Lobsang Sangay

Lobsang Sangay (born 1968 at Darjeeling) is a Tibetan refugee, legal scholar and political activist. He was elected as the next Kalon Tripa (equivalent to Prime Minister) of the Tibetan Government in Exile on 26 April 2011, succeeding the 5th Samdhong Rinpoche.

Education and academic career

After graduating from the Tibetan Refugee school in Darjeeling, Sangay received his B.A. (Hons) and LL.B. degrees from the University of Delhi in India. In 1995, he won a Fulbright Scholarship to Harvard Law School, where he subsequently received his LL.M. degree the same year.

In 2003, Sangay organized five conferences between Chinese and Tibetan scholars, including a meeting between the Dalai Lama and thirty-five Chinese scholars at Harvard University.

In 2004, he became the first Tibetan (among six million) to earn a S.J.D. degree from Harvard Law School and was a recipient of the 2004 Yong K. Kim' 95 Prize of excellence for his dissertation Democracy in Distress: Is Exile Polity a Remedy? A Case Study of Tibet's Government-in-exile. In 2006, Sangay was selected as one of the twenty-four Young Leaders of Asia by the Asia Society, a global organization working to strengthen relationships and promote understanding among the people, leaders, and institutions of Asia and the United States. Sangay is currently a Senior Fellow at the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. He is an expert in Tibetan law and international human rights law.

Governmental career

On April 27, 2011 he was elected Kalon Tripa of the Tibetan Government in Exile. Sangay won 55% of the votes, defeating Tenzin Tethong (37.4%) and Tashi Wangdi (6.4%). 83,400 Tibetan were eligible to vote and 49,000 ballots were cast. He will succeed Lobsang Tenzin as the head of the Tibetan Government in Exile. On August 8, 2011 Lobsang Sangay officially took oath and accepted his post as the Kalon Tripa.

While the leadership of the government-in-exile is in a state of transition, the 14th Dalai Lama remains formally ceremonial Head of State and has taken no political stances since his announced retirement in early 2011 from active participation in Tibetan affairs.

Personal life

Sangay was born in a village in Darjeeling in 1968, with a typical Shichak (settlement) background amidst fields, cows, chicken, fetching wood in the forest and helping his parent's small business including winter sweater selling. March 10 is used as his birthday as shown on his facebook page, but he doesn’t know the exact day on which he was born nor did a lot of Tibetan children born in those years in the refugee camp. Upon registration in school where a birthday was needed, his parents entered March 10, as did the parents of almost a third of his classmates. To Tibetans, March 10 is known as the National Uprising Day (1959 Tibetan uprising), marking the 1959 armed rebellion against the Chinese rule over Tibet. Presently, he lives in Greater Boston area in the US. His mother Kelsang Choden from Chamdo lives with him and his father died in 2004. He is married to Kesang Yangdon Shakchang, whose parents were from the Lhokha and Phare area. They have been together for 13 years and have a three-year-old daughter.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Danilo Medina

Danilo Medina Sánchez (born November 10, 1951) is the current president elect of the Dominican Republic. He was the presidential candidate of the Dominican Liberation Party in the 2000 presidential election, and was defeated by Hipólito Mejía. On May 20th, 2012 he won the presidential election defeating Hipólito Mejía with 51% of the votes 2012 presidential election.

Medina was President of the Chamber of Deputies of the Dominican Republic from 1994 to 1996. He subsequently served as Secretary of State of the Presidency of the Dominican Republic from 1996 to 2000 and again from 2004 to 2006.

Early Years

Medina was born in Arroyo Cano, San Juan Province, in the southwest of the Dominican Republic. He is the oldest of eight brothers born of Juan Pablo Medina and Amelia Sánchez. Since he was 18 years old he was a student leader, founding the San Juan de la Maguana branch of the Frente Revolucionario Estudiantil Nacionalista at the UASD. When Professor Juan Bosch founded the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana in 1973, Medina joined him. He studied economics at Instituto Tecnológico Santo Domingo (INTEC), and graduated magna cum laude in 1984. He has been a member of the Central Committee of the PLD since 1983. In 1986 election he was elected a deputy in Congress. In 1987, he married psychologist Cándida Montilla and has three daughters, Sibeli, Vanessa and Ana Paula.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Tariq al-Hashimi

Tariq al-Hashimi (Arabic: طارق الهاشمي‎; born 1942) is an Iraqi politician and was general secretary of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) until May 2009. Along with Adil Abdul Mahdi, he was a Vice President of Iraq in the government formed after the December 2005 elections for 5 years, and is now Vice President of Iraq along with Khodair al-Khozaei. As a Sunni, he took the place of fellow Sunni politician Ghazi al-Yawar.

Early Life

Tariq al-Hashimi was born in 1942 in Baghdad, Iraq, into the Mashhadan tribe. From 1959 until 1962, he studied at a military academy. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Al-Mustansiriya University in 1969, and a master's in 1978. At the age of 33, he left the military and became active in the Iraqi Islamic Party, serving on its planning committee.

Political Views

Hashimi's party represented the largest Sunni block in parliament after the 2005 election. Hashimi opposes federalism, wants oil revenues distributed based on population, de-Baathification reversed and more Sunnis in the new military and police.

Hashimi stepped down as secretary general of the IIP in May 2009, and Dr. Osama al Tikriti was elected to fill the position. Hashimi stated that he stepped down because he wanted to focus on his responsibilities as vice president, and not for political reasons.

USA Today reported in December 2006 that Hashimi was involved in forming a multi-sectarian alliance to replace the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, with the encouragement of U.S. President George W. Bush, Muqtada al-Sadr.

Arrest Warrant

On May 8th 2012 the interpol had issued an arrest warrant on him. On December 19, 2011, it was announced that Iraq's Judicial Council had issued an arrest warrant for al-Hashimi, accusing him of orchestrating bombing attacks. He has been accused of running a hit squad and killing Shiite government officials. He subsequently sought protection in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. President of Kurdistan Massoud Barzani declared in March 2012 that the Kurdistan Regional Government would not hand over al-Hashimi to Iraqi authorities because Kurdish ethics prevented them from doing so. Al-Hashimi has denied all charges and claimed constitutional immunity from the prosecution.

On April 1, 2012, al-Hashimi was allowed by the authorities in Kurdistan to travel to Qatar to meet with the Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, on what the Qatari administration described as an official diplomatic visit. Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Hussain al-Shahristani denounced the visit as unacceptable on Qatar's part and called for al-Hashimi to be immediately handed over.The arrest warrant came just one day after the final U.S. troop withdrawal of remaining forces from Iraq. The dispute between the Sunni Muslim al-Hashimi with the primarily Shia administration of Prime Minister Maliki has generated concern over the stability of the young Iraqi government amid the ongoing sectarian conflic.

Priscilla Chan

She likes Target, the Food Network and sun-dried tomatoes. She loves taking pictures of her dog Beast, and admits to checking her phone "every five seconds."

Priscilla Chan vaulted into the spotlight on Saturday when it was revealed she had married longtime boyfriend Mark Zuckerberg -- billionaire and Facebook founder. The wedding, according to media reports, came within days of Chan's graduation from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco.

The two met more than nine years ago while both were studying at Harvard. In a 2005 Harvard Crimson story about Zuckerberg leaving the university, he is quoted as asking Chan, identified as a "passing friend," "Hey, Priscilla, do you want a job at the Facebook?"

"I'd love a job at Facebook," she responds while "offering him a Twizzler."

But Chan, who graduated from Harvard as a biology major in 2007, never worked for Facebook.

Instead, the Braintree, Massachusetts, native worked as a fourth- and fifth-grade science teacher at The Harker School in San Jose, California, following her graduation. On Facebook, she described her job as "hanging out with the little ones and trying to explain how the world works."

She left the school in June 2008 and entered medical school, according to Facebook. "Learning to be a doctor," she noted on her page.

On the UCSF web site, Chan is quoted along with other students on the school. "I was attracted by the faculty's honesty and warmth and the curriculum's inter-disciplinary approach," she said. "San Francisco's quirkiness and diversity sealed the deal."

Chan graduated from Harvard in 2007. A picture posted on another of her Facebook pages shows her in a cap and gown next to Zuckerberg, who was wearing his trademark hoodie.

In another picture from 2007, Chan writes she is with Zuckerberg at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, noting, "My date was wearing shoes!"

In March 2011, the couple adopted Beast -- and, of course, set up a Facebook page for him.

"I am a Puli, which is a type of Hungarian sheepdog," according to Beast's page. "I live in Palo Alto with Mark and Cilla. I like cuddling and herding things."

On his page, Beast is shown lying on Chan's computer keyboard as she looks at the screen; peering into the fridge for a snack; and describing his "favorite thing in the world ... pooping on Mark's white rug."

Beast is also shown on Chan's page, which had been updated as of Sunday to show her married to Zuckerberg.

However, her pages also show a keen sense of humor. She writes that she "loves cooking and soft things" and enjoys diet A&W. "I am a simple creature," she writes.

One with the power to help change the world: Zuckerberg told ABC News this month that dinner table conversations with Chan helped him formulate an organ-donation initiative on Facebook.

"She's going to be a pediatrician, so our dinner conversations are often about Facebook and the kids that she's meeting," he said. Chan told him, he added, of patients "getting sicker as they don't have the organ that they need."

According to her Facebook page, Chan speaks English, Spanish and Cantonese. Zuckerberg told ABC that Chan inspired him to try to learn Mandarin Chinese in one year. The venture wasn't very successful, he said, but he picked up enough to talk with Chan's elderly grandmother.

From : CNN

Tomislav Nikolić

Tomislav "Toma" Nikolić (Serbian Cyrillic: Томислав Николић; born 15 February 1952) is a Serbian politician, President of the Serbian Progressive Party. He is also a former member of the Serbian Radical Party, where he served as deputy leader of the party and parliamentary leader during the absence of Vojislav Šešelj. During his leadership of the party, Nikolić favored pushing the SRS towards focusing on issues such as poverty and unemployment, rather than militant nationalism. Nikolić held this post from 23 February 2003 to 6 September 2008, when he resigned following a disagreement with Šešelj regarding Serbia's relations with the European Union. Nikolić then formed the Serbian Progressive Party, which several SRS politicians joined.

He served as President of the National Assembly of Serbia between 8 and 13 May 2007 and was Deputy Prime Minister of FR Yugoslavia in the coalition government from 1999 to 2000. Nikolić ran for the President of Yugoslavia in the 2000 elections and placed third. As a perennial candidate he also ran three times for the President of Serbia (in 2003, 2004 and 2008 elections). In 2003 he garnered the most votes, but the election was cancelled due to low turnout. In 2004 and 2008 he placed second, behind Boris Tadić.

Nikolić has published thirteen books as of 2005[update]. He and his wife Dragica (née Ninković) have two sons. Nikolić became a candidate for the 2012 Serbian Presidential Elections, after the resignation of former president Boris Tadić. His campaign literature promised that he would be a non-political head of state who would unite all citizens, as did a speech by his colleague, Aleksandar Vučić.

Biography

Nikolić was born in Kragujevac. In the 1990s, he became a member of the People's Radical Party, which merged with the Serbian Chetnik Movement to form the Serbian Radical Party. Nikolić became a member of the new party on 23 January 1991. He was soon elected the party's vice-president, and at the last three Congresses of Serbian Radicals he was elected deputy president. He has been a deputy in the National Assembly of Serbia since 1991, the only one to be elected continuously since that year. During the rule of Slobodan Milošević and the Socialist Party of Serbia, he and Šešelj were sentenced to three months in prison which he served in Gnjilane. However, in March 1998 Nikolić's Serbian Radical Party formed a coalition with the Socialist Party of Serbia and Nikolić became the vice-president of the Government of Serbia and, by the end of 1999, the vice-president of the Government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Parliamentarians elected Nikolić the Speaker of Parliament on 8 May 2007, defeating Milena Milošević of the Democratic Party by 142 to 99 votes out of 244 members of Parliament. The Democratic Party of Serbia endorsed him. Hajredin Kuci of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, Ylli Hoxha of the Reformist Party ORA, and Prime Minister of Kosovo Agim Çeku condemned the election of Nikolić as "counterproductive and dangerous for Kosovo". On 9 May, Nikolić met with Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Alekseyev and gave a speech to Parliament in which he advocated making Serbia part of a Belarus-Russia superstate, saying that together they would "stand up against the hegemony of America and the European Union."

He resigned from his position as speaker on 15 May after the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia formed a preliminary alliance in preparation for a coalition government. He was the Speaker with the shortest mandate in the history of parliamentary democracy in the Balkans. Nikolić told the Democratic parties that if they "peacefully accept" the independence of Kosovo the Radical Party "will not sit calmly and wait".

On 28 February 2003, about 20 days before the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić, Nikolić said: "If anyone of you, in the following month or two, sees Zoran Đinđić, tell him that Tito also had a problem with a leg before his death". Nikolić stated that Serbian president Boris Tadić was an Ustasha, and that he was not sorry for the death of Serbian journalist Slavko Ćuruvija. His public statements include that he still dreams about Greater Serbia as a state where all Serbs will once live in, and that Russian troops should be allowed to build a military base in Serbia at the strategic location Pasuljanske livade.

From : www.wikipedia.org

János Áder

János Áder (born 9 May 1959) is a Hungarian lawyer and politician, and as of 2 May 2012 (2012 -05-02) is President-elect of Hungary.

Life and career

Áder grew up in the small town of Csorna in Győr-Moson-Sopron county. Beginning in 1978, he studied law for five years at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. From 1986 to 1990, he was a research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' Sociological Research Institute.

Áder, who has a law degree, was a co-founder of Fidesz (Alliance of Young Democrats), at the time a liberal coalition of democrats (although it has shifted to center-right as of 2012). He served as a party legal expert. Áder was a member of the Opposition Round Table which, in 1989, negotiated an end to single-party rule in Hungary.

In the 1990 and 1994 elections he was head of the Fidesz campaign. He was a member of the Hungarian Parliament (Országgyűlés) from 1990 to 2009, and was the Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary from 18 June 1998 to 15 May 2002. He was the leader of the Fidesz caucus opposition from 2002 to 2006. In 2011, he helped draft legislation which changed the role of the Hungarian judiciary, leading the European Commission to bring the matter of Hungarian judicial independence before the European Court of Justice. He also helped draft the legislation which revised Hungarian electoral laws.

In the 2009 European Parliament election, he became a member of the European Parliament.

On 16 April 2012, Áder was appointed by the Fidesz party, and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, to become the new President of Hungary after the resignation of Pál Schmitt. He was elected on 2 May to a five-year term by a vote of 262–40, and will take office on 10 May 2012. He will be the first president to hold that office since the new Hungarian constitution took effect on 1 January 2012.

Family

János Áder is married to Anita Herczegh, who works as a judge. They have three girls and one boy. Áder's father-in-law, Géza Herczegh, was a judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague from 1993 to 2003.

From : www.wikipedia.org

Chen Guangcheng

Chen Guangcheng (born 12 November 1971) is a Chinese civil rights activist who works on human rights issues in rural areas of the People's Republic of China. Blind from an early age and self-taught in the law, Chen is frequently described as a "barefoot lawyer" who advocates for women's rights and the poor. He is best known for exposing alleged abuses in official family planning policy, often involving claims of violence and forced abortions.

In 2005, he became internationally known for organizing a class-action lawsuit against the city of Linyi in Shandong for excessive enforcement of the one-child policy. As a result of this lawsuit, Chen was placed under house arrest from September 2005 to March 2006, with a formal arrest in June 2006. During his trial, Chen's attorneys were forbidden access to the court, leaving him without a proper defender. On 24 August 2006, Chen was sentenced to four years and three months for "damaging property and organising a mob to disturb traffic".

Chen was released from prison on 8 September 2010 after serving his full sentence, but remained under house arrest or "soft detention" at his home in Dongshigu Village (东师古村). Chen and his wife were reportedly beaten shortly after a human rights group released a video of their home under intense police surveillance on 9 February 2011.

Chen's case received sustained international attention, with the U.S. State Department, the British Foreign Secretary, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International issuing appeals for his release; the latter group designated him a prisoner of conscience. Chen is a 2007 laureate of the Ramon Magsaysay Award and in 2006 was named to the Time 100.

On 22 April 2012, Chen escaped his house arrest and was reported to have fled to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

Early Life

Chen hails from the small village of Dongshigu, Shandong province, approximately 200km from the city of Jinan. Due to a severe fever, Chen lost his sight at an early age. He was illiterate until 1994 when he was enrolled by Qingdao High School for the Blind and graduated in 1998. In that time, Chen had already begun developing an interest in the law, and enlisted his brothers to read legal texts for him. He then studied in Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine from 1998 to 2001, specializing in acupuncture and massage. After graduation he returned to his home region and found a job as a masseur in the hospital of Yinan county. Nonetheless, he managed to audit law classes, and learned enough to aid his fellow villagers when they sought his assistance.

From : www.wikipedia.org