describe fairy piece movements. The move is specified in the form m={"expression"}, where "m" stands for "move", and the "expression" is composed from the following elements:


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Ralph Betza created a classification scheme for fairy chess pieces (including standard chess pieces) in terms of the moves of basic pieces with modifiers.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Capital letters stand for basic leap movements, ranging from single-square orthogonal moves to 3×3 diagonal leaps: Wazir, Ferz, Dabbaba, KNight, Alfil, THreeleaper, Camel, Zebra, and G (3,3)-leaper. C and Z are equivalent to obsolete letters L (Long Knight) and J (Jump) which are no longer commonly used. Longer leaps are specified here by a vector, such as (1,4) for the giraffe.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: A leaper is converted into a rider by doubling its letter. For example, WW describes a rook, FF describes a bishop, and NN describes a nightrider. The second letter can instead be a number, which is a limitation on how many times the leap motion can be repeated; for example, W4 describes a rook limited to 4 spaces of movement.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Combining multiple movement letters into a string means the piece can use any of the available options. For example, WF describes a king, capable of moving one space orthogonally or diagonally.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Standard chess pieces except pawns (which are particularly complex) and knights (which are a basic leap movement) have their own letters available; K = WF, Q = WWFF, B = FF, R = WW. R4 and W4 are synonyms.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: All mentioned capitals refer to a maximally symmetric set of moves that can be used for both moving and capturing. Lowercase letters in front of the capital letters modify the component, usually restricting the moves to a subset. They can be distinguished in directional, modal and other modifiers. Basic directional modifiers are: forward, b, right, left. On non-orthogonal moves these indicate pairs of moves, and a second modifier of the perpendicular type is needed to fully specify a single direction. Otherwise, when multiple directions are mentioned, it means that moves in all these directions are possible. The prefix notations sideways and vertical are shorthands for lr and fb, respectively. Modal modifiers are move only, capture only. Other modifiers are jumping (basic distant leap must jump, cannot move without a hurdle), non-jumping like the Chinese elephant, grasshopper (a rider that moves only by landing on the square immediately beyond the first piece it encounters), pao (a rider that moves only by landing any number of squares beyond the first piece it encounters, but not beyond a second piece), o cylindrical (moving off one side of the board wraps to the other), z crooked (moving in a zigzag line like the boyscout), q circular movement (like the rose), and then (for pieces that start moving in one direction and then continue in another, like the gryphon).


title: Fairy chess piece

text: In addition, Betza has also suggested adding brackets to his notation: <nowiki>q[WF]q[FW]</nowiki> would be a circular king, which can move from e4 to f5 (first the ferz move) then g5, h4, h3, g2, f2, e3, and back to e4, effectively passing a turn, and could also start from e4 to f4 (first the wazir move) then g5, g6, f7, e7, d6, d5, and back to e4.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: There is no standard order of the components and modifiers. Betza often plays with the order to create somehow pronounceable piece names and artistic word play.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Note that this table is a special case of the Cartesian coordinate plane, where the Origin is always the "current" location of the piece about to move.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Betza does not use the small letter i. It is used here for "initial" in the description of the different types of pawns. The letter a is used here to describe again, indicating the piece can make the move on which it is prefixed multiple times, possibly with new modifiers mentioned behind the a, which then apply to the second 'leg' of the move. Directional specifications for such a continuation step should be interpreted relative to the first step (e.g. aW is a two-step orthogonal move that can change direction; afW is a two-step orthogonal move that must continue the same direction).


title: Fairy chess piece

text: To handle some frequently encountered special moves, e can be used next to m and c to indicate "en-passant" capture, i.e. capture of the piece that just made a move with i & n modifier, by moving to the square where the n implies it could have been blocked. (This makes the full description of the FIDE pawn mfWcefFimfnD.) An O with a range specifier is used to indicate castling with the furthest piece in that direction in the initial setup, the range indicating the number of squares the king moves (orthodox castling: ismO2). XBetza overloads some modifiers, by giving them an alternative meaning where the original meaning makes no sense. E.g. i in a continuation leg ('iso') indicates the length must be the same as the previous riding leg, useful for indicating rifle captures (caibR).


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Non-final legs of a multi-leg move also have the option to end on an occupied square without disturbing its contents. To indicate this the modifier p is used, and thus has a slightly different meaning than on final legs; the traditional meaning can then be seen as shorthand for paf. To make the a notation more versatile, it can also be used when the moves of the two legs are not exactly congruent: g is an alternative to indicates a non-final leg to an occupied square, but in contrast to p it specifies a 'range toggle', converting a mentioned rider move into the corresponding leaper move (e.g. R ⟷ W) for the next leg, and vice versa (making the traditional g shorthand for gaf). A similar range toggle on reaching an empty square can be indicated by y, to indicate a slider "spontaneously" turns a corner after starting with a leap. Continuation directions will always be encoded in the 8-fold (K) system, even when the initial leg only had 4-fold symmetry. Mention of an intermediate direction on a 4-fold-symmetrical move would then swap orthogonal moves to the corresponding diagonal moves, (e.g. W ⟷ F) and vice versa. (So mafsW is the xiangqi horse, move to an empty W-square, and continue one F-step at 45 degree, and FyafsF is the gryphon.)


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Bex notation also adds many extensions for indicating different modes of capture: where a simple c describes replacement capture as in chess, the notations [ca], [cw], [cl] describe capture by approach, withdrawal, leaping over, etc. [crM] describes "rifle capture" (i.e. annihilating enemy pieces without moving), and specifies with the atom M it contains what can be captured that way. Bex notation also introduces a way to describe "exotic effects" as a step in a longer move. E.g. [xo] as final move step indicates returning to the square of origin, [xiK] means "immobilize" all pieces a K step away from the current square, while [x!iK] would similarly mobilize such neighbors. [xwN] would denote a position swap with a piece an N leap away. None of these things can be specified in the original Betza notation, but the downside is that the notations are completely ad-hoc, and do not follow from an underlying principle.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: The British Chess Problem Society (BCPS) provides notations for many fairy chess pieces, extending the standard algebraic notation for chess. The notation consists of one or two capital letters or of one capital letter followed by a digit. It is noteworthy that the notation of the standard Knight is the letter S (from German "Springer") and the single letter N denotes the Nightrider. The notation for the Wazir is WE (from German "Wesir") while the notation WA denotes the Waran (Rook + Nightrider).


title: Fairy chess piece

text: As with piece values in traditional chess, fairy pieces have values assigned for use in scoring and strategising. While a large amount of information can be found concerning the relative value of variant chess pieces, there are few resources where it is in a concise format for more than just a few piece types. One challenge of producing such a summary is that piece values are dependent upon the size of boards they are played on, and the combination of other pieces on the board: even when the same game format is assumed (board size and combination of other pieces), there is often little agreement on the specific value of many other pieces.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: On an 8×8 board, the standard chess pieces (pawn, knight, bishop, rook, and queen) are usually given values of 1, 3, 3, 5, and 9 respectively. When the basic pieces wazir (W), ferz (F), and mann (WF = K), are played with a similar mix of pieces, they are typically valued at around 1, 1.5, and 3 points respectively. Three popular compound pieces, the archbishop (BN), chancellor (RN), and amazon (QN) have been estimated to have point values around 8, 8.5, and 12 respectively. The values of other pieces are not well established; compound pieces are sometimes approximated as the sum of their component pieces, or estimated to be slightly higher due to synergistic effects (such as it is for the archbishop and chancellor).


title: Fairy chess piece

text: Musketeer Chess, a modern chess variant, has tried to give relatively accurate values of 10 fairy pieces: Hawk, Elephant, Unicorn, Fortress, Dragon, Spider, Leopard, Cannon, Archbishop, Chancellor. The method that led to these calculations has been based on computation, using a dedicated engine developed. Thousands of games were generated, which helped refine the values that served as a starting point (Musketeer Chess Pieces Relative Value). Other independent approaches have given Musketeer Chess a trial. For example, Sbiis Sabian, in a 24-page article, reviewed many existing methods and came-up with his own methodology, inspired from previous trials. He created a program that generates random chess positions, then calculated average mobility in thousands of positions approximating the relative piece val. Another progress has been the use of powerful engines: an approach presented by Grandmaster Larry Kaufman has allowed the evaluation of the relative piece values in many situations, e.g. the bishop pair.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: The following table shows some game pieces of unorthodox chess, from fairy chess problems and chess variants (including historical and regional ones), and the six orthodox chess pieces. The columns "BCPS", "Parlett" and "Betza" contain the notation describing how each piece moves. The notation systems are explained above.


title: Fairy chess piece

text: 0–9 – A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X, Y, Z


title: Proposed states and union territories of India

text: This is a list of proposed states and union territories in India. The constitutional power to create new states and union territories in India is solely reserved with the Parliament of India. The parliament can do so by announcing new states/union territories, separating territory from an existing state or merging two or more states/union territories or parts of them. In addition to the existing 28 states and 8 union territories, several new states and union territories have been proposed throughout India's history.


text: The Indian constitution (under Part I: The Union and its territory) allows certain provisions for the creation of new states and union territories:


text: However, at the same time, demanding separate statehood from an existing state can lead to criminal charges under the secession law in India.


text: Before independence, India was divided into British-administered provinces and nominally autonomous princely states, which were governed by the British administration. After the partition of India, some of these administrative divisions became part of the Dominion of Pakistan, whilst the remaining states and provinces formed the Dominion of India. The colonial system of administration continued until 1956 when the States Reorganisation Act abolished the provinces and princely states in favour of new states which were based on language and ethnicity.


text: Several new states and union territories have been created out of the existing states since 1956. The Bombay Reorganisation Act split the Bombay State into the present-day states of Gujarat and Maharashtra on 1 May 1960 on a linguistic basis. The state of Nagaland was created on 1 December 1963. The Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966 carved out a new Hindi-speaking state of Haryana from the southern districts of Punjab state, transferred the northern districts to Himachal Pradesh and designated a union territory around Chandigarh, the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana.


text: Statehood was conferred upon Himachal Pradesh on 25 January 1971, and upon Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura on 21 January 1972. The Kingdom of Sikkim joined the Indian Union as a state on 26 April 1975. In 1987, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram became states on 20 February, followed by Goa on 30 May of the same year. Goa's northern exclaves of Daman and Diu became a separate union territory.


text: Three new states were created in November 2000: Chhattisgarh (1 November) was created out of eastern Madhya Pradesh; Uttaranchal (9 November), which was later renamed Uttarakhand, was created out of the mountainous districts of northwest Uttar Pradesh; and Jharkhand (15 November) was created out of the southern districts of Bihar.


text: On 2 June 2014, Telangana was separated from Andhra Pradesh as the 29th state of the union. On 31 October 2019, the state of Jammu and Kashmir was split into two new Union Territories: Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. On 26 January 2020, the Union Territory of Daman and Diu and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli were merged into one Union Territory: the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.


text: This proposed state would consist of eight districts, namely Kurnool, Nandyal, Anantapur, Sri Sathya Sai, Kadapa, Annamayya, Tirupati, and Chittoor. Rayalaseema Parirakshana Samithi is a political party formed by Byreddy Rajasekhar Reddy in 2013 advocating for a separate Rayalaseema state. There have also been demands to include the two coastal districts of Prakasam and Nellore district to form Greater Rayalaseema.


text: The agitation for the creation of a separate Bodoland state resulted in an agreement between the Indian Government, the Assam state government, and the Bodo Liberation Tigers Force. According to the agreement made on 10 February 2003, the Bodoland Territorial Council, an entity subordinate to the government of Assam, was created to govern four districts covering 3,082 Bodo Kachari-majority villages in Assam. Elections to the council were held on 13 May 2003, and Hagrama Mohilary was sworn in as the chief of the 46-member council on 4 June.


text: Karbi Anglong is one of the 35 districts of Assam. Several memoranda for a Karbi homeland have been submitted at multiple times by several organisations over the years. The demand for a separate state turned violent on 31 July 2013 when student demonstrators set government buildings on fire.


text: The Dimasa people of northeast India have been demanding a separate state called Dimaraji or "Dimaland" for several decades. It would comprise the Dimasa-Kachari inhabited areas in Assam, namely the Dima Hasao district, Cachar district, Karimganj district, Hailakandi district, Karbi Anglong district, and parts of Hojai district, together with part of the Dimapur district in Nagaland.


text: The native Bengali people of Assam have demanded a separate state for themselves within the Barak Valley, particularly the Bengali majority districts of Cachar, Hailakandi, and Karimganj. Some definitions also include Dima Hasao and Hojai. Silchar would be the capital of the proposed state.


text: There have been demands for a Bhojpur state, comprising the Bhojpuri speaking districts of western Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh.


text: Mithila is a proposed state which would cover the Maithili speaking regions of Bihar and Jharkhand. There is no consensus on the capital, although Begusarai, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, and Purnia have all been suggested as candidate cities.


text: The political administration of Delhi more closely resembles that of a state than a union territory, with its own legislature, high court, and an executive council of ministers headed by a Chief Minister. New Delhi is jointly administered by the union government and the local government of Delhi. The previous National Democratic Alliance government introduced a bill in Parliament in 2003, to grant full statehood to Delhi, however the legislation was not passed.


text: The establishment of Bhil Pradesh has been a demand for over 30 years. The Daily News and Analysis reported in 2013 that the formation of the Telangana state has reignited hopes of statehood to this region, comprising the tribal-dominated parts of Gujarat and neighbouring states Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra.


text: Kutch State or Cutch State, covering the Kutch district of Gujarat, the Great Rann of Kutch, and the Little Rann of Kutch, is an aspirant, both as an independent state and as part of a combined Saurashtra, also known as Kathiawar. Both Saurashtra State and Kutch State existed as separate states from 1947 to 1956. They were Part-B and Part-C states of India respectively. They were merged with Bombay state following the States Re-organisation Act, and became part of Gujarat after the bifurcation of Bombay state on 1 May 1960 following the Mahagujarat Movement. Some people demand a return of statehood to Saurashtra and Kutch, citing slow development of the regions. Apart from these two separate statehood demands, there is a demand for a separate Bhilistan state.


text: At the time of the integration of the princely state of Kutch with India in 1947, the accession was done on the condition that Kutch would retain the status of a separate state. It enjoyed this status until 1960, when a separate state of Gujarat was carved out of Maharashtra and Kutch was merged with it. The main reason behind a separate state is cultural and geographical distance from Gandhinagar. In 1960, Kutch was promised an autonomous development board under Article 371(2) of the Constitution, which never came into existence due to lack of political will. Additionally, water from the Narmada does not reach the farms of this region.


text: The movement for a separate Saurashtra state was initiated in 1972 by advocate Ratilal Tanna, who was a close aide of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. As per the Saurashtra Sankalan Samiti, more than 300 organisations across the Saurashtra region support the demand of the separate State. The Samiti also claims that compared to other parts of Gujarat, Saurashtra is underdeveloped. Lack of better water supply to the region, lack of job opportunities, and subsequent youth migration have been cited as major reasons for the demand of statehood. Saurashtra is linguistically different from the rest of the state due to the prevalence of its Saurashtra dialect.


text: Ethnic Kashmiri leaders, including writer and opinion leader Ghulam Nabi Khayal, have called for the division of Jammu and Kashmir into separate states as a possible solution to the Kashmir conflict. The proposed state of Kashmir comprises the Kashmir Division, and the proposed state of Jammu comprises the Jammu Division. Demographically, the Jammu region is very different from the Kashmir valley. It is primarily inhabited by Dogras, Gujjars, and Sikhs who speak the Dogri, Gojri, Punjabi languages.


text: In late 2020, IkkJutt Jammu was launched as a party and demanded that the Jammu Division should be separated and given statehood. The party also supports splitting Kashmir Division into two union territories, with one for Kashmiri Hindus.


text: Panun Kashmir is a superficial proposed union territory in the Kashmir Valley on religious lines which is advocated by the Kashmiri Pandit Network as a homeland for Kashmiri Hindus who have fled the Kashmir valley as a result of ongoing separatist movement and hope to return.


text: North Karnataka is a geographical region consisting of mostly semi-arid plateau from elevation that constitutes the northern part of the Karnataka state in India. It is drained by the Krishna River and its tributaries, the Bhima, Ghataprabha, Malaprabha, and Tungabhadra. North Karnataka lies within the Deccan thorn scrub forests ecoregion, which extends north into eastern Maharashtra.


text: The proposed state of North Karnataka includes the districts of Bagalkot, Belagavi, Bellary, Bidar, Dharwad, Gadag, Haveri, Kalaburagi, Koppal, Raichur, Vijayanagar, Vijayapura, and Yadgir.


text: There is a notable difference from the regions of Old Mysore, Coastal Karnataka, and Central Karnataka in terms of language, cuisine and culture. The region is well known for its contributions to the literature, arts, architecture, economy and politics of Karnataka.


text: Kodagu is a district of Karnataka that is predominantly inhabited by Kodava people. The Codava National Council (CNC) wishes for it to be an "autonomous region".


text: Konkan is a rugged section of the western coastline of India. It consists of the coastal districts of Maharashtra, Goa, and Karnataka. The ancient sapta-Konkan is a slightly larger region described in the Sahyadrikhanda, which refers to it as "Parashuramakshetra". The proposed Konkan state includes the districts of Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg from Maharashtra, the state of Goa, and Karwar up to Aghanashini in Karnataka.


text: Tulu Nadu is a border region between the states of Karnataka and Kerala in southern India. The demand for a separate state is based on a distinct culture and language (Tulu, which does not have official status), and neglect of the region by the two state governments. To counter these complaints and accusations, the Karnataka and Kerala state governments created the "Tulu Sahitya Academy" to preserve and promote Tuluva culture. The proposed state would comprise the districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi from Karnataka, and the Kasaragod district from Kerala.


text: Madhya Pradesh is the second largest Indian state by area, holding nearly 9.37% of the country's land area and approximately 10% of its population. The regions of Madhya Pradesh are very ethno-linguistically diverse and often hold no connection to each other. Naturally, this has led to several proposals to divide the state into smaller states, each with homogeneous populations.


text: Vindhya Pradesh was a former state of India. It occupied an area of 23,603 sq. miles. It was created in 1948, shortly after the independence of India, from the territories of the princely states in the eastern portion of the former Central India Agency. It was named after the Vindhya Range, which runs straight through the center of the province. The capital of the state was originally Singrauli, then Rewa. It lay between Uttar Pradesh to the north and Madhya Pradesh to the south, and the enclave of Datia, which lay a short distance to the west, was surrounded by the state of Madhya Bharat.


text: Vindhya Pradesh was merged into Madhya Pradesh in 1956, following the States Reorganisation Act. In 2000, Sriniwas Tiwari, ex-speaker of the Madhya Pradesh assembly, called for nine districts to be separated from Madhya Pradesh to create a new state of Vindhya Pradesh, although this was rejected by the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. Separate states of Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand, instead of a single Vindhya Pradesh state, is advocated as well to accommodate for the districts claimed by these regions from the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh.


text: Recently, the demand for a Bundelkhand state has been gaining popularity. Former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Uma Bharti has assured people of the region to raise voice for a separate Bundelkhand state. Former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Mayawati has also expressed her support for the establishment of the Bundelkhand state. The Bundelkhand state would consist of more than 16 districts, including Jhansi, Lalitpur, Urai, Jalon, Banda, Chitrakoot, Hamirpur, Mauranipur, Mahoba in Uttar Pradesh and Sagar, Damoh, Panna, Chhatarpur, Tikamgarh, Shivpuri, Datia, and some parts of Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. More recently, a voice for the Bundelkhand state has been raised by Bundelkhand Mukti Morcha, a political party headed by Raja Bundela of Lalitpur.


text: Mahakoshal is a region which lies in the upper or eastern reaches of the Narmada River valley in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The region includes the districts of Jabalpur, Chhindwara, Katni, Narsinghpur], Mandla, Dindori, and Seoni. The largest city and a possible capital is Jabalpur. Organisations such as Mahakaushal Mukti Morcha and Bharatiya Janashakti have demanded separate statehood for the region.


text: It is alleged that although the Mahakoshal region is rich in minerals, forests, water and land resources, related industries were set up in nearby states. The region has a distinct cultural identity owing to Jabalpur city, known as the "Sanskardhani" (cultural capital) of the State, one of the oldest towns of central India. Culturally and socially, the Mahakoshal region differs greatly from the neighbouring Vindhya Pradesh. One of the key reasons for this is said to be that large parts of Mahakoshal were under direct British rule from the nineteenth century onwards, turning it into a relatively progressive, modern and liberal area and infusing democratic values into its body politic. Casteism and feudalism are said to be not as deeply rooted in this region as they are in Vindhya Pradesh.


text: A parallel demand for a state of Gondwana from the same Mahakoshal region of Madhya Pradesh has arisen, owing to the fact that vast areas of Mahakoshal were ruled by Gondi kings and even today, Mandla, Chinndwara, Dindori, Seoni, and Balaghat have a predominantly Gondi tribal population. Tribes constitute 64% of the total population of the Dindori district and 57% of the Mandla district. The Gondwana Gantantra party (GGP) was established in 1991, with the objective to struggle for the creation of a separate Gondwana State comprising regions that were ruled by Gondis. The Gondwana Gantantra party (GGP) has since divided into numerous factions, such as the Rashtriya Gondwana party and Gondwana Mukti Dal.


text: There have been demands for a separate Malwa state with the probable capital at Indore. The region includes the Madhya Pradesh districts of Agar Malwa, Dewas, Dhar, Indore, Jhabua, Mandsaur, Neemuch, Rajgarh, Ratlam, Shajapur, Ujjain, and parts of Guna and Sehore, and the Rajasthan districts of Jhalawar and parts of Banswara and Pratapgarh.


text: The main language of Malwa is Malvi, although Hindi is widely spoken in the cities. The language is sometimes referred to as Malavi or Ujjaini. Malvi is part of the Rajasthani branch of languages; "Nimadi" is spoken in the Nimar region of Madhya Pradesh and in Rajasthan. The dialects of Malvi are, in alphabetical order, "Bachadi", "Bhoyari", "Dholewari", "Hoshangabadi", "Jamral", "Katiyai", Malvi Proper, "Patvi", "Rangari", "Rangri" and "Sondwari". A survey in 2001 found only four dialects: Ujjaini (in the districts of Ujjain, Indore, Dewas and Sehore), "Rajawari" (Ratlam, Mandsaur and Neemuch), "Umadwari" (Rajgarh) and "Sondhwari" (Jhalawar, in Rajasthan). About 55% of the population of Malwa can converse in and about 40% of the population is literate in Hindi, the official language of the Madhya Pradesh state.


text: An initiative has been started by MP High Court Bar council with a demand of a new state of "Rewakhand" from the eastern half of the state combining all the regions of Vindhya Pradesh, Bundelkhand, Baghelkhand and Mahakoshal.


text: The Konkan region is a section of land along the north-western coast of India and the north Western Ghats. Konkan lies in between the Deccan plateau and the Arabian Sea. It consists of the westernmost districts of Daman, Maharashtra, and Goa. The ancient sapta-Konkan is a slightly larger region described in the Sahyadrikhanda, which refers to it as "Parashuramakshetra". The proposed Konkan state includes the historically Konkani speaking districts of the Konkan division, the former untion territory of Goa, Daman and Diu, and a portion of the Carwar district.


text: Marathwada is one of the five divisions of Maharashtra. The region coincides with the Aurangabad Division of Maharashtra. Marathwada came under the rule of the Nizam of Hyderabad, which later became the princely state of Hyderabad, under the suzerainty of British India. Subsequently, through Operation Polo, a "police action" on 17 September 1948, the Indian army annexed Hyderabad to India and on 1 November 1956, Marathwada was formed by merging Hyderabad State and Bombay State. On 1 May 1960, Bombay State was divided into the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, with Marathwada becoming a part of the former. There have been demands for a separate Marathwaada state.


text: Vidarbha is a region that comprises the Amravati and Nagpre divisions of eastern Maharashtra. The State Reorganisation Act of 1956 placed Vidarbha in Bombay State. Shortly after this, the States Reorganisation Commission recommended the creation of Vidarbha state with Nagpur as the capital, but instead it was included in Maharashtra state, which was formed on 1 May 1960. Support for a separate Vidarbha state had been expressed by Loknayak Bapuji Aney and Brajlal Biyani. The demands for the creation of a separate state are based on allegations of neglect by the Maharashtra state government. Jambuwantrao Dhote led a popular struggle for Vidarbha statehood in the 1970s. Two politicians, N. K. P. Salve and Vasant Sathe, have led attempts to bring about statehood in recent times.


text: The BJP supported the Vidarbha statehood demand and it won 44 out of the 62 seats in Vidarbha region in the 2014 Maharashtra Legislative assembly election, receiving a majority in the Maharashtra Legislative assembly. However, BJP didn't create a separate state after winning the election. In the following 2019 legislative assembly election, BJP was defeated, only winning 29 seats.


text: Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) is seated at Tura and is one of the three Autonomous District Councils within Meghalaya state, and one of fourteen autonomous regions of India. The region of Garoland covers the districts of East Garo Hills, West Garo Hills, South Garo Hills, North Garo Hills, and Southwest Garo Hills.


text: The Garo National Council is a political party in Meghalaya in northeastern India. Founded by Clifford R. Marak, the party fights for the creation of a Garo-majority state, to be carved from the districts of West Garo Hills, East Garo Hills, and South Garo Hills. The Garoland demand of GNC is different from that of the separatist guerrilla Achik National Volunteer Council, who alos demands that parts of Assam ought to be part of Garoland.


text: In the 2003 Meghalaya state assembly elections, GNC had put up seven candidates, who together received 8,483 votes.


text: Clifford Marak, the only GNC MLA in the state legislature, died on 1 March 2015 of liver and kidney disease.


text: Chakmaland is a proposed union territory for the predominantly Buddhist Chakma people in western Mizoram, which came under Indian territory from the Chittagong Hill Tracts after the Partition of India. Chakmas have been demanding to convert the existing Chakma Autonomous District Council and areas of Tlabung in Mizoram into a union territory. The Chakma people have faced discrimination by the predominantly Christian Mizo people.


text: The Kosal state movement is an effort by people of the Western Odisha region to secede from the state of Odisha. Organizations like Western Odisha Yuva Manch (WOYM), Kosal Youth Coordination Committee (KYCC), Kosal State Coordination Committee (KSCC), KOSHAL SENA are mainly leading this.


text: The demand for secession from the state of Odisha arose mostly because of the prolonged underdevelopment and backwardness of this region. Pro-separatist groups have repeatedly claimed the state government is not doing enough for the development of undeveloped districts of western Odisha.


text: To develop the western Odisha region, the state government has established a Western Odisha Development Council (WODC). A significant budget is allotted to this council from the total budget of Odisha. However, the WODC headquarters is located in the state capital Bhubaneswar rather than in Western Odisha.


text: Maru Pradesh (मरुप्रदेश) is a proposed desert state in North West India, to be carved out from the state of Rajasthan. The proposed state consists of the Barmer district, Jaisalmer district, Bikaner district, Churu district, Ganganagar district, Hanumangarh district, Jhunjhunu district, Jodhpur district, Nagaur district, Pali district, Jalore district, Sirohi district, and Sikar district.


text: When the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee created three new states in the year 2000, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat wrote a letter saying that for the development of the state of Rajasthan and the internal security of the country, two parts of the state were go done.


text: There is a demand for the formation of a Kongu Nadu state by bifurcating Tamil Nadu. In 2021 the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Coimbatore North district demanded separate statehood to Kongu Nadu. Kongunadu Munnetra Kazhagam party has supported the statehood demand. The Kongu Vellalar Gounder caste organization Kongu Vellala Goundergal Peravai has also passed a resolution in favor of formation of a Kongu Nadu state by bifurcating Tamil Nadu. The DMK has opposed the move.


text: Tipraland is the name of a proposed state in India. The formation of "Tipraland", a state within the TTAADC, under articles 2 and 3 of the Indian Constitution, is demanded by the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) as part of their political agenda. Another registered regional political party, Tipraland State Party (TSP) also demanded statehood for Tipraland.


text: The Kingdom of Tripura was a kingdom ruled by the Manikya Dynasty. Its first king was Maha Manikya, who ruled the kingdom in the early 15th century. The earlier kings are partly mythological and partly legendary or semi-legendary. The penultimate king was Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Debbarman Manikya Bahadur. After his death in 1947, the princely state of Tripura joined India as a Part C State on 15 October 1949 under the name Tripura, and later achieved statehood on 21 January 1972.


text: Historically, the rulers of Tripura's Manikya dynasty had always encouraged the immigration of and settlement of non-tribals to Tripura, especially Bengalis. Rajmala authenticates the fact that Ratna Manikya (1464-1468) was the first to "settle 4,000 Bengalis in four places" in Tripura. During the Noakhali riots in 1946, many Bengali Hindu survivors were sheltered in temporary relief camps in Comilla, Chandpur, Agartala (the present capital of Tripura), and other places. A large migration of Bengali Hindus and Muslims took place in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and other places during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. The indigenous Tipra people demanded an autonomous district, which they finally achieved on 23 March 1979 in the form of the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC).


text: The population of a proposed Awadh state, consisting of Awadhi speaking districts of central Uttar Pradesh, would be approximately 50 million people with an area of approximately 75,000 km and Lucknow as the capital.


text: Harit Pradesh is a proposed state, which would comprise 22 districts of Western Uttar Pradesh, currently forming six divisions – Agra, Aligarh, Bareilly, Meerut, Moradabad, Saharanpur and some parts of the Kanpur Division, (Farrukhabad, Etawah and Auraiya districts). The most prominent advocate for the creation of the new state is Ajit Singh, the leader of the Rashtriya Lok Dal party. Mayawati also supported the formation of Harit Pradesh in December 2009.


text: There is another demand within the same region – Braj Pradesh, consisting of the Agra division, Aligarh division and some districts of the Kanpur division (Farrukhabad, Etawah and Auraiya) from Uttar Pradesh, and the districts of Bharatpur, Dholpur and Gwalior from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The proposed capital would be in Agra. So far, Braj has remained as a historical and cultural region, rather than a political entity. The language of Braj is Braj Bhasha.


text: Bundelkhand comprises parts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. In 2011, the Bahujan Samaj Party government under Chief Minister Mayawati proposed the creation of Bundelkhand from seven districts of Uttar Pradesh, with Allahabad as the capital. Organisations such as Bundelkhand Mukti Morcha (BMM) also demanded its formulation, along with the inclusion of six other districts from Madhya Pradesh as well. Uma Bharati of the Bharatiya Janata Party promised a separate state of Bundelkhand within three years if her party was voted to power, during campaigning for the 2014 Loksabha Elections at Jhansi. A similar promise was made by Congress leader Pradeep Jain Aditya during these elections.


text: Since the early 1960s, there has been a movement for establishing a Bundelkhand state for promoting the development of the region. Bundelkhand is geographically in the central part of India, covering part of Madhya Pradesh and part of Uttar Pradesh. Despite being rich in minerals, the people of Bundelkhand are poor and the region is underdeveloped and underrepresented in state and central politics. Agrarian crisis and farmer's suicides are also cited as the reason for separate statehood.


text: Purvanchal is a geographic region of north-central India, which comprises the eastern end of Uttar Pradesh state. It is bounded by Nepal to the north, Bihar state to the east, Baghelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh state to the south, the Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh to the west. Purvanchal comprises three divisions – Awadhi region in the west, Bhojpuri region in the east, and the Baghelkhand region in the south. The most commonly spoken language in Purvanchal is Bhojpuri. The area is represented by 23 Members of Parliament to the lower house of Indian Parliament, and 117 legislators in the 403 member Uttar Pradesh state assembly or Vidhan Sabha. The region includes the districts of Azamgarh, Ballia, Basti, Chandauli, Deoria, Ghazipur, Gorakhpur, Jaunpur, Kushinagar, Maharajganj, Mau, Mirzapur, Sant Kabir Nagar, Sant Ravidas Nagar, Siddharth Nagar, and Varanasi.


text: As a fallout of the movement for Telangana, then state chief minister Mayawati, proposed on 13 December 2009, to carve out a separate state of Purvanchal out of Uttar Pradesh, with Gorakhpur or Varanasi as its capital.


text: Gorkhaland is a proposed state covering areas inhabited by the ethnic Indian Gorkha people, namely the Darjeeling hills and the Dooars in the northern part of West Bengal. Nepali is spoken by 40% of the population of the Darjeeling district and 51% of the population of the Kalimpong district. The movement for Gorkhaland has gained momentum in the line of ethno-linguistic-cultural sentiment of the people who desire to identify themselves as Gorkha.


text: The demand for a separate administrative region has existed since 1907, when the Hillmen's Association of Darjeeling submitted a memorandum to the Morley-Minto reforms committee. After Indian independence, the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League (ABGL) was the first political party from the region to demand greater identity for the Gorkha ethnic group and economic freedom for the community. In 1980, the Pranta Parishad of Darjeeling wrote to the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, with the need to form a state for the Gorkhas.


text: The movement for a separate state of Gorkhaland gained serious momentum during the 1980s, when a violent agitation was carried out by the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) led by Subhash Ghising. The agitation ultimately led to the establishment of a semiautonomous body in 1988 called the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) to govern certain areas of the Darjeeling district. However, in 2008, a new party called the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) raised the demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland once again. In 2011, the GJM signed an agreement with the state and central governments for the formation of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, a semiautonomous body that replaced the DGHC in the Darjeeling hills. On 28 March 2022, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha permanently dropped its Gorkhaland statehood demand, instead seeking political solution within West Bengal.


text: Kamtapur lies in the northern parts of West Bengal. The proposed state consists of the districts of Cooch Behar, Goalpara, Dhubri, South Salmara, Bongaigaon, Kamrup, and the southern plains of the Darjeeling district, including Siliguri city as well as Jalpaiguri.


text: In 2021, Saumitra Khan, Lok Sabha BJP MP advocated for the creation of a Junglemahal state by carving out Junglemahal area from West Bengal. He claimed that the Junglemahal area is underdeveloped and the demands of employment and development for locals could only be met if it gets statehood. The proposed Junglemahal state consists of Purulia, Jhargram, Bankura, parts of Birbhum, Purbo Medinipur, and Paschim Medinipur, along with some other areas. Currently 15 of the 40 MLAs from the Bankura, Purulia, West Midnapore and Jhargram are from BJP.


text: However, the West Bengal state BJP unit distanced itself from the demand. Following the Junglemahal statehood demand, a Trinamool congress leader filed Complaint against Saumitra Khan for demanding separate statehood.


text: In 2021, BJP MP John Barla demanded carving out a state or union territory comprising North Bengal districts out of the West Bengal state. The demand was supported by BJP MP Jayanta Roy, MLA Aanandamay Barman and MLA Sikha Chatterjee. The proposed Union Territory will comprise eight districts of North Bengal: Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, Cooch Behar, Malda, Uttar Dinajpur, and Dakshin Dinajpur. Currently, 30 out of the 54 MLAs in the North Bengal are from the BJP.


text: The West Bengal state BJP unit distanced itself from the union territory/statehood demand. The West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said that this is a plot to carve out Muslim-dominated regions in the state and added that RSS is behind this move. A Trinamool congress leader filed a complaint against John Barla for demanding a separate state. However, North Bengal's different native linguistic ethnic groups like Bengalis, Nepalis, Adivasis, and Koch Rajbongshis have rejected the separate statehood demand and are against the division of West Bengal.


title: Whitney (album)

text: Whitney is the second studio album by American singer Whitney Houston, released on June 2, 1987, by Arista Records as the follow-up to her best-selling debut album, "Whitney Houston". The album features five top 10 hits on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, which also became international hits. The album's first four singles—"I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)", "Didn't We Almost Have It All", "So Emotional" and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go"—all peaked at number one on the US Hot 100, making her the first female act to achieve four number one hits from one album.


title: Whitney (album)

text: Along with three straight number one singles from Houston's previous album, this gave the singer an unprecedented seven consecutive number one hits, surpassing the Beatles and the Bee Gees, who each had six number one consecutive hits. None of Houston's seven consecutive number one singles were duets, and none were recorded with other major acts. The album "Whitney" also included the top-ten US hit "Love Will Save the Day".


title: Whitney (album)

text: The album and the first single, "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)", were hits worldwide, peaking at number one in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several countries throughout Europe. It also became a major hit in various other countries in Asia, South America, and Africa. The album was a global success, and debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" Top 200 Album Chart on June 27, 1987. This made Houston the first female artist to ever debut at number one in the United States. The album remained at the top for eleven consecutive weeks, creating a record; the most cumulative weeks (25 weeks) at number one on the albums chart by a female artist during the 1980s.