Casimir IV KG was Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1440 and King of Poland from 1447, until his death. He was one of the most active Polish rulers, under whom Poland, by defeating the Teutonic Knights in the Thirteen Years' War recovered Pomerania, the Jagiellonian dynasty became one of the leading royal houses in Europe, he was a strong opponent of aristocracy, helped to strengthen the importance of Parliament and the Senate. The great triumph of his reign was bringing Prussia under Polish rule; the long and brilliant rule of Casimir corresponded to the age of “new monarchies” in western Europe. By the 15th century Poland had narrowed the distance separating it from western Europe and become a significant factor in international relations; the demand for raw materials and semi-finished goods stimulated trade, producing a positive balance, contributed to the growth of crafts and mining in the entire country. He was a recipient of the English Order of the Garter, the highest order of chivalry and the most prestigious honour in England.

Following Casimir's death in 1492, the kingdom was divided between his two sons – John I Albert succeeded him as King of Poland, Alexander I Jagiellon was proclaimed Grand Duke of Lithuania. Casimir Jagiellon was the third and youngest son of King Władysław II Jagiełło and his fourth wife, Sophia of Halshany, his father was around 70 years old at the time of Casimir's birth, his brother Władysław III, three years his senior, was expected to become king before his majority. Strangely, little was done for his education, he relied on his instinct and feelings and had little political knowledge, but shared a great interest in the diplomacy and economic affairs of the country. Throughout Casimir's youth, Bishop Zbigniew Oleśnicki was his mentor and tutor, the cleric felt a strong reluctance towards him, believing that he would be an unsuccessful monarch following Władysław's death; the sudden death of Sigismund Kęstutaitis left. The Voivode of Trakai, Jonas Goštautas, other magnates of Lithuania, supported Casimir as a candidate to the throne.

However many Polish noblemen hoped that the thirteen-year-old boy would become a Vice-regent for the Polish King in Lithuania. Casimir was invited by the Lithuanian magnates to Lithuania, when he arrived in Vilnius in 1440, he was proclaimed as the Grand Duke of Lithuania on 29 June 1440 by the Council of Lords, contrary to the wishes of the Polish noble lords—an act supported and coordinated by Jonas Goštautas; when the news arrived in the Kingdom of Poland concerning the proclamation of Casimir as the Grand Duke of Lithuania, it was met with hostility to the point of military threats against Lithuania. Since the young Grand Duke was underage, the supreme control over the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was in the hands of the Council of Lords, presided by Jonas Goštautas. Casimir had been taught Lithuanian language and the customs of Lithuania by appointed court officials. During Casimir's rule the rights of the Lithuanian nobility—dukes and boyars, irrespective of their religion and ethnicity—were put on an equal footing to those of the Polish szlachta.

Additionally, Casimir promised to protect the Grand Duchy's borders and not to appoint persons from the Polish Kingdom to the offices of the Grand Duchy. He accepted that decisions on matters concerning the Grand Duchy would not be made without the Council of Lords' consent, he granted the subject region of Samogitia the right to elect its own elder. Casimir was the first ruler of Lithuania baptised at birth, becoming the first native Roman Catholic Grand Duke. Casimir succeeded his brother Władysław III as King of Poland after a three-year interregnum on 25 June 1447. In 1454, he married Elisabeth of Austria, daughter of the late King of the Romans Albert II of Habsburg by his late wife Elisabeth of Bohemia, a female-line descendant of Casimir III of Poland, her distant relative Frederick of Habsburg became Holy Roman Emperor and reigned as Frederick III until after Casimir's own death. The marriage strengthened the ties between the house of Jagiellon and the sovereigns of Hungary-Bohemia and put Casimir at odds with the Holy Roman Emperor through internal Habsburg rivalry.

That same year, Casimir was approached by the Prussian Confederation for aid against the Teutonic Order, which he promised, by making the separatist Prussian regions a protectorate of the Polish Kingdom. However, when the insurgent cities rebelled against the Order, it resisted and the Thirteen Years' War ensued. Casimir and the Prussian Confederation defeated the Teutonic Order, entering its abandoned capital at Marienburg. In the Second Peace of Thorn, the Order recognized Polish sovereignty over the seceded western Prussian regions, Royal Prussia, the Polish crown's overlordship over the remaining Teutonic Monastic State, transformed in 1525 into a duchy, Ducal Prussia. Elisabeth's only brother Ladislaus, king of Bohemia and Hungary, died in 1457, after that Casimir and Elisabeth's dynastic interests were directed towards her brother's former kingdoms. King Casimir IV died on 7 June 1492 in the Old Grodno Castle in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in a personal union with Poland; the intervention of the Roman curia, which hitherto had been hostile to Casimir because of his steady and patriotic resistance to papal aggression, was due to the permutations

SAVAK was the secret police, domestic security and intelligence service in Iran during the reign of the Pahlavi dynasty. It was established by Mohammad Reza Shah with the help of the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Israeli Mossad. SAVAK operated from 1957 until the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when the prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar ordered its dissolution during the outbreak of Iranian Revolution. SAVAK has been described as Iran's "most hated and feared institution" prior to the revolution of 1979 because of its practice of torturing and executing opponents of the Pahlavi regime. At its peak, the organization had as many as 60,000 agents serving in its ranks according to one source, another source by Gholam Reza Afkhami estimates SAVAK staffing at between 4,000 and 6,000. After the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, when the United States and the United Kingdom removed Mohammad Mosaddeq, focused on nationalizing Iran's oil industry, but set out to weaken the Shah from power on August 19, 1953.

After the coup, the monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah, established an intelligence service with police powers. The Shah's goal was to strengthen his regime by placing political opponents under surveillance and repressing dissident movements. According to Encyclopædia Iranica: A U. S. Army colonel working for the CIA was sent to Persia in September 1953 to work with General Teymur Bakhtiar, appointed military governor of Tehran in December 1953 and began to assemble the nucleus of a new intelligence organization; the U. S. Army colonel worked with Bakhtīār and his subordinates, commanding the new intelligence organization and training its members in basic intelligence techniques, such as surveillance and interrogation methods, the use of intelligence networks, organizational security; this organization was the first effective intelligence service to operate in Persia. Its main achievement occurred in September 1954, when it discovered and destroyed a large communist Tudeh Party network, established in the Persian armed forces In March 1955, the Army colonel was "replaced with a more permanent team of five career CIA officers, including specialists in covert operations, intelligence analysis, counterintelligence, including Major General Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf who "trained all of the first generation of SAVAK personnel."

In 1956, this agency was given the name Sazeman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar. These in turn were replaced by SAVAK's own instructors in 1965. SAVAK had the power to censor the media, screen applicants for government jobs, "according to reliable Western source, use all means necessary, including torture, to hunt down dissidents". After 1963, the Shah expanded his security organizations, including SAVAK, which grew to over 5,300 full-time agents and a large but unknown number of part-time informers. In 1961 the Iranian authorities dismissed the agency's first director, General Teymur Bakhtiar and he became a political dissident. In 1970, SAVAK agents assassinated him. General Hassan Pakravan, director of SAVAK from 1961 to 1966, had an benevolent reputation, for example dining on a weekly basis with Ayatollah Khomeini while Khomeini was under house arrest, intervened to prevent Khomeini's execution on the grounds that it would "anger the common people of Iran". After the Iranian Revolution, Pakravan was among the first of the Shah's officials to be executed by the Khomeini regime.

Pakravan was replaced in 1966 by General Nematollah Nassiri, a close associate of the Shah, the service was reorganized and became active in the face of rising Shia and communist militancy and political unrest. A turning point in SAVAK's reputation for ruthless brutality was an attack on a gendarmerie post in the Caspian village of Siahkal by a small band of armed Marxists in February 1971, although it is reported to have tortured to death a Shia cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad Reza Sa'idi, in 1970. According to Iranian political historian Ervand Abrahamian, after this attack SAVAK interrogators were sent abroad for "scientific training to prevent unwanted deaths from'brute force.' Brute force was supplemented with the bastinado. This latter contraption was dubbed the Apollo—an allusion to the American space capsules. Prisoners were humiliated by being raped, urinated on, forced to stand naked. Despite the new'scientific' methods, the torture of choice remained the traditional bastinado used to beat soles of the feet.

The "primary goal" of those using the bastinados "was to locate arms caches, safe houses and accomplices..."Abrahamian estimates that SAVAK killed 368 guerrillas including the leadership of the major urban guerrilla organizations such as Hamid Ashraf between 1971–1977 and executed up to 100 political prisoners between 1971 and 1979—the most violent era of the SAVAK's existence. One well known writer was arrested, tortured for months, placed before television cameras to'confess' that his works paid too much attention to social problems and not enough to the

The Al-Fahd is an armoured fighting vehicle used by the Armed Forces of Saudi Arabia. It was the first armoured fighting vehicle built in Saudi Arabia; the vehicle is produced by the Abdallah Al Faris Company for Heavy Industries, based in Dammam. The Al Fahd is available in three configurations: The AF-40-8-1; the AF-40-8-1 and AF-40-8-2 are similar in terms of 8-wheeled hull configuration and transmission. Internally, the vehicles differ in both engine type and engine placement; the AF-40-8-2's larger, 12-cylinder engine is mounted at the rear of the hull, where the AF-40-8-1's 10-cylinder engine is mounted at the front to allow for the troop compartment, rear troop ramp which are not present on or required for the AFRV version. The Al Fahd uses a variable hydropneumatic suspension which allows the vehicle to adjust its ground clearance by a total of 45 cm - between 15 cm and 60 cm - depending on need; the vehicle is designed to be able to negotiate slopes of up to 80% and 55%, cross trenches between 2 m and 2.5 m.

There is an amphibious version of the Al Fahd available depending on customer requirements. The hydraulic propellers are optional, so not; the Al Fahd uses a high-hardness steel alloy to offer protection against 14 mm ammunition on the frontal arc at ranges of 300 m and greater, 7.62 mm ammunition at ranges of 25 m and greater on the sides and rear of the vehicle. The vehicle incorporates multiple layers of Kevlar internally to protect the crew and passengers against spall; the armament for both the AF-40-8-1 and AF-40-8-2 varies according to customer specifications. The AF-40-8-1 is capable of mounting anything up to and including a 40 mm cannon, the AF-40-8-2 anything up to and including a low-recoil 105 mm cannon. Bangladesh Kuwait Pakistan: 250 Al-Fahd IFV's in service with the Pakistan Army. Saudi Arabia

Yutaka Ikejima is a Japanese film director and producer. Considered the most successful filmmaker in the pink film genre in the 2000s, his films are popular with traditional pink film audiences, fans of cinema, with critics; because of his prolific contributions to the pink film he has earned the nickname "Mr. Pink". Yutaka Ikejima was born on March 30, 1948, he studied Literature at Waseda University. He first entered the entertainment business in the late 1970s as an actor with Shuji Terayama's theatrical group Tenjō Sajiki, his film debut was in the 1981 Genji Nakamura pink film Semi Documentary: Housewife Prostitution Team aka Document Porno: Married Woman Prostitution Techniques. In contrast to his stage career, in his screen work, Ikejima has stayed in the erotic genres. Between 1981 and 1988 he appeared in over 500 softcore pink films, working for such directors as Hisayasu Satō, Yōjirō Takita and Ryūichi Hiroki. Ikejima appeared in Satō's gay-themed Temptation of the Mask, a film significant for joining three of the "Four Devils" or "Four Heavenly Kings of Pink" in one work.

Ikejima became one of Zeze Takahisa's "Zeze-gumi" of regulars including Takeshi Itō, Yōta Kawase and Yumeka Sasaki. Though most awarded and recognized as a director, Ikejima has continued acting to the present day, he began his directorial career in 1988, at first working in AVs. His cinematic theatrical debut as a director was The Masturbating Lesbian. Through his production company Cement Match, Ikejima both stages self-produces film. Cement Match has made films for all of the major pink film distribution companies, but most produces for OP Eiga. Through this company he has produced such prominent pink films as Daisuke Goto's A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn and ENK's The Gays in Wonderland. Active in gay-themed films in both acting and directing careers, the 1996 gay film, Love Me Danger, directed by Ikejima, was chosen the 6th Best Film at the Pink Grand Prix, his Men Who Love was one of the first pink films to be shown at the Tokyo International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. In his pink film directorial career, Ikejima collaborates with his wife, screenwriter Kyōko Godai, who had made a name for herself scripting for Hisayasu Satō.

Known for his professionalism and efficiency, when the original pink film version of The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai went over-budget and behind schedule, Ikejima was called in to film a temporary replacement, a task he accomplished in a few days. In 2008 Ikejima directed his 100th pink film, an accomplishment for which he was given a special award at the Pink Grand Prix. 1994 9th place: Real Underwear Body 1995 2nd place: Sexual Desires in the Ladies' Restroom: Dripping! 1995 4th place: Mistake 1996 4th place: SM Teacher: Tied Up by Students 1996 6th place: Love Me Danger 1996 6th place: Kogal*KoMadam*Wife*Beautiful Mature Woman: Lewd Carnival 1997 4th place: Beautiful Secretary: Rip Off the Panty Hose 1998 1st place: Twilight Dinner 1998 4th place: This Sort of Couple 1998 6th place: Report on Blind Passion: Shameless 1998 7th place: The Bride's Vibrator: Drilling 2000 7th place: Sex Guy's Inn: Women's Wiggling Asses 2000 9th place: Lolita-Colored Underpants 2002 3rd place: Office Lady's Sexual Confession: Burning Love Affair 2002 8th place: Obscene Stalker: It Holds in Darkness!

2002 9th place: Delivery Health Girl: The Moisture of Silken Skin 2003 2nd place: Adulterous Wife's Dirty Afternoon 2003 9th place: Men Who Love 2004 Honorable Mention: Wife Taxi: Crowded with Big Tits 2005 9th place: Snake that Makes the Wife Moist: Extreme SM Compilation 2005 10th place: The Snake that Makes the Kimono's Underwear Moist: SM Compilation 2006 3rd place: Hostess Madness: Unparched Nectar 2006 5th place: Shōwa Erotic Romance: The Virgin's Bashfulness 2006 6th place: Mature Woman: Wife-Hunting 2007 8th place: Fascinating Woman: The Temptation of Creampie 2008 1st place: Chō Inran: Yarebayaruhodo Iikimochi 2008 4th place: Hanjuku Baishun: Itohiku Aishiru 2008 6th place: Best Friend's Wife: The Black Panties of a Secret Rendezvous 2008 Gold Prize: Chō Inran: Yarebayaruhodo Iikimochi 2008 Pearl Prize: Hanjuku Baishun: Itohiku Aishiru Sharp, Jasper. Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema. Guildford: FAB Press. Pp. 332–334, 345. ISBN 978-1-903254-54-7.

Weisser, Thomas. Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Se

Ludwigshöhe is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Rhein-Selz; the small municipality of Ludwigshöhe lies in Rhenish Hesse, in the Rhine rift a short way west of the Rhine on the old Mainz-Worms trade road, nowadays known as Bundesstraße 9 exactly halfway between the Rhineland-Palatinate state capital of Mainz and the Nibelungstadt of Worms. Ludwigshöhe is a comparatively new place, but it goes back to the Merovingian community of Rudelsheim. A dykeburst in 1819 brought about a shift in that place’s population to higher ground on a nearby hill. Rudelsheim had its first documentary mention in 766 in a donation document from the Lorsch Abbey, it is believed to have been founded in the 6th century by the Franks. After the Romans had brought winegrowing to the region, this form of agriculture was taken over by the Franks. Above all, it was the monasteries that perfected it.

In the Middle Ages, Rudelsheim lay near or right at the yet unchannelled Rhine, whose course could change with each flood, thereby bringing the village considerable misery and damage. A devastating dykeburst in December 1819 led to the village being relocated on a hill farther to the west; the foundation stone was laid on 25 August 1822, Saint Louis’s Day, in honour of Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse, in his honour was the new village’s name, Ludwigshöhe. Abandonment and moving from the old Rudelsheim was ongoing up until 1830; the church, the only preserved building, fell victim to a fire in 1837. The council is made up of 8 council members who were elected by majority vote on 13 June 2004; the municipality’s arms might be described thus: Azure a lion rampant barry of nine gules and argent armed and langued gules and crowned Or, in his gambe dexter a sword of the fourth held in bend sinister, in base argent a pot of the first with the inscription ST. VITUS, issuant from beneath which flames of fire of the second.

Schloss Villa Ludwigshöhe near Edenkoben in the Palatinate. Johann Becker German politician, Member of the Reichstag, Imperial Minister of Economics Ludwigshöhe in the collective municipality’s Web pages

The list of Olympic men's ice hockey players for Belarus consists of 43 skaters and 4 goaltenders. Men's ice hockey tournaments have been staged at the Olympic Games since 1920. Belarus has participated in three tournaments since becoming independent in 1991: 1998, 2002 and 2010; as part of the Soviet Union, Belarus participated in the Winter Olympics from 1956 until 1988, as well as with the Unified Team at the 1992 Winter Olympics. Belarus has never won a medal in ice hockey, with their highest finish being fourth in 2002. Four players — goaltender Andrei Mezin and skaters Oleg Antonenko, Alexei Kalyuzhny, Ruslan Salei — have played in all three Olympics Belarus has participated in, with Kalyuzhny playing in the most games, 20. Kalyuzhny has scored the most goals for Belarus, while Alexander Andrievsky and Dmitri Dudik have the most assists. Five players — Andrievsky, Kalyuzhny, Andrei Kovalev, Vadim Bekbulatov — have 7 points, the most scored at the Olympics. Salei is the only Belarusian player to be inducted into the International Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame.

Belarus men's Andrew. IIHF Top 100 Hockey Stories of All-Time. H. B. Fenn & Company, Ltd. ISBN 978-1-55168-358-4. Retrieved March 31, 2009. Podnieks, Andrew, ed. IIHF Media Guide & Record Book 2011, Toronto: Moydart Press Wallechinsky, David; the Complete Book of the Winter Olympics. New York: The Overlook Press. ISBN 978-1-58567-185-4. "Results database". International Olympic Committee. Retrieved April 2, 2009