Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny was a Soviet statesman who served as the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the head of state of the Soviet Union, from 1965 to 1977. Podgorny was born to a Ukrainian working-class family in the city of Karlovka, graduating from a local worker's school in 1926 and the Kiev Technological Institute of Food Industry in 1931. Podgorny became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1930 and climbed up the Soviet hierarchy through the industrial ladder by delivering the production goals set by the bureaucrats of the centrally planned economy. Podgorny became Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1953, was elevated to First Secretary of the party's Central Committee from 1957 to 1963. Podgorny was elected Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet after the resignation of Anastas Mikoyan in 1965 and ruled the Soviet Union in a troika with Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin following the removal of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

Podgorny became the second-most powerful figure in the Soviet Union behind Brezhnev after Kosygin's fall from power in 1968. Podgorny was removed as Chairman of the Presidium in 1977 during Brezhnev's consolidation of power as General Secretary, lost his seat in the Politburo. Podgorny was forced to resign from active politics and sidelined in Soviet affairs until he died in 1983. Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny was born on 18 February 1903 in Karlovka, Russian Empire, to a Ukrainian working-class family. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Podgorny became one of the founders of the Karlovka branch of the Komsomol, served as a Secretary of the Komsomol from 1921 to 1923. Podgorny started work at the age of 17 as a student at the mechanical workshops in Karlovka. In 1926, Podgorny graduated from a local workers' school. In 1930, Podgorny became a member of the All-Union Communist Party, the ruling party of the Soviet Union. In 1931, Podgorny graduated from the Kiev Technological Institute of Food Industry and started working in the sugar industry.

Podgorny was promoted to deputy chief engineer of Vinnytsia in 1937 and was promoted in 1939 as the chief engineer of the Kamenetz-Podolsk Oblast sugar trusts. By the end of 1939, Podgorny had become Deputy People's Commissar for Food Industry of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic; the next year, Podgorny was appointed Deputy People's Commissar for Food Industry of the Soviet Union. Podgorny became the Director of the Moscow Technological Institute of Food Industry in 1942 during World War II. After the liberation of Ukraine from Nazi Germany, Podgorny reestablished Soviet control over Ukraine on the orders of the Ukrainian SSR and the Soviet Government. In the post-war years, Podgorny regained his old office of Deputy People's Commissar for Food Industry of the Ukrainian SSR, but was appointed in 1946 as a Permanent Representative to the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR. In April 1950, he was made First Secretary of the Kharkiv Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine.

In 1953, Podgorny was elevated to Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPU. From 1957 to 1963, Podgorny was First Secretary of the CC of the CPU the most powerful position in Ukraine. In this role, Podgorny worked on reorganising and modernising the Ukrainian economy, destroyed during the war years, he worked to increase the rate of industrial and agricultural production and to improve people's welfare. He paid particular attention to educating new cadres. In 1960, Podgorny became a member of the Politburo, the highest policy-making authority in the Soviet Union. By 1963, Podgorny had risen to prominence within the Soviet hierarchy as a member of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; as a protégé and close companion of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, he traveled with him to the United Nations headquarters in 1960. Podgorny acted as a Soviet emissary to Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Yugoslavia. Podgorny's beliefs were influenced by Khrushchev, under Leonid Brezhnev's rule, Podgorny was one of the most liberal members within the Soviet leadership more liberal than Premier Alexei Kosygin.

Podgorny fell out of Khruschev's favor in 1961 when he blamed bad corn yields in the Ukrainian SSR on "bad weather", while Khrushchev claimed the crops had been "stolen" and "pilfered". However, in 1962, Podgorny reported to Khrushchev that agricultural output had again increased: Under Podgorny's leadership, the Ukrainian SSR had doubled Ukraine's supply of grain to the state from the previous year; because of his handling of agriculture, First World commentators saw Podgorny as one of Khrushchev's many potential heirs. According to historian Ilya Zemtsov, the author of Chernenko: The Last Bolshevik: The Soviet Union on the Eve of Perestroika, Brezhnev began starting a conspiracy against Khrushchev when he found out that he had chosen Podgorny, not himself, as his potential successor. Brezhnev's coup d'etat attempt against Khrushchev evidently took Podgorny by surprise, seeing that he left Moscow on October 10, two days before the coup was initiated. During the 1964 ouster to remove Khrushchev as First Secretary and Premier and Brezhnev appealed to the Central Committee, blaming Khrushchev for economic failures and accusing him of voluntarism and immodest behavior.

Influenced by Brezhnev and his allies, Politburo members voted to remove Khrushchev from office. In the aftermath of Khrushchev's removal, a collective leadership known as a troika was f

2156 Kate, provisional designation A917 SH, is a stony, rare-type asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt 8 kilometers in diameter. The asteroid was discovered on 23 September 1917, by Soviet–Russian astronomer Sergey Belyavsky at Simeiz Observatory on the Crimean peninsula, it was named for wife of astronomer L. K. Kristensen. Kate orbits the Sun in the inner main-belt at a distance of 1.8–2.7 AU once every 3 years and 4 months. Its orbit has an inclination of 5 ° with respect to the ecliptic; as no precoveries were taken, no prior identifications were made, the asteroid's observation arc begins with its official discovery observation at Simeiz in 1917. In the Tholen classification, Kate is a common S-type asteroid, it has been characterized as a rare A-type asteroid by Pan-STARRS' large photometric survey. A large number of rotational lightcurves were obtained from photometric observations, they gave a well-defined rotation period of 5.620 to 5.623 hours with a brightness variation between 0.5 and 0.9 magnitude.

According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's space-based Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Kate measures 8.131 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.189 and 0.2242 while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20 and calculates a diameter of 8.61 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 12.69. This minor planet was named after Kate Kristensen, wife of astronomer L. K. Kristensen, involved in the body's orbit computation; the official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 1 April 1980. Asteroid Lightcurve Database, query form Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Google books Asteroids and comets rotation curves, CdR – Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets - – Minor Planet Center 2156 Kate at AstDyS-2, Asteroids—Dynamic Site Ephemeris · Observation prediction · Orbital info · Proper elements · Observational info 2156 Kate at the JPL Small-Body Database Close approach · Discovery · Ephemeris · Orbit diagram · Orbital elements · Physical parameters

Michael Olesker is a former syndicated columnist for the Baltimore Sun newspaper in Baltimore, a book author. Olesker resigned from the Sun on January 4, 2006, after it was alleged that his columns contained passages plagiarized from articles at other newspapers. Olesker is known for his liberal viewpoints and for his criticism of the administration of Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. whose press office in November 2004 issued an executive order banning state executive employees from talking with Olesker. The Sun unsuccessfully sued over the ban, in a case decided by the 4th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals; the Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele accused Olesker of making up quotes. Olesker started writing for the Baltimore News American in 1978, prior to becoming a Baltimore Sun writer between 1979–2006, he was a commentator on WJZ-TV from 1983 through December 2002, his columns were syndicated in other newspapers such as Newsday and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. After leaving the Baltimore Sun, Olesker was a columnist for the Baltimore Examiner until that newspaper ceased publication in 2009.

Olesker attended the University of Maryland where he was on the staff of the school newspaper, The Diamondback, serving as the sports page editor. Olesker is the author of Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore and co-authored Leap into Darkness, a 1998 memoir of a Holocaust survivor, his other books include: The Colts' Baltimore: A City and Its Love Affair in the 1950s Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re HomeHe was an extra in the 5th season of HBO's The Wire