title: Woman in the Dunes

text: The film won the Special Jury Prize at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival and, somewhat unusually for an avant-garde film, was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in the same year (losing to "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow"). In 1965, Teshigahara was nominated for the Best Director Oscar (losing to Robert Wise for "The Sound of Music"). In 1967, the film won the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.


title: Shamsheer Vayalil

text: Shamsheer Vayalil Parambath (born 11 January 1977) is an Indian radiologist and businessman. He is the founder, chairman and managing director of VPS Healthcare Group, and the vice chairman and managing director of Amanat Holdings, a healthcare and education investment company. , Vayalil has a net worth of US$1.4 billion.


title: Shamsheer Vayalil

text: Vayalil was born on 11 January 1977 in Kozhikode, Kerala, India. His parents are Hashim Pokkinari and Mariyam Barakkool.


title: Shamsheer Vayalil

text: After his schooling, he pursued a MBBS at Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, then obtained his MD in radiology from Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, Chennai. He did his radiology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.


title: Shamsheer Vayalil

text: Vayalil was a radiologist for 12 months at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, Abu Dhabi, UAE. In 2007, he opened his first hospital LLH Hospital in Abu Dhabi. Over the next twelve years, his company VPS Healthcare started 23 hospitals in four countries with over 125 medical centres and about 13,000 employees in the Middle East, Europe, and India.


title: Shamsheer Vayalil

text: Vayalil is a member of the UAE Medical Council, a board member of the Abu Dhabi University, and a member of the advisory committee of the University of Sharjah College of Medicine. He is a former director of Kannur International Airport Ltd, and a member of the Kerala NRI Commission, a commission with quasi-judicial powers set up in Kerala to protect the rights, interests, and properties of non-resident Indians (NRIs) from Kerala.


title: Shamsheer Vayalil

text: VPS Healthcare donated emergency healthcare equipment worth Rs 1.75 crores when Nipah viral infection was diagnosed in Kerala in 2018.


title: Shamsheer Vayalil

text: Vayalil personally pledged to donate Dh 26 million (Rs 50 crore) to Kerala after the monsoon floods in August 2018.


title: Shamsheer Vayalil

text: He was honoured at an event hosted by United Nations in New York for his philanthropy. He was recognised for the community welfare initiatives, which include the '1000 Free Heart Surgeries' initiative for the underprivileged, launched as a tribute to Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. As part of the initiative, people from around the world, from babies to a 70-year-old, have undergone cardiac surgeries.


title: Shamsheer Vayalil

text: Vayalil made donations to the UAE Red Crescent for Syrian refugees and to the Indian Prime Minister's National Relief Fund for flood-hit Jammu and Kashmir. He extended his support to the kin of the victims of the Mangaluru plane crash in May 2010. He offered jobs and educational assistance to the families of the victims and many of the people that took up jobs at VPS Healthcare continue to work with the company today.


title: Shamsheer Vayalil

text: In April 2014, Vayalil filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India in connection with non-resident Indian (NRI) voting rights. Currently, voters have to travel to their constituency to vote. The Court directed the Election Commission of India to explore the possibility for NRIs to cast their vote from their place of residence. In October 2014, the Commission submitted its report to the Court, recommending that NRIs be permitted to vote by proxy and e-postal ballot. On 9 August 2018, the Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill 2017, enabling the facility of proxy voting to overseas Indians, was passed by the Lok Sabha, and was awaiting introduction in the upper house of the Indian Parliament, the Rajya Sabha.


title: Shamsheer Vayalil

text: Vayalil is married to Shabeena, the eldest daughter of fellow billionaire M. A. Yusuff Ali. They have four children and live in the UAE.


title: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

text: With the advice and consent of the United States Senate, the president of the United States appoints the members of the Supreme Court of the United States, which is the highest court of the federal judiciary of the United States. Following his victory in the 2016 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump took office as president on January 20, 2017, and faced an immediate vacancy on the Supreme Court due to the February 2016 death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. During the 2016 campaign, Trump had released two lists of potential nominees to the Supreme Court. After taking office, he nominated Neil Gorsuch to succeed Scalia, and Gorsuch was confirmed in April 2017. In November 2017, five more names were added to the previous lists of potential nominees. In June 2018, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, creating a second vacancy on the Supreme Court. In early July 2018, Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh as his replacement; Kavanaugh was confirmed on October 6, 2018. Following the death of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18, 2020, Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett as her replacement on September 26, 2020. Exactly a month later on October 26, 2020, Barrett was confirmed by a vote of 52–48.


title: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

text: The Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett confirmations were enabled by a rule change made by Senate Republicans in 2017, which applied the so-called nuclear option to Supreme Court nominees and allowed nominations to be advanced by a simple majority vote rather than the historical norm of a three-fifths supermajority vote. Leonard Leo played a crucial role in selecting Trump's appointees and helping them successfully navigate their Senate confirmation hearings.


title: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

text: President Donald Trump began his term in January 2017 with a vacancy to be filled as a result of the February 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia. As three of the Court's justices at the time—Ruth Bader Ginsburg (born 1933), Anthony Kennedy (born 1936) and Stephen Breyer (born 1938)—were aged 78 or older, speculation arose that additional vacancies could occur during Trump's four-year presidential term. Because Ginsburg and Breyer were part of the liberal wing of the Court and Kennedy was a swing vote who often aligned with them on social issues, many top political analysts saw Trump's term as a chance for Republicans to reshape the court significantly towards a more conservative vision of the law. On June 27, 2018, this became a real possibility when Justice Kennedy officially announced his retirement. Following the death of Ginsburg on September 18, 2020, and the subsequent confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett on October 26, 2020, the Supreme Court had the following nine justices:


title: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

text: On February 13, 2016, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia died while vacationing at Cibolo Creek Ranch near Marfa, Texas. Scalia's death marked just the second time in 60 years that a sitting Supreme Court justice died. This resulted in there being a Supreme Court vacancy during the last year of Barack Obama's presidency.


title: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

text: Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, stated that the new president, whomever won the 2016 election, should replace Scalia, while President Obama stated that he planned to nominate someone to replace Scalia on the Supreme Court. On February 23, the 11 Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee signed a letter to McConnell stating their intention to withhold consent on any nominee made by Obama, and that no hearings would occur until after January 20, 2017, when the new president took office. On March 16, 2016, Obama nominated then-chief judge Merrick Garland (of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit), to replace Scalia. After Garland's nomination, McConnell reiterated his position that the Senate would not consider any Supreme Court nomination until a new president took office. Garland's nomination expired on January 3, 2017, with the Senate having taken no action on it.


title: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

text: Trump rejected any move by Obama to fill the vacancy, maintaining that picking a successor to Scalia should be done by the next president. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump released two lists of potential Supreme Court nominees. On May 18, 2016, he released a short list of 11 judges for nomination to the Scalia vacancy. Then, on September 23, 2016, he released a second list of 10 possible nominees, this time including three minorities. Both lists were assembled by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. Days after Trump's inauguration, "Politico" named three individuals as the front-runners for Scalia's position: Neil Gorsuch, Thomas Hardiman and Bill Pryor, with Trump reportedly later narrowing his list down to Gorsuch and Hardiman. At the time of the nomination, Gorsuch, Hardiman, and Pryor were all federal appellate judges who had been appointed by President George W. Bush. President Trump and White House counsel Don McGahn interviewed those three individuals as well as Judge Amul Thapar of the U.S. District Court for Eastern District of Kentucky in the weeks before the nomination. Trump announced Gorsuch as his nominee on January 31. The Senate confirmed Gorsuch by a 54–45 vote on April 7, 2017, with votes from 51 Republicans and 3 Democrats. He was sworn into office as an associate justice of the Supreme Court on April 10.


title: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

text: On June 27, 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, effective July 31, giving Trump an opportunity to send a second Supreme Court nominee to the Senate for confirmation. Kavanaugh was officially nominated on July 9, selected from among a list of "25 highly qualified potential nominees" considered by the Trump Administration. Kavanaugh's nomination was officially sent to the Senate on July 10, 2018, and confirmation hearings began on September 4. The hearings took longer than initially expected over objections to the withholding of documents pertinent to Kavanaugh's time in the Bush administration as a lawyer, and due to the presence of protestors.


title: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

text: On September 16, 2018, Christine Blasey Ford alleged a then-17 year old Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in 1982, in what she described as an attempted rape. The accusation delayed the scheduled September 20 vote. After Ford's accusation, Kavanaugh indicated he would not withdraw. Ford's allegations were followed by an accusation of sexual assault by Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez, and a letter from Julie Swetnick accusing Kavanaugh of gang rape in high school. Ford and Kavanaugh appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing on September 27, and were questioned by Arizona sex crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell and members of the Senate. The Judiciary Committee voted to approve Kavanaugh on September 28 after Jeff Flake, considered to be a swing vote, declared his intent to vote in favor of the nomination with the provision that there would be a new FBI investigation into the allegations by Ford. The investigation concluded on October 4. Two days later, Kavanaugh was confirmed by a 50–48 vote, and sworn in that same day.


title: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

text: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020. The following day, Trump stated that any successor of Ginsburg would "most likely" be a woman. On September 25, 2020, it was announced that Trump intended to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. On October 26, 2020, Barrett was confirmed by a vote of 52–48. She was sworn in the next day.


title: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

text: Below is a list of individuals which President Trump identified as his potential nominees for Supreme Court appointments. Most of them were revealed in two lists released by the Trump campaign in 2016. Others were added in a revised list released by the White House on November 17, 2017 and a fourth list released on September 9, 2020


title: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

text: Following the nomination of Amul Thapar to the Sixth Circuit, it was reported that Trump might try to season some of the candidates on his list with federal appellate court experience prior to potential nomination to the Supreme Court. Indeed, Trump later elevated a number of state court judges from his list to fill vacant positions on the federal Courts of Appeals: Joan Larsen (Sixth Circuit), David Stras (Eighth Circuit), Allison H. Eid (Tenth Circuit), Don Willett (Fifth Circuit), and Britt Grant (Eleventh Circuit). Conversely, two previous Trump appointees to the Courts of Appeals—Amy Coney Barrett (Seventh Circuit) and Kevin Newsom (Eleventh Circuit)—were later added to the list of potential Supreme Court candidates.


title: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

text: Despite speculation that Trump might consider other candidates for a possible second Supreme Court nomination, he said in May 2017 that he would make his next appointment from the same list he used to choose Gorsuch (the combined 21 names given on either of the two lists he released during the campaign), describing the list as "a big thing" for him and his supporters. Trump added five further candidates to the list on November 17, 2017.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: The siege of Tsingtao (or Tsingtau) was the attack on the German port of Tsingtao (now Qingdao) in China during World War I by Japan and the United Kingdom. The siege was waged against Imperial Germany between 27 August and 7 November 1914. The siege was the first encounter between Japanese and German forces, the first Anglo-Japanese operation of the war, and the only major land battle in the Asian and Pacific theatre during World War I.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Germany joined other European powers in a scramble for colonial possessions. As with the other world powers (including the United States and Japan), Germany began to interfere in Chinese local affairs. After two German missionaries were killed in the Juye Incident in 1897, China was forced to agree to the Kiautschou Bay concession in Shantung (now Shandong) to Germany in 1898 on a 99-year lease. Germany then began to assert its influence across the rest of the province and built the city and port of Tsingtao, which became the base of the German East Asiatic Squadron of the "Kaiserliche Marine" (German Navy), which operated in support of the German colonies in the Pacific. Britain viewed the German presence in China with suspicion and leased Weihaiwei, also in Shantung, as a naval port and coaling station. Russia leased its own station at Port Arthur (now Lüshunkou) and France at Kwang-Chou-Wan. Britain also began to forge close ties with Japan, and diplomatic relations became closer, with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance being signed on 30 January 1902. Japan saw the alliance as a necessary deterrent to its main rival, Russia. Japan demonstrated its potential by its victory in the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War, and the alliance continued into World War I.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: When the war in Europe began in August 1914, Britain promptly requested Japanese assistance. On 15 August, Japan issued an ultimatum, stating that Germany must withdraw her warships from Chinese and Japanese waters and transfer control of its port of Tsingtao to Japan. The next day, Major-General Mitsuomi Kamio, General Officer Commanding (GOC), 18th Infantry Division, was ordered to prepare to take Tsingtao by force. The ultimatum expired on 23 August, and Japan declared war on Germany. At the beginning of hostilities, the ships of the East Asia Squadron under Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee were dispersed at various Pacific colonies on routine missions. Spee's ships rendezvoused in the Northern Mariana Islands for coaling. then headed for the Indian Ocean, while the rest of the squadron made their way to the west coast of South America. The squadron engaged and destroyed two obsolescent ships of a small Royal Navy squadron at the Battle of Coronel, before itself being destroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: The Boxer Rebellion, at the beginning of the century, had led Germany to consider the defence of Tsingtao. The port and the town were divided from the rest of the peninsula by steep hills. The main line of defense lay along three hills, Mount Moltke, Mount Bismarck, and Mount Iltis, from the "Kaiserstuhl" to "Litsuner" Heights. Guarding the left wing was Fort Moltke, on the hill of the same name, with two 9.4 in. (240 mm) guns. The heaviest firepower was concentrated in the four 11 in. (280 mm) howitzers of Fort Bismarck. On the right wing, Fort Iltis contained two 9.4 in. guns at the hill's summit. A second line of defense was set up along a closer line of steep hills. The final line of defense was along hills above the town. A network of trenches, batteries, and other fortifications had been built in preparation for the coming siege. Germany had strengthened the defenses from the sea by laying mines in the approaches to the harbor and building four batteries and five redoubts. The fortifications were well equipped (though some with obsolete Chinese artillery) and were well manned.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: On 27 August the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) sent ships under Vice-Admiral Sadakichi Kato, flying his flag in the pre-dreadnought , to blockade the coast of Kiaochow. The British Royal Navy (RN) strengthened the Japanese fleet by sending the China Station's pre-dreadnought and the destroyer . On October 14, the "Triumph" was slightly damaged by a German shore battery, killing one member of its crew and injuring two others. The blockading fleet consisted mainly of nearly obsolete warships, though it did at times include a few modern vessels. These included the dreadnoughts , , the battlecruiser , her sister "Hiei", and the seaplane carrier , whose airplanes became the first of its kind in the world to attack sea and land targets. These Japanese airplanes would also take part in another military first, a night-time bombing raid.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: The 18th Infantry Division was the primary Japanese Army formation that took part in the initial landings, numbering some 23,000 soldiers with support from 142 artillery pieces. They began to land on 2 September at Lungkow, which was experiencing heavy floods at the time, and later at Lau Schan Bay on 18 September, about east of Tsingtao. China protested against the Japanese violation of her neutrality but did not interfere in the operations.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: The British Government and the other European great powers were concerned about Japanese intentions in the region and decided to send a small symbolic British contingent from Tientsin in an effort to allay their fears. The 1,500-man contingent was commanded by Brigadier-General Nathaniel Walter Barnardiston and consisted of 1,000 soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, The South Wales Borderers; later followed by 500 soldiers of the 36th Sikhs. Following a friendly fire incident, British troops were given Japanese raincoats to wear so they would be more easily identifiable to the Japanese.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: The Germans responded to the threat against Tsingtao by concentrating all of their available East Asian troops in the city. Kaiser Wilhelm II made the defense of Tsingtao a top priority, saying that "... it would shame me more to surrender Tsingtao to the Japanese than Berlin to the Russians". The German garrison, commanded by naval Captain and Governor Alfred Meyer-Waldeck, consisted of the marines of "III Seebataillon", naval personnel, Chinese colonial troops, and Austro-Hungarian sailors, for a total strength of 3,625 men. He also had a modest complement of vessels, including the torpedo boat ; the decommissioned unprotected cruiser ; the auxiliary cruiser , former captured Russian steamer Ryazan manned with the crew of cruiser Cormoran; four small gunboats: the , , , and ; and the Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser , whose crew was initially divided in two: half to man the ship, and half to fight with the German land forces.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: On 22 August of the China squadron, under the command of Lieutenant Commander F. A. Russell, while routinely monitoring the naval trade routes, encountered and was damaged in action by the German torpedo boat , the German gunboat SMS "Lauting" and a 4-inch shore battery off Tsingtao. She was hit twice from the retreating "S90".


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: As the Japanese approached their positions, Meyer-Waldeck withdrew his forces from the two outer defensive lines and concentrated his troops on the innermost line of defense along the hills closest to the town. The Austro-Hungarian cruiser, SMS "Kaiserin Elisabeth", was stationed in Tsingtao at the start of the war. On 2 September 1914 the German gunboat "Jaguar" sank the stranded Japanese destroyer "Shirotaye". On 5 September a Japanese reconnaissance airplane scouted the port and reported that the Asian German fleet had departed, the Japanese ordered the dreadnought, pre-dreadnought, and cruiser to leave the blockade. The next day the second air-sea battle in history took place (the first air-sea battle in history was at the Balkan wars in 1913) when a Farman seaplane launched by the "Wakamiya" unsuccessfully attacked the "Kaiserin Elisabeth" and the "Jaguar" in Qiaozhou Bay with bombs. Early in the siege, the "Kaiserin Elisabeth" and German gunboat "Jaguar" made an unsuccessful sortie against Japanese vessels blockading Tsingtao. Later, the cruiser's 15cm and 4.7cm guns were removed from the ship and mounted onshore, creating the "Batterie Elisabeth". The ship's crew took part in the defense of Tsingtao. On 13 September the Japanese land forces launched a cavalry raid on the German rear guard at Tsimo, which the Germans gave up and retreated. Subsequently, the Japanese took control of Kiautschou and the Santung railway. Lt. Gen. Kamio considered this the point of no return for his land forces and as the weather became extremely harsh he took no risk and fortified the troops at the town, returned the reinforcements that were on the way, re-embarked and landed at Lau Schan Bay.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: On 26 September, Kamio resumed his advance, and the Germans were forced to retreat beyond the river Litsun. The Japanese made good time, crossing the river Paisha early in the day, swiftly crossing the seven-mile lowland plain and reaching the northern bank of the Litsun.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: On September 27, Kamio tried to take Prince Heinrich Hill by a frontal assault and was caught in a murderous crossfire. From the summit, the Germans rained down bullets from four Maxim guns. Out in the harbor, "Kaiserin Elisabeth" and "Leopard" shelled the exposed slopes, nearly routing the Japanese right flank. The Japanese assault was saved by the allied fleet. As the siege progressed, the naval vessels trapped in the harbor, "Cormoran", "Iltis" and "Luchs", were scuttled on 28 September. On 17 October, the torpedo boat "S-90" slipped out of Tsingtao harbor and fired a torpedo which sank the Japanese cruiser with the loss of 271 officers and men. "S-90" was unable to run the blockade back to Tsingtao and was scuttled in Chinese waters when the ship ran low on fuel. "Tiger" was scuttled on 29 October, "Kaiserin Elisabeth" on 2 November, followed finally by "Jaguar" on 7 November, the day the fortress surrendered to the Japanese forces.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: The Japanese started shelling the fort and the city on 31 October and began digging parallel lines of trenches, just as they had done at the siege of Port Arthur nine years earlier. Very large 11inch howitzers from land, in addition to the firing of the Japanese naval guns, brought the German defenses under constant bombardment during the night, the Japanese moving their own trenches further forward under the cover of their artillery. The bombardment continued for seven days, employing around 100 siege guns with 1,200 shells each on the Japanese side. While the Germans were able to use the heavy guns of the port fortifications to bombard the landward positions of the Allies, they soon ran out of ammunition. When the artillery ran out of ammunition on 6 November, surrender was inevitable.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: The German garrison was able to field only a single Etrich Taube airplane during the siege flown by Lieutenant Gunther Plüschow. (A second Etrich Taube piloted by Lt. Friedrich Müllerskowsky crashed early in the campaign). That airplane was used for frequent reconnaissance flights and Plüschow made several nuisance attacks on the blockading squadron dropping improvised munitions and other ordnance on them. Plüschow claimed the downing of a Japanese Farman MF.VII with his pistol, the first aerial victory in aviation history. Plüschow flew from Tsingtao on 6 November 1914 carrying the governor's last dispatches, which were forwarded to Berlin through neutral diplomatic channels.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: On the night of 6 November, waves of Japanese infantry attacked the third line of defense and overwhelmed the defenders. The next morning, the German forces, along with their Austro-Hungarian allies, asked for terms. The Allies took formal possession of the colony on 16 November 1914.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: As the German garrison was able to hold out for nearly two months despite the naval blockade with sustained artillery bombardment and being outnumbered 6 to 1, the defeat nevertheless temporarily served as a morale booster. The German defenders watched the Japanese with curiosity as they marched into Tsingtao but turned their backs on the British when they entered into town. So deep was their anger that some German officers spat in the faces of their British counterparts.


title: Siege of Tsingtao

text: Japanese casualties numbered 733 killed and 1,282 wounded; the British had 12 killed and 53 wounded. The German defenders lost 199 dead and 504 wounded. The German dead were buried at Tsingtao, while the remaining soldiers were transported to prisoner of war camps in Japan. During the march to Tsingtao and the subsequent siege, Japanese forces killed 98 Chinese civilians and wounded 30; there were also countless incidents of rape against Chinese women committed by Japanese soldiers. The 4,700 German prisoners were treated well and with respect in Japan, such as in Bandō prisoner-of-war camp. The German troops were interned in Japan until the formal signature of the Versailles peace treaty in 1919, but due to technical questions, the troops were not repatriated before 1920. 170 prisoners chose to remain in Japan after the end of the war.


title: Power of the Dollar

text: Power of the Dollar is the unreleased debut studio album by American rapper 50 Cent. Originally set to be released as his major-label debut in 2000 by Columbia Records, the album's release was cancelled after Columbia discovered that 50 Cent was struck by nine bullets in a shooting that took place two months before the album was set to release. After the shooting, Columbia dropped 50 Cent from the label. Subsequently, the album was heavily bootlegged. , Columbia has no plans to release the album.


title: Power of the Dollar

text: The album features guest appearances from Destiny's Child, Noreaga, Dave Hollister, Bun B and the Madd Rapper. The album's production was handled by Trackmasters, Red Spyda, Sha Self, DJ Scratch and Erick Sermon, among other producers.


title: Power of the Dollar

text: AllMusic writes that the tracks utilize "penetrating wit and funk-infused beats, accompanied by grand orchestrations of commanding horns, pronounced percussion, and various string elements".


title: Power of the Dollar

text: The album's lead single, "How to Rob", was released on August 10, 1999, and was also included on the soundtrack to the film "In Too Deep". The single attracted significant controversy due to its content, which was him comically telling how he would rob several high-profile hip-hop & R&B artists. The second single, "Thug Love" featuring Destiny's Child, was released on September 21, 1999. Days before 50 Cent was scheduled to film its music video, he was attacked by a gunman in the infamous shooting incident that left him with nine gunshot wounds and gave him his dimple scar; an event that 50 Cent often references in his lyrics. While hospitalized, he signed a publishing deal with Columbia Records; however, he was dropped from the label after it was discovered that he had been shot. The track, "Ghetto Qur'an (Forgive Me)", has been speculated to be the reason for the shooting.


title: Power of the Dollar

text: The third and final single, "Your Life's on the Line", was released in 1999. The song was produced by Terrence Dudley, and was perceived as a diss song to Ja Rule, which would begin their highly publicized feud on records. 50 mocks Ja Rule's catchphrase "Murdaa!", on the chorus of the song, rapping "Murdaa, I don't believe you/Murdaa, Fuck around and leave you/Murdaa, I don't believe you/Murda Murda, your life's on the line". A music video for this song was released, which was also the only song with a music video of the whole album. The song would later be included as a bonus track on 50's officially released debut album "Get Rich or Die Tryin"'.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Major General Orde Charles Wingate, (26 February 1903 – 24 March 1944) was a senior British Army officer known for his creation of the Chindit deep-penetration missions in Japanese-held territory during the Burma Campaign of the Second World War.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate was an exponent of unconventional military thinking and the value of surprise tactics. Assigned to Mandatory Palestine, he became a supporter of Zionism, and set up a joint British-Jewish counter-insurgency unit. Under the patronage of the area commander Archibald Wavell, Wingate was given increasing latitude to put his ideas into practice during the Second World War. He created units in Abyssinia and Burma.


title: Orde Wingate

text: At a time when Britain was in need of morale-boosting generalship, Wingate attracted British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's attention with a self-reliant aggressive philosophy of war, and was given resources to stage a large-scale operation. The last Chindit campaign may have determined the outcome of the Battle of Kohima, although the offensive into India by the Japanese may have occurred because Wingate's first operation had demonstrated the possibility of moving through the jungle. In practice, both Japanese and British forces suffered severe supply problems and malnutrition.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate was killed in an aircraft accident in March 1944. The casualty rate the Chindits suffered, especially from disease, is a continuing controversy. Wingate believed that resistance to infection could be improved by inculcating a tough mental attitude, but medical officers considered his methods unsuited to a tropical environment.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate, the eldest of three sons, was born on 26 February 1903 at Naini Tal near Almora in Kumaon, India, into a military family (cousins of the Wingate baronets). His father, Colonel George Wingate (1852–1936), had become a committed member of the Plymouth Brethren early in his army career in India; at the age of 46, after wooing her for 20 years, he married (Mary) Ethel (1867–1943), the oldest daughter of the Orde Browne family, who were also Plymouth Brethren. His father retired from the army two years after Wingate was born.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Most of Wingate's childhood was spent in England. For the first 12 years of his life, he socialised primarily with his siblings. The seven Wingate children received a Christian education that was typical for that period, and time was set aside each day for studying and memorising the Scriptures.


title: Orde Wingate

text: In 1916, his family moved to Godalming where Wingate attended Charterhouse as a day boy. He did not board at the school nor did he participate in the activities of a public school education. Instead, he was kept busy at home by his parents, who encouraged their children to tackle challenging projects which fostered independent thought, initiative and self-reliance.


title: Orde Wingate

text: After four years, Wingate left Charterhouse and in 1921 he was accepted at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, the Royal Artillery's officers' training school. For committing a minor offence against the rules, a first-year student would be subjected to a ragging ritual named "running". This ritual consisted of the first-year being stripped and forced to run a gauntlet of senior students, all of whom wielded a knotted towel which was used to hit the accused on his journey along the line. On reaching the end, the first-year would then be thrown into an icy-cold cistern of water.


title: Orde Wingate

text: When it came time for Wingate to run the gauntlet, for allegedly having returned a horse to the stables too late, he walked up to the senior student at the head of the gauntlet, stared at him and dared him to strike. The senior refused. Wingate moved to the next senior and did the same; he too refused. In turn, each senior declined to strike; coming to the end of the line, Wingate walked to the cistern and dived straight into the icy-cold water.


title: Orde Wingate

text: In 1923, Wingate received his Royal Artillery officer's commission and was posted to the 5th Medium Brigade at Larkhill on Salisbury Plain. During this period, he was able to exercise his great interest in horse riding, gaining a reputation for his skill (and great success) in point-to-point races and fox hunting, particularly for finding suitable places to cross rivers, which earned him the nickname "Otter". It was difficult for a 1920s army officer to live on his pay and Wingate, living life to the full, also gained a reputation as a late payer of his bills.


title: Orde Wingate

text: He was promoted to lieutenant on 29 August 1925. In 1926, because of his prowess in riding, Wingate was posted to the Military School of Equitation where he excelled, much to the chagrin of the majority of the cavalry officers at the centre who found him insufferable; he frequently challenged the instructors as a demonstration of his rebellious nature.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate's father's cousin, Sir Reginald Wingate, a retired army general who had been governor-general of the Sudan between 1899 and 1916 and high commissioner of Egypt from 1917 to 1919, had a considerable influence on Wingate's career. He gave him a positive interest in Middle East affairs and in Arabic. As a result, Wingate applied to take a course in Arabic at the School of Oriental Studies in London and passed out of the course, which lasted from October 1926 to March 1927, with a mark of 85/100.


title: Orde Wingate

text: In June 1927, with Cousin Rex's encouragement, Wingate obtained six months' leave in order to mount an expedition in the Sudan. Rex had suggested that he travel via Cairo and then try to obtain secondment to the Sudan Defence Force (SDF). Sending his luggage ahead of him, Wingate set off in September 1927 by bicycle, travelling first through France and Germany before making his way to Genoa via Czechoslovakia, Austria and Yugoslavia. From Genoa he took a boat to Egypt. From Cairo he travelled to Khartoum.


title: Orde Wingate

text: In April 1928, his application to transfer to the SDF came through and he was posted to the East Arab Corps, serving in the area of Roseires and Gallabat on the borders of Ethiopia, where the SDF patrolled to catch slave traders and ivory poachers. He changed the method of regular patrolling to ambushes.


title: Orde Wingate

text: In March 1930, Wingate was given command of a company of 300 soldiers with the local rank of "bimbashi" (major). He was never happier than when in the bush with his unit, but when at HQ in Khartoum, he antagonised the other officers with his aggressive and argumentative personality. He was granted the local rank of captain in the regular army on 16 April 1930.


title: Orde Wingate

text: At the end of his tour, Wingate mounted a short expedition into the Libyan desert to investigate the lost army of Cambyses, mentioned in the writings of Herodotus, and to search for the lost oasis of Zerzura. Supported by equipment from the Royal Geographical Society (the findings of the expedition were published in the "Royal Geographical Magazine" in April 1934) and the Sudan Survey Department, the expedition set off in January 1933. Although they did not find the oasis, Wingate saw the expedition as an opportunity to test his endurance in a very harsh physical environment, and also his organisational and leadership abilities. He concluded his service in the Sudan on 2 April 1933.


title: Orde Wingate

text: On his return to the UK in 1933, Wingate was posted to Bulford on Salisbury Plain and was heavily involved in retraining, as British artillery units were being mechanised. On the sea voyage from Egypt he met Lorna Moncrieff Patterson, who was 16 years old and travelling with her mother. They were married two years later, on 24 January 1935.


title: Orde Wingate

text: From 13 January 1935, Wingate was seconded to the Territorial Army as the adjutant of the 71st (West Riding) Field Brigade, a Territorial Army unit of the Royal Artillery, with the temporary rank of captain. He was promoted to the substantive rank of captain on 16 May 1936, and vacated his appointment as adjutant on 8 September.


title: Orde Wingate

text: In September 1936, Wingate was assigned to a staff officer position in the British Mandate of Palestine, and became an intelligence officer. From his arrival he saw the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine as being a religious duty, and immediately put himself into absolute alliance with Jewish political leaders. Palestinian Arab guerrillas had at the time of his arrival begun a campaign of attacks against both British mandate officials and Jewish communities.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate became politically involved with a number of Zionist leaders, and became an ardent Zionist himself. He always returned to Kibbutz En Harod—because he felt familiar with the biblical judge Gideon, who fought in this area, and used it himself as a military base. He formulated the idea of raising small assault units of British-led Jewish commandos armed with grenades and light infantry small arms to combat the Arab revolt. Wingate took his idea personally to Wavell, who was then the commander of British forces in Palestine.


title: Orde Wingate

text: After Wavell gave his permission, Wingate convinced the Zionist Jewish Agency and the leadership of Haganah, the Jewish armed group. In June 1938, the new British commander, General Haining, gave his permission to create the Special Night Squads (SNSs), armed groups formed of British and Haganah volunteers. The Jewish Agency helped pay salaries and other costs of the Haganah personnel.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate trained, commanded and accompanied them on their patrols. The units frequently ambushed Arab saboteurs who attacked oil pipelines of the Iraq Petroleum Company, raiding border villages the attackers had used as bases. In these raids, Wingate's men sometimes imposed severe collective punishments on the villagers, which was criticised by Zionist leaders as well as Wingate's British superiors.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate disliked Arabs, once shouting at Haganah fighters after a June 1938 attack on a village on the border between Mandatory Palestine and Lebanon, "I think you are all totally ignorant in your Ramat Yochanan [the training base for the Haganah] since you do not even know the elementary use of bayonets when attacking dirty Arabs: how can you put your left foot in front?" But the brutal tactics proved effective in quelling the uprising, and Wingate was awarded the DSO in 1938.


title: Orde Wingate

text: However, his deepening direct political involvement with the Zionist cause and an incident where he spoke publicly in favour of the formation of a Jewish state during his leave in Britain, caused his superiors in Palestine to remove him from command. He was so deeply associated with political causes in Palestine that his superiors considered him compromised as an intelligence officer in the country. He was promoting his own agenda rather than that of the army or the government. In May 1939, he was transferred to Britain. Wingate became a hero of the Yishuv (the Jewish Community), and was loved by leaders such as Zvi Brenner and Moshe Dayan, who trained under him and claimed that Wingate had "taught us everything we know."


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate was the commander of an anti-aircraft unit in Britain when the Second World War began. He repeatedly made proposals to the army and government for the creation of a Jewish army in Palestine which would rule over the area and its Arab population in the name of the British. His friend Wavell was commander-in-chief of Middle East Command based in Cairo, and he invited him to Sudan to begin operations against Italian occupation forces in Ethiopia. He created Gideon Force under William Platt, the British commander in Sudan, a Special Operations Executive (SOE) force composed of British, Sudanese, and Ethiopian soldiers. At Khartoum, he and Tony Simonds joined Mission 101 controlled by London and Cairo.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Gideon force was named after the biblical judge Gideon who defeated a large force with a tiny band of men. Wingate invited a number of veterans of the Haganah SNS to join him, with the blessing of Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie, and the group began to operate in February 1941. The Italians occupied Ethiopia between 1936 and 1941, and they conducted operations to "pacify" the people which killed about seven percent of the population. There was a huge reservoir of hatred for the Italians as a result, and many Ethiopians were happy to assist Gideon Force. Wingate was temporarily promoted lieutenant colonel and put in command. He again insisted on leading from the front and accompanied his troops in the reconquest of Abyssinia.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Gideon Force harassed Italian forts and their supply lines with the aid of local resistance fighters, while regular army units took on the main Italian army. A small force of no more than 1,700 men took the surrender of about 20,000 Italians toward the end of the campaign. At the end of the fighting, Wingate and the men of Gideon Force linked with the force of Lt. Gen. Alan Cunningham which had advanced from Kenya in the south, and they accompanied the emperor in his triumphant return to Addis Ababa that May. Wingate was mentioned in dispatches in April 1941 and was awarded a bar to his DSO in December.


title: Orde Wingate

text: With the end of the East African Campaign on 4 June 1941, Wingate was removed from command of the dismantled Gideon Force and his rank reduced to that of major. During the campaign, he was irritated that British authorities ignored a request for decorations for his men. They also obstructed his efforts to obtain back pay and other compensation. He left for Cairo and wrote an official report which was extremely critical of his commanders, fellow officers, government officials, and many others. He was also angry that his efforts had not been praised by authorities and that he had been forced to leave Abyssinia without saying farewell to Emperor Selassie. He was most concerned about British attempts to stifle Ethiopian freedom, writing that attempts to raise future rebellions amongst populations must be honest ones and should appeal to justice.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate contracted malaria soon after this and sought treatment from a local doctor instead of army medical staff because he was afraid that the illness would give his detractors a further excuse to undermine him. This doctor gave him a large supply of the drug Atabrine, which can produce depression as a side-effect if taken in high dosages. Wingate was already depressed by the official response to his Abyssinian command, and he was also sick with malaria; he attempted suicide by stabbing himself in the neck. Only prompt action by another officer saved him, and he was sent to Britain to recuperate.


title: Orde Wingate

text: A highly edited version of his report was passed to Winston Churchill through his political supporters in London, and Secretary of State for India Leo Amery contacted Wavell, Commander-in-Chief in India commanding the South-East Asian Theatre to enquire if there were any chance of employing Wingate in the Far East. Wingate was far from pleased with his posting as a "supernumary major without staff grading", but he left Britain for Rangoon on 27 February 1942.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate was appointed colonel once more by General Wavell upon arrival in the Far East in March 1942, and he was ordered to organise guerrilla units to fight behind Japanese lines. However, the precipitate collapse of Allied defences in Burma forestalled further planning, and he flew back to India in April where he began to promote his ideas for jungle long-range penetration units. "Never ask favours", he recalled from his long association with Wavell, "but tell people if they care to help they can come along, that you yourself are going anyway".


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wavell was intrigued by Wingate's theories and gave him the (Indian 77th Infantry Brigade), from which he created a jungle long-range penetration unit. 77 Brigade was eventually named the Chindits, a corrupted version of a mythical Burmese lion called the "chinthe". By August 1942, he had set up a training centre at Dhana near Saugor district in Madhya Pradesh and attempted to toughen up the men by having them camp in the Indian jungle during the rainy season. This proved disastrous, as the result was a very high sickness rate among the men. In one battalion, 70 percent of the men went absent from duty due to illness, while a Gurkha battalion was reduced from 750 men to 500. Many of the men were replaced in September 1942 by new drafts of personnel from elsewhere in the army.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Meanwhile, he won few friends among the officer corps with his direct manner of dealing with fellow officers and superiors, along with eccentric personal habits. He would eat raw onions because he thought that they were healthy, scrub himself with a rubber brush instead of bathing, and greet visitors to his tent while completely naked. Wavell's political connections and patronage protected him from closer scrutiny, for he admired Wingate's work in the Abyssinian campaign, but Wingate remained the regimental gadfly always ready to flout the King's regulations; he grew a beard in the jungle and allowed his men to do the same. Nevertheless, he won plaudits by his outstanding courage and leadership in the face of the enemy.


title: Orde Wingate

text: The original 1943 Chindit operation was supposed to be a coordinated plan with the field army, but the Army's offensive into Burma was cancelled. Wingate then persuaded Wavell to let him proceed into Burma anyway, arguing the need to disrupt any Japanese attack on Sumprabum as well as to gauge the utility of long-range jungle penetration operations, and Wavell eventually gave his consent to "Operation Longcloth". Wingate set out from Imphal on 12 February 1943 with the Chindits organised into eight separate columns to cross the Chindwin river. The force met with initial success in putting one of the main railways in Burma out of action, then Wingate led them deep into Burma and over the Irrawaddy River. However, they found conditions very different from what their intelligence had led them to expect. The area was dry and inhospitable and criss-crossed by motor roads which the Japanese were able to use to good effect, particularly by intercepting supply drops to the Chindits. They soon began to suffer severely from exhaustion and shortages of water and food.


title: Orde Wingate

text: On 22 March, Eastern Army HQ ordered Wingate to withdraw his units back to India. He and his senior commanders considered a number of options to achieve this, but all were threatened by the fact that the Japanese would be able to focus their attention on destroying the Chindit force, having no major army offensive in progress. They finally agreed to retrace their steps to the Irrawaddy, since the Japanese would not expect this, and then disperse to make attacks on the enemy as they returned to the Chindwin. By mid-March, the Japanese had three infantry divisions chasing the Chindits, who were eventually trapped inside the bend of the Shweli River. They were unable to cross the river intact and still reach British lines, so they split into small groups to evade enemy forces. The Japanese paid great attention to preventing air resupply of Chindit columns, as well as hindering their mobility by removing boats from the Irrawaddy, Chindwin, and Mu rivers and actively patrolling the river banks. The force returned to India by various routes during the spring of 1943 in groups ranging from single individuals to whole columns: some directly, others via a roundabout route from China, and always harassed by the Japanese. Casualties were high, and the force lost approximately one-third of its total strength.


title: Orde Wingate

text: With the losses incurred during the first long-range jungle penetration operation, many officers in the British and Indian army questioned the overall value of the Chindits. The campaign had the unintended effect of convincing the Japanese that certain sections of the Burma/India Frontier were not as impassable as they previously believed, thus altering their strategic plans. As one consequence, the overall Japanese Army commander in Burma, Gen. Masakazu Kawabe, began planning a 1944 offensive into India to capture the Imphal Plain and Kohima, in order to better defend Burma from future Allied offensives.


title: Orde Wingate

text: In London, the Chindits and their exploits were viewed as a success after the long string of Allied disasters in the Far East theatre. Winston Churchill, an ardent proponent of commando operations, was, in particular, complimentary toward the Chindits and their accomplishments. The Japanese subsequently admitted that the Chindits had disrupted their plans for the first half of 1943.


title: Orde Wingate

text: As a propaganda tool, the Chindit operation was used to prove to the army and those at home that the Japanese could be beaten and that British/Indian troops could successfully operate in the jungle against experienced Japanese forces. On his return, Wingate wrote an operations report in which he was again highly critical of the army and even some of his own officers and men. He also promoted more unorthodox ideas such as the idea that British soldiers had become weak by having too easy access to doctors in civilian life. The report was again passed through back channels by Wingate's political friends in London directly to Churchill. The Prime Minister then invited Wingate to London for talks.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Soon after Wingate arrived, Churchill decided to take him and his wife along to the Quebec Conference. There, Wingate explained his ideas of deep penetration warfare to the Combined Chiefs of Staff meeting on 17 August. Air power, radio, and recent developments in warfare would allow units to establish bases deep in enemy territory, breaching the outer defences, and extend the range of conventional forces. The leaders were impressed, and larger scale deep-penetration attacks were approved. By now, a war-substantive lieutenant-colonel and temporary brigadier, Wingate was promoted to the rank of acting major general on 18 September 1943.


title: Orde Wingate

text: After his meeting with Allied leaders, Wingate contracted typhoid by drinking water from a flower vase in a Cairo hotel while on his way back to India. Doctors were shocked as it was drummed into every serviceman that they should never use such a source as drinking water. His illness prevented him from taking a more active role in training of the new long-range jungle forces.


title: Orde Wingate

text: While Wingate was still in Burma, Wavell had ordered the formation of 111 Brigade, known as the "Leopards", along the lines of the 77 Brigade. He selected Brigadier Joe Lentaigne as the new commander. Wavell intended that the two brigades would operate with one engaged on operations while the other trained and prepared for the next operation. However, once back in India, Wingate was promoted to acting major general and was given six brigades. This involved breaking up the experienced 70th Division, which other commanders felt could be better used as a standard "line" division. At first, Wingate proposed to convert the entire front into one giant Chindit mission by breaking up the whole of the Fourteenth Army into Long-Range Penetration units, presumably in the expectation that the Japanese would follow them around the Burmese jungle in an effort to wipe them out. This plan was hurriedly dropped after other commanders pointed out that the Japanese Army would simply advance and seize the air bases from which Chindit forces were supplied, requiring a defensive battle and substantial troops that the Indian Army would be unable to provide.


title: Orde Wingate

text: In the end, a new long-range jungle penetration operation was planned, this time using all six of the brigades recently allocated to Wingate. The second long-range penetration mission was originally intended as a coordinated effort with a planned regular army offensive against northern Burma, but events on the ground resulted in cancellation of the army offensive, leaving the long-range penetration groups without a means of transporting all six brigades into Burma. Upon Wingate's return to India, he found that his mission had also been cancelled for lack of air transport. Wingate took the news bitterly, voicing disappointment to all who would listen, including Allied commanders such as Colonel Philip Cochran of the 1st Air Commando Group, which proved to be a blessing in disguise. Cochran told Wingate that cancelling the long-range mission was unnecessary; only a limited amount of aerial transport would be needed since, in addition to the light planes and C-47 Dakotas Wingate had counted on, Cochran explained that 1st Air Commando had 150 gliders to haul supplies: "Wingate’s dark eyes widened as Phil explained that the gliders could also move a sizable force of troops. The general immediately spread a map on the floor and planned how his Chindits, airlifted deep into the jungle, could fan out from there and fight the Japanese".


title: Orde Wingate

text: With his new glider landing option, Wingate decided to proceed into Burma anyway. The character of the 1944 operations differed from those of 1943 in that they aimed to establish fortified bases in Burma out of which the Chindits would conduct offensive patrol and blocking operations. A similar strategy would be used by the French in Indochina years later at Dien Bien Phu.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate planned that part of 77 Brigade would land by glider in Burma and prepare airstrips into which 111 Brigade and the remainder of 77 Brigade would be flown by C-47 transport aircraft. Three landing sites, codenamed "Piccadilly", "Broadway" and "Chowringhee" were selected. On the evening of 5 March as Wingate, Lieutenant General Slim (the commander of Fourteenth Army), Brigadier Michael Calvert (the commander of 77 Brigade) and Cochrane waited at an airfield in India for 77 Brigade to fly into "Piccadilly", an incident occurred which Wingate's critics later claimed to show his lack of firmness or balance.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate had forbidden continuous reconnaissance of the landing sites to avoid compromising the security of the operation, but Cochrane ordered a last-minute reconnaissance flight which showed "Piccadilly" to be completely obstructed with logs. By Slim's account, Wingate became highly emotional and insisted that the operation had been betrayed, and that the Japanese would have set up ambushes on the other two landing sites. He passed the responsibility for ordering the operation to proceed or to be cancelled to Slim.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Slim ordered that the operation was to go ahead. Wingate then ordered that 77 Brigade would fly into "Chowringhee". Both Cochrane and Calvert objected, as "Chowringhee" was on the wrong side of the Irrawaddy and Cochrane's pilots were not familiar with the layout. Eventually, "Broadway" was selected instead. The landings were initially a failure, as many gliders crashed "en route" or on "Broadway", but Calvert's brigade soon made the landing ground fit to take aircraft, and sent the success signal. It was later found that the logs on "Piccadilly" had been laid there to dry by Burmese teak loggers.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Once all the Chindit brigades (less one which remained in India) had marched or flown into Burma, they established base areas and drop zones behind Japanese lines. By fortunate timing, the Japanese launched an invasion of India around the same time. By forcing several pitched battles along their line of march, the Chindit columns were able to disrupt the Japanese offensive, diverting troops from the battles in India.


title: Orde Wingate

text: The value of Wingate's Chindits has been disputed. Field Marshal William Slim argued that special forces in general had an overall negative effect on the prosecution of war by separating the best-trained and most committed troops from the main army. However, Sir Robert Thompson, a Chindit who went on to become one of "world's leading expert on countering the Mao Tse-tung technique of rural guerrilla insurgency", wrote in his autobiography that "Every time I look at the picture of General Slim and his Corps Commanders being knighted by Lord Wavell as Viceroy on the field of battle after Imphal, I see the ghost of Wingate present. He was unquestionably one of the great men of [the 20th] century".


title: Orde Wingate

text: Regarding Operation Thursday, historian Raymond Callahan, author of "Churchill and His Generals" argues that "Wingate’s ideas were flawed in many respects. For one thing, the Imperial Japanese Army did not have Western-style supply lines to disrupt, and tended to ignore logistics generally. When Special Force launched itself into Burma in March 1944, Wingate’s ideas, so enchantingly laid out for Churchill, rapidly proved unworkable." However, the Japanese commander, Mutaguchi Renya, later stated that Operation Thursday had a significant effect on the campaign, saying "The Chindit invasion ... had a decisive effect on these operations ... they drew off the whole of 53 Division and parts of 15 Division, one regiment of which would have turned the scales at Kohima".


title: Orde Wingate

text: On 24 March 1944, Wingate flew to assess the situations in three Chindit-held bases in Burma. On his return, he agreed to allow two British war correspondents' request for a lift even though the pilot protested that the plane was overloaded. Flying from Imphal to Lalaghat, the USAAF B-25 Mitchell bomber of the 1st Air Commando Group in which he was flying crashed into jungle-covered hills in the present-day state of Manipur in northeast India, killing all ten passengers aboard, including Wingate, who died an acting major general. In place of Wingate, Brigadier (later Lt.-Gen.) Walter Lentaigne was appointed to overall command of LRP forces. He flew out of Burma to assume command as Japanese forces began their assault on Imphal. Command of Lentaigne's 111 Brigade in Burma was assigned to Lt. Col. J.R. 'Jumbo' Morris.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate and the nine other crash victims were initially buried in a common grave close to the crash site near the village of Bishnupur in the present-day state of Manipur in India. The bodies were charred beyond recognition, hence individuals could not be identified under medical practices of the day, as identification from dental records was not possible.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Since five of the ten crash victims, including both pilots, were Americans, all ten bodies were exhumed in 1947 and reburied in Imphal, India and yet again exhumed in 1950 and flown to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia for reburial. The exhumation was possible due to a three-way agreement among the governments of India, United Kingdom and the United States, and in accordance with the families' wishes.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate was known for various eccentricities. For instance, he often wore an alarm clock around his wrist, which would go off at times, and had raw onions and garlic on a string around his neck, which he would occasionally bite into as a snack (the reason he used to give for this was to ward off mosquitoes). He often went about without clothing. In Palestine, recruits were used to having him come out of the shower to give them orders, wearing nothing but a shower cap, and continuing to scrub himself with a shower brush. Sometimes Wingate would eat only grapes and onions.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Lord Moran, Winston Churchill's personal physician, wrote in his diaries that "[Wingate] seemed to me hardly sane – in medical jargon a borderline case." Likewise, referring to Churchill's meeting with Wingate in Quebec, Max Hastings wrote that, "Wingate proved a short-lived protégé: closer acquaintance caused Churchill to realise that he was too mad for high command."


title: Orde Wingate

text: Field Marshal Montgomery told Moshe Dayan in 1966 that he considered Wingate to have "been mentally unbalanced and that the best thing he ever did was to get killed in a plane crash in 1944."


title: Orde Wingate

text: In a tribute to Wingate, Churchill called him "one of the most brilliant and courageous figures of the second world war ... a man of genius who might well have become also a man of destiny".


title: Orde Wingate

text: A memorial to Orde Wingate and the Chindits stands on the north side of the Victoria Embankment, near Ministry of Defence headquarters in London. The facade commemorates the Chindits and the four men awarded the Victoria Cross. The battalions that took part are listed on the sides, with non-infantry units mentioned by their parent formations. The rear of the monument is dedicated to Orde Wingate, and also mentions his contributions to the state of Israel.


title: Orde Wingate

text: To commemorate Wingate's great assistance to the Zionist cause, Israel's National Centre for Physical Education and Sport, the Wingate Institute ("Machon Wingate") was named after him. A square in the Talbiya neighbourhood of Jerusalem, Wingate Square ("Kikar Wingate"), also bears his name, as does the Yemin Orde youth village near Haifa. A Jewish football club formed in London in 1946, Wingate Football Club was also named in his honour.


title: Orde Wingate

text: The General Wingate School, on the western city limit of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, commemorates Orde Wingate's contribution (along with the Gideon Force and the Ethiopian Patriots) to the liberation of Ethiopia in 1941, following the defeat of the Italian forces in that country.


title: Orde Wingate

text: A memorial stone in his honour stands in Charlton Cemetery, London, where other members of the Orde Browne family are buried. There is a memorial in Charterhouse School Chapel.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate Golf Club, Harare, Zimbabwe is named after the general and there are photographs of him in the Clubhouse. The club was set up to accommodate Jewish and Catholic members since The Royal Harare Golf Club in the past didn't admit either.


title: Orde Wingate

text: The deep-penetration tactics pioneered by the Chindits were adopted by the Indonesian National Army during the Indonesian National Revolution against the Netherlands. As conventional defensive tactics failed to make up for the technological advantage held by the Dutch, Indonesian General A.H. Nasution ordered Indonesian units to carry out 'Wingate' actions by penetrating into enemy lines and setting up pockets of resistance during the closing stages of the revolution in 1948.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Wingate's eccentric and strong-willed personality, his reputation for being difficult, advocacy of irregular warfare and his Zionism have led to sharply opposed assessments by historians. The British historian Simon Anglim called Wingate the most controversial British general of the Second World War as no other British general from that war produced such starkly polarized interpretations. The Chindit operations have been presented as either costly operations that achieved nothing or inspired operations that tied down Japanese troops that could have been used in the invasion of India. In Britain, the two opposing tendencies has been for historians to portray him either as a mentally unstable, delusional figure operating well beyond his level of competence as in official works by I.S.O. Playfair and Woodburn Kirby or alternatively as a visionary, a leader of men noted for his audacity, courage and toughness as in works by Charles Rolo, Bernard Fergusson, Wilfred Burchett, and Leonard Mosley.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Attempts to achieve a balance between the opposing views of Wingate were "Orde Wingate and the Historians" by Peter Mead, "Wingate and the Chindits" by David Rooney and "Orde Wingate" by Christopher Sykes. In Ethiopia, Wingate is remembered as liberator from the Italian occupation. In Israel, Wingate's role in creating and leading the SNS, which became the prototype of the Israeli Defense Forces, has made him a national hero, a man celebrated for his Zionism and courage, in the words of the Israeli historian Michael Oren a "heroic, larger-than-life figure to whom the Jewish people owed a deep and enduring debt".


title: Orde Wingate

text: The two most popular Israeli books about Wingate, both written by SNS veterans were "In the Path of Fighters" by Israel Carmi and "Orde Wingate: His Life and Works" by Avraham Akavia. By contrast, Palestinian historians portrayed Wingate very negatively as a thuggish fanatic who terrorized Palestinian villages during the Arab Revolt.


title: Orde Wingate

text: In recent years, the Israeli New Historians have taken a critical picture of Wingate with Tom Segev calling him "quite mad, and perhaps a sadist, too" and a war criminal. Oren has accused Segev of maligning Wingate, arguing that Segev has "edited" accounts by contemporaries to imply that Wingate was present at incidents in Palestine when he was in London at the time.


title: Orde Wingate

text: Orde Wingate had a wife, Lorna, and a son, Lt Col Orde Jonathan Wingate, who joined the Honourable Artillery Company after a regular Army career in the Royal Artillery and became the regiment's commanding officer and later regimental colonel. He died in 2000 at the age of 56, and was survived by his wife and two daughters.


title: Orde Wingate

text: He was also related to Reginald Wingate and Ronald Wingate. The Governor of Malta, Sir William Dobbie, was his uncle.


title: High Plains (United States)

text: The High Plains are a subregion of the Great Plains, mainly in the Western United States, but also partly in the Midwest states of Nebraska, Kansas, and South Dakota, generally encompassing the western part of the Great Plains before the region reaches the Rocky Mountains. The High Plains are located in eastern Montana, southeastern Wyoming, southwestern South Dakota, western Nebraska, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, eastern New Mexico. The southern region of the Western High Plains ecology region contains the geological formation known as Llano Estacado which can be seen from a short distance or on satellite maps. From east to west, the High Plains rise in elevation from around .


title: High Plains (United States)

text: The term "Great Plains", for the region west of about the 96th or 98th meridian and east of the Rocky Mountains, was not generally used before the early 20th century. Nevin Fenneman's 1916 study, "Physiographic Subdivision of the United States", brought the term Great Plains into more widespread usage. Prior to 1916, the region was almost invariably called the High Plains, in contrast to the lower Prairie Plains of the Midwestern states. Today the term "High Plains" is usually used for a subregion instead of the whole of the Great Plains.


title: High Plains (United States)

text: The High Plains has a "cold semi-arid" climate—Köppen "BSk"—receiving between of precipitation annually.


title: High Plains (United States)

text: Due to low moisture and high elevation, the High Plains commonly experiences wide ranges and extremes in temperature. The temperature range from day to night is usually 30 °F (~16.5 °C), and 24-hour temperature shifts of 100 °F (~55.5 °C) are possible, as evidenced by a weather event that occurred in Browning, Montana, from 23 January 1916 to 24 January 1916, when the temperature fell from . This is the world record for the greatest temperature change in 24 hours. The region is known for the steady, and sometimes intense, winds that prevail from the west. The winds add a considerable wind chill factor in the winter. The development of wind farms in the High Plains is one of the newest areas of economic development.


title: High Plains (United States)

text: The High Plains are anomalously high in elevation. An explanation has recently been proposed to explain this high elevation. As the Farallon plate was subducted into the mantle beneath the region, water trapped in hydrous minerals in the descending slab was forced up into the lower crust above. Within the crust this water caused the hydration of dense garnet and other phases into lower density amphibole and mica minerals. The resulting increase in crustal volume raised the elevation about one mile.


title: High Plains (United States)

text: Typical plant communities of the region are shortgrass prairie, prickly pear cacti and scrub. Sagebrush steppe is also present, particularly in high and dry areas closer to the Rocky Mountains.


title: High Plains (United States)

text: Agriculture in the forms of cattle ranching and the growing of wheat, corn, and sunflowers is the primary economic activity in the region. The aridity of the region necessitates either dryland farming methods or irrigation; much water for irrigation is drawn from the underlying Ogallala Aquifer, which makes it possible to grow water-intensive crops such as corn, which the region's aridity would otherwise not support. Some areas of the High Plains have significant petroleum and natural gas deposits.


title: High Plains (United States)

text: The combination of oil, natural gas, and wind energy along with plentiful underground water, has allowed some areas (such as West Texas) to sustain a range of economic activity, including occasional industry. For example, the ASARCO refinery in Amarillo, Texas has been in operation since 1924 due to the plentiful and inexpensive natural gas and water that are needed in metal ore refining.


title: High Plains (United States)

text: The High Plains has one of the lowest population densities of any region in the continental United States; Wyoming, for example, has the second lowest population density in the country after Alaska. In contrast to the stagnant population growth in the northern and western High Plains, cities in west Texas have shown sustained growth; Amarillo and Lubbock both have populations near or above 200,000 and continue to grow. Smaller towns, on the other hand, often struggle to sustain their population.


title: Driver (video game)

text: Driver (known as Driver: You Are the Wheelman in North America) is an action driving video game and the first installment in the "Driver" series. Developed by Reflections Interactive and published by GT Interactive, it was released on the PlayStation on 25 June 1999. The game, inspired by movie car chases, sees players driving around four real-life cities – Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York – using a variety of vehicles, with the plot focusing on the work of an undercover police officer, John Tanner, who infiltrates a criminal outfit to investigate their operations, only to discover a plot by their boss to assassinate the President of the United States.


title: Driver (video game)

text: The game proved a commercial hit upon release, and received favorable reviews from critics. Additional versions were created and released at later dates – two ports for Microsoft Windows and Mac were released on 11 October 1999 and in December 2000 respectively; and handheld remakes for the Game Boy Color, developed Crawfish Interactive and published by Infogrames, and for iOS and Palm Pre, developed and published by Gameloft, were released in May 2000 and on 8 December 2009 respectively. The game was re-released on the PlayStation Network on 14 October 2008. The game's success led to further sequels, including "Driver 2" in November 2000 and "Driver 3" in June 2004.


title: Driver (video game)

text: The game is played out in four cities: Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, each of which remain only partially faithful to the actual city layouts. A fifth bonus city, Newcastle (where Reflections Interactive is based), is unlockable in the PC version through gameplay and in the PlayStation version using a cheat device, but no missions are available and the playable area is small. The game was notable at the time of its original release insofar as the player was able to explore each city as an open world environment. "Driver" has often been compared to the "Grand Theft Auto" series. It also bears significant thematic resemblances to the 20th Century Fox movie "The Driver" (1978).


title: Driver (video game)

text: NYPD detective and former racing driver John Tanner is sent undercover by Lieutenant McKenzie to investigate a crime syndicate led by Castaldi; McKenzie instructs Tanner to go to Miami and meet a pimp named Rufus. After arriving in Miami, Tanner uses his driving skills to prove himself to some gangsters in a parking garage, and becomes their getaway driver.


title: Driver (video game)

text: Tanner carries out jobs for various criminals before meeting Rufus, who tasks Tanner with rescuing Jean-Paul, one of his associates. Rufus is later shot by his girlfriend Jesse, who is apprehended by Tanner, and she reveals that Jean-Paul is now in San Francisco.


title: Driver (video game)

text: Tanner goes to San Francisco, where he finally meets Castaldi and begins working directly for him. He also meets Rusty Slater, his former racing rival, who also works for Castaldi. Tanner later learns that Castaldi is working with a man named Don Hancock, who is running for president. He later suspects that Slater has been spying on him and wrecks Slater's car during a chase, resulting in Slater being arrested.


title: Driver (video game)

text: Castaldi's syndicate move to Los Angeles, where Castaldi plans to assassinate FBI agent Bill Maddox. Tanner instructs Leck, a police associate, to ensure Maddox turns up, otherwise his cover may be blown. The assassination is unsuccessful and the police ambush the gangsters, forcing Tanner to take them to safety. Tanner convinces the suspicious gangsters that Slater told the police about the planned assassination. Leck later tells Tanner that McKenzie recently met with Marcus Vaughn, a corrupt FBI agent who is working with Castaldi and Hancock.


title: Driver (video game)

text: The syndicate then moves to New York, where Castaldi plans a high profile assassination. Tanner is told by his police associates that McKenzie wants him to pull out of the undercover operation, as he worries for Tanner's cover, and Leck tells Tanner that Hancock has bribed several people in the FBI. Tanner remains undercover and continues working for Castaldi, intent on uncovering his plan.


title: Driver (video game)

text: Tanner eventually learns that Castaldi plans to assassinate the President of the United States, and Tanner is tasked with driving the President's car. However, he ignores all instructions and takes the President to safety. McKenzie then arrives and tells Tanner that Castaldi and all of his associates, including Hancock and Vaughn, have been arrested. However, Tanner suspects that the police and FBI were involved with Castaldi, and he leaves, ignoring McKenzie completely.


title: Driver (video game)

text: In 2009, a remastered version of the game was released on the App Store. Developed and published by Gameloft, the original plot and structure were left intact, but the graphics were enhanced, the music was re-done, and voice acting was re-recorded for the cutscenes.


title: Driver (video game)

text: "Driver" was a commercial hit, with sales above 1 million units by early August 1999. In the German market, "Driver"s PlayStation version received a "Gold" award from the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD) by the end of July, indicating sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The committee raised it to "Platinum" status (200,000 sales) by the end of September. In the United States, "Driver"s jewel case version for computers sold 390,000 copies and earned $3.8 million by August 2006, after its release in October 2000. It was the country's 42nd-best-selling computer game between January 2000 and August 2006. , it has sold over units worldwide and grossed $150 million in revenue.


title: Driver (video game)

text: Upon its initial release, "Driver" was met with very positive feedback and critical acclaim. The PlayStation and iOS versions received "favorable" reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.


title: Driver (video game)

text: Jeff Lundrigan reviewed the PlayStation version of the game for "Next Generation", rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "a movie buff's dream – but "Driver" is still great even if you aren't big on movies".


title: Driver (video game)

text: IGN's Douglass C. Perry said of the original PlayStation game: "In the history of driving games for PlayStation, there is nothing that comes close to the comprehensive, deep, and thoroughly pleasurable experience that's embedded deep in the heart of "Driver" [...] It fulfills driving enthusiasts' deepest desires to drive as fast as possible through major US cities and to slam into just about anything without any repercussions. In that sense, "Driver" is a dream come true". He went on to call it "one of the best driving games on any system". Game Revolution's Ben Silverman was equally impressed, saying: ""Driver" excels where other games have failed by striking a perfect balance between action and realism. Car handling is a wonderful mixture of true physics and arcade functionality—not as nitpicky and sim oriented as "Gran Turismo" nor as ridiculously implausible as "". Driving follows the 'easy to learn, hard to master' formula [...] Rarely does a game captivate the stoic and hypercritical Game Revolution office, but "Driver" has done just that". GameSpot's Ryan MacDonald was not as enthusiastic, saying: ""Driver" is a game that might be mediocre in its presentation but more than makes up for it in its gameplay and concept".


title: Driver (video game)

text: IGN's Mike Morrissey praised the quality of the PC port and said: "Though the PC version of "Driver" is a fairly straight port from the PlayStation title released in July, graphic improvements are apparent, especially at resolutions of 800x600 and over with the details cranked. Though this requires a fairly fast computer, the effect is worth it. Smooth frame rates reveal nice textures for the buildings and surroundings, translucent water in areas of Miami, and of course, lens flare". GameSpot's Erik Wolpaw was somewhat disappointed with the port, but this was negated because the original game was so strong: "Like many console-to-PC ports, "Driver" suffers from being translated verbatim and taking little advantage of the more powerful PC platform. However, "Driver"s core game design is so strikingly original and fun that it can be enjoyed without embellishment". They concluded that "it is addictive, intuitive, and fun, which are qualities sometimes overlooked in the industry's myopic pursuit of purely technical innovation. With "Driver", Reflections has produced the definitive re-creation of the classic urban car-chase movie and has quite possibly introduced a new genre of driving game".


title: Driver (video game)

text: IGN's Craig Harris praised the Game Boy Color port's top down view and the controls and concluded: "I'm actually quite surprised at how well "Driver" turned out for the Game Boy Color. I was expecting a Point-A-to-B game like "Grand Theft Auto" and got a whole lot more. The missions have different elements to give the basic formula a bit more variety. It's missing a few details from the PlayStation version, but for what Crawfish had to work with hardware-wise, the development team did a great job". GameSpot's Frank Provo was critical of the sound, but aside from that, he said, ""Driver" is smoothness personified. Driving around is fun and exciting, the levels are varied, and the side games really do improve your skill within the main game. Even without a battery save and a two-player feature, there's really nothing major to complain about".


title: Driver (video game)

text: Despite the general praise, the opening tutorial set in a car park, where the player has to perform various stunts and moves (such as drifting and 180 degree turns) as well as the final mission, were criticised for excessive difficulty. Because of this, the game frequently appears in lists of 'hardest PS1 games'.


title: Driver (video game)

text: At the 1999 E3 Game Critics Awards, "Driver" won "Best Racing Game", and in 2002 it was ranked No. 12 on IGN's list of the "Top 25 PlayStation Games".


title: Kristin Gore

text: Kristin Carlson Gore (born June 5, 1977) is an American author and screenwriter. She is the second daughter of former U.S. vice president Al Gore and advocate Tipper Gore (née Aitcheson).


title: Kristin Gore

text: Gore was born in Carthage, Tennessee. She has three siblings, sisters Karenna and Sarah, and brother Albert III. Gore was raised in Washington, D.C. She graduated from National Cathedral School in 1995 and Harvard University in 1999. While at Harvard, she was an editor for "The Harvard Lampoon", and, until her senior year, was the only woman on its literary board.


title: Kristin Gore

text: Gore has published three novels, "Sammy's Hill" (2004), "Sammy's House" (2007), and "Sweet Jiminy" (2011). She co-wrote the screenplay for the 2015 film "Accidental Love", and the narration for the 2007 documentary "Arctic Tale". She was also a writer for the animated sitcom "Futurama" and the long-running sketch comedy series "Saturday Night Live".


title: Kristin Gore

text: In 1999, Gore sang backup vocals on a Diva Zappa comedy single called "When The Bell Drops" about Zappa's "hunt for someone to make out with on the Millennium". Tipper Gore played drums on the recording.


title: Kristin Gore

text: In 2013, she worked on Spike Jonze's film "Her". Gore has written a screenplay called "Racing Dreams", with Lance Acord attached to direct.


title: Kristin Gore

text: Gore married Paul Cusack, a former district director for former Massachusetts United States Representative Marty Meehan, in 2005. The couple divorced in 2009. Since 2016, Gore has been married to musician Damian Kulash. They have two children.


title: Echo and Narcissus

text: Echo and Narcissus is a myth from Ovid's "Metamorphoses", a Roman mythological epic from the Augustan Age. The introduction of the myth of the mountain nymph Echo into the story of Narcissus, the beautiful youth who rejected Echo and fell in love with his own reflection, appears to have been Ovid's invention. Ovid's version influenced the presentation of the myth in later Western art and literature.


title: Echo and Narcissus

text: The myth of the goddess is told in Book III of the "Metamorphoses", and tells the story of a "talkative nymph" whom the goddess Venus admires for her magnificent voice and song. When she tricks Juno into believing that her husband, Jupiter, was in the city, Juno curses Echo by making her able to only finish a sentence not started, and unable to say anything on her own. "Yet a chatterbox, had no other use of speech than she has now, that she could repeat only the last words out of many." This is the explanation of the aural effect which was named after her.


title: Echo and Narcissus

text: Sometime after being cursed, Echo spied a young man, Narcissus, while he was out hunting deer with his companions. She immediately fell in love with him and, infatuated, followed quietly. The more she looked at the young man, the more she longed for him. Though she wished with all her heart to call out to Narcissus, Juno's curse prevented her.


title: Echo and Narcissus

text: During the hunt, Narcissus became separated from his companions and called out, ‘is anyone there,’ and heard the nymph repeat his words. Startled, Narcissus answered the voice, ‘come here,’ only to be told the same. When Narcissus saw that nobody had emerged from the glade, he concluded that the owner of the voice must be running away from him and called out again. Finally, he shouted, "This way, we must come together." Taking this to be a reciprocation of her love, Echo concurred ecstatically, "We must come together!"


title: Echo and Narcissus

text: In her delight, Echo rushed to Narcissus ready to throw her arms around her beloved. Narcissus, however, was appalled and, spurning her, exclaimed, ‘Hands off! May I die before you enjoy my body.’ All Echo could whisper in reply was, ‘enjoy my body’ and having done so she fled, scorned, humiliated, and shamed.


title: Echo and Narcissus

text: Despite the harshness of his rejection, Echo's love for Narcissus only grew. Echo's fellow nymphs prayed to Nemesis to punish Narcissus with a love that was equally not reciprocated. Nemesis caused him to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water where he wasted away and died, unable to take his eyes away from the beautiful youth he did not recognise as himself. Narcissus, looking one last time into the pool uttered, "Oh marvellous boy, I loved you in vain, farewell", Echo too chorused, "Farewell."


title: Echo and Narcissus

text: Eventually, Echo, too, began to waste away. Though she was immortal, her body faded and her bones turned to stone. Today, all that remains of Echo is the sound of her voice.


title: Ordination of women

text: The ordination of women to ministerial or priestly office is an increasingly common practice among some contemporary major religious groups. It remains a controversial issue in certain Christian traditions and most denominations in which "ordination" (the process by which a person is understood to be consecrated and set apart by God for the administration of various religious rites) was often a traditionally male dominated profession (except within the diaconate and early heretical movement known as Montanism).


title: Ordination of women

text: In some cases, women have been permitted to be ordained, but not to hold higher positions, such as (until July 2014) that of bishop in the Church of England. Where laws prohibit sex discrimination in employment, exceptions are often made for clergy (for example, in the United States) on grounds of separation of church and state. The following aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the ordination of women from ancient to contemporary times. Religious groups are ordered alphabetically, while subgroups may be ordered chronologically (e.g. Christian denominations).


title: Ordination of women

text: In Ancient Egyptian religion, God's Wife of Amun was the highest ranking priestess; this title was held by a daughter of the High Priest of Amun, during the reign of Hatshepsut, while the capital of Egypt was in Thebes during the second millennium BC (circa 2160 BC).


title: Ordination of women

text: Later, Divine Adoratrice of Amun was a title created for the chief priestess of Amun. During the first millennium BC, when the holder of this office exercised her largest measure of influence, her position was an important appointment facilitating the transfer of power from one pharaoh to the next, when his daughter was "adopted" to fill it by the incumbent office holder. The Divine Adoratrice ruled over the extensive temple duties and domains, controlling a significant part of the ancient Egyptian economy.


title: Ordination of women

text: In ancient Greek religion, some important observances, such as the Thesmophoria, were made by women. Priestesses, Hiereiai, served in many different cults of many divinities, with their duties varying depending on the cult and the divinity in which they served.


title: Ordination of women

text: Priestesses played a major role in the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which they served on many levels, from the High Priestess of Demeter and Dadouchousa Prietess to the Panageis and Hierophantides. The Gerarai were priestesses of Dionysus who presided over festivals and rituals associated with the god.


title: Ordination of women

text: A body of priestesses might also maintain the cult at a particular holy site, such as the Peleiades at the oracle of Dodona. The "Arrephoroi" were young girls ages seven to twelve who worked as servants of Athena Polias on the Athenian Acropolis and were charged with conducting unique rituals under the surveillance of the High Priestess of Athena Polias. The Priestess of Hera at Argos served at the Heraion of Argos and enjoyed great prestige in all Greece.


title: Ordination of women

text: At several sites women priestesses served as oracles, the most famous of which is the Oracle of Delphi. The priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was the Pythia, credited throughout the Greco-Roman world for her prophecies, which gave her a prominence unusual for a woman in male-dominated ancient Greece. The Phrygian Sibyl presided over an oracle of Apollo in Anatolian Phrygia. The inspired speech of divining women, however, was interpreted by male priests; a woman might be a mantic "(mantis)" who became the mouthpiece of a deity through possession, but the "prophecy of interpretation" required specialized knowledge and was considered a rational process suited only to a male '"prophet" ("prophētēs").


title: Ordination of women

text: The Latin word "sacerdos", "priest", is the same for both the grammatical genders. In Roman state religion, the Vestal Virgins were responsible for the continuance and security of Rome as embodied by the sacred fire that they were required to tend on pain of extreme punishment. The Vestals were a college of six "sacerdotes" (plural) devoted to Vesta, goddess of the hearth, both the focus of a private home "(domus)" and the state hearth that was the center of communal religion. Freed of the usual social obligations to marry and rear children, the Vestals took a vow of chastity in order to devote themselves to the study and correct observance of state rituals that were off-limits to the male colleges of priests. They retained their religious authority until the Christian emperor Gratian confiscated their revenues and his successor Theodosius I closed the Temple of Vesta permanently.


title: Ordination of women

text: The Romans also had at least two priesthoods that were each held jointly by a married couple, the "rex" and "regina sacrorum", and the "flamen" and "flaminica Dialis". The "regina sacrorum" ("queen of the sacred rites") and the "flaminica Dialis" (high priestess of Jupiter) each had her own distinct duties and presided over public sacrifices, the "regina" on the first day of every month, and the "flaminica" every nundinal cycle (the Roman equivalent of a week). The highly public nature of these sacrifices, like the role of the Vestals, indicates that women's religious activities in ancient Rome were not restricted to the private or domestic sphere. So essential was the gender complement to these priesthoods that if the wife died, the husband had to give up his office. This is true of the flaminate, and probably true of the "rex" and "regina".


title: Ordination of women

text: The title "sacerdos" was often specified in relation to a deity or temple, such as a "sacerdos Cereris" or "Cerealis", "priestess of Ceres", an office never held by men. Female "sacerdotes" played a leading role in the sanctuaries of Ceres and Proserpina in Rome and throughout Italy that observed so-called "Greek rite" ("ritus graecus"). This form of worship had spread from Sicily under Greek influence, and the Aventine cult of Ceres in Rome was headed by male priests. Only women celebrated the rites of the Bona Dea ("Good Goddess"), for whom "sacerdotes" are recorded. The Temple of Ceres in Rome was surved by the Priestess of Ceres, Sacerdos Cereris, and the Temple of Bona Dea by the Priestess of Bona Dea, Sacerdos Bonae Deae. Other Priestesses were the Sacerdos Liberi, Sacerdos Fortunae Muliebris and the Sacerdos Matris Deum Magnae Idaeae; sacerdos also served as priestesses of the Imperial cult.


title: Ordination of women

text: From the Mid Republic onward, religious diversity became increasingly characteristic of the city of Rome. Many religions that were not part of Rome's earliest state religion offered leadership roles as priests for women, among them the imported cult of Isis and of the "Magna Mater" ("Great Mother", or Cybele). An epitaph preserves the title "sacerdos maxima" for a woman who held the highest priesthood of the Magna Mater's temple near the current site of St. Peter's Basilica. Inscriptions for the Imperial era record priestesses of Juno Populona and of deified women of the Imperial household.


title: Ordination of women

text: Under some circumstances, when cults such as mystery religions were introduced to Romans, it was preferred that they be maintained by women. Although it was Roman practice to incorporate other religions instead of trying to eradicate them, the secrecy of some mystery cults was regarded with suspicion. In 189 BCE, the senate attempted to suppress the Bacchanals, claiming the secret rites corrupted morality and were a hotbed of political conspiracy. One provision of the senatorial decree was that only women should serve as priests of the Dionysian religion, perhaps to guard against the politicizing of the cult, since even Roman women who were citizens lacked the right to vote or hold political office. Priestesses of Liber, the Roman god identified with Dionysus, are mentioned by the 1st-century BC scholar Varro, as well as indicated by epigraphic evidence.


title: Ordination of women

text: Other religious titles for Roman women include "magistra", a high priestess, female expert or teacher; and "ministra", a female assistant, particularly one in service to a deity. A "magistra" or "ministra" would have been responsible for the regular maintenance of a cult. Epitaphs provide the main evidence for these priesthoods, and the woman is often not identified in terms of her marital status.


title: Ordination of women

text: The tradition of the ordained monastic community in Buddhism (the sangha) began with the Buddha, who established an order of monks. According to the scriptures, later, after an initial reluctance, he also established an order of nuns. Fully ordained Buddhist nuns are called bhikkhunis. Mahapajapati Gotami, the aunt and foster mother of Buddha, was the first bhikkhuni; she was ordained in the sixth century B.C.E.


title: Ordination of women

text: Prajñādhara is the twenty-seventh Indian Patriarch of Zen Buddhism and is believed to have been a woman.


title: Ordination of women

text: In the Mahayana tradition during the 13th century, the Japanese Mugai Nyodai became the first female Zen master in Japan.


title: Ordination of women

text: However, the bhikkhuni ordination once existing in the countries where Theravada is more widespread died out around the 10th century, and novice ordination has also disappeared in those countries. Therefore, women who wish to live as nuns in those countries must do so by taking eight or ten precepts. Neither laywomen nor formally ordained, these women do not receive the recognition, education, financial support or status enjoyed by Buddhist men in their countries. These "precept-holders" live in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, and Thailand. In particular, the governing council of Burmese Buddhism has ruled that there can be no valid ordination of women in modern times, though some Burmese monks disagree. However, in 2003, Saccavadi and Gunasari were ordained as bhikkhunis in Sri Lanka, thus becoming the first female Burmese novices in modern times to receive higher ordination in Sri Lanka. Japan is a special case as, although it has neither the bhikkhuni nor novice ordinations, the precept-holding nuns who live there do enjoy a higher status and better training than their precept-holder sisters elsewhere, and can even become Zen priests. In Tibet there is currently no bhikkhuni ordination, but the Dalai Lama has authorized followers of the Tibetan tradition to be ordained as nuns in traditions that have such ordination.


title: Ordination of women

text: The bhikkhuni ordination of Buddhist nuns has always been practiced in East Asia. In 1996, through the efforts of Sakyadhita, an International Buddhist Women Association, ten Sri Lankan women were ordained as bhikkhunis in Sarnath, India. Also, bhikkhuni ordination of Buddhist nuns began again in Sri Lanka in 1998 after a lapse of 900 years. In 2003 Ayya Sudhamma became the first American-born woman to receive bhikkhuni ordination in Sri Lanka.


title: Ordination of women

text: Furthermore, on February 28, 2003, Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, formerly known as Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, became the first Thai woman to receive bhikkhuni ordination as a Theravada nun (Theravada is a school of Buddhism).


title: Ordination of women

text: Dhammananda Bhikkhuni was ordained in Sri Lanka. Dhammananda Bhikkhuni's mother Venerable Voramai, also called Ta Tao Fa Tzu, had become the first fully ordained Thai woman in the Mahayana lineage in Taiwan in 1971.