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Michael Žantovský
Michael Žantovský (born 3 January 1949, Prague) is a Czech polymath. He is a former Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United Kingdom, as well as to Israel and the United States. Education, background, scientific work Born in Prague in a literary family, he was educated at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University, Prague (B.A. ''summa cum laude'' in clinical and social psychology, 1973) and McGill University, Montreal. From 1973 until 1980 he worked in the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, where he did research in the fields of theory of motivation and sexual behavior. He left the Institute in 1980 and worked as a free-lance translator, lyricist and publicist. He contributed to the underground press. In 1988-89 he worked as the Prague correspondent for Reuters, the international news agency. With his first wife, playwright and journalist Kristina Žantovská, they have a daughter Ester (*1980) and son Jonáš (*1984). With his second wife, Jana Žantovská, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Senate Of The Parliament Of The Czech Republic
The Senate () is the upper house of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. The seat of the Senate is Wallenstein Palace in Prague. Structure The Senate has 81 members, chosen in single-seat constituencies through the two-round system. If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round, there is a second round between the two highest-placed candidates. The term of office for Senators is six years, and elections are Staggered elections, staggered so that a third of the seats are up for election every two years. A candidate for the Senate does not need to be on a political party's ticket (unlike in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic, Chamber of Deputies). The Senate has one President and four Vice-presidents. Its members participate in specialised committees and commissions. The Senate Chancellery has been created to provide professional, organisational and technical services. The Senate occupies several historical palaces in centre of Prague, in Malá Str ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles University
Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest universities in the world in continuous operation, the oldest university north of the Alps and east of University of Paris, Paris. Today, the university consists of 17 faculties located in Prague, Hradec Králové, and Plzeň. History Medieval university (1349–1419) The establishment of a medieval university in Prague was inspired by Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV. He requested his friend and ally, Pope Clement VI, to create the university. On 26 January 1347, the pope issued the bull establishing a university in Prague, modeled on the University of Paris, with all four faculty (division), faculties, including theology. On 7 April 1348 Charles, the king of Bohemia, gave to the established university privileges and immunities from the se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is the 1961 novel '' Catch-22'', a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice. He was nominated in 1972 for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Early life Heller was born on May 1, 1923, in Coney Island in Brooklyn,. the son of poor Jewish parents, Lena and Isaac Donald Heller from Russia. As a teenager, he wrote a story about the Soviet invasion of Finland and sent it to the ''New York Daily News'', which rejected it. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941, Heller spent the next year working as a blacksmith's apprentice, a messenger boy, and a filing clerk. In 1942, at age 19, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Two years later he was sent to the Italian Front, where he flew 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier. His unit was the 488th Bombardment Squadron, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norman Mailer
Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer, journalist and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II. His novel ''The Naked and the Dead'' was published in 1948 and brought him early renown. His 1968 nonfiction novel ''The Armies of the Night'' won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction as well as the National Book Award. Among his other well-known works are ''An American Dream (novel), An American Dream'' (1965), ''The Fight (book), The Fight'' (1975) and ''The Executioner's Song'' (1979), which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Mailer is considered an innovator of "creative nonfiction" or "New Journalism", along with Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe, a genre that uses the style and devices of literary fiction in factual journalism. He was a promin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin (né Jones; August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'' has been ranked by ''Time'' magazine as one of the top 100 English-language novels. His 1955 essay collection '' Notes of a Native Son'' helped establish his reputation as a voice for human equality. Baldwin was an influential public figure and orator, especially during the civil rights movement in the United States. Baldwin's fiction posed fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures. Themes of masculinity, sexuality, race, and class intertwine to create intricate narratives that influenced both the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement in mid-twentieth century America. His protagonists are often but not exclusively African-American; gay and bisexual men feature prominently in his work (as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1949 as the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., but also has a campus in Aspen, Colorado, its original home. Its stated mission is to "drive change through dialogue, leadership, and action to help solve the greatest challenges of our time". The Aspen Institute’s work focuses on many sectors including business, education, communications, energy and environment, health, security and international affairs. History The institute was largely the creation of Walter Paepcke, a Chicago businessman who had become inspired by the Great Books program of Mortimer Adler at the University of Chicago. In 1945, Paepcke visited Bauhaus artist and architect Herbert Bayer, AIA, who had designed and built a Bauhaus-inspired minimalist home outside the decaying former mining town of Aspen, in the Roaring Fork Valley. Paepcke and Bayer envisioned a place where artists, leaders, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prague Security Studies Institute
The Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI, ; ''PIBS'') is a non-profit, nongovernmental organization established in early 2002 to advance the building of a just, secure, democratic and free-market society in the Czech Republic and other post-communist states. PSSI’s primary mission is to build an ever-growing number of informed and security-minded policy practitioners dedicated to the development and safeguarding of democratic institutions and values in the Czech Republic and its regional neighbors. PSSI works to identify and analyze select foreign policy and security-related concerns in transatlantic relations and other theaters of the world, propose sound, achievable policy responses and host regular roundtables and major conferences on these topics. PSSI is especially alert to the intersection of global finance/energy and national security considerations. History The founding of PSSI was the result of nearly five years of planning and development. In 1997, the National Sec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Districts Of Prague
Prague has a local-government structure of two or three tiers, depending on the area of town. At the top is the Magistrate of the Capital City of Prague (), which is responsible for public transport; waste collection; municipal police; firefighting; ambulance services; cultural activities; care of historical sites; the Prague Zoo; and other activities of citywide significance. Prague is divided into 10 municipal districts (1-10), 22 administrative districts (1-22), 57 municipal parts, or 112 cadastral areas. Since 1990, the city has been divided into 56 (since 1992, 57) self-governing municipal parts (). The parts are responsible for parks and environmental protection; ordering equipment for schools and volunteer firefighters; some cultural and sports activities; activities for seniors; some social and health programs; cemeteries; and collection of fees for dog tags and the like. Another important activity of the municipal parts is the ownership, maintenance and, sometimes, sale o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Senate Of The Czech Republic
The Senate () is the upper house of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. The seat of the Senate is Wallenstein Palace in Prague. Structure The Senate has 81 members, chosen in single-seat constituencies through the two-round system. If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round, there is a second round between the two highest-placed candidates. The term of office for Senators is six years, and elections are Staggered elections, staggered so that a third of the seats are up for election every two years. A candidate for the Senate does not need to be on a political party's ticket (unlike in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic, Chamber of Deputies). The Senate has one President and four Vice-presidents. Its members participate in specialised committees and commissions. The Senate Chancellery has been created to provide professional, organisational and technical services. The Senate occupies several historical palaces in centre of Prague, in Malá Str ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Václav Havel
Václav Havel (; 5 October 193618 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and dissident. Havel served as the last List of presidents of Czechoslovakia, president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December, before he became the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the Revolutions of 1989, fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays and memoirs. His educational opportunities having been limited by his bourgeois background, when freedoms were limited by the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Havel first rose to prominence as a playwright. In works such as ''The Garden Party (play), The Garden Party'' and ''The Memorandum'', Havel used an Theatre of the absurd, absurdist style to criticize the Communist system. After participating in the Prague Spring and being blacklisted a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was established in London in 1851 by Paul Reuter. The Thomson Corporation of Canada acquired the agency in a 2008 corporate merger, resulting in the formation of the Thomson Reuters Corporation. In December 2024, Reuters was ranked as the 27th most visited news site in the world, with over 105 million monthly readers. History 19th century Paul Julius Reuter worked at a book-publishing firm in Berlin and was involved in distributing radical pamphlets at the beginning of the Revolutions of 1848. These publications brought much attention to Reuter, who in 1850 developed a prototype news service in Aachen using homing pigeons and electric telegraphy from 1851 on, in order to transmit messages between Brussels and Aachen, in what today is Aa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McGill University
McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, 1801–1895.'' McGill-Queen's University Press, 1980. the university bears the name of James McGill, a Scottish merchant, whose bequest in 1813 established the University of McGill College. In 1885, the name of the university was officially changed to McGill University. Its main campus is on the slope of Mount Royal in downtown Montreal in the borough of Ville-Marie, with a second campus situated in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, west of the main campus on Montreal Island. The university is one of two members of the Association of American Universities located outside the United States, alongside the University of Toronto, and is the only Canadian member of the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF) within the World Economic Forum. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
