title: Aag (2007 film)

text: Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag (), or simply, Aag () is a 2007 Indian Hindi-language action drama film produced and directed by Ram Gopal Varma, the film features Amitabh Bachchan, Mohanlal, Ajay Devgn, Prashant Raj Sachdev, Sushmita Sen, J. D. Chakravarthy, and Suchitra Krishnamoorthi in principal roles. The film is an adaptation of the 1975 Hindi film "Sholay", upon release, it was negatively received by the critics. It is considered as one of the worst films made.


title: Aag (2007 film)

text: Nashik-based Heerendra Dhaan and Raj Ranade are bodyguards of a politician but, after their employer is implicated in a scam, they end up assaulting a police officer and flee to Mumbai. Once there, they meet with Rambhabhai, who, in turn, gets them employed with a gangster named Shambhu. After a short, while the duo is apprehended by Police Inspector Narsimha, questioned, and after they agree to cooperate to bring down Shambhu, they will be let go. The two succeed in assisting the police arrest Shambhu, but they themselves are arrested, tried in Court, and sentenced to a year in jail.


title: Aag (2007 film)

text: After their discharge, they are again met by Inspector Narsimha, who, this time, wants to recruit them to capture and kill dreaded bandit Babban Singh, who had slaughtered his wife, Kavita, and son, Subbu, as well as cut his fingers off. He had done this as revenge for killing his brother, whom he really loved, and for having him sent to jail. Heerendra and Raj agree to carry out this task for 8 Lakh Rupees. They re-locate to Kaliganj, where Heerendra falls in love with an auto-rickshaw driver, Ghungroo, while Raj gives his heart to Subbu's widow, Durga. They then set out to capture Babban and meet with some success during Diwali, but Babban manages to escape. Babban then starts to ambush and kill the Kaliganj residents to compel them to surrender the duo to him.


title: Aag (2007 film)

text: Raj and Heerendra give in and meet Babban's henchmen in an abandoned building. They fight the goons, but Raj is killed in the process. Babban's right-hand man, Tambe, is badly injured, and later on, killed by Babban for failing. Babban has a final encounter with Heerendra and Inspector Narsimha, where Heerendra was about to kill him, but Inspector Narsimha tells him to spare and let the law decide his fate. However, Babban tries to escape, and he's shot dead (it is unclear as to who shot him since Heerendra was told not to kill him and Inspector Narsimha does not have fingers). The film ends with Heerendra getting arrested and Inspector Narsimha apologizing to everyone about it.


title: Aag (2007 film)

text: The Delhi High Court fined Ram Gopal Varma for the "deliberate act" of copyright infringement for the usage of characters such as "Gabbar Singh" of original "Sholay".


title: Aag (2007 film)

text: This film received negative reviews from critics and also turned out to be a commercial failure. Rajeev Masand rated it zero out of five. "The Times of India" stated that "Aag" "destroyed Bollywood's greatest film" and acknowledged that some "consider it the world's worst film." "Hindustan Times" awarded it the "Lifetime's Worst Ever Movie Award." It came in first in a "FHM India" list of the 57 worst movies ever made. "Total Film" included it in their list of the 66 worst films of all time. Amitabh Bachchan later admitted that the film was "a mistake."


title: Two Point Campus

text: Two Point Campus is a business simulation game developed by Two Point Studios and published by Sega. It is a successor to "Two Point Hospital" (2018) and tasks the player to build and manage a university campus. The game was released for Linux, macOS, Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on 9 August 2022. A brand new expansion titled "Space Academy" was revealed on 29 Nov 2022. The game received positive reviews upon release.


title: Two Point Campus

text: In "Two Point Campus", the player must build and manage a university campus. The player must build various educational rooms such as classrooms, lecture halls and libraries, as well as organizing different cultural events and extra-curricular activities. The player also must appoint staff, such as lecturers, teaching assistants and janitors.


title: Two Point Campus

text: In addition to maintaining the operation of the campus, the player will also need to take care of the well-being of the students. If a student enjoys their nightlife too much, they may not attend classes in the following day. The pupils fall into different archetypes, and their personalities are procedurally generated. Unlike "Two Point Hospital", in which patients leave the hospital once they are cured, the students in "Campus" will stay for a much longer time.


title: Two Point Campus

text: Each in-game year lasts for around 20 minutes. Graduation ceremonies will be held, and a new cohort of students will arrive. These students would interact with each other and develop relationships with other characters in the game. Each student also has their own specific needs, and they will either succeed, fail or drop out of school depending on how they were guided during their time in the campus.


title: Two Point Campus

text: Like "Two Point Hospital", the game is set in Two Point County, and some characters from "Hospital" also return in "Campus". At the beginning of the game, the player is given a plot of land and players can freely plan out and build the campus, lay down paths, and place decorations both inside and outside of the campus. The game features a sandbox mode where the players can build their school freely. A clean environment would attract more students, which would then bring the player more income. Financial management remains an important gameplay pillar, as constructing new buildings and maintaining the happiness of the students would all cost money. As with "Hospital", the game features a light-hearted tone and allows players to set up various exotic courses such as "Knight School", in which students study ancient literature and learn to become a Medieval knight.


title: Two Point Campus

text: "Two Point Campus" is the successor of "Two Point Hospital" and the second game developed by British developer Two Point Studios. The studio was inspired by "Animal House", "Pitch Perfect", "Grease" and "Harry Potter". The team added a "trait" system, which allows students to form relationships. The team believed that by allowing players to see how the students evolve throughout the in-game academic years, they will start to care for them. The system was added as the team was influenced by other simulation games, such as "The Sims" series. According to game director Gary Carr, "the byproduct we want is when you say goodbye to your first enrollment, if we can make you have a little tear in your eye as you're waving them off into the great wide world, that's awesome". The game features city-building game mechanics more extensively than "Hospital" as the team wanted to cater to players who are more interested in building creatively than actually managing the campus.


title: Two Point Campus

text: The in game world features a fictional student radio station, with voice acting by Marc Silk, Dan Pye, and the classic signature announcements by Jayne Webley. The content on Campus Radio helps set the tone of the games comedy, and enhances storylines throughout the gameplay.


title: Two Point Campus

text: The game was officially announced on 10 June 2021, though the game was leaked via the Xbox store on 31 May. The studio invited the community to provide input for the game through the Games2Gether program, which was created by fellow Sega development studio Amplitude. The game was originally set to be released for Linux, macOS, Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X and Series S on 17 May 2022. Two Point Studios announced in April 2022 that the team had delayed the game's release date to 9 August 2022.


title: Two Point Campus

text: The game received generally positive reviews upon release, according to review aggregator Metacritic. The game was nominated for "Best Sim/Strategy Game" at The Game Awards 2022.


title: Café society

text: Café society was the description of the "Beautiful People" and "Bright Young Things" who gathered in fashionable cafés and restaurants in New York, Paris and London beginning in the late 19th century. Maury Henry Biddle Paul is credited with coining the phrase "café society" in 1915.


title: Café society

text: Members attended each other's private dinners and balls, and took holidays in exotic locations or at elegant resorts. In the United States, café society came to the fore with the end of Prohibition in December 1933 and the rise of photojournalism to describe the set of people who tended to do their entertaining semi-publicly—in restaurants and night clubs—and who would include among them movie stars and sports celebrities. Some of the American night clubs and New York City restaurants frequented by the denizens of café society included the 21 Club, El Morocco, Restaurant Larue, and the Stork Club.


title: Damballa

text: Damballa, also spelled Damballah, Dambala, Dambalah, among other variations (), is one of the most important of all loa, spirits in Haitian Voodoo and other African diaspora religious traditions such as Obeah. He is traditionally portrayed as a great white serpent, originating in the city of Wedo (Whydah or Ouidah) in modern-day Benin. Damballa is said to be the Sky Father and the primordial creator of all life, or the first thing created by Gran Met. In those Vodou societies that view Damballa as the primordial creator, he created the cosmos by using his 7,000 coils to form the stars and the planets in the heavens and to shape the hills and valleys on earth. In others, being the first thing created by God, creation was undertaken through him. By shedding the serpent skin, Damballa created all the waters on the earth. As a serpent, he moves between land and water, generating life, and through the earth, uniting the land with the waters below. Damballa is usually syncretized with either Saint Patrick or Moses. He is counted among the Rada loa.


title: Damballa

text: Damballa is seen as benevolent and patient, wise and kind, yet detached and removed from the trials and tribulations of daily, human life. His very presence brings peace, and he represents a continuum which is "at once the ancient past and the assurance of the future." As a serpent, and due to his extreme age, he does not speak, but may whistle or make a soft, hissing sound.


title: Damballa

text: When a serviteur is believed to be possessed by Damballa during a ceremony, he or she moves on the floor like a serpent. A white sheet is laid down for him, and another waved over him to fan and cool him. His purity is such that it cannot be allowed to be exposed to impure or unclean things. Some peristyles maintain a basin full of water into which the possessed will plunge, to swim and cool off. Offerings to him include milk, white foods and flowers, rice, coconut, orgeat syrup, and a perfume called "lotion pompeia". However his offering "par excellence" is a white, uncooked egg on a mound of white flour.


title: Damballa

text: Damballa, like many other loa, is subdivided into different spirits who play different roles. For example, as Damballa Tocan he is a spirit of the intellect. When he manifests in the Petro rites it is Damballa La Flambo.


title: Damballa

text: Damballa's wife is Ayida-Weddo, although in some Vodou societies she is his sister, and in others Damballa himself after a different fashion. Erzulie Freda is his lover, although, once again, she may be considered his wife in some societies.


title: Damballa

text: Bahamian folk musician Exuma wrote and recorded the song "Dambala" for his 1970 self-titled album, in which he exhorts Dambala and God to punish slavers. The song was later covered by Nina Simone in live performances.


title: Damballa

text: A segment in the Amicus 1964 portmanteau horror film "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" features an unscrupulous jazz musician (Roy Castle) appropriating ritual music of a Dambalah ceremony.


title: Damballa

text: In the "Child's Play" franchise, Damballa's name is used in the voodoo incantation by the main antagonist Chucky to transfer his soul into his Good Guy Doll host.


title: Damballa

text: In Sierra's "", protagonist Gabriel Knight meets Damballa while investigating a series of murders in New Orleans.


title: Damballa

text: In the animated series "Conan: The Adventurer" episode "Bones of Damballa", the High Priest Sadinar worships Damballa, revealed to be an aspect of the serpent god Set.


title: Damballa

text: In "The Champions" episode "Shadow of the Panther", a stage magician in Haiti performs under the name Damballa.


title: New Zealand First

text: New Zealand First (), commonly abbreviated to NZ First, is a nationalist and populist political party in New Zealand. The party formed in July 1993 following the resignation on 19 March 1993 of its leader and founder, Winston Peters, from the then-governing National Party. Peters had been the sitting Member of Parliament for Tauranga since 1984 and would use the electorate as the base for New Zealand First until consecutive defeats by National Party candidates in 2005 and 2008. His party has formed coalition governments with both major political parties in New Zealand: first with the National Party from 1996 to 1998 and then with the Labour Party from 2005 to 2008 and from 2017 to 2020. Peters has served on two occasions as deputy prime minister.


title: New Zealand First

text: New Zealand First takes a broadly centrist position on economic issues and a conservative position on social issues such as criminal justice. The party distinguishes itself from the mainstream political establishment through its use of populist rhetoric, and supports popular referendums. The party is also anti-immigration, and is supportive of protectionism and pensioners' interests.


title: New Zealand First

text: The party entered the House of Representatives shortly after its formation in 1993. New Zealand First had 17 members of parliament (MPs) at its peak, following the first MMP election in 1996. It left parliament following the 2008 election in which it failed to gain enough party votes to retain representation. However, in the 2011 election, New Zealand First gained 6.59% of the total party vote, entitling it to eight MPs. The party increased its number of MPs to eleven at the 2014 election. During the 2017 election, the party's number of MPs dropped to nine members. In the weeks following the 2017 election, New Zealand First formed a coalition government with the Labour Party. In the 2020 election New Zealand First's share of the party vote fell to 2.6%, with all incumbent MPs, including Peters, losing their seats in Parliament.


title: New Zealand First

text: In June 1992, National Party Member of Parliament for Tauranga, Winston Peters, was told that he would not be allowed to run under National's banner in the 1993 election. A former Minister of Māori Affairs, Peters had previously been dismissed from the Cabinet in 1991, after he publicly criticised National Party policy.


title: New Zealand First

text: On 19 March 1993, Peters resigned from the then governing National Party. He resigned from Parliament, triggering a by-election in his electorate on 17 April 1993 in which he stood as an independent, winning with 90.8% of votes. On 18 July 1993, shortly before the writs were issued for that year's general election, Peters formed New Zealand First as a political grouping. At the time of its formation, New Zealand First's policy platform was broadly conservative—Peters claimed to be reviving National policies from which the Bolger government had departed.


title: New Zealand First

text: In the April 1993 special by-election, Tauranga voters re-elected Peters as an independent. At the general election six months later, New Zealand First received 8.4% of the total vote. Peters easily retained Tauranga, and Tau Henare, another New Zealand First candidate, won the Northern Māori seat, giving the party a total of two MPs. This did much to counter the perception of New Zealand First as merely a personality-driven vehicle for Peters.


title: New Zealand First

text: With the switch to the mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system for the 1996 election, smaller parties could gain a share of seats proportional to their share of the vote. This enabled New Zealand First to win 13% of the vote and 17 seats, including all five Māori electorates. New Zealand First's five Māori MPs—Henare (the party's deputy leader), Tuku Morgan, Rana Waitai, Tu Wyllie and Tuariki Delamere—became known as the "Tight Five".


title: New Zealand First

text: The election result put New Zealand First in a powerful position just three years after its formation. Neither of the two traditional major parties (National and Labour) had enough seats to govern alone, and only New Zealand First had enough seats to become a realistic coalition partner for either. This placed the relatively new party in a position where it could effectively choose the next prime minister.


title: New Zealand First

text: New Zealand First entered into negotiations with both major parties. Before the election, most people (including many New Zealand First voters) had expected Peters to enter into coalition with Labour. In fact, he harshly attacked his former National colleagues during the campaign, and appeared to promise that he would not even consider going into coalition with them.


title: New Zealand First

text: To the surprise of the electorate, which had apparently voted for New Zealand First to get rid of National, Peters decided to enter a coalition "with" National, enabling and becoming part of the third term of the fourth National government. The most common explanation for this decision involved National's willingness to accept New Zealand First's demands (and/or Labour's refusal to do so). However, Michael Laws (a former National Party MP who served as a New Zealand First campaign manager) claims that Peters had secretly decided to go with National significantly before this time, and that he merely used negotiations with Labour to encourage more concessions from National.


title: New Zealand First

text: Whatever the case, New Zealand First exacted a high price from incumbent Prime Minister Jim Bolger in return for allowing him to stay in power. Under the terms of a detailed coalition agreement, Peters would serve as Deputy Prime Minister, and would also hold the specially created office of Treasurer (senior to the Minister of Finance). The National Party also made considerable concessions on policy. Peters was free to select the ministers from his own party, without Bolger's oversight.


title: New Zealand First

text: New Zealand First had a relatively smooth coalition relationship with National at first. Despite early concerns about the ability of Peters to work with Bolger, who had sacked Peters from a former National cabinet, the two did not have major problems. New Zealand First had graver concerns about the behaviour of some of its MPs, whom opponents accused of incompetence and extravagant spending. Many people came to the conclusion that the party's minor MPs had come into parliament merely to provide votes for Peters, and would not make any real contributions themselves. A particularly damaging scandal involved Tuku Morgan.


title: New Zealand First

text: Gradually, however, the coalition tensions became more significant than problems of party discipline. This became increasingly the case after Transport Minister Jenny Shipley gained enough support within the National caucus to force Bolger's resignation and become Prime Minister (8 December 1997). The tensions between the two parties also rose as New Zealand First adopted a more aggressive approach to promoting its policies (including those that National would not implement). This new attitude probably fed off New Zealand First's poor performance in opinion polls, which (to Peters) indicated that the party's success rested on its confrontational style. Many commentators believe that Peters performs better in opposition than in Government.


title: New Zealand First

text: On 14 August 1998, Shipley sacked Peters from Cabinet. This occurred after an ongoing dispute about the sale of the government's stake in Wellington International Airport.


title: New Zealand First

text: Peters immediately broke off the coalition with National. However, several other MPs, unwilling to follow Peters out of government, tried to replace Peters with Henare. This caucus-room coup failed, and most of these MPs joined Henare in forming a new party, Mauri Pacific, while others established themselves as independents. Many of these MPs had come under public scrutiny for their behaviour. Until 1999, however, they provided National with enough support to continue without New Zealand First.


title: New Zealand First

text: In the 1999 election New Zealand First lost much of its support, receiving only 4% of the party vote. Some voters had apparently not forgiven Peters for forming a coalition with National after being led to believe that a vote for him would help get rid of National. Under New Zealand's MMP rules, a party must either win an electorate seat or 5% of the vote to have seats in parliament. Peters held his Tauranga seat by a mere 63 votes, and New Zealand First received five seats in total.


title: New Zealand First

text: By the election of 2002, however, the party had rebuilt much of its support. This occurred largely because of Peters' three-point campaign for sensible immigration, scrutinising Treaty costs, and reducing crime. The party won 10.38% of the vote, which was a considerable improvement on its previous performance (although not as good as its performance in 1996), and New Zealand First won thirteen seats in parliament. Peters' campaign slogan "Can We Fix It? Yes We Can" attracted much media attention, as the same line appears in theme music for the children's television programme "Bob the Builder". Party activists stated they were unaware the chant came from a children's cartoon.


title: New Zealand First

text: It appears that New Zealand First had hoped to play in 2002 a similar role to the one it had in 1996, where it found itself able to give power to either Labour or National depending on which offered the best deal. However, National's vote had collapsed to the extent that it could not form a government even with New Zealand First's support, depriving the party of its negotiating advantage. In the end, however, this proved irrelevant, as Labour refused to consider an alliance with New Zealand First in any case. Instead, Labour relied on support from the newly significant United Future Party.


title: New Zealand First

text: After the 2002 election, in light of National's decreased strength, New Zealand First attempted to gain more prominence in Opposition, frequently attacking the Labour Coalition government on a wide range of issues. Speculation has occurred on efforts to create a more united front linking New Zealand First, National, and ACT, but Peters has rejected this scenario, saying that the New Zealand voters will decide what alliances are necessary (even though New Zealand never votes directly on preferred coalitions). Unlike ACT, which portrays itself as a natural coalition partner for National, New Zealand First welcomes coalition with any major party, regardless of the political spectrum.


title: New Zealand First

text: For a period in early 2004 New Zealand First experienced a brief decline in the polls after Don Brash became leader of the National Party, a change which hugely revived National's fortunes. The votes that had apparently switched to New Zealand First from National seemed to return to support Brash, and many commentators predicted that New Zealand First would lose a number of its seats in the next election. By 2005, however, the proportions had changed again, and as the campaign for the September 2005 election got under way, New Zealand First had again reached the 10% mark in political polling.


title: New Zealand First

text: Pre-election polls put New Zealand First ahead of the other minor parties. Some thought it likely that in the event of a National minority, unless ACT's fortunes dramatically improved, Brash would have to form a second coalition or seek a support agreement with New Zealand First to be able to form a government. Peters promised to support the party that won the most seats, or at least abstain in no-confidence motions against it. However, he also said he would not support any government that included the Greens within the Cabinet.


title: New Zealand First

text: In the 2005 election, however, the smaller political parties (including New Zealand First) suffered a severe mauling. Though it remained the third-largest party in the House, New Zealand First took only 5.72% of the vote, a considerable loss from 2002, and just enough to cross the MMP proportionality quota of 5%. In addition, Peters narrowly lost his previously safe constituency seat of Tauranga by 730 votes to National's Bob Clarkson, and became a list MP.


title: New Zealand First

text: New Zealand First had seven MPs, all elected on the party list: Peters, Peter Brown, Dail Jones, Ron Mark, Doug Woolerton, Barbara Stewart and Pita Paraone.


title: New Zealand First

text: Following the 2005 election, New Zealand First agreed to a supply-and-confidence agreement with the Labour Party (along with United Future) in return for policy concessions and the post of Foreign Minister (outside Cabinet) for Peters. Some reaction


title: New Zealand First

text: to Peters' becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs detected a change in his attitude since Peters' "Rotorua speech" on 7 September 2005 at a public address at the Rotorua Convention Centre, which had spoken of sitting on the cross-benches (and thus staying out of government) and eschewing "the baubles of office".


title: New Zealand First

text: Soon after the 2005 election Peters launched a legal challenge against Clarkson. The case alleged that Clarkson had spent more than the legal limit allowed for campaign budgets during elections in New Zealand. This legal bid failed, with a majority of the judges in the case declaring that Clarkson had not overspent.


title: New Zealand First

text: In the 2005 election funding controversy, the Auditor-General found that all the parties in parliament except the Progressive Party had misspent parliamentary funding. New Zealand First was the only party that did not repay the misspent funding.


title: New Zealand First

text: In the months before the 2008 general election, New Zealand First became embroiled in a dispute over donations to the party from Owen Glenn, the Vela family and Bob Jones. This resulted in an investigation into party finances by the Serious Fraud Office on 28 August 2008 and an investigation into Peters by the Privileges Committee. On 29 August 2008 Peters stood down from his ministerial roles while the investigations were ongoing. Although the Serious Fraud Office and the police found that Peters was not guilty of any wrongdoing, the episode harmed Peters and the party in the lead-up to the election.


title: New Zealand First

text: On election night it was clear that Peters had not regained Tauranga and that the party had not met the 5% threshold needed for parties to be elected without an electorate seat. In what some journalists described as a 'gracious' concession speech, Peters said that 'it's not over yet. We'll reorganise ourselves in the next few months. And we'll see what 2011 might hold for all us.'


title: New Zealand First

text: At a post-election meeting held to discuss the party's future in February 2009, Deputy Leader Peter Brown stepped down.


title: New Zealand First

text: At the beginning of the election campaign New Zealand First was polling at around 2% in most major polls and was effectively written off by most political commentators. Prime Minister John Key had ruled out working with Peters and New Zealand First, however Opposition Leader Phil Goff had stated he was open to working with New Zealand First post-election provided they made it back into Parliament.


title: New Zealand First

text: Peters received a significant amount of media attention towards the end of the campaign at the height of the Tea Tape scandal which arose during the campaign. Peters had criticised the arrangement in the seat of Epsom between National and ACT in which National encouraged its supporters to vote for the ACT candidate for their electorate MP. He railed against National for alleged negative remarks made about the then ACT leader Don Brash and New Zealand First's elderly supporters.


title: New Zealand First

text: Peters appeared on a TVNZ minor parties leaders debate and won the debate convincingly in the subsequent text poll, with a plurality of 36% of the respondents saying Peters had won.


title: New Zealand First

text: New Zealand First won 6.6% of the party vote on election night. Many political experts credit the Tea Tape Scandal for the re-entry of New Zealand First into Parliament; however, Peters himself credits the return to Parliament to the hard work undertaken by the Party over the three years it was not represented in Parliament.


title: New Zealand First

text: In 2012 the party sacked MP Brendan Horan after allegations he stole money from his dying mother to gamble.


title: New Zealand First

text: In 2012, New Zealand First stated their intent to work in coalition with parties that would buy the privatised state assets back after the 2014 general election.


title: New Zealand First

text: New Zealand First entered the 2014 general election campaign without providing a clear indication as to their coalition preferences. However, Peters did raise late in the campaign the prospect of a Labour-New Zealand First coalition or confidence and supply arrangement, and express some respect for the National Party, in particular the Finance Minister Bill English.


title: New Zealand First

text: New Zealand First increased its party vote to 8.66% at the election, which took the party's representation in Parliament to 11 seats. Peters was highly critical of the conduct of the Labour and Green parties, who he blamed for the Opposition's loss.


title: New Zealand First

text: In 2015 Peters contested the Northland by-election, which was held as a result of the resignation of the incumbent Mike Sabin on 30 January 2015 amid allegations of assault. Peters won the traditionally safe National seat with a majority of 4,441 over the National candidate Mark Osborne. It was the first time a New Zealand First MP held an electorate seat since Peters lost Tauranga in 2005. The win also resulted in New Zealand First acquiring a new List MP, Ria Bond, which increased the party's parliamentary representation to 12 seats.


title: New Zealand First

text: On 3 July 2015 Ron Mark was elected Deputy Leader of New Zealand First, replacing Tracey Martin who had held the post since 2013.


title: New Zealand First

text: Winston Peters has said that he will continue on as the Leader of New Zealand First. New Zealand First launched its campaign in Palmerston North on 25 June 2017. Policies include ring-fencing GST to the regions it is collected from and writing off student loans of people willing to work outside major centres, and recruiting 1,800 extra police officers. New Zealand First is also campaigning on increasing the minimum wage to $17. They would later increase it to $20. On 28 June 2017, New Zealand First changed their logo that they have used since its formation in 1993, giving the new design the name "A Fresh Face".


title: New Zealand First

text: In early July 2017, the Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei criticised New Zealand First for its alleged racist attitude towards immigration. Her criticism was echoed by fellow Green MP Barry Coates, who claimed that the Greens would call for a snap in election in response to a Labour–New Zealand First coalition government. In response, Peters and Deputy Leader Tracey Martin warned that Turei and Coates' comments could affect post-election negotiations between the two parties. Though Turei did not apologise for her remarks, Greens co-leader James Shaw later clarified that Coates' statement did not represent official Green Party policy.


title: New Zealand First

text: During the party's convention in South Auckland on 16 July, Peters vowed that a New Zealand First government would hold two binding referendums on whether Maori electorates should be abolished and whether the number of MPs should be reduced to 100. Other New Zealand First policies included reducing immigration to 10,000 a year (from 72,300 in the June 2017 year), and nationalising the country's banks, making Kiwibank the New Zealand government's official trading bank.


title: New Zealand First

text: During the 2017 general election, New Zealand First's share of the vote dropped to 7.2% with the party's representation in Parliament being reduced to 9 MPs. Under Peters' leadership, New Zealand First entered into talks to form coalitions with the National Party and the Labour Party. National Party leader and caretaker Prime Minister Bill English signalled an interest in forming a coalition with New Zealand First, while Labour leader Jacinda Ardern considered a three-way coalition with New Zealand First and the Greens. Peters stated that he would not make his final decision until the special votes results were released on 7 October 2017. During negotiations with Ardern, Peters indicated that he would be willing to consider dropping his call for a referendum on abolishing the Māori electorates in return for forming a coalition with Labour; a bone of contention in New Zealand race relations.


title: New Zealand First

text: On 19 October, Labour and New Zealand First decided to form a coalition government and a confidence and supply agreement with the Green Party. On 26 October, Peters was appointed Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister for State-owned enterprises, and Minister for Racing. Deputy Leader Ron Mark was given the Minister of Defence and Veterans portfolios. Tracey Martin was given the Children, Internal Affairs, and Senior Citizens portfolios as well as being made Associate Minister of Education. Shane Jones was made Minister of Forestry, Infrastructure, Regional Economic Development, and Associate Minister of Finance and Transport.


title: New Zealand First

text: During the post-election negotiations, New Zealand First managed to secure several policies and concessions including a Regional Development Fund, the re-establishment of the New Zealand Forest Service, increasing the minimum wage to $20 per hour by 2020, a comprehensive register of foreign-owned land and housing, free doctors' visits for all under-14-year-olds, free driver training for all secondary students, a new generation SuperGold smartcard containing entitlements and concessions, a royalty on the exports of bottled water, a commitment to re-entry of the Pike River Mine, and Members of Parliament being allowed to vote in a potential referendum on euthanasia. In return, New Zealand First agreed to drop its demand for referendums on overturning New Zealand's anti-smacking ban and abolishing the Māori electorates.


title: New Zealand First

text: In 2019, New Zealand First's Internal Affairs minister, Tracey Martin participated in negotiations with the Labour Party to pass the Abortion Legislation Bill to reform the country's abortion laws. While Martin had ruled out supporting a referendum, she was overruled by the party leader Peters who demanded a binding referendum on the proposed legislation. He also ruled out giving New Zealand First MPs a conscience vote on the issue. While the party would support the bill at first reading, Peters warned that they would withdraw support if the proposed law was not put to a public referendum. In response, Justice Minister Andrew Little rebuffed Peters' demands for a referendum on the grounds that Parliament would decide the legislation. In March 2020, the two female NZ First MPs voted in favour of the Bill at its final reading—Tracey Martin and Jenny Marcroft.


title: New Zealand First

text: In late 2019, New Zealand First won a parliamentary vote to hold a euthanasia referendum, as the party threatened to vote down the legislation if it did not go to a referendum. The decision to go to a referendum passed 63–57.


title: New Zealand First

text: During the 2020 New Zealand general election, New Zealand First's party vote dropped to 75,021 (2.6%), causing the party to lose of all its seats in Parliament since it fell below the five percent threshold needed to enter Parliament through the party list alone. All NZ First MPs also lost the seats they were contesting. Two months after the election, both its president and secretary resigned. Former MP Darroch Ball became interim president; he claimed that the resignations were "always a planned retirement after the election for both roles".


title: New Zealand First

text: On 20 June 2021, Winston Peters confirmed that he would continue leading the party for the next general election. Peters also made a speech attacking the Labour, National and Green parties that touched upon various issues including transportation infrastructure in Auckland, the increasing use of the Māori language in official reports and public life, the Government's COVID-19 vaccination rollout, purchase of Ihumātao land, elimination of referendums on Māori wards and constituencies, and so-called wokeness in New Zealand society. This speech marked his first major public appearance since the 2020 general election.


title: New Zealand First

text: In mid-February 2020, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) announced that it was investigating the NZ First Foundation in response to allegations that the party had created a slush fund. Between 2017 and 2019, New Zealand First officials had allegedly channelled half a million dollars of donations into the NZ First Foundation's bank account to cover various party-related expenses such as the party's headquarters, graphic design, an MP's legal advice, and even a $5000 day at the Wellington races. The amount of donations deposited into the foundation and used by the party was at odds with its official annual returns. Peters has denied any wrongdoing, while fellow MP Shane Jones, the Minister for Infrastructure, has denounced allegations that the party was offering policy for cash as "conspiracy theories."


title: New Zealand First

text: In late September 2020, the Serious Fraud Office announced that they would be laying charges against two persons as a result of their investigation into the NZ First Foundation. Both the SFO and Peters confirmed that the accused were not ministers, candidates or current members of the party. Peters criticised the timing of the SFO's decision to lay charges against the defendants as "politically motivated," describing it as a "James Comey level error of judgment". According to Stuff, Peters had tried unsuccessfully to stop the Serious Fraud Office from releasing its press release until after the formation of a new government following the 2020 New Zealand general election on 17 October 2020.


title: New Zealand First

text: On 7 June 2022, the trial of two men charged with stealing NZ$746,881 worth of donations from New Zealand First between September 2015 and February 2020 began at the Auckland High Court. At the time, the defendants had been granted name suppression. Prosecutor Paul Wicks QC argued that the defendants had deceived about 40 donors, the NZ First party secretary and the Electoral Commission into believing that their donations were going to the party. In fact, the money had gone into one of the defendants' bank accounts and the NZ First Foundation's bank account. Under the Electoral Act, funds donated to the NZ First Foundation between 2017 and 2020 should have been treated as party donations. According to the prosecution, the NZ First Foundation's funds were being used as a "slush fund" to cover party expenses including leasing and furnishing office space for the party's Wellington headquarters, election campaigning, and fundraisers. Wicks claimed that the defendants rather than the party's leadership controlled these funds.


title: New Zealand First

text: On 8 June, the party's former director of operations Apirana Dawson testified that the party had established the NZ First Foundation in response to a shortfall in donations. Unlike other political parties, NZ First did not require its MPs to tithe part of their salary to the party. On 9 June, several former NZ First donors testified at the trial. The defendants' lawyers denied that any criminal offending occurred and claimed that the NZ First Foundation had used the funds as the party leadership expected. The party's former South Island vice-president John Thorn disputed the Serious Fraud Office's charge that the party leadership including Winston Peters were ignorant about the workings of the NZ First Foundation.


title: New Zealand First

text: On 10 June, former NZ First secretary Anne Martin testified that the secrecy around the NZ First Foundation's financial operations could expose the party to prosecution. In addition, the Court heard evidence that the Foundation had loaned the party NZ$73,000 after it incurred election expenses during the 2017 New Zealand general election. The Electoral Commission later determined the loan to be illegal. On 20 June, the Serious Fraud Office testified that the defendants had transferred money into a second account outside of the control of elected party officials. The following day, the Court heard testimony from former NZ First President Lester Grey, who had resigned in August 2019 after Peters and the party leadership had refused to provide him with information about certain party donations and bank accounts connected to the NZ First Foundation. Gray also testified that money raised by NZ First MP Clayton Mitchell was unaccounted for. On 23 June, the Crown concluded its closing arguments against the defendants. The defence concluded its closing arguments on 27 June.


title: New Zealand First

text: On 20 July, High Court Justice Pheroze Jagose permanently suppressed the names of the two defendants in the NZ First Foundation fraud case. On 22 July, the two defendants were acquitted by Justice Jagose. She accepted the defence's argument that the Crown had failed to prove its fraud case beyond a reasonable doubt. The defence had highlighted the Crown's failure to prove that party leader Peters had been deceived by the defendants. Following the trial, Peters welcomed Jagose's ruling as a vindication and claimed that the fraud allegations were "politically-motivated and spurious." He also accused the New Zealand media of using the NZ First Foundation case to discredit the party and stated that he would hold several unidentified journalists and media outlets accountable for alleged "abuse of power."


title: New Zealand First

text: In response to the NZ First Foundation trial verdict, Justice Minister Kiri Allan announced that the Government would be introducing new electoral donation amendment bill to widen the definition of political donations to include those donated to third-party entities and making it an offence not to pass political donations to a party's secretary. Other proposed measures include lowering the donation disclosure threshold from NZ$15,000 to NZ$5,000.


title: New Zealand First

text: Rather than defining the party's precise position on the left–right political spectrum, many political commentators simply label New Zealand First as populist, although the party has also been described as conservative and right-wing populist. Politics Professor Todd Donovan argues that "radical right / right-wing populist" is a misclassification because New Zealand First is neither radical nor right-wing.


title: New Zealand First

text: The party has long advocated direct democracy in the form of "binding citizen initiated referenda", to create "a democracy that is of the people and for the people", while forcing government "to accept the will of the people". Peters has also used anti-establishment and anti-elite rhetoric, such as criticising what he regards as the "intellectually arrogant elite in government and bureaucratic circles".


title: New Zealand First

text: At the core of New Zealand First's policies are its "Fifteen Fundamental Principles"; the first being "To put New Zealand and New Zealanders First". They largely echo the policies that Winston Peters, the party's founder, has advocated during his career. NZ First seeks to "promote and protect the customs, traditions and values of all New Zealanders". Commentators have described the party, and Peters himself, as nationalist. Former party official and parliamentary researcher Josh Van Veen has characterised the party as culturally conservative due to its emphasis on preserving heritage and respect for national symbols. Van Veen opines that New Zealand First's emphasis on an inclusive national identity has led to a marriage between liberal values and progressive nationalism.


title: New Zealand First

text: New Zealand First has been closely associated with its policies regarding the welfare of senior citizens and its anti-immigration stance. The party has frequently criticised immigration on economic, social and cultural grounds. It proposes an annual immigration cap of between 7,000 and 15,000 "seriously qualified" migrants, who would be expected to assimilate into New Zealand culture.


title: New Zealand First

text: Winston Peters has on several occasions characterised the rate of Asian immigration into New Zealand as too high; in 2004, he stated: "We are being dragged into the status of an Asian colony and it is time that New Zealanders were placed first in their own country". On 26 April 2005, he said: "Māori will be disturbed to know that in 17 years' time they will be outnumbered by Asians in New Zealand", an estimate disputed by Statistics New Zealand, the government's statistics bureau, which stated that with a 145% increase from 270,000 to 670,000, the Asian community would still be smaller in 2021 than the Māori, who would increase by 5% to 760,000 over the same timeframe. Peters quickly rebutted that Statistics New Zealand has underestimated the growth rate of the Asian community in the past, as the Bureau had corrected its estimation by a 66,000 increase between 2003 and 2005. In April 2008, deputy leader Peter Brown drew widespread attention after voicing similar views and expressing concern at the growth of New Zealand's ethnic Asian population: "If we continue this open door policy there is real danger we will be inundated with people who have no intention of integrating into our society … They will form their own mini-societies to the detriment of integration and that will lead to division, friction and resentment".


title: New Zealand First

text: New Zealand First also espouses a mixture of economic policies. Peters has called for economic nationalism. The party supports raising the minimum wage to a living wage, opposes the privatisation of state assets (particularly to overseas buyers) and advocates buying back former state-owned enterprises. These policies align it with views generally found on the left of New Zealand politics. On the other hand, it favours reducing taxation and reducing the size of government (policies typical of the New Zealand right) and espouses conservative views on social issues. New Zealand First provided for its strong support among elderly voters by its repeal of the surtax on superannuation, institution of a superannuation level of 66% of the net average wage, and introduction of the SuperGold Card ("see "). The party opposes any raising of the retirement age.


title: New Zealand First

text: "Law and order" issues feature heavily in the party's policy platform. New Zealand First advocates a stricter criminal code, longer judicial sentences, and the lowering of the age of criminal responsibility. In 2011, at its annual convention, New Zealand First vowed to repeal the controversial Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007 (which it characterised as the "anti-smacking law"), which a vast majority of voters rejected in a non-binding 2009 citizen-initiated referendum. In the 2017 general election campaign, the party again vowed to repeal the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act; it also ruled out a confidence and supply arrangement or coalition with any party which opposed the policy.


title: New Zealand First

text: In 2013, all seven NZ First MPs voted against the third reading of the Marriage Amendment Bill, which permitted same sex marriage in New Zealand. Peters had called for a referendum on the issue.


title: New Zealand First

text: The SuperGold Card, a discounts and concessions card for senior citizens and veterans, has been a major initiative of the party.


title: New Zealand First

text: New Zealand First established a research team to design the SuperGold Card, which included public transport benefits like free off-peak travel (funded by the government) and discounts from businesses and companies across thousands of outlets.


title: New Zealand First

text: Winston Peters negotiated with then-Prime Minister Helen Clark, despite widespread opposition to the card on the grounds of high cost. As a condition of the 2005 confidence and supply agreement between New Zealand First and the Labour Government, Peters launched the SuperGold Card in August 2007.


title: New Zealand First

text: The card is available to all eligible New Zealanders over the age of 65. A Veterans' SuperGold Card, also exists for those who have served in the New Zealand Defence Force in a recognised war or emergency. The card provides over 600,000 New Zealanders with access to a wide range of government and local authority services, business discounts, entitlements and concessions, such as hearing aid subsidies. However, it was argued much of the extra costs were 'book entries'. For example, the Government subsidises much of public transport anyway, where buses and trains travel with empty seats during off-peak hours; SuperGold Card commuters are simply using buses and trains during off-peak times.


title: New Zealand First

text: SuperGold Card came under threat in 2010 when National Minister Steven Joyce tried to terminate free SuperGold transport on some more expensive public transport services, including the Waiheke Island ferry and the Wairarapa Connection train. The Minister retreated when he came under fire from senior citizens.


title: New Zealand First

text: In October 2019, Peters announced a $7.7 million investment into the SuperGold Card scheme. The "upgrade" includes a new website, a mobile app, and 500 new partner businesses.


title: New Zealand First

text: Winston Peters is part-Māori. The party once held all Māori electorates (the five MPs were nicknamed the "Tight Five"), and it continued to receive significant support from voters registered in Māori electorates. New Zealand First no longer supports the retention of the Māori electorates and has declared that it will not stand candidates in the Māori electorates in the future. It did not stand candidates in the Māori electorates in the 2002, 2005, or 2008 general elections.


title: New Zealand First

text: New Zealand First is further characterised by its strong stance on the Treaty of Waitangi. The party refers to the Treaty as a "source of national pride" but does not support it becoming a part of constitutional law. Peters has criticised what he refers to as a Treaty "Grievance Industry"—which profits from making frivolous claims of violations of the Treaty—and the cost of Treaty negotiations and settlement payments. The party has called for an end to "special treatment" of Māori.


title: New Zealand First

text: On 19 July 2017, Peters promised that a New Zealand First government would hold two binding referendums on whether Maori electorates should be abolished and whether the number of MPs should be reduced to 100. Following the 2017 general election, Peters indicated that he would be willing to consider dropping his call for a referendum on abolishing the Māori electorates during coalition-forming negotiations with Labour leader Jacinda Ardern.


title: Ali Hillis

text: Ali Hillis (born December 29, 1978) is an American actress who has appeared in television and film, and voices a number of characters in video games. She may be best known for her video game work as Dr. Liara T'Soni in the "Mass Effect" trilogy, Lightning in the "Final Fantasy XIII" series, and Palutena in "."


title: Ali Hillis

text: Hillis was born in Huntington Beach, California on December 29, 1978. When she was six months old, Hillis and her family moved to Normal, Illinois and at age 3, to Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin. She moved to Charlotte, North Carolina at age 13 and performed at The Children's Theater. She auditioned for Broadway plays in New York City with TV shows of "Felicity" (2 episodes in 1999), "FreakyLinks", "Undressed" (2000), "Naruto", "JAG", "Boomtown" and "Less Than Perfect". Her several film roles are "All the Wrong Places", "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", "Must Love Dogs", "", "The Ultimate Gift", and "The Heartbreak Kid" and the Los Angeles play, "A Good Soldier". Her video game roles are Lightning in "Final Fantasy XIII", its sequels and "Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy", Liara T'Soni in the "Mass Effect" trilogy, Ariel Hanson in "", Karin in the "Naruto" series, Palutena in "" and Isabelle "Izzy" Sinclair in "Fuse".


title: Ali Hillis

text: In 2012, she starred in a YouTube web series called "Fix Me" by ModernMom, in which she plays Sydney Lang, a housewife who tries to fix everything around her.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Jacqueline Cochran (May 11, 1906 – August 9, 1980) was an American pilot and business executive. She pioneered women's aviation as one of the most prominent racing pilots of her generation. She set numerous records and was the first woman to break the sound barrier on 18 May 1953. Cochran (along with Nancy Love) was the wartime head of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) (1943–1944), which employed about 1000 civilian American women in a non-combat role to ferry planes from factories to port cities. Cochran was later a sponsor of the Mercury 13 women astronaut program.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Jacqueline Cochran, born Bessie Lee Pittman, in Pensacola, (some sources indicate she was born in DeFuniak Springs) in the Florida Panhandle, was the youngest of the five children of Mary (Grant) and Ira Pittman, a skilled millwright who frequently relocated setting up and reworking sawmills. While her family was not wealthy, Cochran's childhood living in small-town Florida was similar to those in other families of the era. Contrary to some accounts, there was always food on the table and she was not adopted, as she often claimed.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Circa 1920, (she would have been 13 or 14), she married Robert Cochran and gave birth to a son, Robert, who died in 1925 at the age of 5. After the marriage ended, she kept the name Cochran and began using Jacqueline or Jackie as her given name. Cochran then became a hairdresser and got a job in Pensacola, eventually moving to New York City. There, she used her looks and driving personality to get a job at a prestigious salon at Saks Fifth Avenue.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Although Cochran denied her family and her past, she remained in touch with them and provided for them over the years. Some of her family moved to her ranch in California after she remarried. They were instructed to always say they were her adopted family. Cochran apparently wanted to hide from the public the early chapters of her life and was successful in doing so until after her death.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Later Cochran met Floyd Bostwick Odlum, founder of Atlas Corp and CEO of RKO in Hollywood. Fourteen years her senior, he was reputed to be one of the 10 wealthiest men in the world. Odlum became enamored of Cochran and offered to help her establish a cosmetics business.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: After a friend offered her a ride in an aircraft, Cochran began taking flying lessons at Roosevelt Airfield, Long Island in the early 1930s and learned to fly an aircraft in three weeks. She then soloed and within two years obtained her commercial pilot's license. Odlum, whom she married in 1936 after his divorce, was an astute financier and savvy marketer who recognized the value of publicity for her business. Calling her line of cosmetics "Wings to Beauty", she flew her own aircraft around the country promoting her products. Years later, Odlum used his Hollywood connections to get Marilyn Monroe to endorse Cochran's line of lipstick.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Known by her friends as "Jackie", and maintaining the Cochran name, she was one of three women to compete in the MacRobertson Air Race in 1934. In 1937, she was the only woman to compete in the Bendix race and worked with Amelia Earhart to open the race to women. That year, she also set a new women's world speed record. By 1938, she was considered the best female pilot in the United States. She had won the Bendix and set a new transcontinental speed record as well as altitude records. Cochran was the first woman to fly a bomber across the Atlantic. She won five Harmon Trophies. Sometimes called the "Speed Queen", at the time of her death, no other pilot held more speed, distance, or altitude records in aviation history than Cochran.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Cochran was a friend of Amelia Earhart. Although she was not a founding member of the Ninety-Nines, she was one of their most influential members. She was president of the Ninety-Nines from 1941-1943, and was instrumental in ensuring that women pilots would be able to participate in the newly-founded Civil Air Patrol as well as the WASP. In her monthly editorials for the Ninety-Nines Newsletter, she exhorted members to join the CAP or the WASP, and to do what they could to help the war effort.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Before the United States joined World War II, Cochran was part of "Wings for Britain", an organization that ferried American-built aircraft to Britain, becoming the first woman to fly a bomber (a Lockheed Hudson V) across the Atlantic. In Britain, she volunteered her services to the Royal Air Force. For several months she worked for the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), recruiting qualified women pilots in the United States and taking them to England where they joined the ATA. Cochran attained the rank of Flight Captain (equivalent to a Squadron Leader in the RAF or a Major in the U.S. Air Force) in the ATA.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: In September, 1939, Cochran wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt to introduce the proposal of starting a women's flying division in the Army Air Forces. She felt that qualified women pilots could do all of the domestic, noncombat aviation jobs necessary to release more male pilots for combat. She pictured herself in command of these women, with the same standings as Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby, who was then the director of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). (The WAAC was given full military status on July 1, 1943, thus making them part of the Army. At the same time, the unit was renamed Women's Army Corps (WAC).)


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: That same year, Cochran wrote a letter to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Olds, who was helping to organize the Air Corps Ferrying Command for the Air Corps at the time. (Ferrying Command was originally a courier/aircraft delivery service, but evolved into the air transport branch of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) as the Air Transport Command). In the letter, Cochran suggested that women pilots be employed to fly non-combat missions for the new command. In early 1941, Olds asked Cochran to find out how many women pilots there were in the United States, what their flying times were, their skills, their interest in flying for the country, and personal information about them. She used records from the Civil Aeronautics Administration to gather the data.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: In spite of pilot shortages, Army Air Forces commander Lieutenant General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold still needed to be convinced that women pilots were the solution to his staffing problems. He knew that women were being used successfully in the ATA in England so Arnold suggested that Cochran take a group of qualified female pilots to see how the British were doing. He promised her that no decisions regarding women flying for the USAAF would be made until she returned.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: When Arnold asked Cochran to go to Britain to study the ATA, Cochran asked 76 of the most qualified female pilots – identified during the research she had done earlier for Olds – to come along and fly for the ATA. Qualifications for these women were high: at least 300 hours of flying time, but most of the women pilots had over 1,000 hours. Those who made it to Canada found out that the washout rate was also high. A total of 25 women passed the tests and, two months later in March 1942 they went to Britain with Cochran to join the ATA.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: While Cochran was in England, in September 1942, General Arnold authorized the formation of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) under the direction of Nancy Harkness Love. The WAFS began at New Castle Air Base in Wilmington, Delaware, with a group of female pilots whose objective was to ferry military aircraft. Hearing about the WAFS, Cochran immediately returned from England. Cochran's experience in Britain with the ATA convinced her that women pilots could be trained to do much more than ferrying. Lobbying Arnold for expanded flying opportunities for female pilots, he sanctioned the creation of the Women's Flying Training Detachment (WFTD), headed by Cochran. In August 1943, the WAFS and the WFTD merged to create the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) with Cochran as director and Nancy Love as head of the ferrying division.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: As director of the WASP, Cochran supervised the training of hundreds of women pilots at the former Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas from August 1943 to December 1944.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: For her wartime service, she received the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) in 1945. Her award of the DSM was announced in a War Department press release dated March 1, 1945 which stated that Cochran was the first woman civilian to receive the DSM, which was then the highest non-combat award presented by the United States government. (In actuality, however, a few civilian women received the DSM for service during the First World War. These women included Hannah J. Patterson and Anna Howard Shaw of the Council of National Defense, Evangeline Booth of the Salvation Army as well as Mary Vail Andress and Jane A. Delano of the American Red Cross.)


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: At war's end, Cochran was hired by a magazine to report on global postwar events. In this role, she witnessed Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita's surrender in the Philippines and was then the first non-Japanese woman to enter Japan after the War and attended the Nuremberg Trials in Germany.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: On September 9, 1948, Cochran joined the U.S. Air Force Reserve as a lieutenant colonel. She was promoted to colonel in 1969 and retired in 1970. She was, quite probably, the first woman pilot in the United States Air Force. During her career in the Air Force Reserve, she received three awards of the Distinguished Flying Cross for various achievements from 1947 to 1964.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Postwar, Cochran began flying the new jet aircraft, setting numerous records. She became the first woman pilot to "go supersonic".


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: In 1952, Cochran, at age 47, decided to challenge the world speed record for women, then held by Jacqueline Auriol. She tried to borrow an F-86 from the U.S. Air Force, but was refused. She was introduced to an Air Vice-Marshal of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) who, with the permission of the Canadian Minister of Defence, arranged for her to borrow 19200, the sole Sabre 3. Canadair sent a 16-man support team to California for the attempt. On 18 May 1953, Cochran set a new 100 km speed record of 1,050.15 km/h (652.5 mph). Later on 3 June, she set a new 15 km closed circuit record of 1078 km/h (670 mph). Encouraged by then-Major Chuck Yeager, with whom Cochran shared a lifelong friendship, on May 18, 1953, at Rogers Dry Lake, California, Cochran flew the Sabre 3 at an average speed of 652.337 mph. During the course of this run the Sabre went supersonic, and Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Among her many record accomplishments, from August to October 1961, as a consultant to Northrop Corporation, Cochran set a series of speed, distance and altitude records while flying a Northrop T-38A-30-NO Talon supersonic trainer, serial number 60-0551. On the final day of the record series, she set two Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) world records, taking the T-38 to altitudes of 55,252.625 feet (16,841 m) in horizontal flight and reaching a peak altitude of 56,072.835 feet (17,091 m).


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Cochran was also the first woman to land and take off from an aircraft carrier, the first woman to pilot a bomber across the North Atlantic (in 1941) and later to fly a jet aircraft on a transatlantic flight, the first woman to make a blind (instrument) landing, the only woman ever to be president of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (1958–1961), the first woman to fly a fixed-wing, jet aircraft across the Atlantic, the first pilot to fly above 20,000 feet (6,096 m) with an oxygen mask, and the first woman to enter the Bendix Transcontinental Race. She still holds more distance and speed records than any pilot living or dead, male or female.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Because of her interest in all forms of aviation, Cochran flew the Goodyear Blimp in the early 1960s with Goodyear Blimp Captain R. W. Crosier in Akron, Ohio.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: In the 1960s, Cochran was a sponsor of the Mercury 13 program, an early effort to test the ability of women to be astronauts. Thirteen women pilots passed the same preliminary tests as the male astronauts of the Mercury program before the program was cancelled. It was never a NASA initiative, though it was spearheaded by two members of the NASA Life Sciences Committee, one of whom, William Randolph Lovelace II, was a close friend of Cochran and her husband. Though Cochran initially supported the program, she was later responsible for delaying further phases of testing, and letters from her to members of the Navy and NASA expressing concern over whether the program was to be run properly and in accordance with NASA goals may have significantly contributed to the eventual cancellation of the program. It is generally accepted that Cochran turned against the program out of concern that she would no longer be the most prominent female aviator.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: On 17 and 18 July 1962, Representative Victor Anfuso (D-NY) convened public hearings before a special Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics to determine whether or not the exclusion of women from the astronaut program was discriminatory, during which John Glenn and Scott Carpenter testified against admitting women to the astronaut program. Cochran herself argued against bringing women into the space program, saying that time was of the essence, and moving forward as planned was the only way to beat the Soviets in the Space Race. (None of the women who had passed the tests were military jet test pilots, nor did they have engineering degrees, which were the two basic experiential qualifications for potential astronauts. Women were not allowed to be military jet test pilots at that time. On average, however, they all had more flight experience than the male astronauts.) "NASA required all astronauts to be graduates of military jet test piloting programs and have engineering degrees. In 1962, no women could meet these requirements." This ended the Mercury 13 program. However, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter, who were part of the Mercury 7, also did not have engineering degrees when they were selected. Both of them were granted a degree after their flights for NASA.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Significantly, the hearings investigated the possibility of gender discrimination a two full years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made that illegal.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: A lifelong Republican, Cochran, as a result of her involvement in politics and the military, became close friends with General Dwight Eisenhower. In the early part of 1952, she and her husband helped sponsor a large rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City in support of an Eisenhower presidential candidacy.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: The rally was documented on film and Cochran personally flew the film to France for a special showing at Eisenhower's headquarters. Her efforts proved a major factor in convincing Eisenhower to run for President of the United States in 1952 and she played a major role in his successful campaign. Close friends thereafter, Eisenhower frequently visited her and her husband at their California ranch and after leaving office, wrote portions of his memoirs there.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Politically ambitious, Cochran ran for Congress in 1956 from California's 29th Congressional District as the candidate of the Republican Party. Her name appeared throughout the campaign and on the ballot as Jacqueline Cochran-Odlum. Although she defeated a field of five male opponents to win the Republican nomination, in the general election she lost a close election to Democratic candidate and first Asian-American congressman Dalip Singh Saund. Saund won with 54,989 votes (51.5%) to Cochran's 51,690 votes (48.5%). Her political setback was one of the few failures she ever experienced and she never attempted another run. Those who knew Cochran have said that the loss bothered her for the rest of her life.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Cochran died on August 9, 1980, at the home in Indio, California, she had shared with her husband until his death four years earlier. She was a long-time resident of the Coachella Valley and is buried in Coachella Valley Public Cemetery. She regularly utilized Thermal Airport over the course of her long aviation career. The airport, which had been renamed Desert Resorts Regional, was again renamed Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport in her honor.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Despite her lack of formal education, Cochran had a quick mind and an affinity for business and her investment in the cosmetics field proved a lucrative one. Later, in 1951, the Boston Chamber of Commerce voted her one of the 25 outstanding businesswomen in America. In 1953 and 1954, the Associated Press named her "Woman of the Year in Business".


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: Cochran served on the Board of Trustees for the George Washington University from 1962 until her passing in 1980.


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: "For exceptionally meritorious service to the Government in a position of great responsibility from June 1943 to December 1944 as Director of Women Pilots, Headquarters Army Air Forces. She directed the planning, programming and administration of all women pilot activities of the Army Air Forces, including the organization, training and operation of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Under her leadership, the WASP performed with the utmost loyalty and efficiency, multiple flying services, in direct and effective support of the Army Air Forces which were of the greatest assistance and support to the war effort and the nation. Further, her achievements in this respect and the conclusions she has carefully and wisely drawn from this undertaking represent a contribution that is of permanent and far-reaching significance to the future of aviation. Her vision, skill and initiative have resulted in services of exceptional value and importance to the country."


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: "The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 2, 1926, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Flying Cross to Colonel Jacqueline Cochran, United States Air Force, for extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight from 1947 to 1951. During this period, Colonel Cochran piloted an F-51 aircraft in which she established six world speed records. At Coachella Valley, California, flying a closed-circuit 100-kilometer course, Colonel Cochran established a new speed record of 469.549 miles per hour. In other flights from Thermal, Indio, and Palm Springs, CA, Colonel Cochran established world speed records for the 3-, 15-, 500-, 1000-, and 2000-kilometer courses. The professional competence, aerial skill, and devotion to duty displayed by Colonel Cochran reflect great credit upon herself and the United States Air Force."


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: "The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 2, 1926, takes pleasure in presenting a Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster in lieu of a Second Award of the Distinguished Flying Cross to Colonel Jacqueline Cochran, United States Air Force, for extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight during April 1962. During that period, Colonel Cochran established a number of world records on a flight from New Orleans, LA to Bonn, Germany. Flying a Lockheed Jet Star C-140 Colonel Cochran established 69 intercity, intercapital, and straight-line distance records and routes, in addition to becoming the first woman to fly a jet aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean. The records were for both speed and distance. The professional competence, aerial skill, and devotion to duty displayed by Colonel Cochran reflect great credit upon herself and the United States Air Force."


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: "The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 2, 1926, takes pleasure in presenting a Second Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster in lieu of a Third Award of the Distinguished Flying Cross to Colonel Jacqueline Cochran, United States Air Force, for extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight during May and June 1964. During this period, Colonel Cochran established three world speed records in an F-104C Starfighter. Flying a precise circular course, Colonel Cochran set a 25-kilometer record of 1429.297 miles per hour, more than twice the speed of sound. She established a record for the 100-kilometer course by flying at 1302 miles per hour. Colonel Cochran established a third world's speed record by achieving 1135 miles per hour over a 500-kilometer course. The professional competence, aerial skill, and devotion to duty displayed by Colonel Cochran reflect great credit upon herself and the United States Air Force."


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: From many countries around the world, Cochran received citations and awards. In 1949, the government of France recognized her contribution to the war and aviation awarding her in 1951 with the French Air Medal. She is the only woman to ever receive the Gold Medal from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. She went on to be elected to that body's board of directors and director of Northwest Airlines in the U.S. At home, the Air Force awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Legion of Merit. In 1949, Cochran became the fourth U.S. recipient of the Türk Hava Kurumu's (Turkish Aeronautical Association) highest award, the Murassa Brövesi (Diamond Brevet).


title: Jacqueline Cochran

text: An annual air show called the "Jacqueline Cochran Air Show" is named in her honor and takes place at the Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport. Cochran also became the first woman to be honored with a permanent display of her achievements at the United States Air Force Academy. In the play "The Fastest Woman Alive", written by Karen Sunde, Cochran's life is chronicled alongside her husband, Floyd, Amelia Earhart, and others.


title: Caria

text: Caria (; from Greek: Καρία, "Karia"; ) was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia (Mycale) south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionian and Dorian Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there. Carians were described by Herodotus as being of Minoan descent, while he reports that the Carians themselves maintained that they were Anatolian mainlanders intensely engaged in seafaring and were akin to the Mysians and the Lydians. The Carians spoke Carian, a native Anatolian language closely related to Luwian. Also closely associated with the Carians were the Leleges, which could be an earlier name for Carians.


title: Caria

text: Cramer's detailed catalog of Carian towns in classical Greece is based entirely on ancient sources. The multiple names of towns and geomorphic features, such as bays and headlands, reveal an ethnic layering consistent with the known colonization.


title: Caria

text: Coastal Caria begins with Didyma south of Miletus, but Miletus had been placed in the pre-Greek Caria. South of it is the Iassicus Sinus (Güllük Körfezi) and the towns of Iassus and Bargylia, giving an alternative name of Bargyleticus Sinus to Güllük Körfezi, and nearby Cindye, which the Carians called Andanus. After Bargylia is Caryanda or Caryinda, and then on the Bodrum Peninsula Myndus (Mentecha or Muntecha), from Miletus. In the vicinity is Naziandus, exact location unknown.


title: Caria

text: On the tip of the Bodrum Peninsula (Cape Termerium) is Termera (Telmera, Termerea), and on the other side Ceramicus Sinus (Gökova Körfezi). It "was formerly crowded with numerous towns." Halicarnassus, a Dorian Greek city, was planted there among six Carian towns: Theangela, Sibde, Medmasa, Euranium, Pedasa or Pedasum, and Telmissus. These with Myndus and Synagela (or Syagela or Souagela) constitute the eight Lelege towns. Also on the north coast of the Ceramicus Sinus is Ceramus and Bargasus.


title: Caria

text: On the south of the Ceramicus Sinus is the Carian Chersonnese, or Triopium Promontory (Cape Krio), also called Doris after the Dorian colony of Cnidus. At the base of the peninsula (Datça Peninsula) is Bybassus or Bybastus from which an earlier names, the Bybassia Chersonnese, had been derived. It was now Acanthus and Doulopolis ("slave city").


title: Caria

text: South of the Carian Chersonnese is Doridis Sinus, the "Gulf of Doris" (Gulf of Symi), the locale of the Dorian Confederacy. There are three bays in it: Bubassius, Thymnias and Schoenus, the last enclosing the town of Hyda. In the gulf somewhere are Euthene or Eutane, Pitaeum, and an island: Elaeus or Elaeussa near Loryma. On the south shore is the Cynossema, or Onugnathos Promontory, opposite Symi.


title: Caria

text: South of there is the Rhodian Peraea, a section of the coast under Rhodes. It includes Loryma or Larymna in Oedimus Bay, Gelos, Tisanusa, the headland of Paridion, Panydon or Pandion (Cape Marmorice) with Physicus, Amos, Physca or Physcus, also called Cressa (Marmaris). Beyond Cressa is the Calbis River (Dalyan River). On the other side is Caunus (near Dalyan), with Pisilis or Pilisis and Pyrnos between.


title: Caria

text: Then follow some cities that some assign to Lycia and some to Caria: Calynda on the Indus River, Crya and Alina in the Gulf of Glaucus (Katranci Bay or the Gulf of Makri), the Glaucus River being the border. Other Carian towns in the gulf are Clydae or Lydae and Aenus.


title: Caria

text: At the base of the east end of Latmus near Euromus, and near Milas where the current village Selimiye is, was the district of Euromus or Eurome, possibly Europus, formerly Idrieus and Chrysaoris (Stratonicea). The name Chrysaoris once applied to all of Caria; moreover, Euromus was originally settled from Lycia. Its towns are Tauropolis, Plarasa and Chrysaoris. These were all incorporated later into Mylasa. Connected to the latter by a sacred way are Labraunda and Sinuri. Around Stratonicea is also Lagina as well as Panamara, Tendeba and Astragon.


title: Caria

text: Further inland towards Aydın is Alabanda, noted for its marble and its scorpions, Orthosia, Coscinia or Coscinus on the upper Maeander and Alinda. To the east is the religious centre Hyllarima. At the confluence of the Maeander and the Harpasus is Harpasa (Arpaz). At the confluence of the Maeander and the Orsinus, Corsymus or Corsynus is Antioch on the Maeander and on the Orsinus in the mountains a border town with Phrygia, Gordiutichos ("Gordius' Fort") near Geyre. Founded by the Leleges and called Ninoe it became Megalopolis ("Big City") and Aphrodisias, sometime capital of Caria.


title: Caria

text: Other towns on the Orsinus are Timeles and Plarasa. Tabae was at various times attributed to Phrygia, Lydia and Caria and seems to have been occupied by mixed nationals. Caria also comprises the headwaters of the Indus and Eriya or Eriyus and Thabusion on the border with the small state of Cibyra.


title: Caria

text: The name of "Caria" also appears in a number of early languages: Hittite "Karkija" (a member state of the Assuwa league, c. 1250 BC), Babylonian "Karsa", Elamite and Old Persian "Kurka". After the Bronze Age Collapse, Caria arose as a Neo-Hittite kingdom.


title: Caria

text: Greeks settled the area in the early Iron Age, including former Mycenaean settlements such as Knidos and Halicarnassos. The coast of Caria was part of the Doric hexapolis ("six-cities").


title: Caria

text: Lemprière notes that "As Caria probably abounded in figs, a particular sort has been called Carica, and the words "In Care periculum facere", have been proverbially used to signify the encountering of danger in the pursuit of a thing of trifling value." The region of Caria continues to be an important fig-producing area to this day, accounting for most fig production in Turkey, which is the world's largest producer of figs.


title: Caria

text: An account also cited that Aristotle claimed Caria, as a naval empire, occupied Epidaurus and Hermione and that this was confirmed when the Athenians discovered the graves of the dead from Delos. Half of it were identified as Carians based on the characteristics of the weapons they were buried with.


title: Caria

text: The expansionism of Lydia under Croesus (560-546 BC) incorporated Caria briefly into Lydia before it fell before the Achaemenid advance.


title: Caria

text: Caria was then incorporated into the Persian Achaemenid Empire as a satrapy (province) in 545 BC. The most important town was Halicarnassus, from where its sovereigns, the tyrants of the Lygdamid dynasty (c.520-450 BC), reigned. Other major towns were Latmus, refounded as Heracleia under Latmus, Antiochia, Myndus, Laodicea, Alinda and Alabanda. Caria participated in the Ionian Revolt (499–493 BC) against the Persian rule.


title: Caria

text: During the Second Persian invasion of Greece (480-479 BC), the cities of Caria were allies of Xerxes I and they fought at the Battle of Artemisium and the Battle of Salamis, where the Queen of Halicarnassus Artemisia commanded the contingent of 70 Carian ships. Themistocles, before the battles of Artemisium and Salamis, tried to split the Ionians and Carians from the Persian coalition. He told them to come and be on his side or not to participate at the battles, but if they were bound down by too strong a compulsion to be able to make revolt, when the battles begin, to be purposely slack. Plutarch in his work, The Parallel Lives, at The Life of Themistocles wrote that: "Phanias (), writes that the mother of Themistocles was not a Thracian, but a Carian woman and her name was Euterpe (), and Neanthes () adds that she was from Halicarnassus in Caria.".


title: Caria

text: After the unsuccessful Persian invasion of Greece in 479 BC, the cities of Caria became members of the Athenian-led Delian League, but then returned to Achaemenid rule for about one century, from around 428 BC. Under Achaemenid rule, the Carian dynast Mausolus took control of neighbouring Lycia, a territory which was still held by Pixodarus as shown by the Xanthos trilingual inscription.


title: Caria

text: The Carians were incorporated into the Macedonian Empire following the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Siege of Halicarnassus in 334 BC.


title: Caria

text: Halicarnassus was the location of the famed Mausoleum dedicated to Mausolus, a satrap of Caria between 377–353 BC, by his wife, Artemisia II of Caria. The monument became one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and from which the Romans named any grand tomb a "mausoleum."


title: Caria

text: Caria was conquered by Alexander III of Macedon in 334 BC with the help of the former queen of the land Ada of Caria who had been dethroned by the Persian Empire and actively helped Alexander in his conquest of Caria on condition of being reinstated as queen. After their capture of Caria, she declared Alexander as her heir.


title: Caria

text: As part of the Roman Empire the name of Caria was still used for the geographic region but the territory administratively belonged to the province of Asia. During the administrative reforms of the 4th century this province was abolished and divided into smaller units. Caria became a separate province as part of the Diocese of Asia.


title: Caria

text: Christianity was on the whole slow to take hold in Caria. The region was not visited by St. Paul, and the only early churches seem to be those of Laodicea and Colossae (Chonae) on the extreme inland fringe of the country, which itself pursued its pagan customs. It appears that it was not until Christianity was officially adopted in Constantinople that the new religion made any real headway in Caria.


title: Caria

text: In the 7th century, Byzantine provinces were abolished and the new military theme system was introduced. The region corresponding to ancient Caria was captured by the Turks under the Menteşe Dynasty in the early 13th century.


title: Caria

text: There are only indirect clues regarding the population structure under the Menteşe and the parts played in it by Turkish migration from inland regions and by local conversions, but the first Ottoman Empire census records indicate, in a situation not atypical for the region as a whole, a large Muslim (practically exclusively Turkish) majority reaching as high as 99% and a non-Muslim minority (practically exclusively Greek supplemented with a small Jewish community in Milas) as low as one per cent. One of the first acts of the Ottomans after their takeover was to transfer the administrative center of the region from its millenary seat in Milas to the then much smaller Muğla, which was nevertheless better suited for controlling the southern fringes of the province. Still named Menteşe until the early decades of the 20th century, the kazas corresponding to ancient Caria are recorded by sources such as G. Sotiriadis (1918) and S. Anagiostopoulou (1997) as having a Greek population averaging at around ten per cent of the total, ranging somewhere between twelve and eighteen thousand, many of them reportedly recent immigrants from the islands. Most chose to leave in 1919, before the population exchange.


title: Caria

text: In July 2021, archaeologists led by Abuzer Kızıl have announced the discovery of two 2,500-year-old marble statues and an inscription during excavations at the Temple of Zeus Lepsynos in Euromus. According to Abuzer Kızıl, one of the statues was naked while other was wearing armor made of leather and a short skirt. Both of the statues were depicted with a lion in their hands.


title: Sun of May

text: The Sun of May () is a national emblem of Argentina and Uruguay, and appears on the flags of both countries.


title: Sun of May

text: The specification ""of May"" is a reference to the May Revolution which took place in the week from 18 to 25 May 1810, which marked the beginning of the independence from the Spanish Empire for the countries that were then part of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. A legend claims that as the new government was proclaimed, the sun broke through the clouds, which was seen as a good omen.


title: Sun of May

text: In the flag of Argentina, the Sun of May is the radiant golden yellow sun bearing the human face and thirty-two rays that alternate between sixteen straight and sixteen wavy.


title: Sun of May

text: In the flag of Uruguay, the Sun of May is the golden yellow sun bearing the human face and sixteen triangular rays that alternate between eight straight and eight wavy.


title: Sun of May

text: Inspired by the Latin American wars of independence, the Philippines, which was a fellow former Spanish colony, also adopted the Sun of May as a revolutionary banner.


title: Sun of May

text: The sun, called the Sun of May, is a replica of an engraving on the first Argentine coin, approved in 1813 by the Constituent Assembly, whose value was eight " (one Spanish dollar).


title: Sun of May

text: In form, it is similar to—and may be partially derived from—the sun in splendour, which is common in European heraldry. This, too, is usually depicted with a face, and with alternating straight and wavy rays (representing light and heat respectively), though it normally has only sixteen rays.


title: Sun of May

text: A 1978 law describing the official ceremonial flag of Argentina specifies that the sun must be golden yellow in color ("), have an inner diameter of 10 cm, and an outer diameter of 25 cm (the diameter of the sun equals the height of the white stripe, and the sun's face is of its height), must feature 32 rays (16 undulated and 16 straight in alternation), and must be embroidered in the official ceremonial flag.


title: Middle of the road (music)

text: Middle of the road (also known by its acronym MOR) is a commercial radio format and popular music genre. Music associated with this term is strongly melodic and uses techniques of vocal harmony and light orchestral arrangements. The format was eventually rebranded as soft adult contemporary.


title: Middle of the road (music)

text: According to music academic Norman Abjorensen, "middle of the road" has referred to a commercial radio format more often than a music genre, although "it has been used to describe a broad type of music" of numerous styles, usually characterized by vocal harmony techniques, prominent melodies, and subtle orchestral arrangements. MOR is somewhat often used as a derogatory term for this type of music. Radio stations that played beautiful music during the 1960s and 1970s were marketed as "MOR radio" in order to differentiate them from related soft adult contemporary and smooth jazz stations. Soft rock groups like the Association, the 5th Dimension, and Simon & Garfunkel infiltrated the MOR market in the late 1960s. Writing in "" (1990), Robert Christgau said MOR "applied to radio formats that shun or put stringent tempo and volume restrictions on rock, although 'lite' and 'adult contemporary' are now the preferred evasions."


title: Middle of the road (music)

text: As an AM radio format in the United States and Canada, MOR's heyday was the 1960s and the 1970s. The 50,000-watt AM radio stations WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio; WJR in Detroit, Michigan; WNEW in New York City, New York; WCCO in Minneapolis, Minnesota; KMPC in Los Angeles, California; KIRO and KOMO in Seattle, Washington; WTIC in Hartford, Connecticut; and Canadian stations CFRB in Toronto, Ontario and CKNW in Vancouver, British Columbia, were known as "full-service MOR" stations with scheduled programming other than the MOR music. Even though it was not a 50,000-watt station, WMAL in Washington DC achieved some of the highest ratings and revenue of all radio stations in the country by programming MOR music, news, sports, and very popular announcers. In time, as the listener demographic groups aged and popular music migrated to FM radio, MOR stations found themselves competing with adult contemporary FM stations and AM stations broadcasting the Music of Your Life and adult standards formats. In response, most eliminated music and transmitted only news and talk programs; some continued to play MOR music until the early 1990s. MOR (or at least formats bearing a strong resemblance to MOR) were still available as late as 2013; the Memories/Unforgettable Favorites network, a nationwide MOR satellite service, was available until 2006. Many of the styles and genres of music that had traditionally been heard on MOR formatted stations are currently heard on adult standards-formatted stations.


title: Middle of the road (music)

text: In recent years, the term "middle of the road" has been used pejoratively by genre-specific music aficionados to describe musicians who avoid "edgy" (innovative) material, and who calibrate their musical appeal to commercial, popular musical taste. Artists such as Westlife (pop), Kenny Rogers (country) and Train (rock) are considered middle-of-the-road.


title: Middle of the road (music)

text: Moreover, MOR has been used to pejoratively describe a musical band's creative and commercial progress from the innovative path to the tried-and-true-pop-catalogue path. For example, Pitchfork Media's review of Duran Duran's "Rio" states: "The band peppered the 80s with a number of hot singles (most of which can be found on the unstoppable side A of "Rio") before departing for MOR country.", while on a later review of Coldplay's "X&Y", Pitchfork writes that: "U2 recorded "I Will Follow", "New Year's Day", "Bad", and "The Joshua Tree", among others, before they wandered off into the MOR wilderness.".


title: States' rights

text: In American political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the Tenth Amendment. The enumerated powers that are listed in the Constitution include exclusive federal powers, as well as concurrent powers that are shared with the states, and all of those powers are contrasted with the reserved powers—also called states' rights—that only the states possess.


title: States' rights

text: The balance of federal powers and those powers held by the states as defined in the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution was first addressed in the case of "McCulloch v. Maryland" (1819). The Court's decision by Chief Justice John Marshall asserted that the laws adopted by the federal government, when exercising its constitutional powers, are generally paramount over any conflicting laws adopted by state governments. After "McCulloch", the primary legal issues in this area concerned the scope of Congress' constitutional powers, and whether the states possess certain powers to the exclusion of the federal government, even if the Constitution does not explicitly limit them to the states.


title: States' rights

text: In "The Federalist" Papers, ratification proponent Alexander Hamilton explained the limitations this clause placed on the proposed federal government, describing that acts of the federal government were binding on the states and the people therein "only if" the act was in pursuance of constitutionally granted powers, and juxtaposing acts which exceeded those bounds as "void and of no force":


title: States' rights

text: In the period between the American Revolution and the ratification of the United States Constitution, the states had united under a much weaker federal government and a much stronger state and local government, pursuant to the Articles of Confederation. The Articles gave the central government very little, if any, authority to overrule individual state actions. The Constitution subsequently strengthened the central government, authorizing it to exercise powers deemed necessary to exercise its authority, with an ambiguous boundary between the two co-existing levels of government. In the event of any conflict between state and federal law, the Constitution resolved the conflict via the Supremacy Clause of Article VI in favor of the federal government, which declares federal law the "supreme Law of the Land" and provides that "the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." However, the Supremacy Clause only applies if the federal government is acting in pursuit of its constitutionally authorized powers, as noted by the phrase "in pursuance thereof" in the actual text of the Supremacy Clause itself (see above).


title: States' rights

text: When the Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison secretly wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which provide a classic statement in support of states' rights and called on state legislatures to nullify unconstitutional federal laws. (The other states, however, did not follow suit and several rejected the notion that states could nullify federal law.) According to this theory, the federal union is a voluntary association of states, and if the central government goes too far each state has the right to nullify that law. As Jefferson said in the Kentucky Resolutions:


title: States' rights

text: Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: That to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party...each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.