Whoopi Goldberg The One Woman Show

Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Johnson in New York City and spent the first years of her life in a public housing project in Manhattan. She made her performing debut at age eight with the Helena Rubinstein Children's Theatre at the Hudson Guild. After dropping out of high school, she found work as a summer camp counselor, and in the choruses of the Broadway shows Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar and Pippin.

In 1974, after a failed marriage, she moved to California with her young daughter and, the following year, helped found the San Diego Repertory Theatre and joined the improvisational theater group Spontaneous Combustion. It was at this time that she adopted her distinctive stage name and began to develop the character monologues that were to make her famous. After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, she joined another improvisational group, the Blake Street Hawkeyes, acquired a following for her work as a stand-up comedian, and toured the U.S. and Europe with her one-woman production, The Spook Show.


Whoopi Goldberg Biography Photo
In 1983 the legendary director Mike Nichols saw her perform and, the following year, presented her on Broadway in a one-woman show of her own creation. The show was an enormous success, and brought her to the attention of Steven Spielberg, who cast her in the leading role in his film of Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Making her film debut in this coveted role instantly established her as one of Hollywood's leading actresses. Her performance in Ghost won her an Academy Award. She followed this with memorable performances in the box-office smash Sister Act and the critically acclaimed Robert Altman film, The Player. Her other film credits include Made In America; Corinna, Corinna; Star Trek: Generations and Boys on the Side. In addition to her acting roles, Whoopi Goldberg has hosted her own television talk show and has earned rave reviews for hosting the annual Academy Awards telecast.
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Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi was born on 19 June 1945. Her father, Aung San, negotiated Burma's independence from the United Kingdom in 1947, and was assassinated by his rivals in the same year. She grew up with her mother, Khin Kyi, and two brothers, Aung San Lin and Aung San Oo in Rangoon. Her favourite brother Aung San Lin drowned in a pool accident when Suu Kyi was eight. Her elder brother migrated to San Diego, California, becoming a United States citizen. Suu Kyi was educated in English Catholic schools for much of her childhood in Burma.

Khin Kyi (Ma Khin Kyi) gained prominence as a political figure in the newly-formed Burmese government. Ma Khin Kyi was appointed as Burmese ambassador to India in 1960, and Aung San Suu Kyi followed her there, graduating from Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi in 1964.


She continued her education at St Hugh's College, Oxford, obtaining a B.A. degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in 1969 and a Ph.D. at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1985. She also worked for the government of the Union of Myanmar. In 1972, Aung San Suu Kyi married Dr. Michael Aris, a scholar of Tibetan culture, living abroad in Bhutan. The following year she gave birth to first son, Alexander, in London; and in 1977 she had her second son, Kim.

Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to take care of her ailing mother. By coincidence, in that year, the long-time leader of the socialist ruling party, General Ne Win, stepped down, leading to mass demonstrations for democratisation on August 8, 1988 (8-8-88, a day seen as favorable), which were violently suppressed. A new military junta took power.

Heavily influenced by both Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence and by more specifically Buddhist concepts[12], Aung San Suu Kyi entered politics to work for democratisation, helped found the National League for Democracy on 27 September 1988, and was put under house arrest on 20 July 1989. She was offered freedom if she would leave the country, but she refused.

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Col. Pam Melroy The Woman to Command a U.S. Space Mission

(NASA pictures)

Col. Pam Melroy, age 44, has been named as the commander of STS-120, a space shuttle mission that is planned to add two new components to the International Space Station.

Melroy is only the second woman to command a U.S. space mission. This ought not to be a landmark, but it is one of a sort. Men have done it 144 times, not counting the thirteen crews to occupy the station (where it gets complicated--one crew member, American or Russian, is the "Expedition Commander," while another (always Russian) is "Soyuz Commander"--it doesn't make much difference; they've all been male).


The larger question is how soon Melroy and her six crewmates will get to launch. Five shuttle flights are ahead of them in line, and the debate over launching the first of them, STS-121 on July 1, was described as "spirited." (The flight numbers may seem to make no sense, but a flight gets one when it's been put together, and that may be different from the order in which the missions fly. STS-121 will be followed by STS-115; STS-119 comes after STS-120, and--oh, I'll let it go.)

By : Ned Potter is the science correspondent for ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson." He has reported on such topics as space exploration, the human genome and climate change.

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Katie Holmes

Just hours after crossing the finish line in the grueling New York City Marathon, Katie Holmes stepped out again – in black, open-toed heels! – for husband Tom Cruise's film premiere.

While many other runners would be huddled in bed recovering, Holmes and Cruise walked hand-in-hand into the Museum of Modern Art Sunday night for a screening of his new film Lions for Lambs (directed by Robert Redford and costarring Meryl Streep). When asked about his wife's resilience, Cruise beamed proudly, telling PEOPLE, "I know, I know. It's amazing."


Also on hand were Cruise's mother and sister and Holmes's parents. "Isn't she amazing?" gushed mom Kathy. "She's such a good girl. We're so proud [of her]."

Earlier in the day, Holmes, 28, crossed the finish line in a respectable 5:29:58, as Cruise and their daughter Suri, 18 months, cheered from the sidelines.

MONDAY NOVEMBER 05, 2007 08:15 AM EST

By Jeffrey Slonim

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Milla Jovovich

Born Milica Nataša Jovović on December 17, 1975) is an American supermodel, actress, musician, singer, and fashion designer. Jovovich has been featured in numerous high profile modeling campaigns as well as in Hollywood films. Over her career, she has appeared in a number of science-fiction and action themed films, for which music channel VH1 has referred to her as the "reigning queen of kick-butt".

Jovovich had began modeling at eleven, when Richard Avedon featured her in Revlon's "Most Unforgettable Women in the World" advertisements, and she continues her career with more notable campaigns for L'Oreal cosmetics, Banana Republic, Christian Dior, Donna Karan and Versace. In 1988, she had her first professional acting role in the television film The Night Train to Kathmandu, and later that year she appeared in her first feature film, Two Moon Junction. Following more small television and film roles, she gained notoriety with the film Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991), the sequel to The Blue Lagoon. Jovovich then acted along side Bruce Willis in the science fiction film The Fifth Element (1997), and later played the title role in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999). In 2002, she starred in the video game adaptation, Resident Evil, which has gone onto spawn two sequels, Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) and Resident Evil: Extinction (2007).

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Martina Hingis

Martina Hingis (born September 30, 1980 in Košice, Slovakia) is a former tennis player and World No. 1. Known as the "Swiss Miss", she won five Grand Slam singles titles (three Australian Open, one Wimbledon, and one US Open) before her retirement on November 1, 2007.

She also won nine Grand Slam women's doubles titles, winning a calendar year Grand Slam in 1998, and one Grand Slam mixed doubles title. She spent a total of 209 weeks as World No. 1 and set a series of "youngest-ever" records before ligament injuries in both ankles forced her to temporarily withdraw from professional tennis at the relatively early age of 22.


On November 29, 2005, after several surgeries and long recuperations, the 25-year-old Hingis announced that she would return to the WTA tour. During her comeback Hingis climbed as high as No. 6 in the world rankings and won three titles (at the Tier I tournament in Rome, the Tier III tournament in Kolkata, India, and the Tier I tournament in Tokyo).

On November 1, 2007, after suffering from injuries for much of the year, Hingis announced her second retirement from tennis while admitting she had tested positive for cocaine during the 2007 Wimbledon Championships. She denied using the drug.
wikipedia

“Throughout my career, I have always been open and honest with you,” said Martina Hingis in a press conference three days ago. “I find this accusation so horrendous, so monstrous... My weapon on the tennis court is and always was one single thing: the game, the ingenuity on court. And for this style of tennis, there is only one performance enhancer—the love of the game.

Is Martina Hingis guilty?


Like you and the rest of the tennis world, I hope she’s innocent. I hope she’s telling the truth. You see, Ms. Hingis is not tennis’ Bad Girl. She never was. You never read about her partying until 3 a.m. like Jennifer Capriati or lambasting an opponent who’s just beaten her like Serena Williams. Ever since she became the world’s youngest-ever world No.1 (at 16 years old) in 1997, her reputation was as white as the Swiss Alps snow.

I, for one, adored Hingis. When I had the chance, back in 1999, to visit the US Open with my dad Bunny, I stood 20 feet away from her while she practiced at a side court. I took photos, enlarged my eyes, and photographed the memory I knew I’d never forget.

Well, guess what... that picture ricocheted back two days ago alongside one word: DRUGS. It’s ugly, dirty and, worse of all, the question begs, “Do we believe Hingis or not?”

Take Marion Jones. Remember her? She was crowned one of history’s greatest track and field beings on Earth. Back at the 2000 Sydney Games, she was the princess, the Poster Girl, the smiling face of the Olympics who won gold medals in the 100 meters, 200 meters and the 1,600 relay, plus bronzes in the 400 relay and long jump.

Then, in 2004, she was accused of taking steroids. Her reply? And the reply of every athlete who’s ever been accused, guilty or not?

“I didn’t do it.”

Tell me I’m lying: Doesn’t everybody who’s ever been caught of anything utter the same four words...

“I didn’t do it.”

Today, of course, we know the truth. Marion Jones did do it. She injected steroids and, worse, she lied. Lied. Lied. While smiling before the cameras. The result? All her five Olympic medals have been confiscated, her earnings will be recovered, and she’s going to jail.

And that’s not all: While the rule says that the gold medal be handed over to the silver medalist, in the case of Jones’ 100-meter win, the second-placer, Katerina Thanou, failed to show up for drug tests on the eve of the Games and was suspended for two years. So, does that mean the gold be handed to the bronze medalist? Sure. But what if she’s also a drug cheat?

Is everybody a cheat?

In cycling—and this was a major shocker—Floyd Landis tested positive. That was another heartbreaker for us, the cycling fans. Because when the 2006 Tour de France started, we thought, well, this will be devoid of drama... but it wasn’t.

Because Landis wore the yellow jersey, surrendered it, wore it again, surrendered it, then rode “one of the most epic days of cycling ever seen” in Le Tour history, his Stage 17 victory.

Then... drugs. The allegation. The denial. The court case. And finally, Landis stripped of his Tour victory.

How sad. Who do we believe? Hingis? Landis? How about Barry Bonds? How about my all-time favorite sportsman, Lance Armstrong? Can we believe him? Can we trust anybody who says, “I didn’t do it?”

Sad. And I thought this only happened in politics!

The only solution to this chaotic cycle of lies? Follow the slogan adhered to by the Brotherhood of Christian Businessmen and Professionals (BCBP): “BE HONEST. EVEN IF OTHERS ARE NOT. EVEN IF OTHERS WILL NOT. EVEN IF OTHERS CANNOT.”

(www.pages.ph/john@pages.ph)

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Hillary Rodham Clinton

Bill Clinton returned to the Governor's office two years later by winning the election of 1982. During her husband's campaign, Rodham began to use the name Hillary Clinton, or sometimes "Mrs. Bill Clinton", in order to have greater appeal to Arkansas voters; she also took a leave of absence from Rose Law in order to campaign for him full-time. As First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee from 1982 to 1992, where she sought to bring about reform in the state's court-sanctioned public education system.One of the most important initiatives of the entire Clinton governorship, she fought a prolonged but ultimately successful battle against the Arkansas Education Association to put mandatory teacher testing as well as state standards for curriculum and classroom size in place. She introduced Arkansas' Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth in 1985, a program that helps parents work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy. She was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984.

Clinton continued to practice law with the Rose Law Firm while she was First Lady of Arkansas. She earned less than all the other partners, due to fewer hours being billed, but still made over $200,000 in her final year there. She continued to rarely do trial work, but was considered a "rainmaker" at the firm for bringing in clients, partly due to the prestige she lent the firm and to her corporate board connections. She was also very influential in the appointment of state judges. Bill Clinton's Republican opponent in his 1986 gubernatorial re-election campaign accused the Clintons of conflict of interest, because Rose Law did state business; the Clintons deflected the charge by saying that state fees were walled off by the firm before her profits were calculated. From 1987 to 1991 she chaired the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession, which addressed gender bias in the law profession and induced the association to adopt measures to combat it. She was twice named by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America, in 1988 and in 1991.When Bill Clinton thought about not running again for governor in 1990, Hillary Clinton considered running herself, but private polls were unfavorable and in the end he ran and was re-elected for the final time.

Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988–1992) and the Children's Defense Fund (as chair, 1986–1992). In addition to her positions with non-profit organizations, she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985–1992), Wal-Mart Stores (1986–1992) and Lafarge (1990–1992). TCBY and Wal-Mart were Arkansas-based companies that were also clients of Rose Law. Clinton was the first female member on Wal-Mart's board, added when chairman Sam Walton was pressured to name one; once there, she pushed successfully for the chain to adopt more environmentally-friendly practices, pushed largely unsuccessfully for more women to be added to the company's management, and was silent about the company's famously anti-labor union practices.

Cultural and political image

Observers have consistently characterized Hillary Clinton as a polarizing figure in American politics. By 1992, during her husband's presidential campaign, a reporter asked her, "Some people think of you as an inspiring female attorney mother, and other people think of you as the overbearing yuppie wife from hell. How would you describe yourself?" Political operatives said she could be easily seen as either a positive role model or a nagging "hall monitor" type. The polarized response to Clinton ran along both political and cultural lines. In 1995, after the failure of her health care reform initiative, New York Times reporter Todd Purdum labelled Hillary Clinton "a complex and polarizing figure in public opinion," and "the First Lady as Rorschach test;" the latter assessment was echoed by feminist writer and activist Betty Friedan.

In part, this led from her background and her new role. Colorado State University communication studies professor Karrin Vasby Anderson describes the First Lady position as a "site" for American womanhood, one ready made for the symbolic negotiation of female identity. In particular there has been a cultural bias towards traditional first ladies and a cultural prohibition against modern first ladies; by the time of Clinton, the First Lady position had become a site of heterogeneity and paradox. Nowhere was this paradox more evident than when Clinton achieved her highest approval ratings as First Lady late in 1998, not for any professional or political achievement of her own but for being seen as the victim of her husband's very public infidelity. University of Pennsylvania communications professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson saw Hillary Clinton as an exemplar of the double bind, who though able to live in a "both-and" world of both career and family, nevertheless "became a surrogate on whom we projected our attitudes about attributes once thought incompatible," leading to her being placed in a variety of no-win situations. The world of political cartoons also played in the symbolic negotiation: University of Indianapolis English professor Charlotte Templin found cartoonists using a variety of stereotypes such as gender reversal, radical feminist as emasculator, and the wife the husband wants to get rid of, to portray Hillary Clinton as violating gender norms.

Over fifty books and scholarly works have been written about Hillary Clinton, from many different angles. There has been a cottage industry in attack books against her, put out by Regnery Publishing and its brethren, with lurid subtitles such as Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House, Hillary's Scheme: Inside the Next Clinton's Ruthless Agenda to Take the White House, and Can She Be Stopped? : Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless .... When she ran for Senate in 2000, a number of fundraising groups with dire-sounding names such as Save Our Senate and the Emergency Committee to Stop Hillary Rodham Clinton sprang up. She was a reliable bogeyman of Republican and conservative fundraising letters, on a par with Ted Kennedy and the equivalent of Democratic beggings to fear about Newt Gingrich.

By the 2000s she had escaped the First Lady role for the Senate, but her polarizing status largely remained. In 2006, before her presidential campaign began in earnest, Time magazine's Ana Marie Cox said "she may be the most polarizing figure on the current political landscape," NPR's Daniel Schorr said that, in light of her qualities as a public figure and candidate, her polarizing force made her the "great political paradox of our time," and historian Gil Troy titled his biography of her Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady. A Time magazine cover that year showed a large picture of her, with two checkboxes labeled "Love Her", "Hate Her", while Mother Jones titled its Jack Hitt-written profile of her "Harpy, Hero, Heretic: Hillary". A typical public opinion poll reporting Hillary Clinton's favorability versus unfavorability showed large percentages in both camps, few undecided, and none who did not know who she is. By the time of her presidential campaign for 2008, however, there were a few signs that her polarizing quality be abating. Democratic netroots activists consistently rated Clinton very low in polls of their desired candidates, while some conservative figures such as Bruce Bartlett and Christopher Ruddy were declaring a Hillary Clinton presidency not so bad after all and an October 2007 cover of The American Conservative magazine was titled "The Waning Power of Hillary Hate".

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The Rt Hon Helen Clark Prime Minister of New Zealand

Helen Clark first gained election to the New Zealand House of Representatives in the 1981 general election as one of four women who entered Parliament on that occasion. In winning the Mount Albert electorate in Auckland, she became the second woman elected to represent an Auckland electorate, and the seventeenth woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament. At the 2005 general election Clark won 66% of the electorate votes, or 20,918 votes with a 14,749 majority. During her first term in the House (1981 - 1984), she became a member of the Statutes Revision Committee. In her second term (1984 - 1987), she chaired the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Select Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control, both of which combined with the Defence Select Committee in 1985 to form a single committee.

Cabinet Minister

In 1987, Clark became a Cabinet Minister in the Fourth Labour Government, led by David Lange (1984 - 1989), Geoffrey Palmer (1989 - 1990) and Mike Moore (1990), first as Minister of Housing and as Minister of Conservation, then as Minister of Health and later as Deputy Prime Minister.

Clark served as Minister of Conservation from August 1987 until January 1989 and as Minister of Housing from August 1987 until August 1989. She became Minister of Health in January 1989 and Minister of Labour and Deputy Prime Minister in August 1989. She chaired the Cabinet Social Equity Committee and became a member of the Cabinet Policy Committee, of the Cabinet Committee on Chief Executives, of the Cabinet Economic Development and Employment Committee, of the Cabinet Expenditure Review Committee, of the Cabinet State Agencies Committee, of the Cabinet Honours Appointments and Travel Committee and of the Cabinet Domestic and External Security Committee.

Leader of the Opposition

From October 1990 until December 1993 Clark held the posts of Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Opposition spokesperson for Health and Labour and member of the Social Services Select Committee and of the Labour Select Committee. After the National Party won the 1993 general election with a majority of one seat, Clark challenged Mike Moore for the leadership of the parliamentary Labour Party and became Leader of the Opposition on 1 December 1993. She led the Opposition during the National-led Governments of Jim Bolger (1990 - 1997) and Jenny Shipley (1997 - 1999).
source:wikipedia

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