title: History of Western civilization

text: Although Europe as a whole was relatively peaceful in this period, both Britain and Spain suffered from acts of terrorism. In Britain, The Troubles saw Irish republicans battle Unionists loyal to Britain. In Spain, ETA, a Basque separatist group, began committing acts of terror against Spaniards, hoping to gain independence for the Basques, an ethnic minority in north-eastern Spain. Both these terrorist campaigns failed, however.


title: History of Western civilization

text: For Greece, Spain and Portugal, ideological battles between left and right continued and the emergence of parliamentary democracy was troubled. Greece experienced Civil War, coup and counter-coup into the 1970s. Portugal, since the 1930s under a quasi-Fascist regime and among the poorest nations in Europe, fought a rearguard action against independence movements in its empire, until a 1974 coup. The last authoritarian dictatorship in Western Europe fell in 1975, when Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain, died. Franco had helped to modernize the country and improve the economy. His successor, King Juan Carlos, transformed the country into a constitutional monarchy. By 1980, all Western European nations were democracies.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Between 1945 and 1980, the British Empire was transformed from its centuries old position as a global colonial power, to a voluntary association known as the Commonwealth of Nations – only some of which retained any formal political links to Britain or its monarchy. Some former British colonies or protectorates disassociated themselves entirely from Britain.


title: History of Western civilization

text: The popular war time leader Winston Churchill was swept from office at the 1945 election and the Labour Government of Clement Attlee introduced a program of nationalisation of industry and introduced wide-ranging social welfare. Britain's finances had been ravaged by the war and John Maynard Keynes was sent to Washington to negotiate the massive Anglo-American loan on which Britain relied to fund its post-war reconstruction.


title: History of Western civilization

text: India was granted Independence in 1947 and Britain's global influence rapidly declined as decolonisation proceeded. Though the USSR and United States now stood as the post war super powers, Britain and France launched the ill-fated Suez intervention in the 1950s, and Britain committed to the Korean War.


title: History of Western civilization

text: From the 1960s The Troubles afflicted Northern Ireland, as British Unionist and Irish Republican paramilitaries conducted campaigns of violence in support of their political goals. The conflict at times spilled into Ireland and England and continental Europe. Paramilitaries such as the IRA (Irish Republican Army) wanted union with the Republic of Ireland while the UDA (Ulster Defence Association) were supporters of Northern Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom.


title: History of Western civilization

text: In 1973, Britain entered the European Common Market, stepping away from imperial and commonwealth trade ties. Inflation and unemployment contributed to a growing sense of economic decline – partly offset by the exploitation of North Sea Oil from 1974. In 1979, the electorate turned to Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher, who became Britain's first female prime minister. Thatcher launched a radical program of economic reform and remained in power for over a decade. In 1982, Thatcher dispatched a British fleet to the Falkland Islands which successfully repelled an Argentine invasion of the British Territory, demonstrating that Britain could still project power across the globe.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Canada continued to evolve its own national identity in the post-war period. Although it was an independent nation, it remained part of the British Commonwealth and recognized the British monarch as the Canadian monarch as well. Following the war, French and English were recognized as co-equal official languages in Canada, and French became the only official language in the French-speaking province of Quebec. Referendums were held in both 1980 and 1995 in which Quebecers, however, voted not to secede from the union. Other cultural changes Canada faced were similar to those in the United States. Racism and discrimination largely disappeared in the post-war years, and dual-income families became the norm. Also, there was a rejection of traditional Western values by many in Canada. The government also established universal health care for its citizens following the war.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Following World War II, Australia and New Zealand enjoyed a great deal of prosperity along with the rest of the West. Both countries remained constitutional monarchies within the evolving Commonwealth of Nations and continued to recognise British monarchs as head of their own independent Parliaments. However, following British defeats by the Japanese in World War II, the post-war decline of the British Empire, and entry of Britain into the European Economic Community in 1973, the two nations re-calibrated defence and trade relations with the rest of the world. Following the Fall of Singapore in 1941, Australia turned to the United States for military aid against the Japanese Empire and Australia and New Zealand joined the United States in the ANZUS military alliance in the early 1950s and contributed troops to anti-communist conflicts in South-East Asia in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The two nations also established multicultural immigration programs with waves of economic and refugee migrants establishing bases for large Southern European, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and South Pacific islander communities. Trade integration with Asia expanded, particularly through good post-war relations with Japan. The Maori and Australian Aborigines had been largely dispossessed and disenfranchised during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but relations between the descendants of European settlers and the Indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand began to improve through legislative and social reform over the post-war period corresponding with the civil rights movement in North America. The Fraser Government became a vocal critic of white-minority rule in Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia, concluding the Gleaeagles Agreement in 1977.


title: History of Western civilization

text: The arts also diversified and flourished over the period – with Australian cinema, literature and musical artists expanding their nation's profile internationally. The iconic Sydney Opera House opened in 1973 and Australian Aboriginal Art began to find international recognition and influence.


title: History of Western civilization

text: The West went through a series of great cultural and social changes between 1945 and 1980. Mass media created a global culture that could ignore national frontiers. Literacy became almost universal, encouraging the growth of books, magazines and newspapers. The influence of cinema and radio remained, while televisions became near essentials in every home. A new pop culture also emerged with rock n roll and pop stars at its heart.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Religious observance declined in most of the West. Protestant churches began focusing more on social gospel rather than doctrine, and the ecumenist movement, which supported co-operation among Christian Churches. The Catholic Church changed many of its practices in the Second Vatican Council, including allowing masses to be said in the vernacular rather than Latin.


title: History of Western civilization

text: The counterculture of the 1960s (and early 1970s) began in the United States as a reaction against the conservative government, social norms of the 1950s, the political conservatism (and perceived social repression) of the Cold War period, and the US government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam.


title: History of Western civilization

text: With the abolition of laws treating most non-whites as second-class citizens, overt institutional racism largely disappeared from the West.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Although the United States failed to secure the legal equality of women with men (by the failure of Congress to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment), women continued working outside the home, and by 1980 the double-income family became commonplace in Western society. Beginning in the 1960s, many began rejecting traditional Western values and there was a decline in emphasis on church and the family.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Rock and roll music and the spread of technological innovations such as television dramatically altered the cultural landscape of western civilisation. The influential artists of the 20th century often belonged to the new technology artforms.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Rock and roll emerged from the United States from the 1950s to become a quintessential 20th-century art form. Artists such as Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash and, later, The Beach Boys developed the new genre in the Southern United States. Cash became an icon of the also newly emerging popular genre of country music. British rock and roll emerged later, with bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones rising to unparalleled success during the 1960s. From Australia emerged the mega pop band The Bee Gees and hard rock band AC/DC, who carried the genre in new directions through the 1970s. These musical artists were icons of radical social changes which saw many traditional notions of western culture alter dramatically.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Hollywood, California became synonymous with film during the 20th century and American Cinema continued a period of immense global influence in the West after World War II. American cinema played a role in adjusting community attitudes through the 1940s to 1980 with seminal works like John Ford's 1956 Western "The Searchers", starring John Wayne, providing a sympathetic view of the Native American experience; and 1962's "To Kill a Mockingbird", based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee and starring Gregory Peck, challenging racial prejudice. The advent of television challenged the status of cinema and the artform evolved dramatically from the 1940s through the age of glamorous icons like Marilyn Monroe and directors like Alfred Hitchcock to the emergence of such directors as Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, whose body of work reflected the emerging Space Age and immense technological and social change.


title: History of Western civilization

text: The 1980s were a period of economic growth in the West, though the 1987 Stock Market Crash saw much of the West enter the 1990s in a downturn. The 1990s and turn of the century in turn saw a period of prosperity throughout the West. The World Trade Organization was formed to assist in the organisation of world trade. Following the collapse of Soviet Communism, Central and Eastern Europe began a difficult readjustment towards market economies and parliamentary democracy. In the post Cold War environment, new co-operation emerged between the West and former rivals like Russia and China, but Islamism declared itself a mortal enemy of the West, and wars were launched in Afghanistan and the mid-East in response. The economic cycle turned again with the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, but amidst a new economic paradigm, the effect on the West was uneven, with Europe and United States suffering deep recession, but Pacific economies like Australia and Canada, largely avoiding the downturn – benefitting from a combination of rising trade with Asia, good fiscal management and banking regulation. In the early 21st century, Brasil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC nations) were re-emerging as drivers of economic growth from outside North America and Western Europe.


title: History of Western civilization

text: In the early stages after the Cold War, Russian president Boris Yeltsin stared down an attempted restoration of Sovietism in Russia, and pursued closer relations with the West. Amid economic turmoil a class of oligarchs emerged at the summit of the Russian economy. Yeltsin's chosen successor, the former spy, Vladimir Putin, tightened the reins on political opposition, opposed separatist movements within the Russian Federation, and battled pro-Western neighbour states like Georgia, contributing to a challenging climate of relations with Europe and America. Former Soviet satellites joined NATO and the European Union, leaving Russia again isolated in the East. Under Putin's long reign, the Russian economy profited from a resource boom in the global economy, and the political and economic instability of the Yeltsin era was brought to an end.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Elsewhere, both within and without the West, democracy and capitalism were in the ascendant – even Communist holdouts like mainland China and (to a lesser extent) Cuba and Vietnam, while retaining one party government, experimented with market liberalisation, a process which accelerated after the fall of European Communism, enabling the re-emergence of China as an alternative centre of economic and political power standing outside the West.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Free trade agreements were signed by many countries. The European nations broke down trade barriers with one another in the EU, and the United States, Canada, and Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Although free trade has helped businesses and consumers, it has had the unintended consequence of leading companies to outsource jobs to areas where labor is cheapest. Today, the West's economy is largely service and information-based, with most of the factories closing and relocating to China and India.


title: History of Western civilization

text: European countries have had very good relations with each other since 1980. The European Union has become increasingly powerful, taking on roles traditionally reserved for the nation-state. Although real power still exists in the individual member states, one major achievement of the Union was the introduction of the Euro, a currency adopted by most EU countries.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Australia and New Zealand continued their large multi-ethnic immigration programs and became more integrated in the Asia Pacific region. While remaining constitutional monarchies within the Commonwealth, distance has grown between them and Britain, spurred on by Britain's entry into the European Common Market. Australia and New Zealand have integrated their own economies via a free trade agreement. While political and cultural ties with North America and Europe remain strong, economic reform and commodities trade with the booming economies of Asia have set the South Pacific nations on a new economic trajectory with Australia largely avoiding a downturn in the Financial crisis of 2007–2008 which unleashed severe economic loss through North America and Western Europe.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Today Canada remains part of the Commonwealth, and relations between French and English Canada have continued to present problems. A referendum was held in Quebec, however, in 1980, in which Quebecers voted to remain part of Canada.


title: History of Western civilization

text: In 1990, the white-minority government of the Republic of South Africa, led by F. W. de Klerk, began negotiations to dismantle the system of apartheid. South Africa held its first universal elections in 1994, which the African National Congress (ANC), led by Nelson Mandela, won by an overwhelming majority. The country has since rejoined the Commonwealth of Nations.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Since 1991, the United States has been regarded as the world's only superpower. Politically, the United States is dominated by the Republican and Democratic parties. Presidents of the United States between 1980 and 2006 have been Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Since 1980, Americans have become far more optimistic about their country than they were in the 1970s. Since the 1960s, a large number of immigrants have been coming into the U.S., mostly from Asia and Latin America, with the largest single group being Mexicans. Large numbers from those areas have also been coming illegally, and the solution to this problem has produced much debate in the U.S.


title: History of Western civilization

text: On 11 September 2001, the United States suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history. Four planes were hijacked by Islamic extremists and crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.


title: History of Western civilization

text: The late-2000s financial crisis, considered by many economists to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, was triggered by a liquidity shortfall in the United States banking system, and has resulted in the collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and downturns in stock markets throughout much of the West. The United States and Britain faced serious downturn, while Portugal, Greece, Ireland and Iceland faced major debt crises. Almost uniquely among Western nations, Australia avoided recession off the back of strong Asian trade and 25 years of economic reform and low levels of government debt.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Evidence of the major demographic and social shifts which have taken place within Western society since World War II can be found with the elections of national level leaders: United States (Barack Obama was elected president in 2009, becoming the first African-American to hold that office), France (Nicolas Sarkozy, a president of France of Hungarian descent), Germany (Angela Merkel, the first female leader of that nation), and Australia (Julia Gillard, also the first female leader of that nation).


title: History of Western civilization

text: Following 1991, Western nations provided troops and aid to many war-torn areas of the world. Some of these missions were unsuccessful, like the attempt by the United States to provide relief in Somalia in the early 1990s. A very successful peace-making operation was conducted in the Balkans in the late 1990s, however. After the Cold War, Yugoslavia broke up into several countries along ethnic lines, and soon countries and ethnic groups within countries of the former Yugoslavia began fighting one another. Eventually, NATO troops arrived in 1999 and ended the conflict. Australian led a United Nations mission into East Timor in 1999 (INTERFET) to restore order during that nation's transition to democracy and independence from Indonesia.


title: History of Western civilization

text: The greatest war fought by the West in the 1990s, however, was the Persian Gulf War. In 1990, the Middle Eastern nation of Iraq, under its brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, invaded the much smaller neighbouring country of Kuwait. After refusing to withdraw troops, the United Nations condemned Iraq and sent troops to liberate Kuwait. American, British, French, Egyptian and Syrian troops all took part in the liberation. The war ended in 1991, with the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait and Iraq's agreement to allow United Nations inspectors to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.


title: History of Western civilization

text: The West had become increasingly unpopular in the Middle East following World War II. The Arab states greatly disliked the West's support for Israel. Many soon had a special hatred towards the United States, Israel's greatest ally. Also, partly to ensure stability on the region and a steady supply of the oil the world economy needed, the United States supported many corrupt dictatorships in the Middle East. In 1979, an Islamic revolution in Iran overthrew the pro-Western Shah and established an anti-Western Shiite Islamic theocracy. Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, most of the country came under the rule of a Sunni Islamic theocracy, the Taliban. The Taliban offered shelter to the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda, founded by the extremist Saudi Arabian exile Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda launched a series of attacks on United States overseas interests in the 1990s and 2000. Following the September 11 attacks, however, the United States overthrew the Taliban government and captured or killed many Al Qaeda leaders, including Bin Laden. In 2003, the United States led a controversial war in Iraq, because Saddam had never accounted for all his weapons of mass destruction. By May of that year, American, British, Polish and troops from other countries had defeated and occupied Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction however, were never found afterwards. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States and its allies established democratic governments. Following the Iraq war, however, an insurgency made up of a number of domestic and foreign factions has cost many lives and made establishing a government very hard.


title: History of Western civilization

text: In March 2011, a multi-state coalition led by NATO began a military intervention in Libya to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which was taken in response to threat made by the government of Muammar Gaddafi against the civilian population of Libya during the 2011 Libyan civil war.


title: History of Western civilization

text: In general, Western culture has become increasingly secular in Northern Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Nevertheless, in a sign of the continuing status of the ancient Western institution of the Papacy in the early 21st century, the Funeral of Pope John Paul II brought together the single largest gathering in history of heads of state outside the United Nations. It is likely to have been the largest single gathering of Christianity in history, with numbers estimated in excess of four million mourners gathering in Rome. He was followed by another non-Italian Benedict XVI, whose near-unprecedented resignation from the papacy in 2013 ushered in the election of the Argentine Pope Francis – the first pope from the Americas, the new demographic heartland of Catholicism.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Personal computers emerged from the West as a new society changing phenomenon during this period. In the 1960s, experiment began on networks linking computers and from these experiments grew the World Wide Web. The internet revolutionised global communications through the late 1990s and into the early 21st century and permitted the rise of new social media with profound consequences, linking the world as never before. In the West, the internet allowed free access to vast amounts of information, while outside the democratic West, as in China and in Middle Eastern nations, a range of censorship and monitoring measures were instigated, providing a new socio-political contrast between east and west.


title: History of Western civilization

text: Chicago historian William H. McNeill wrote "The Rise of the West" (1965) to show how the separate civilizations of Eurasia interacted from the very beginning of their history, borrowing critical skills from one another, and thus precipitating still further change as adjustment between traditional old and borrowed new knowledge and practice became necessary. He then discusses the dramatic effect of Western civilization on others in the past 500 years of history. McNeill took a broad approach organized around the interactions of peoples across the globe. Such interactions have become both more numerous and more continual and substantial in recent times. Before about 1500, the network of communication between cultures was that of Eurasia. The term for these areas of interaction differ from one world historian to another and include "world-system" and "ecumene." His emphasis on cultural fusions influenced historical theory significantly.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Bramall Lane is a football stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, which is the home of Sheffield United.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The stadium was originally a cricket ground, built on a road named after the Bramall family of file and graver manufacturers. The Bramalls owned The Old White House, on the corner of Bramall Lane and Cherry Street, and the Sheaf House, now a pub, that still stands at the top of Bramall Lane.


title: Bramall Lane

text: It was the largest stadium in Sheffield in the 19th century, and hosted the city's most significant matches, including the final of the world's first football tournament, first floodlit match and several matches between the Sheffield and London Football Associations that led to the unification of their respective rules. It was also used by Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield FC. It has been the home of Sheffield United since the club's establishment in 1889. It is the oldest major stadium in the world still hosting professional association football matches.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Bramall Lane is one of only two grounds (the other being the Oval) which has hosted England football internationals (five games before 1930), an England Test cricket match (in 1902, against Australia) and an FA Cup Final (the 1912 replay, in which Barnsley beat West Bromwich Albion 1–0). It also regularly hosted FA Cup semi-finals and replays between 1889 and 1938. In 2022, it hosted UEFA Women's Euro 2022 matches.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The ground has also hosted rugby league games for the Sheffield Eagles, as well as for the delayed 2021 Rugby League World Cup in 2022. The ground also hosted a Billy Graham Evangelist meeting in 1985, rock concerts by Bruce Springsteen in 1988, a friendly match for the 150th anniversary of Sheffield FC when they played Inter Milan in 2007, a Travis Pastrana Motor cross event in 2016, an IBF Welterweight title boxing match featuring Sheffield United fan Kell Brook in 2017, the Women's League Cup final and a Rod Stewart concert in 2019, and Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe rock concerts in 2023. The stadium has also been used to host England men's and women's senior and youth teams in friendly and competitive matches.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The record attendance at the ground is 68,287, set during an FA Cup fifth round tie between Sheffield United and Leeds United on 15 February 1936. The ground was extensively renovated in the wake of the Taylor Report and has an all-seated capacity of 32,050.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Bramall Lane opened as a cricket ground in 1855, having been leased by Michael Ellison from the Duke of Norfolk at an annual rent of £70. The site was then away from the city's industrial area, and relatively free from smoke. It was built to host the matches of local cricket clubs and originally had six clubs playing there, one of whom was the Wednesday Cricket Club, forerunner of Sheffield Wednesday.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Bramall Lane opened on 30 April 1855 as a cricket ground with a match between "The Eleven" and "The Twenty Two", The Eleven, despite being the senior team, lost by an innings and 28 runs.


title: Bramall Lane

text: A team representing Yorkshire played the first county match at the ground on 27 August 1855, against Sussex but lost by an innings and 117 runs.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Although the first county game had been played eight years earlier, the official Yorkshire County Cricket Club was not formed until 1863. The idea came from Ellison, who was using his own finances to support the club, in order to improve Bramall Lane's financial position as the county's headquarters. It was the club's headquarters until 1893, when they moved to Headingley in Leeds.


title: Bramall Lane

text: In 1897, Jack Brown and John Tunnicliffe recorded a first wicket score of 378 against Sussex — a ground record that stands to this day. Brown's score of 311 and Yorkshire's innings of 681–5 declared were also records when the cricket ground closed. Other notable scores include 582–7 against Surrey in 1935 and 579 against the touring South Africa team in 1951. Six other scores in excess of 500 were made. In contrast there were a host of scores under 100, mainly in the 19th century, although Derbyshire's paltry total of 20 in 1939 remains the lowest ever score. Nottinghamshire were dismissed for 24 in 1888, but Kent bowled Yorkshire out for 30 during a match in 1865. Many of the low totals were made on rain affected, uncovered wickets.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The ground hosted a single Test match in 1902, against Australia, which England lost by 143 runs. Australia won thanks to a century by Clem Hill and the bowling of Saunders and Noble, who each took five wickets in England's first innings of 145 and Noble and Trumble who took six and four wickets respectively to bowl the home team out for 195 second time around. The defeat was blamed on the poor light at the ground; a product of smoke emitted by local factories. Attendances were poor and the experiment was never repeated.


title: Bramall Lane

text: In addition, Jack Brown's triple century 10 double centuries were scored on the ground. Len Hutton scored unbeaten two double centuries, a 280 not out against Hampshire in 1939 and 271 not out against Derbyshire in 1937. W Barber posted 255 against Surrey in 1935 while the great Indian batsman V.S. Hazare scored 244 not out for the Indian tourists in the first season after World War II.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Among many notable partnerships W. Barber and Maurice Leyland amassed 346 for the second wicket against Middlesex in 1932 and the aforementioned V.S. Hazare and Vinoo Mankad put on 322 for the Indians against Yorkshire for the 4th wicket in 1946. Only one century was scored in list A one-day cricket at Bramall Lane, John Hampshire's 108 against Nottinghamshire in 1970 in the Sunday League.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Three bowlers took all ten wickets in an innings at Bramall Lane, the feat being more common in the annals of first-class cricket than many imagine. The great Australian leg spinner Clarrie Grimmett took 10 for 37 for the tourists in 1930 while TF Smailes took all 10 for 47 for Yorkshire against Derbyshire in 1939. G. Wootton took 10 for 54 for an All England Eleven v Yorkshire in 1865 while 9 other bowlers took 9 wickets in an innings there, including a haul of 9 for 12 by the great Yorkshire slow left armer Hedley Verity.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The best match bowling figures at the ground, 16 for 114, were recorded by G. Burton of Middlesex against Yorkshire in 1888 while Hedley Verity took a remarkable 15 for 38 against Kent in 1936. Len Braund took 15 for 71 for Somerset in 1902 while W. G. Grace showed his youthful talent with the ball with a haul of 15 for 79 for Gloucestershire in 1872.


title: Bramall Lane

text: D. Hunter of Surrey dismissed caught five batsmen and stumped another in one innings in 1891 while Yorkshire stalwart Jimmy Binks completed 5 dismissals in an innings 3 times.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The two ends of the ground were known as the Pavilion End and the Football Ground End. Between 1863 and 1973, Yorkshire played 391 first class matches, including 339 County Championship matches at Bramall Lane. Yorkshire's last match at the ground took place on 4, 6 and 7 August 1973, a drawn game against Lancashire. The construction of the South Stand began soon after, over the cricket square, finally enclosing the football pitch on all four sides. Yorkshire's cricket games in Sheffield moved to Abbeydale Park.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The ground hosted its first football match on 29 December 1862, between Sheffield and Hallam The game was played to raise money for the Lancashire Distress Fund during the cotton famine and ended 0–0.


title: Bramall Lane

text: As Sheffield's primary sporting stadium, it held all the most important local matches. Bramall Lane hosted the semi-final, final and second-place playoff of the 1867 Youdan Cup (won by Hallam). This was followed by the Cromwell Cup a year later, which was won by a newly formed team called The Wednesday. By 1877, a crowd of 8,000 watched The Wednesday beat Hallam in the Sheffield Challenge Cup. Bramall Lane effectively became The Wednesday's permanent home between 1880 and the opening of their new stadium at Olive Grove in 1887.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The first inter-association match, between the FA (often referred to as the London FA) and Sheffield FA, was also held at Bramall Lane on 2 December 1871. It was won 3–1 by the home side, who also arranged a number of games with other Associations including regular fixtures against the Glasgow FA (the first in 1874 and the last in 1957).


title: Bramall Lane

text: On 22 March 1889, six days after 22,688 people paid to watch the FA Cup semi-final between Preston North End and West Bromwich Albion, it was decided to create a home football team to play at Bramall Lane. It was named Sheffield United after the cricket team.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Bramall Lane was regularly used for international matches before the construction of a national stadium in London. The world's first ever floodlit football match took place at Bramall Lane on 14 October 1878 in front of an attendance of 20,000. England's match against Scotland on 10 March 1883 was the first match between these two countries outside London or Glasgow. Bramall Lane is the second-oldest football venue in the world still capable of hosting international matches, after the Racecourse Ground in Wrexham.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Bramall Lane was one of several venues used for the UEFA Women's Euro 2022 tournament. It was used to host Group C matches, alongside Leigh Sports Village, and a semi-final, which involved England.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The ground has been an all-seater stadium since 1994 and comprises four stands and two corner infill sections in the north-east and south-west corners. The north-west corner (as well as a lot of the land under the John Street Stand) contains the Blades Enterprise Centre. The south-west corner behind the Bramall Lane corner stand is a four-star hotel built in 2008.


title: Bramall Lane

text: This is the oldest existing stand at Bramall Lane, this two-tiered structure was opened in 1966 behind the goal at the Bramall Lane end, opposite the Kop. The bottom tier is generally occupied by away fans whilst the upper tier, which links into the south-west corner infill stand, is given to home fans (although part of the upper tier may be offered to away fans for cup fixtures if demand is sufficient). During the 2005–06 season, the outside of the Bramall Lane Stand was reclad in red-and-white, with the stand sponsors and the club crest on the outside of the stand, while the wooden seats of the upper tier were replaced with newer plastic seats with the words "BLADES" written into them. When the corner infill stand was built during the close season, the roof over the Bramall Lane Stand was extended toward the pitch to provide better cover for the lower tier and to remove the supporting pillars from the upper tier. There are approximately 2,700 seats in the upper tier, and 2,990 in the lower, giving a total capacity of 5,680. This stand had for many years housed a basic LCD scoreboard and clock between the upper and lower tiers, however at the start of the 2006–07 season both were replaced by a modern colour video scoreboard.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The stand was temporarily known as the “Jessica Ennis Stand” following the 2012 Olympics but was renamed after sponsors in 2015. Ennis-Hill had threatened to remove her name from the stand following controversy over the club's decision to re-sign Ched Evans after his release from prison.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Located off Cherry Street, The Tony Currie Stand opened in August 1975. In 2018, the stand was named after Sheffield United legend Tony Currie. The Stand is also known as the "South Stand", although some fans still refer to it as the "Laver Stand" (after the stand's long-term sponsors in the 1990s) or even the "New Stand" by many older fans since there was no stand on the South end of the pitch until 1975, where previously it was used as the cricket pitch's outfield.


title: Bramall Lane

text: During the 2005–06 season, this stand was renovated, with a re-clad of the outside of the stand and the old wooden seats replaced by newer red plastic seats and white plastic seats forming an emblem of two swords. The box-seats were also upgraded. This stand holds approximately 7,500 fans, and most of the ground's amenities, including the box office, newly expanded and renovated for the 2006–07 season Blades Superstore, Platinum Suite, "Legends of the Lane" museum, "1889" award-winning restaurant (formerly known as Bosworth's of Bramall Lane), the former police control centre (now relocated to the Blades Enterprise Centre between the Bramall Lane and John Street Stands), newly refurbished reception, press box, players entrance, administrative offices and television gantry attached to the roof of the stand.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The bottom of the stand, facing into the club car park, has been made into a fans "Wall of Fame". Built of the ground's signature mark red bricks, each one is etched with an individual supporters' name or nickname. The wall was launched as a commercial venture by the club in the 1990s and is still offered today for other sections of the ground. Within the car park situated adjacent to the stand on Cherry Street, statutes were erected in 2010 commemorating Joe Shaw, holder of United's attendance record with 714 appearances, and Derek Dooley, former club chairman.


title: Bramall Lane

text: In December 2017 the club announced plans to extend the Tony Currie Stand. Proposals included adding more than 5,400 extra seats, new executive boxes and a media centre. The plans would extend the stand building into part of the existing Cherry Street car park area.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Located on Shoreham Street, The Kop has been seated since 1991, this is the area in which the most boisterous home fans sit, such that former assistant manager (1999–2003) and manager (2008–10) Kevin Blackwell named the noise coming from this stand as the "Bramall Roar" after the 2003 play-off semi-final second-leg against Nottingham Forest, which the Blades won 4–3, coming from 0–2 down. The stand is currently sponsored by Kennedy's Law and, was formerly sponsored by Hallam FM. The stand itself is built into a hillside situated behind the goal, at the east end of the stadium. This places the stand along Shoreham Street, hence the often-heard chant of "Shoreham boys we are here oh oh oh oh, Shoreham boys we are here oh oh oh oh etc" coming from this stand on matchdays. It has the club's initials "SUFC" written into the seats, and holds 10,221 fans, making this the largest stand at Bramall Lane. The facilities are of lower quality in the Kop because there is no indoor concourse, although an outdoor bar was completed in September 2007 to complement the fast-food takeaway, but in spite of this it is still a firm favourite amongst the fans, and usually full on matchday. At a Shareholders' meeting in November 2007 the club announced that it intended to expand the Kop by 3,500 (making it the largest "Kop" in the country) and to upgrade all the facilities and cover the concourse areas. However, since then, former chief executive Trevor Birch announced that the extension would not be taken into consideration until the club can gain and maintain Premier League status. United submitted a revised application for the redevelopment of the stand in 2015, which would see 3,215 seats added to its current capacity.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The John Street stand, completed in 1996, is used as a family enclosure for home fans and is situated along the north side of the pitch, boasting great views of the playing action. Sponsored by the Maltese Tourist Board, in a combined stand and shirt sponsorship deal, it has the word "BLADES" written in the seats and holds just under 7,000 fans. This is also where the home disabled supporters may sit. The stand is home to a small club shop as well as the Marstons & Malta Executive Suites and "Tunnel Bar". There is also a row of 31, individual executive boxes with private facilities and their own balconies along the back of the stand.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Also called the Northeast Corner and formerly known as the Pukka Pies Stand after its sponsorship deal, this stand was completed in 2001 and is between the Kop and the John Street stand. It is fully linked to the John Street Stand and is also used as a family enclosure holding around 900 fans (after the installation of new restricted-view seats after the 2006–07 campaign. This section of the ground has always been part of the Kop stand structure and the lower half was historically used as a family standing enclosure until it was demolished as part of the main Kop re-development.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Also known as the "new" corner infill, this stand is in the south-west corner of the stadium, between the Bramall Lane Stand and the South Stand and was sponsored by Westfield Health. It is linked to the Bramall Lane Stand (upper tier), sharing its facilities, turnstiles and exits. It is always used by home fans, and reputedly has the best views of the ground. The stand holds approximately 2,000 fans. Built just behind the stand is a four-star hotel.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The north-west corner is filled in by rentable offices, known as the Blades Enterprise Centre, one of many examples of United diversifying their off-the-field activities to maximise income streams. Completed in 2002, the Enterprise Centre provides office space for smaller and new companies in the block between the John Street and Bramall Lane Stands, and also underneath the John Street Stand itself.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The stadium has an enviable central location close to the city centre. In order to maximise the earnings potential of the land around the stadium in June 2007 work began to build a 158 bedroomed 4-star Millennium and Copthorne Hotel behind the new Westfield stand. The new hotel opened its doors in November 2008.


title: Bramall Lane

text: At the Shareholders' meeting in November 2007 the club announced that it intended to extend the back of the Kop stand with an additional 3,200 seats and remove the pillars holding up the roof. The revised stand capacity is likely to be about 13,400, slightly less than the Holte End at Villa Park.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The club also planned a major upgrade to the Kop facilities and covering of the concourse areas, in tandem with a plan to build student accommodation at the back of the Kop and a large business centre (office block) between the Kop and South stand.


title: Bramall Lane

text: In the same meeting, the club announced that its long-term ambitions are to add an additional 6,000 seats to the main South (Valad) Stand with the intentions of taking the overall stadium capacity to just over 44,000, however this expansion would depend on demand in the Premiership and any potential 2018 World Cup venue bid. United PLC Former Chairman Kevin McCabe stated that he would build Bramall Lane's extensions to any specifications laid down by the FA with a view to the ground hosting matches should England be successful in winning their World Cup bid. However, on 16 December 2009, the FA announced that Hillsborough Stadium (home of rivals Sheffield Wednesday) would be Sheffield's venue in the event that a World Cup is awarded to England and Sheffield is named a host city.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Following this announcement Sheffield United's Chief Executive, Trevor Birch, made it known that all planned redevelopment work had been put on hold until the club was able to regain and maintain Premiership status.


title: Bramall Lane

text: In May 2015 work began on the installation of a state-of-the-art Desso pitch, bringing to an end around 153 years of football being played on a traditional surface at the oldest professional football stadium in the world. New proposals for the currently open corner between the Kop and South Stand were revealed in 2017, with the plans including the construction of a block of residential flats and a new, larger club shop.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The record attendance stands at 68,287 for the Sheffield United v. Leeds United FA Cup fifth round tie, played on 15 February 1936.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The record attendance since the 1994 introduction of all spectators being seated is 32,604 at the Sheffield United v. Wigan Athletic game in the Premier League, on 13 May 2007.


title: Bramall Lane

text: In the 2007–2008 season, Sheffield United had the best average attendance in the Championship. The following season Sheffield United had the second-best average attendance in the league of 26,023.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Bramall Lane is located in the district of Highfield, south of Sheffield city centre. Heading south from Junction 4 of the A61 Sheffield Inner Ring Road which surrounds the city centre.


title: Bramall Lane

text: On match days Bramall Lane closes off to most traffic shortly before and after matches, with traffic diverted to Shoreham Street, or towards London Road or onto the A61. This is to ensure the safety of the public, as Bramall Lane is a main road labelled as the A621 and the turnstiles on Bramall Lane are only a few metres away from the road. Also this enables the away fans' coaches and team coaches to approach/leave the stadium unimpeded (usually with a police escort from/to Park Square roundabout) and avoid a bottleneck scenario.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Sheffield railway station is under a mile from the ground, as is Sheffield Interchange, which is a bus station and a National Express Coaches hub.


title: Bramall Lane

text: Sheffield's light rail tram network called the Supertram runs east of the ground. The nearest stops are Granville Road/Sheffield College or Park Grange Croft. Both stops are 0.5 miles walking distance and either stop can be used in both directions. The ground is also visible from the viaduct which connects the two stops. The Blue route and the Purple route serve these stops. Both routes go to/from the city centre.


title: Bramall Lane

text: There are bus links outside the ground with bus stops on Shoreham Street and Bramall Lane. Other bus stops located near the ground are on Charlotte Road, Queens Road and London Road. All buses from these locations will go to/from the city centre.


title: Bramall Lane

text: The stadium is located near Route 6 of the National Cycle Network with numerous cycle paths and lanes surrounding the stadium which connect to it. Bramall Lane roundabout has an underpass for easy access to/from the city centre for cycles and pedestrians, with Bramall Lane itself having an on-road cycle lane running its length. Shorham Street is a signed cycle route and St. Mary's Gate (A61 ring road) has a traffic free cycle path. There are various secured and unsecured bike parking facilities close to the ground.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: Crimes and Misdemeanors is a 1989 American existential comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen, who stars alongside Martin Landau, Mia Farrow, Anjelica Huston, Jerry Orbach, Alan Alda, Sam Waterston, and Joanna Gleason.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: The film was met with critical acclaim, receiving three Academy Award nominations: Allen, for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and Landau, for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Several publications have ranked "Crimes and Misdemeanors" as one of Allen's greatest films.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: The story follows two main characters: Judah Rosenthal, a successful and reputable ophthalmologist, and Clifford Stern, a small-time documentary filmmaker.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: Judah, an upper-class respected family man, is having an affair with flight attendant Dolores Paley. After it becomes clear to her that Judah will not end his marriage, Dolores threatens to disclose the affair to Judah's wife, Miriam. She is also aware of some questionable financial deals Judah made before becoming a wealthy ophthalmologist, which adds to his stress. He confides in a patient, Ben, a rabbi who is rapidly losing his eyesight. Ben advises openness and honesty between Judah and his wife, but Judah does not wish to imperil his marriage. Desperate, Judah turns to his brother, Jack, a gangster, who hires a hitman to kill Dolores. Before her corpse is discovered, Judah retrieves letters and other items from her apartment in order to cover his tracks. Stricken with guilt, Judah turns to the religious teachings he had rejected, believing for the first time that a just God is watching him and passing judgment.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: Cliff, meanwhile, has been hired by his pompous brother-in-law, Lester, a successful television producer, to make a documentary celebrating Lester's life and work. Cliff grows to despise him. While filming and mocking the subject, Cliff falls in love with Lester's associate producer, Halley Reed. Despondent over his failing marriage to Lester's sister Wendy, he woos Halley, showing her footage from his ongoing documentary about Professor Louis Levy, a renowned philosopher. He ensures Halley is aware that he is shooting Lester's documentary merely for the money so he can finish his more meaningful project with Levy.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: Cliff learns that Professor Levy, whom he had been profiling for a documentary centered on his philosophical views and the strength of his celebration of life, has committed suicide, leaving a curt note that only says: "I've gone out the window". When Halley visits to comfort him, he makes a pass at her, which she gently rebuffs, telling him she is not ready for another romance. Cliff's dislike for Lester becomes evident during the first screening of the film. Cliff has maliciously edited the film, which juxtaposes footage of Lester with clownish poses of Benito Mussolini addressing a throng of supporters from a balcony. It also shows Lester yelling at his employees and clumsily making a pass at an attractive young actress. Lester fires him.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: Adding to Cliff's burdens, Halley leaves for London, where Lester is offering her a producing job; when she returns several months later, Cliff is astounded to discover that she and Lester are engaged. Hearing that Lester sent Halley white roses "round the clock, for days" while they were in London, Cliff is crestfallen as he realizes he is incapable of that kind of ostentatious display. His last romantic gesture to Halley had been a love letter which he had mostly plagiarized from James Joyce including references to Dublin.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: Judah and Cliff meet by happenstance at the wedding of the daughter of Rabbi Ben, who is Cliff's brother-in-law and Judah's patient. Judah has worked through his guilt and is enjoying life once more; the murder had been blamed on a drifter with a criminal record. He draws Cliff into a supposedly hypothetical discussion that draws upon his moral quandary. Judah says that with time, any crisis will pass; but Cliff morosely claims instead that one is forever fated to bear one's burdens for "crimes and misdemeanors". Judah cheerfully leaves the wedding party with his wife, and Cliff is left sitting alone, dejected.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: The wedding party continues. Rabbi Ben, who is now blind, shares a dance with his daughter while the voice of Professor Levy is heard, saying that the universe is a dark and indifferent place which human beings fill with love, in the hope that it will give the void a meaning.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: After viewing the first cut of the film, Allen decided to throw out the first act, call back actors for reshoots, and focus on what turned out to be the central story.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: Allen makes use of classical and jazz music in many of the film's scenes. The soundtrack includes Franz Schubert's String Quartet No. 15 (a recording by the Juilliard String Quartet), which is used in the scenes leading up to Dolores' death, and Judah discovering her body.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: The outline of Judah's moral dilemma—whether a person can continue everyday life with the knowledge of having committed murder—evokes the pivotal idea of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" (1866), despite suggesting a resolution nearly opposite to that of the novel. Allen would revisit the theme in his films "Match Point", "Cassandra's Dream", and "Irrational Man".


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: "Crimes and Misdemeanors" received mostly positive reviews. It holds a 92% "Certified Fresh" rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 50 critics, with an average rating of 7.9/10. It holds a 77/100 weighted average score on Metacritic, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: Though normally a fierce critic of Allen's work, John Simon of "National Review" declared the film to be "Allen's first successful blending of drama and comedy, plot and subplot," and also wrote: "Variety" gave the film a more mixed review, however, writing, "Woody Allen ambitiously mixes his two favoured strains of cinema, melodrama and comedy, with mixed results in "Crimes and Misdemeanours"."


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: The film was met with critical acclaim, and was nominated for three Academy Awards: Allen for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and Martin Landau for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: In "Empire" magazine's 2008 poll of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time", "Crimes and Misdemeanors" was ranked number 267. In 2010, it was the first film to win the 20/20 Award for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay (Allen), and Best Supporting Actor (Landau). It also received three additional nominations, for Best Director (Woody Allen), Best Supporting Actor (Jerry Orbach) and Best Supporting Actress (Huston). In a 2016 "Time Out" contributors' poll, it ranked second only to "Annie Hall" among Allen's efforts, with Dave Calhoun praising it as "the film in which Woody's comic and serious sides most comfortably align". The film achieved the same rank in a 2016 article by "The Daily Telegraph" critics Robbie Collin and Tim Robey, who wrote, "Here [Allen is] thinking deeply about moral choice, the question of whether guilt in your own eyes or the eyes of the world matters more. This bubblingly wise film, rich with beautifully dovetailing metaphors about blindness and conscience and the perils of self-knowledge, [...] is Allen on soaring form, gliding so elegantly through its maze of ideas it's as if the spirit of Fred Astaire gave it lift-off." "Crimes and Misdemeanors" was also named Allen's second best by Chris Nashawaty of "Entertainment Weekly" and Barbara VanDenbergh of "The Arizona Republic", third by Darian Lusk of CBS News, and fourth by Zachary Wigon of "Nerve". In a 2015 BBC critics' poll, it was voted the 57th greatest American film ever made.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: In October 2013, the film was voted by "The Guardian" readers as the third best film directed by Allen.


title: Crimes and Misdemeanors

text: "Crimes and Misdemeanors" was released through MGM Home Entertainment on DVD on June 5, 2001. A limited-edition Blu-ray of 3,000 units was later released by Twilight Time on February 11, 2014.


title: Omar Borkan Al Gala

text: Omar Borkan Al Gala became notorious in 2013. The incident occurred during the Jandriyah Cultural Festival in Riyadh, in which he, plus two other male models, worked on a promotion stand. In a January 2015 interview, Al Gala said that at the festival, some girls recognized him from some modelling he had done, and they gathered for autographs and photos, after which the crowd around them grew. Al Gala said that "the religion police didn't like it," and "they came and they asked me politely to leave the festival." According to a police officer, "the members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices feared that female visitors would fall in love with them." Later, the delegation of Saudi Arabia issued a statement clarifying that Borkan and the other two models were never asked to leave the country, only the festival, and that had nothing to do with being "too handsome," but was related to the unexpected presence on the stand of men, something that challenged the country's custom regarding having women not to interact with men who are not of their family. They also stated that Al Gala had performed "indecent" dances at the event.


title: Omar Borkan Al Gala

text: The incident became one of the most viral stories on the internet after photographs of Al Gala were disseminated through social media, and he was invited to give interviews on various television programs and appeared on various magazine covers, being presented by the international press as "the most handsome Arab man in the world" or "the most handsome man in the world."


title: Omar Borkan Al Gala

text: Al Gala was born in Baghdad, Iraq, but was raised in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. He was a student at the Abu Obaida Ahjarah Public School in Dubai, and was also a student of the Faculty Executive Hotels International Institute of Hotel Management, where he studied hotel management. In 2015 he married Yasmin Oweidah, with whom he has a son. They separated in 2018. At some point following his gain in notoriety in 2013, he relocated to Vancouver.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: The Federal government of Mexico (alternately known as the Government of the Republic or ' or ') is the national government of the United Mexican States, the central government established by its constitution to share sovereignty over the republic with the governments of the 31 individual Mexican states, and to represent such governments before international bodies such as the United Nations. The Mexican federal government has three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial and functions per the Constitution of the United Mexican States, as enacted in 1917, and as amended.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: The executive power is exercised by the executive branch, which is headed by the president and his Cabinet, which, together, are independent of the legislature. Legislative power is vested upon the Congress of the Union, a bicameral legislature comprising the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Judicial power is exercised by the judiciary, consisting of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, the Council of the Federal Judiciary, and the collegiate, unitary, and district courts.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: The federal government, known as the Supreme Power of the Federation, is constituted by the Powers of the Union: the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. Mexico City, as the capital of Mexico, seats all the powers of the Union. All branches of government are independent; no two separate branches must be vested upon a single person or institution, and the legislative power must not be vested upon a single individual.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: The President of the United Mexican States is the head of the executive branch of the country. They are also the head of state, the head of government, and the supreme commander of the Armed Forces. The President is elected by direct, popular, and universal suffrage. Once elected, the candidate assumes the position on October 1 of the election year. (Prior to the Electoral Reform of 2014, the office was assumed on December 1 of the election year.) Their position lasts for a period of six years, with no possibility of reelection, not even in the case of having served as interim, provisional or substitute. The office of President of the Republic is only waived for serious cause, which must be qualified by the Congress of the Union. In case of death, dismissal, or resignation, the Secretariat of the Interior immediately and provisionally assumes the position (if the absence is the day of the inauguration, it would be the president of the senate, the provisional president). Later, with the reservations contemplated by the constitution, it is up to Congress to appoint a substitute or interim.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: The current Constitution of 1917 provides for said position in its third title third chapter and is addressed by fifteen articles. They specify the obligations, powers requirements, and restrictions to the position; specifications ranging from the command of the armed forces;


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: ownership of foreign, economic policies, social development, and public safety; the promulgation and enforcement of laws issued by the legislative branch;


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: propose appointments to positions that require of the Senate or the Supreme Court; and various prerogatives granted in other articles of the same magna letter and federal laws.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: The President is the head of the Federal Public Administration and is assisted by a cabinet composed of several Secretariats of State, federal agencies, decentralized agencies, and parastatals, which are in charge of various public interest portfolios, in addition to various advisers on call to the


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: Office of the Presidency. The President is protected by the Presidential General Staff, which is the military technical body that assists the president in obtaining general information, planning the personal activities of the position, performing safety precautions, and participating in the execution of the activities coming for these purposes.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: Since the beginning of their term, the official residence of the president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been the National Palace, a building facing Mexico City Zócalo. The National Palace is also the formal seat of the Executive Power and had been the official seat of power in Mexico since early colonial times until it was moved in 1937 to Los Pinos.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: The legislative power is vested upon the Congress of the Union, a bicameral congress comprising the Senate (Spanish: "Cámara de Senadores" or "Senado") and the Chamber of Deputies (). The powers of Congress include the right to pass laws, impose taxes, declare war, approve the national budget, approve or reject treaties and conventions made with foreign countries, and ratify diplomatic appointments. The Senate addresses all matters that concern foreign policy, approves international agreements, and confirms presidential appointments.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: The Chamber of Deputies is formed by 500 representatives of the nation. All deputies are elected in free universal elections every three years, in parallel voting: 300 deputies are elected in single-seat constituencies by first-past-the-post plurality (called uninominal deputies), and the remaining 200 are elected by the principle of proportional representation (called plurinominal deputies) with closed-party lists for which the country is divided into five constituencies or plurinominal circumscriptions. Deputies cannot be reelected for the next immediate term.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: Being a supplementary system (PM) of parallel voting, proportionality is only confined to the plurinominal seats. However, to prevent a party to be overrepresented, several restrictions to the assignation of plurinominal seats are applied:


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: The Senate consists of 128 representatives of the constituent states of the federation. All senators are elected in free universal elections every six years through a parallel voting system as well: 64 senators are elected by first-past-the-post plurality, two per state and two for Mexico City elected jointly; 32 senators are assigned through the principle of "first minority", that is, they are awarded to the first runner-up party for each constituent state and Mexico City; and 32 are elected by proportional representation with closed-party lists, for which the country forms a single constituency.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: The judiciary consists of The Supreme Court of Justice, composed of eleven judges or ministers appointed by the President with Congress approval, who interpret laws and judge cases of federal competency. Other institutions of the judiciary are the Electoral Tribunal, collegiate, unitary and district tribunals, and the Council of the Federal Judiciary. The ministers of the Supreme Court will serve for 15 years and cannot be appointed to serve more than once.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: The entities of the Mexican Federation are free and sovereigns, autonomous in its internal regime. They have the power to govern themselves according to their own laws; they have their own constitution that doesn't have to contradict the principles of the federal constitution. The powers of its executive and legislative branches they are understood as those that are the rights of the entities; as the ownership of the command of the public force (state police and national guard attached), direction and regulation of their own economic policies, of social development and public safety; as well as the administration of those resources that arise from their local taxes or own income. Griselda Álvarez was the first female governor in Mexico. Álvarez was Governor of the state of Colima from 1979 to 1985.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: The states are divided internally into municipalities—or mayors, in the case of Mexico City. Each municipality enjoys autonomy in its capacity


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: to choose its own town hall which is responsible, in most cases; to provide all the public services required by its population. To this concept, which would arise from the Mexican Revolution, it is known as free municipality. The town hall is headed by a municipal president elected every three years.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: Mexico City does not belong to any state in particular, but to the federation, being the capital of the country and seat of the powers of the Union. As such, it is constituted as a special jurisdiction, ultimately administered by the Powers of the Union. Nonetheless, since the late 1990s certain autonomy and powers have been gradually devolved. The executive power is vested upon a head of government elected by first-past-the-post plurality. The legislative power is vested upon a unicameral Legislative Assembly. The judicial power is exercised by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice and the Judiciary Council.


title: Federal government of Mexico

text: Mexico City was divided into "delegaciones" or boroughs. Though not fully equivalent to a municipality in that they do not have regulatory powers, they have gained limited autonomy in recent years, and the representatives to the head of government are now elected by the citizens as well. In 2016, the name was changed to Mexico City and the 16 delegations were transformed into municipalities, each one with its own mayor.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Ineitha Lynnette Hardaway and Herneitha Rochelle Hardaway Richardson, known as Diamond and Silk, are American live-stream video bloggers, conservative political activists, and Newsmax and FrankSpeech.com hosts, whose commentary typically supports former United States President Donald Trump.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: The two women received media attention during the 2016 campaign and again in April 2018 when Facebook notified them they were "unsafe to the community." In response, they publicly complained that Facebook blocked and censored their Facebook page. On April 26, 2018, at Rep. Steve King's invitation they testified in front of Congress about their removal from the community. Subsequently, Republican members of Congress brought up the two women's censorship claims at Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before U.S. Congress. In April 2020, the two were terminated from Fox News for questioning the legitimacy of COVID-19 data.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Hardaway and Richardson are sisters. They were born as Ineitha Lynette Hardaway and Herneitha Rochelle Hardaway; they go by their middle names. They have three other siblings.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Their parents are Freeman Hardaway and Betty Willis Hardaway, televangelical pastors based in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Freeman and Betty Hardaway sold purported weight loss cures, and wreaths that ward off witchcraft. For a fee of $50, Betty wrote the names of customers in a Bible, telling customers that this would make God answer their prayers.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Hardaway and Richardson were registered as Democrats in 2012. Their first YouTube videos were a montage about police brutality, titled "Black Lives Matter" (it received 17,000 views), and a video about Sandra Bland, a black woman who died in a Texas jail (it received 32,000 views). After the pair began to make pro-Trump videos, their YouTube channel started to grow considerably.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Although officially unaffiliated with the Trump campaign, they urged support for Trump via social media efforts and rallies and traveled to three states for the campaign. The two women first joined Donald Trump as the "Stump for Trump Girls" on stage at his Raleigh, North Carolina, rally on December 4, 2015. They later warmed up the crowd at the Trump rally on January 2, 2016, in Biloxi, Mississippi. They initiated a "Ditch and Switch" campaign to encourage Democrats to register as Republicans and created a website explaining to voters which states had closed primaries and when the deadlines were for changing party affiliations.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: On November 2, 2016, Diamond and Silk appeared with Lara Trump, wife of Eric Trump, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on behalf of the Trump campaign. They were paid $1,274.94 for field consulting work by the Trump campaign.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: They regularly appeared on Fox News shows including "Hannity", "Fox News Sunday", "Watters' World", and "The Ingraham Angle", and "Fox & Friends." In November 2018, Diamond and Silk were given a show on Fox Nation, the online Fox News streaming service. They were covered on ABC's "Nightline". Hardaway is notably more talkative, while Richardson often just expresses agreement.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: A documentary film by Hardaway and Richardson titled "Dummycrats" premiered in October 2018 at the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: In May 2019, during a "Fox & Friends" appearance, Diamond and Silk claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was a "non-functioning alcoholic" who "slurs her words." This was in reference to a doctored and slowed down video that appeared to show her slurring her words. Shortly thereafter, "Fox & Friends" had to clarify for its viewers that the video was manipulated.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: In 2019, Diamond and Silk appeared in a Trump 2020 re-election advertisement where they gave a pitch for his re-election. At the same time, Diamond and Silk had a weekly show on Fox News' streaming service.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Beginning in March 2020, Hardaway and Richardson questioned various information about COVID-19 including whether or not the number of deaths from the pandemic was being inflated in order to make Donald Trump look incompetent. These questions led to the termination of their work with FOX in April.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Following the controversial Unite the Right rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11 and 12, 2017, Hardaway and Richardson, appearing on "Fox & Friends", were critical of protesters on both sides in the event. Hardaway criticized Neo-Nazi groups and the Ku Klux Klan for "spewing hate and ... creating violence" declaring "all of them should be condemned and denounced. Period". In the same interview, she also said she does not "like Black Lives Matter and Antifa." They further noted that they feel statues of Civil War Confederate soldiers should be kept in museums.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Hardaway and Richardson, in December 2017, expressed support for Omarosa Manigault Newman following her controversial firing as White House liaison and assistant, faulting the treatment of her by African Americans and the media generally: "What I find appalling, to my brothers and sisters [is] how you ... can laugh at, pick at, gloat at somebody because they either left the White House or you listened to a salacious story that Miss Piggy went around, running around telling everybody." In the same live-stream, they criticized "Good Morning America" anchor Robin Roberts for saying, "Bye, Felicia" to Newman during a segment on the ABC show which aired on December 14, 2017. Addressing Roberts's remarks, Hardaway said, "How is it that you want the community to come up and then when a sister is sitting at the table, 'Well, she didn’t represent us'? Are you crazy?"


title: Diamond and Silk

text: On April 26, 2018, they appeared at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on alleged filtering practices of social media platforms. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee asked the two women if they had ever received money from the Trump campaign, to which Hardaway responded, "We have never been paid by the Trump campaign." Representative Hakeem Jeffries suggested that they could be committing perjury and showed them a Federal Election Commission filing which reported that the Trump campaign paid them $1,275 on November 22, 2016, for "field consulting".


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Diamond and Silk then stated that the payment was reimbursement for the cost of airplane tickets. Following their testimony, "The Huffington Post" reported that, according to Trump campaign treasurer Bradley Crate, the payment had been categorized incorrectly. Crate stated, "The Campaign’s payment to Diamond and Silk for field consulting was based on an invoice they submitted reflecting their costs for air travel to a Campaign event. The invoice was not supported by accompanying receipts, so as a technical matter, could not be reported as a reimbursement even though its purpose was to make them whole for their out-of-pocket costs." In the same "Huffington Post" article, it was reported that following a $7,025 payment from the campaign of Paul Ryan primary election challenger Paul Nehlen, Hardaway and Richardson made a campaign video and endorsed Nehlen.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: In June 2019, House Representative Steve King joined with Diamond and Silk to introduce the Diamond and Silk Act, an anti–sanctuary city bill. When Diamond and Silk were asked what they thought of King retweeting white supremacists, Hardaway responded, "I’m tired of you all playing the race card." The bill failed to pass the House vote and garnered backlash from both left and right-wing media.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: The conservative news magazine "Washington Examiner" criticized King for mocking homelessness and veteran's issues with the bill, and described the Diamond and Silk Act of 2019 as being "named for a clownish YouTube duo who have leveraged their online popularity into regular appearances on Fox News".


title: Diamond and Silk

text: In an April 2018, tweet and Facebook post, Hardaway and Richardson reproduced a message from Facebook stating that the Diamond and Silk Facebook page's content and brand were deemed to be "unsafe to the community." According to Hardaway and Richardson, the message sent from the Facebook policy team concluded with: "This decision is final and it is not appeal-able in any way." The pair stated that they believed that they had been victims of censorship by Facebook after receiving a communication from the social media website's policy team.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Both women stated they had started questioning Facebook via phone calls, emails, and chat sessions as to their alleged "bias censorship and discrimination against D&S brand page" in September 2017. Both women have stated a reduction in reactions to their posts and videos since that time period, and that followers no longer receive notifications about posts and videos. As of April 2018, their Facebook page states they have nearly 1.3 million followers.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Diamond and Silk's censorship claims were uncritically repeated in right-wing media. According to CNN, their claims likely influenced an April 2018 congressional hearing which involved Mark Zuckerberg after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. "Business Insider" noted that Diamond and Silk were a "frequent topic" during that hearing. Tennessee Republican Representative Marsha Blackburn finished her questioning of Zuckerberg by stating, "Let me tell you something right now, Diamond and Silk is not terrorism". Texas Republican Representative Joe Barton asked Zuckerberg, "Why is Facebook censoring conservative bloggers such as Diamond and Silk?" Zuckerberg responded that Facebook employees had made an error and they had contacted Hardaway and Richardson.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: While there is no evidence that Diamond and Silk were censored or that their page was blocked by Facebook, the pair continues to contend it was. Facebook's own analytics firm showed that the Diamond and Silk page had not lost a significant amount of influence on the social network. By the time that Diamond and Silk spoke at a congressional hearing about their censorship claims, news outlets such as CNN and Business Insider described their censorship claims as debunked. At the hearing, experts testified that there was no evidence that Diamond and Silk had been targeted. According to "The Washington Post", "the numbers do not bear out the argument that the sisters have been repressed."


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Diamond and Silk stated that Facebook had not contacted them. Facebook said they attempted contact via email, Twitter, phone, and Facebook Messenger. The pair later said that messages sent to them through email should not be expected to be read, because they receive many emails.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Beginning in 2018, the pair produced original content for Fox News and Fox Nation. The pair's content ceased in April 2020; they had last appeared on Fox News and Fox Business in early March. On April 27, "The Daily Beast" reported that Fox had severed ties with the pair. According to sources at Fox News, the network cut ties with the sisters due to their propagation of misinformation relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Since leaving the Fox News platform, the duo has a Saturday afternoon show on Newsmax TV titled "Diamond and Silk Crystal Clear".


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Artist and activist Bree Newsome has described Hardaway and Richardson as "a modern-day minstrel show" and stated in an interview that the pair's presentation relies on "stereotypical images of black women". Keith Boykin argued that, "the way they speak, the way they talk and act and behave [... if they] were saying anything that was contradictory to Trump, the Trump supporters who defend them would be the first to attack them." Boykin argued that conservatives give attention to Hardaway and Richardson because they "only want to listen to the people who reaffirm their narrow, limited vision of what blackness is all about and how black people should perceive white people and specifically how they should perceive Donald Trump."


title: Diamond and Silk

text: Diamond and Silk wrote "", published in 2020 by Regnery. The book was on Publishers Weekly Hardcover Frontlist Non-Fiction Bestsellers ranked at #17 as of August 28, 2020.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: The Battle of Wuhan (武漢之戰), popularly known to the Chinese as the Defense of Wuhan, and to the Japanese as the Capture of Wuhan, was a large-scale battle of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Engagements took place across vast areas of Anhui, Henan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Hubei provinces over a period of four and a half months. It was the longest, the largest, and arguably the most significant battle in the early stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War. More than one million National Revolutionary Army troops from the Fifth and Ninth War Zone were put under the direct command of Chiang Kai-shek, defending Wuhan from the Central China Area Army of the Imperial Japanese Army led by Shunroku Hata. Chinese forces were also supported by the Soviet Volunteer Group, a group of volunteer pilots from Soviet Air Forces.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: Although the battle ended with the eventual capture of Wuhan by the Japanese forces, it resulted in heavy casualties on both sides, as high as 1.2 million combined by some estimates. With the Japanese suffering their heaviest losses of the war, they decided to divert their attention to the north, which prolonged the war until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The end of the battle signaled the beginning of a strategic stalemate in the war, shifting from large pitched battles to localised struggles.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: On 7 July 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) launched a full-scale invasion of China after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Both Beijing and Tianjin had fallen to the Japanese by 30 July, which exposed the rest of the North China Plain. To disrupt the Japanese invasion plans, the Chinese Nationalists decided to engage the Japanese in Shanghai, which opened a second front. The fighting lasted from 13 August to 12 November, with the Chinese suffering major casualties including "70 percent of Chiang Kai-shek's young officers." After the fall of Shanghai, Nanjing, which was the capital of China, was threatened directly by the Japanese forces. The Nationalists were thus forced to declare the capital an open city while they began the process of moving the capital to Chongqing.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: With the fall of three major Chinese cities (Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai), there was a large number of refugees fleeing the fighting in addition to the government facilities and war supplies that needed to be transferred to Chongqing. Inadequacies in the transport systems prevented the government from being able to complete the transfer. Wuhan thus became the "de facto wartime capital" of the Republic of China for its strong industrial, economic, and cultural foundations. Assistance from the Soviet Union provided additional military and technical resources, including the Soviet Volunteer Group.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: On the Japanese side, the IJA forces were drained by the large number and the extent of military operations since the beginning of the invasion. Reinforcements were thus dispatched to boost forces in the area, but that placed a considerable strain on the Japanese peacetime economy. That caused Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe to reassemble his Cabinet in 1938 and to introduce the National Mobilization Law on 5 May that year, which moved Japan into a wartime economic state.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: Although putting Japan's economy on a wartime footing slowed down the depletion of its treasury, the economic situation was not sustainable in the long term because of the cost of maintaining a military that could deal with the Soviet Union in a border conflict. The Japanese government thus wished to force the Chinese into submission quickly to gather resources to move on with its decision over northward and southward expansion. The Japanese commanders decided that Chinese resistance should be put to an end at Wuhan.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: Wuhan, located halfway upstream of the Yangtze River, was the second-largest city in China, with a population of 1.5 million in late 1938. The Yangtze River and the Hanshui River divide the city into three regions, which include Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang. Wuchang was the political center, Hankou was the commercial district, and Hanyang was the industrial area. After the completion of the Yuehan Railway, the importance of Wuhan as a major transportation hub in the interior of China was further established. The city also served as an important transit point for foreign aid moving inland from the southern ports.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: After the Japanese capture of Nanjing, the bulk of the Nationalist government agencies and the military command headquarters were in Wuhan although the capital had been moved to Chongqing. Wuhan thus became the "de facto" wartime capital at the onset of the engagements in Wuhan. The Chinese war effort was thus focused on protecting Wuhan from being occupied by the Japanese. The Japanese government and the headquarters of the China Expeditionary Army expected Wuhan to fall, along with the Chinese resistance, "within a month or two."


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: In December 1937, the Military Affairs Commission was created to determine the battle plan for the defense of Wuhan. After the loss of Xuzhou, approximately 1.1 million men or 120 divisions of the National Revolutionary Army were redeployed. The commission decided to organize the defense around the Dabie Mountains, Poyang Lake, and the Yangtze River against the 200,000 Japanese in 20 divisions of the Imperial Japanese Army. Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi of the Fifth War Zone were assigned to defend the north of the Yangtze, ans Chen Cheng of the Ninth War Zone was tasked with defending the south. The First War Zone, located in the west of the Zhengzhou-Xinyang section of the Pinghan Railway, was given the task of stopping the Japanese forces coming from the North China Plain. Finally, Chinese troops in the Third War Zone, located between Wuhu, Anqing and Nanchang, were given the task to protect the Yuehan Railway.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: After the Japanese occupied Xuzhou in May 1938, they sought actively to expand the scale of the invasion. The IJA decided to send a vanguard to occupy Anqing for use as a forward base for an attack on Wuhan, for its main force then to attack the area north of the Dabie Mountains moving along the Huai River, and to occupy Wuhan eventually by the way of the Wusheng Pass. Later, another detachment would move west along the Yangtze. However, the Yellow River flood forced the IJA to abandon its plan of attacking along the Huai, and it decided to attack along both banks of the Yangtze instead. On 4 May, the commander of the IJA forces, Shunroku Hata, organized approximately 350,000 men of the Second and Eleventh Armies to fight in and around Wuhan. Under him, Yasuji Okamura commanded five-and-a-half divisions of the Eleventh Army along both banks of the Yangtze in the main assault on Wuhan, and Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni commanded four-and-a-half divisions of the Second Army along the northern foot of the Dabie Mountains to assist the assault. The forces were augmented by 120 ships of the Third Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Koshirō Oikawa, more than 500 planes of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service, and five divisions of Japanese forces from the Central China Area Army to guard the areas in and around Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, and other important cities, which would protect the back of the Japanese forces and complete the preparation for the battle.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: The Battle of Wuhan was preceded by a Japanese air strike on 18 February 1938 that was known as the "2.18 Air Battle" and ended by Chinese forces repelling the attack. On 24 March, the Diet of Japan passed the National Mobilization Law, which authorized unlimited war funding. As part of the law, the National Service Draft Ordinance also allowed the conscription of civilians. On 29 April, the Japanese air force launched major air strikes on Wuhan to celebrate Emperor Shōwa's birthday. The Chinese, with prior intelligence, were well prepared. The battle was known as the "4.29 Air Battle" and was one of the most intense air battles of the Second Sino-Japanese War.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: After the fall of Xuzhou in May 1938, the Japanese planned an extensive invasion of Hankou and the takeover of Wuhan, and intended to destroy the main force of the National Revolutionary Army. The Chinese, on the other hand, were building up their defensive efforts by massing troops in the Wuhan area. They also set up an defensive line in Henan to delay the Japanese forces coming from Xuzhou. However, the disparity in Chinese and Japanese troop strength caused that line of defense collapsed quickly.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: In an attempt to win more time for the preparation of the defense of Wuhan, the Chinese opened up the dikes of the Yellow River in Huayuankou, Zhengzhou on 9 June. The flood, now known as the 1938 Yellow River flood, forced the Japanese to delay their attack on Wuhan. However, it also caused around 500,000 to 900,000 civilian deaths by flooding many cities in northern China.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: On 18 February 1938, an Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service (IJNAF) strike-force composed of at least 11 A5M fighters of the 12th and 13th Kōkūtais, led by Lieutenant Takashi Kaneko, and 15 G3M bombers of the Kanoya Kokutai, led by Lieutenant Commander Sugahisa Tuneru, on a raid against Wuhan engaged in battle with 19 Chinese Air Force I-15 fighters of the 22nd and 23rd Pursuit Squadrons and 10 I-16 fighters of the 21st PS, all under the overall command of the 4th Pursuit Group CO Captain , as well as several more mix of Polikarpov fighters of the Soviet Volunteer Group. The 4th Group fighters would claim at least 4 of the A5Ms, and the Soviet group claimed no less than 3 of the A5Ms shot down. Both the Japanese fighter group commander, Lieutenant Kaneko, and the Chinese fighter group commander, Captain Li, were Killed in action in the battle. A largely-intact A5M fighter plane that was downed in the battle was recovered with a damaged engine, and it was the second intact A5M to be recovered, repaired, and flight-tested in the war, the first recovered-intact A5M having been one downed by Colonel Gao Zhihang during an air battle over Nanjing on 12 October 1937.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: On 3 August 1938, 52 Chinese fighters, with 20 I-15s, 13 I-16s, 11 Gloster Gladiators, and 7 Hawk IIIs intercepted at least 29 A5M fighters and 18 G3M bombers over Hankow. The former Guangxi warlord air force pilot Zhu Jiaxun and his squadron-mate, He Jermin, along with the Chinese-American fighter pilots Arthur Chin and Louie Yim-qun, all flying the Gladiators, would claim at least four of the A5Ms to be shot down that day.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: On 15 June, the Japanese made a naval landing and captured Anqing, which signaled the onset of the Battle of Wuhan. On the southern bank of the Yangtze River, the Chinese Ninth War Zone had one regiment stationed west of Poyang Lake and another stationed in Jiujiang. On 24 June, the Japanese forces made a surprise landing in Madang, while the main force of the Japanese Eleventh Army attacked along southern shore of the Yangtze River. Madang quickly fell to the Japanese, which opened up the route to Jiujiang.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: The Chinese defenders tried to resist the Japanese advance, but they could not repel the landing force of the Japanese 106th Division, which captured Jiujiang on the 26th. The Japanese Namita detachment moved westward along the river, landed northeast of Ruichang on 10 August, and mounted an assault on the city. The defending NRA 2nd Corps was reinforced by the 32nd Army Group and initially halted the Japanese attack. However, when the Japanese 9th Division entered the fray, the Chinese defenders were exhausted, and Ruichang was captured on the 24th.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: The Japanese 9th Division and the Namita detachment continued to move along the river, and the Japanese 27th Division invaded Ruoxi at the same time. The Chinese 30th and 18th Corps resisted along the Ruichang-Ruoxi Road and the surrounding area, which resulted in a stalemate for more than a month until the Japanese 27th Division captured Ruoxi on 5 October. The Japanese forces then turned to strike northeast, captured Xintanpu in Hubei on the 18th, and moved towards Dazhi.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: In the meantime, other Japanese forces and their supporting river fleet continued their advance westwards along the Yangtze, encountering resistance from the defending Chinese 31st Army and 32nd Army Group west of Ruichang. When the town of Madang and Fujin Mountain, both in Yangxin County, were captured. The Chinese 2nd Corps deployed the 6th, 56th, 75th and 98th Armies, along with the 30th Army Group, to strengthen the defense of the Jiangxi region. The battle continued until 22 October when the Chinese lost other towns in Yangxin County, Dazhi and Hubei Provinces. The Japanese 9th Division and Namita detachment were now approaching Wuchang.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: While the Japanese Army attacked Ruichang, the 106th Division moved along the Nanxun Railway, now known as Nanchang-Jiujiang, on the south side. The defending Chinese 4th Army, 8th Army Group, and 29th Army Group relied on the advantageous terrain of Lushan and north of Nanxun Railway to resist. As a result, the Japanese offensive suffered a setback. On 20 August, the Japanese 101st Division crossed the Poyang Lake from Hukou County to reinforce the 106th Division, which breached the Chinese 25th Army's defensive line and captured Xinzhi. They attempted to occupy De'an County and Nanchang, together with the 106th Division, to protect the southern flank of the Japanese Army, which was advancing westward. Xue Yue, the commander-in-chief of the Chinese First Corps, used the 4th, 29th, 66th, and 74th Armies to link with the 25th Army and engaged the Japanese in a fierce battle at Madang and north of De'an, which brought the battle to a stalemate.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: Towards the end of September, four regiments of the Japanese 106th Division circled into the Wanjialing region, west of De'an. Xue Yue commanded the Chinese 4th, 66th, and 77th Armies to flank the Japanese. The 27th Division of the Japanese Army attempted to reinforce the position but was ambushed and repulsed by the Chinese 32nd Army led by Shang Zhen in Baisui Street, west of Wanjialing. On 7 October, the Chinese Army mounted a final large-scale assault to encircle the Japanese troops. The fierce battle continued for three days, and all of the Japanese counterattacks were repelled by the Chinese.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: By 10 October, the Japanese 106th Division, as well as the 9th, 27th, and 101st Divisions, which had gone to reinforce it, had suffered heavy casualties. The Aoki, Ikeda, Kijima, and Tsuda Brigades were also annihilated in the encirclement. With Japanese forces in the area losing combat command capabilities, hundreds of officers were airdropped into the area. Of the four Japanese divisions which had gone into the battle, only around 1,500 men made it out of the encirclement. That was later called the Victory of Wanjialing by the Chinese.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: Well after the war, 2000, Japanese military historians admitted the heavy damages that the 9th, 27th, 101st, and 106th Divisions and their subordinate units had suffered during the Battle of Wanjialing, which multiplied the number of war dead honoured in Japanese shrines. They also said that the damages had not been admitted during the war to maintain public morale and confidence in the war effort.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: In Shandong, 1,000 soldiers under Shi Yousan, who had defected multiple times to rivaling warlord cliques and was then independent, occupied Jinan and held it for a few days. Guerrillas also briefly held Yantai. The area east of Changzhou all the way to Shanghai was controlled by another non-government Chinese force, led by Dai Li, who used guerrilla tactics in the suburbs of Shanghai and across the Huangpu River. The force was made up of secret society members of the Green Gang and the Tiandihui and killed spies and traitors. It lost more than 100 men during its operations. On 13 August, members of the force sneaked into the Japanese air base at Hongqiao and raised a Chinese flag.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: While those factions were active, the Japanese 6th Division breached the defensive lines of Chinese 31st and 68th Army on 24 July and captured Taihu, Susong, and Huangmei Counties on 3 August. As the Japanese continued to move westward, the Chinese 4th Army of the Fifth War Zone deployed its main force in Guangji, Hubei and Tianjia Town to intercept the Japanese offensive. The 11th Army Group and the 68th Army were ordered to form a line of defense in Huangmei county, and the 21st and 29th Army Group, as well as the 26th Army, moved south to flank the Japanese.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: The Chinese recaptured Taihu on 27 August and Susong on 28 August. However, with Japanese reinforcements arriving on 30 August, the Chinese 11th Army Group and the 68th Army were unsuccessful in their counteroffensives. They retreated to Guangji County to continue resisting the Japanese forces along with the Chinese 26th, 55th, and 86th Armies. The Chinese 4th Army Group ordered the 21st and 29th Army Groups to flank the Japanese from northeast of Huangmei, but they were unable to stop the Japanese advance. Guangji was captured on 6 September. On 8 September, Guangji was recovered by the Chinese 4th Corps, but Wuxue was lost the same day.


title: Battle of Wuhan

text: The Japanese Army then lay siege to Tianjia Town Fort. The Chinese 4th Corps sent the 2nd Army to reinforce the 87th Army and the 26th, 48th, and 86th Armies to flank the Japanese. However, they were beaten back and suffered many casualties at the hands of the battle-hardened Japanese, who had greater firepower. The Tianjia Town Fort was captured on the 29th, and the Japanese continued to attack westwards by capturing Huangpo on 24 October and were now approaching Hankou.