Angela Merkel
Frederick Florin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Updated: May 21, 2010
Angela Merkel became the first female chancellor of Germany in 2005 at the age of 51. She was also the first eastern German to lead the country after its reunification following the fall of the Berlin Wall. She is the leader of the Christian Democratic Union, a Catholic-leaning conservative party.
Mrs. Merkel was re-elected in September 2009, making her one of the longest-serving leaders among Europe's major powers. But her party had its worst results in 60 years, reflecting widespread unhappiness over the economic downturn, which has cost Germany its position as the world's leading exporter. She formed a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats, but rising budget deficits as a result of the economic crisis, however, have drastically limited the kind of tax cuts on which the coalition partners campaigned.
Mrs. Merkel was in one sense the central figure in the drama that played out over the first five months of 2010 as the European Union struggled to reach agreement on a response to the sovereign debt crisis set off by Greece. Germans were overwhelmingly opposed to a bailout of a country they saw as spendthrift, and Mrs. Merkel took a tough line in months of negotiations with France and the International Monetary Fund over an aid package.
As the euro continued to deterioriate, Mrs. Merkel went along with an aid package for Greece three times the size of the original plan. Later that week her party lost badly in the regional vote, losing control of the upper house of parliament, meaning that any initiatives of hers could be blocked by opposition parties. And when European leaders worked out a bailout plan of nearly $1 trillion in the hope of putting the debt crisis to rest, Mrs. Merkel was in Moscow watching a military parade commemorating Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II.
On My 21, Germany's Parliament approved a measure allowing the country to contribute to the nearly $1 trillion bailout package. After days of often heated debate, Mrs. Merkel's coalition of conservatives and Free Democrats managed to push through the measure only because her coalition has a comfortable majority in the Bundestag. Opposition leaders said they could not vote for the package because Mrs. Merkel had shown no leadership during the crisis and had no long-term strategy to instill public confidence in the euro.
Born in Hamburg on July 17, 1954, to a Protestant minister, Horst Kasner, and his wife, Herlind, Angela Dorothea Kasner was three months old when her father was asked to take over a country church in Brandenburg. She excelled in school and hoped to become a teacher and translator. But because of her father's pastoral work, she found those careers closed to her. So in 1973, she opted to study physics at Leipzig University.
Mrs. Merkel was settling into a career at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. A month later, she joined a coalition of pro-democracy parties.
When she first took office as Germany's chancellor, Mrs. Merkel seemed less a phenomenon than a fluke -- squeaking into office amid predictions that her government would be hobbled by internal problems and might soon collapse. But she later emerged as a leading political actor in Europe, and, having forged a surprisingly warm relationship with President George W. Bush, the go-to person in Europe for Washington. Reinvigorating the Atlantic alliance was at the top of her agenda.
Mrs. Merkel has professed to want to work closely with American President Barack Obama. But in the spring of 2009, her government became the most vocal of a group of Europe's better-off nations who were resisting calls for large-scale spending or deep interest rate cuts to help buoy not only their own economies, but those of their weaker neighbors to the east and south.
Her reelection freed her from a coalition with the more left-leaning Social Democrats, who had blocked many of her more ambtious ideas for economic restructuring. But the new alliance did not mean smooth sailing: In what should have been a simple formality, Mrs. Merkel's official re-election as chancellor was dampened on Oct. 28, 2009 by the fact that at least nine members of her coalition withheld their votes in the secret parliamentary ballot.
Ms. Merkel sought to rebuild her standing by resisting demands by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and others for swift action in early 2010 to bolster Greece's standing with the credit markets. Ultimately, she forced Mr. Sarkozy, to his fury, to agree that the International Monetary Fund would play a role in creating an aid package -- a step seen as a blow to hopes for a European Union that would be self-sufficient in good times and bad.
With deep resistence to a bailout among German voters, and a critical by-election coming in May, Mrs. Merkel seemed to be playing for time on Greece, stalling on assistance until after the vote. In the process, she carved out a new role for Germany on the European stage: as a nation that overtly pursues its own interest as aggressively as any other.
To some observers, both efforts seemed to backfire, as her Christian Democrats fell more than 10 percentage points in North Rhine-Westphalia's state election, compared with the last vote in 2005, and deteriorating markets forced the European Union to put together the trillion-dollar package of loan guarantees, a commitment far beyond the measures she had earlier opposed.
Her supporters, and even some detractors, say the picture is more complex. They say Mrs. Merkel is a politician skilled in the art of the possible, who exercised patience to overcome difficult circumstances. In this more sympathetic version, Mrs. Merkel helped raise the pressure on the Greek government to agree to tough but necessary cutbacks in public spending. At the same time, the resentment of average Germans yielded to fear for the stability of their currency, making the rescue of Greece and the larger rescue package possible.
Source : New York Time, 2010, Time Topics. Angela Merkel. The New York Times. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/angela_merkel/index.html (accessed May 5th,2010)
Miranda Kerr
Miranda Kerr named face of David Jones
Following months of speculation, David Jones has officially announced Aussie supermodel, Miranda Kerr will replace Megan Gale as the store's new fashion ambassador.
David Jones officially announced the appointment yesterday, saying the 23-year-old Victoria's Secret model will replace Gale as the face of David Jones.
The New York-based model will replace Gale on the catwalk at the bi-annual season collection launches in February and August and will be the face of the David Jones catalogues and advertising campaigns. Gale will continue in a much smaller role as a brand ambassador.
The news came as little surprise to most fashion watchers. Word is, the ink had well and truly dried on the deal long before Gale made her final appearance on the catwalk for the department store in February. It may have been signed as early as December last year.
In a written statement yesterday, David Jones' group general manager apparel, cosmetics, footwear and accessories, Colette Garnsey, said: ''Miranda will be a wonderful role model and fashion ambassador to represent David Jones' unparalleled range of women's fashion. We have no doubt our customers will respond extremely well to her warm and engaging nature."
"Miranda embodies so many wholesome Australian attributes. She has a natural beauty, a great sense of humour, a down to earth attitude and a love for Australia all of which set her apart."
Earlier this year, before Kerr's appointment was confirmed, Myer's marketing and creative director, Paul Bonnici, said Kerr - who will go head-to-head with Myer's glamour girl, Jennifer Hawkins - would be an "interesting" one.
'"I think Jennifer is probably a lot more well-known than Miranda. And Miranda has also been an ambassador for Portmans, so it will be interesting," he said at the time.
Kerr's contract with Portmans finished earlier this year and she appeared in David Jones' most recent winter catalogue, alongside Gale.
It is understood, David Jones held off on making the official announcement until Gale had well and truly departed, out of respect for Gale who was the store's fashion face for seven years.
I believe Kerr's appointment is a great coup for David Jones. Fnding a replacement for the popular Gale, who also came with a sophisticated, glamorous and squeaky clean image wouldn't have been an easy one. But I have no doubt Kerr will have no trouble filling her big shoes. And in terms of fashion cred and style, she leaves Hawkins for dead.
It will be interesting, however, to see whether Kerr can maintain the ''squeaky clean'' image necessary for such a role. With a growing profile, in part because of her relationship with Hollywood hunk, Orlando Bloom, not to mention her rising star overseas (she currently appears on the cover of UK's Harpers Bazaar) Kerr will increasingly become the focus of much media attention.
For me, the appointment is an exciting one. What do you think? Is Kerr a good replacement for Megan Gale? And will she give Jennifer Hawkins a run for her money in the style stakes?
Source: Wells, R. 2009. "Miranda Kerr named face of David Jones," The Vine Fashion News, http://www.thevine.com.au/fashion/articles/miranda-kerr-named-face-of-david-jones.aspx (accessed May 5th 2010)
Helen Keller, The Woman Who Could See
By: Craig Person
Though blind and deaf from the age of two, Helen Keller graduated with honors from Radcliffe College the first blind and deaf person to earn a college degree. She devoted her life, through lecturing and writing books, to social reform. The play and film The Miracle Worker tells the story of how her teacher, Anne Sullivan, helped her emerge from her world of darkness and silence to become celebrated as one of the greatest women of her time.
Keller published a dozen books and visited 40 countries, gaining international fame as she campaigned for peace, womens rights, workers rights, and rights for the disabled. She helped found the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. Her friends included Alexander Graham Bell, Mark Twain, and Charlie Chaplin. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and received honors from around the world.
In her book My Religion, she describes the following experience:
I sense a holy passion pouring down from the springs of Infinity. . . . Bound to suns and planets by invisible cords, I feel the flame of eternity in my soul. Here, in the midst of the every-day air, I sense the rush of ethereal rains. I am conscious of the splendor that binds all things of earth to all things of heaven immured by silence and darkness, I possess the light which shall give me vision a thousandfold when death sets me free.
Helen Keller is describing the experience of a transcendental level of the mind. Relating it to Infinity, she describes it as the flame of eternity in my soul. In this deep inward place, she experiences the splendor that binds all things of earth to all things of heaven. Even though she is blind and deaf, confined by silence and darkness, she nevertheless experiences an inner light that transcends death.
In her book The World I Live In, she comments on this experience from a different direction:
There is in the blind as in the seeing an Absolute which gives truth to what we know to be true, order to what is orderly, beauty to the beautiful, touchableness to what is tangible. If this is granted, it follows that this Absolute is not imperfect, incomplete, partial. . . . Thus deafness and blindness do not exist in the immaterial mind, which is philosophically the real world, but are banished with the perishable material senses. Reality, of which visible things are the symbol, shines before my mind. While I walk about my chamber with unsteady steps, my spirit sweeps skyward on eagle wings and looks out with unquenchable vision upon the world of eternal beauty.
Source: Dr, Pearson, C. 2009. Helen Keller, The Women Who Could See, Article Snatch. http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Helen-Keller--The-Woman-Who-Could-See/1199334 (May 5th, 2010)
Image Source : ywpw. Helen Keller Statue unveiled at Capitol. http://www.ywpw.com/forums/child/post/A0/p0/pic/319-2-HellenKeller02.jpg. Viewed on 16/05/2010
