Liberty X were a British-Irish group consisting of Michelle Heaton, Tony Lundon, Kevin Simm, Jessica Taylor and Kelli Young. The group was formed by the five finalists of the ITV talent show Popstars who failed to make it into the group Hear'Say. Liberty X went on to achieve ten consecutive UK Top 20 singles, various charting singles worldwide, leading to greater commercial success than Hear'Say. Following the release of two singles the group were forced to change their name due to another act using the name Liberty, the group took legal action although lost and therefore altered their name; the group released their debut album Thinking It Over on 27 May 2002 which featured their biggest single "Just a Little", which gave them international success. They released their second studio album Being Somebody a year on 3 November 2003 although not matching the success of their debut. Following disappointing sales the group were dropped and signed with Virgin and released a final studio album X on 10 October 2005.
Liberty X disbanded in early 2007, though not confirming a split due to their popularity in the media eye declining. However they re-formed a year in 2008, for a one-off appearance in Belfast performing their biggest hits, this would be their final appearance as a band before reforming in 2012. On 18 October 2012, it was announced that Liberty X would be reforming for the ITV2 documentary series The Big Reunion, along with Five, Atomic Kitten, 911, B*Witched and Honeyz; the show, which aired from 31 January to 28 March 2013, followed the groups rehearsing for two weeks ahead of one major comeback performance at the London Hammersmith Apollo on 26 February. Lundon confirmed that Liberty X would not continue following the series and that this would be their chance to "say a proper goodbye to fans". However, on 2 February 2014, the group announced via their Facebook page that they had signed to 365 Artists Management "for our future creative and business affairs." While the five winning contestants of Popstars formed Hear'Say, the five runner-up contestants—Michelle Heaton, Tony Lundon, Kevin Simm, Jessica Taylor and Kelli Young—formed the group Liberty.
The name Liberty was chosen to reflect the freedom the members experienced following their participation in Popstars. Amidst pejorative media commentary, the act signed a multi-million-pound record contract with Richard Branson's independent record label, V2 Records. Branson said: "From our first meeting I was wowed by their determination and refusal to give up, but it was when I heard their music that I knew they were going to be a huge success."Shortly after forming, Liberty received a legal challenge in the UK High Court from a funk R&B band called "Liberty", who achieved success in the 1990s, including being awarded Capital Radio Band of the Year, playing Wembley Arena, European tours and the release of albums in the USA, Europe and UK. The original Liberty claimed that the newly formed Liberty was taking advantage of the goodwill, created by the former's success; the final judgment was in favour of the funk R&B band and the ex-Popstars asked readers of UK tabloid newspaper The Sun to suggest a new name.
The winning name was "X Liberty", but the group used the entry as the basis for the official title, Liberty X. On 24 September 2001, whilst the group were known as Liberty, they released their debut single, "Thinking It Over", it was an instant hit. The follow-up single, "Doin' It", peaked at number fourteen. Following a five-month gap, in which the band were involved with the High Court dispute regarding their original name, their third single, "Just a Little", was released; that song reached number one in the UK and became the ninth best-selling single of 2002, as well as becoming a top ten hit in several other countries. It was the fifth most played song on the radio of the 2000s."Just a Little" preceded the release of Liberty X's debut album, Thinking It Over. The album reached number three on the UK Albums Chart selling over one million copies worldwide. Two more hit singles were released from the album, the first being a cover of the 1990 track by electro funk group Mantronix, "Got To Have Your Love".
The final single was "Holding on for You", released in December 2002. The single peaked at number five. During 2002, the group headlined their first arena tour. Following a short break, the group released "Being Nobody", a mash-up of Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody" and The Human League's "Being Boiled"; the single was produced by Richard X and released under the billing of Richard X vs Liberty X, featured on Richard X's album Richard X Presents His X-Factor Vol. 1. "Being Nobody" reached number three on the UK singles chart. Proceeding their second album, Being Somebody, the group released "Jumpin", which peaked at number six. Being Somebody was released in November 2003, debuting at number twelve on the UK albums chart, but sold around 200,000 copies less than sales of their debut; the group released the album's final single, "Everybody Cries", in January 2004. The music video featured the group walking along disused railway lines, for which they were criticised by safety organisations; the single underperformed.
The group took a hiatus following record-label issues, each member decided to work on different individual projects. Kevin Simm appeared on Ch
Chryssie Whitehead is an American actress and dancer on Broadway and television. Whitehead grew up in South Carolina. During her first year of high school, she was in a community theatre production of A Chorus Line, in which she played a cut dancer and understudy to Judy. Before appearing on Broadway, Whitehead was a Rockette in Los Angeles and New York City at the start of her career right out of high school, she toured and performed in Fosse, The Will Rogers Follies, All Shook Up and Paul McCartney's "Driving Rain" tour. Her Broadway debut was starring in the 2006 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, in which she played the character of Kristine alongside Tony Yazbeck; the audition process that she took to get the role can be seen in Every Little Step, a documentary of the A Chorus Line Broadway revival casting process. Following Broadway, television roles ensued, as well as the musicals Damn Yankees as Lola, Cats, A Chorus Line and Will Rogers Follies as Z's Favorite. In 2011, she appeared in the role of Kathy opposite Neal Patrick Harris as Bobby in the New York Philharmonic production of Company.
In 2016– 2017, she played the role of Kitty in the Broadway revival of Chicago, where she understudied and performed the role of Velma Kelly. Whitehead was Julia Stiles' dance double in the final audition scene of Save the Last Dance, she has been in The Producers and other independent films. She was in the ABC Family TV movie Revenge of the Bridesmaids with Raven Simone. On television, Whitehead appeared as Helen Boyd in a 2007 episode of Grey's Anatomy, "Kung Fu Fighting", as well as in the TV series In Plain Sight in the episode "Coma Chameleon", playing the character of Krista. In 2011, she appeared on The Mentalist and Happy Endings. In 2012, she appeared on Switched at Birth. In 2013, she had a recurring role on four episodes of Private Practice. In 2014, Whitehead was a recurring guest star for three of the six final episodes of Warehouse 13, she played the older sister and eldest sibling to Claudia and Joshua Donovan. Her last television appearance was during the third season of Grimm in 2014.
In addition to performing, Whitehead is choreographer. She has her own one woman intensive teaching masterclasses across the globe in musical theatre performance, acting for camera and all styles of dance to the next generation through DASI: Dance, Sing Intensive with Chryssie Whitehead, she is co-founder of Broadway Arts camp with Alexis Carra. As of this date, she resides in New York City and is a faculty member at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy on the New York campus. Chryssie Whitehead on IMDb Chryssie Whitehead at the Internet Broadway Database Official website Chryssie Whitehead Dance Act Sing Intensive with Chryssie Whitehead Broadway Arts Camp
Abercrombie was a bay Standardbred world-record-holding pacer and winner of the E. Roland Harriman Award for Harness Horse of the Year in 1978, who went on to become one of the sport's leading sires. By Silent Majority out of Bergdorf by Duane Hanover, he was sold at the Tattersalls auction for $9,500 to Keith Bulen and Shirley Mitchell. Abercrombie's dam, was a leading broodmare. Jerry Landess was his first trainer, Cecil Peacock, a full-time school bus driver, succeeded Landess as Abercrombie's trainer for his two-year-old season; when his talent became apparent he was turned over to his trainer-driver. In 20 starts as a two-year-old Abercrombie won seven times and finished second and third three times each, earning $49,379. Abercrombie won 22 of his 33 races in 1978, including the Messenger Stakes, the Prix d'Été, the Adios Stakes, earned $703,260, his best time for the mile was 1:53, set as a 4-year-old in August 1979 at the Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Abercrombie retired in 1979 to become an important sire at Castleton Farm in Lexington, helping to return the Adios line to prominence.
As of May 2004, his offspring have won over $149 million. Abercrombie sired more than 1,700 foals. Among Abercrombie's other well-known progeny are Life Sign, Armbro Emerson, Missisippin, Kentucky Spur, Goliath Bayama, Albert Albert and Armbro Dallas, his descendants have been successful both in the breeding shed. Abercrombie was inducted into the United States Harness Racing Hall of Fame in 1999, he died the following year, is buried at the Castleton Farm horse cemetery
Louis Austin was an African American journalist and social activist. Austin purchased The Carolina Times in 1927 and transformed it into an institution that aided African Americans in their fight for freedom and equality in North Carolina, he used a new approach to Civil Rights issues in Durham, incorporating lower and middle class blacks, unlike the moderate, accommodationist approach of the black elite in Durham during this time. Austin's unusual strategy of advocating for the majority of blacks to have a voice in society succeeded in galvanizing a broader segment of the African American community in Durham to act for social change. Austin's approach to black activism helped lay the groundwork for the modern Civil Rights Movement in Durham in the late 1950s and 1960s, which encouraged lower-income blacks to become politically active, his strategies—which were once considered too radical by his peers—allowed Austin to maintain his influence in Durham well into the 1950s and 1960s. In doing so, Austin created a lasting impact for Durham.
Louis Austin was born in North Carolina, a small town eighty-five miles east of Durham. He grew up in a period when African Americans were denied basic civil liberties, including the right to vote. Throughout Austin's childhood, his father William taught him to stand up for his rights; as a young adult, Austin was enraged about racial discrimination, spoke out about these type of injustices at his school. As a result, his parents sent him to finish his high school education at the Joseph K. Brick School in Edgecombe County. Austin attended the National Training School in Durham, North Carolina. After graduating college, Austin worked for the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, a black-owned company based in Durham. Since Freedom's Journal, the first black newspaper, was founded in 1827, the black press served as an outlet for African Americans to define their own identity, create a sense of unity, present events from a black perspective, highlight black achievements that the mainstream press ignore, most work for black equality.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Booker T. Washington, considered the preeminent spokesman for black America during this time period, shared his accommodationist political ideologies in the black press throughout the country, he wielded great power among the black press by clandestinely controlling advertisements and political subsidies. Many black newspapers at the time relied on Washington's financial support and therefore were obligated to write editorials that he favored. Myrdal defined the black press as an instrument of the "Negro upper classes" for spreading conservative values, establishing group control and identity. By the 1920s, black America came to a fork in the road and had to choose whether to accommodate white societal viewpoints or oppose them. W. E. B. Du Bois opposed the white mainstream point of view. Durham was a microcosm of this national black debate, black elites in Durham were champions of Washington's accommodationist strategy; the newspaper published by the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, owned by Charles Clinton Spaulding, a leading member of the black elite in Durham, was quite open about the company's determination to resist W. E. B.
Du Bois's call for an aggressive challenge to white rule. Louis Austin began working at The Carolina Times in 1921, when it was called The Standard Advertiser. Upon joining the paper, he made it clear that he was committed to writing articles that were aligned with Du Bois' approach. Austin bought The Times in 1927, with the help of a loan from Durham's black-owned Mechanics and Farmers Bank. During the early twentieth century, black journalists like Austin played an essential role in the struggle for black equality in America. Austin worked as editor for the Times until his death in 1971. Louis Austin worked tirelessly to shape The Carolina Times into a vehicle for change for the African American community, he used the paper to reenergize the civil rights activism. African Americans who lived in Durham and the surrounding areas relied on their weekly subscription to inform them of issues that impacted the African American community; the paper's motto was "The Truth Unbridled", because Austin's mission was to provide North Carolinian African Americans the unadulterated truth about contemporary situations and events.
Austin's honest and straightforward approach gave him credibility and strong support in Durham, North Carolina and throughout the state. During a time period when Jim Crow laws ruled the South, white supremacy was prevalent, Austin understood that it was necessary to directly confront the problems African Americans were facing and provided a voice for these problems; the Carolina Times was influential as it created an open dialogue amongst blacks in Durham, surrounding areas in North Carolina, throughout the nation. Louis Austin worked towards achieving racial equality for blacks, regardless of their socio-economic status, by approaching discriminatory policies with a new, confrontational strategy. Austin shared the political philosophies of Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, both of whom advocated protest as a political tool in the struggle for equal rights, he realized that confrontation and defiance, not civility and accommodation, were needed to break white supremacy's stronghold in the South.
The civil rights movement in Durham during the early 1900s was controlled by wealthy blacks Spaulding and James Shepherd, president of North Carolina College for Negroes. These black elites were known as the "Big Negroes.
Alaa Al-Aswany is an Egyptian writer, a founding member of the political movement Kefaya. Al-Aswany was born on 26 May 1957, his mother, came from an aristocratic family. His father, Abbas Al-Aswany, was from Aswan and was a lawyer and writer who “is remembered as being a captivating and charismatic speaker with a broad following and loyalty within a cross-section of the Egyptian revolutionary intelligentsia”. Abbas Al-Aswany wrote a regular back-page essay in the Egyptian weekly magazine Rose al-Yūsuf entitled Aswaaniyat. In 1972, he was “the recipient of the state award for literature", he died. Aswany attended Le Lycée Français in Cairo and received a bachelor's degree in dental and oral medicine at Cairo University in 1980, he went on to pursue a master's degree in dentistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1985. He speaks Arabic, English and Spanish, he studied Spanish literature in Madrid. Al-Aswany married his first wife in his early twenties, she was a dentist, they had their son Seif, they divorced later.
When he was 37, he married Eman Taymoor and they had two daughters and Nada. He wrote a weekly literary critique entitled "parenthetic phrase" in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Sha'ab, became responsible for the culture page in the same newspaper, he wrote a monthly political article in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Arabi Al-Nasseri and a weekly article in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Dustour. He wrote a weekly article in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Shorouk, he writes a weekly article in Al-Masry Al-Youm on Tuesdays. His articles have been published in leading international newspapers such as The New York Times, Le Monde, El Pais, The Guardian, The Independent and others, his second novel, The Yacoubian Building, an ironic depiction of modern Egyptian society, has been read in Egypt and throughout the Middle East. His literary works have been translated into 31 languages: Armenian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Chinese Simplified, Danish, English, Finnish, Galician, Greek, Icelandic, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Turkish.
In 2006, The Yacoubian Building was adapted into “the biggest budget movie produced in Egypt”. The movie was a huge hit in Egypt. However, Al-Aswany was banned from attending the premiere; the Yacoubian Building is one of a few movies that addresses social taboos and widespread governmental corruption, such as the rigging of elections. In fact, many intellectuals believe that this work played a crucial role in triggering revolutionary sentiments among the Egyptian people. Alaa Al-Aswany claims that during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, many protesters approached him and said “We are here because of what you wrote". In 2007, The Yacoubian Building was made into a television series of the same name. Chicago, a novel set in the city in which the author was educated, was published in January 2007 and his Automobile Club of Egypt was published in English in 2016. Al-Aswany’s name has been included in the list of the 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World, issued by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan.
He was number one in The Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers list 2011. Al-Aswany participated in the Blue Metropolis literary festival in Montreal, June 2008 and April 2010, was featured in interviews with the CBC programme Writers and Company. In October 2010 the Israel/Palestine Centre for Research and Information said it was offering its Hebrew readers the rare privilege of reading the best-selling Egyptian novel The Yacoubian Building. While Al-Aswany refused for the book to be translated into Hebrew and published in Israel, a volunteer had translated it and IPCRI wanted to offer it for free to expand cultural awareness and understanding in the region. Al-Aswany was frustrated by this, as he rejected the idea of normalizing with Israel, accused the IPCRI and the translator of piracy and theft, he complained to the International Publishers Association. In January 2015, the Gingko Library published Democracy is the Answer: Egypt's Years of Revolution, a collection of newspaper columns written by Al-Aswany for Al-Masry Al-Youm between 2011 and 2014.
Al-Aswany was in Tahrir Square. In fact, he was one of the few prominent people to interview the Mubarak-appointed Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik on an Egyptian channel. Shafik lost his temper under persistent grilling by the novelist and it was the first time for Egyptians to witness a ruler dressed down so by a civilian in public, it is said that Shafik was fired by the SCAF. On 27 October 2013, The Blaze ran an article claiming that Al-Aswany is "an anti-Zionist conspiracy theorist". 1990: Awrāq ʾIṣṣām ʾAbd il-ʾĀṭī 2002: ʿImārat Yaʾqūbiyān 2007: Chicago 2013: Nādī il-sayyārāt 2018: Jumhuriat ka'an 1990: Alladhī iqtarab wa raʾa 1998: Jamʾiyat muntaẓirī il-zaʿīm 2004: Nīrān sadīqa 2010: Li mā dhā lā yathūr il-Miṣriyūn 2011: Hal nastaḥiqq il-dimuqrāṭiyya? (Arabic: هل نستحق الديمقرا
Julia Grace Wales was a Canadian academic known for authoring the Wisconsin Plan, a proposal to set up a conference of intellectuals from neutral nations who would work to find a solution for the First World War. Wales was born on 14 July 1881 in Bury, Eastern Townships, Quebec to Benjamin Nathaniel Wales, a physician - graduate of McGill University in 1874 - and his wife Emma Theodosia, who had married in 1878. Benjamin Nathaniel Wales was the first president of the Historical Society of Argenteuil County, the grandson of Benjamin Wales, founder of the first paper mill in Canada; the family was Presbyterian. Julia Grace Wales attended McGill University in Montreal, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1903; the following year, she received a Master of Arts from Radcliffe College. In 1906, moved from Bury to St. Andrews East, Quebec. Wales was successively student and professor of English literature at the University of Wisconsin, she taught at the University of London from 1919 until 1920, at the University of Cambridge until 1921.
Specializing in William Shakespeare, she earned a doctorate in 1926. By December 1914, Wales had become horrified and physically sickened by the First World War reports coming from Europe. A close friend of hers wrote that "the pity and horror of it seized upon her". Convinced that the war was both irrational and un-Christian, Wales published her views and a solution for the end of the war in a pamphlet entitled "Continuous Mediation Without Armistice", popularly known as the Wisconsin Plan, her plan was to have the United States organize a conference of intellectual mediators from neutral nations, who would receive suggestions from the belligerent nations while at the same time discussing possible solutions to the war. The plan was endorsed by several anti-war and peace movements, as well as by the Wisconsin Legislature; as a delegate, Wales represented the Wisconsin Peace Society at the International Congress of Women, held at The Hague in April 1915. She thus became a founding member of the Women's International League for Freedom.
As a member of the conference's embassy, Wales took her proposal, adopted as a resolution of the conference, to European governments. Her plan failed when the United States entered the war in April 1917, she returned to North America to resume her academic career. Wales never gave up her interest in the peace movement, continued publishing pacifist articles. Along with her mother and younger sister, Anna Letitia, she co-authored a collection of poetry titled Argenteuil Lyrics, published in 1935, she wrote articles on religious themes. Her book, Democracy Needs Education, was published in 1942. Having resided in Madison, Wisconsin from 1940 until her retirement in 1947, Wales returned to St. Andrews East, she died there on 15 July 1957, the day after her 76th birthday. She never had no children. Woodard Bean, Mary Jean: Julia Grace Wales: Canada's Hidden Heroine and the Quest for Peace, 1914-1918. Ottawa: Borealis Press, 2005. ISBN 0888873204 Works by or about Julia Grace Wales at Internet Archive