Articles with BIBSYS identifiers

William Joseph Bratton CBE (born October 6, 1947) is an American businessman and former law enforcement officer who served two terms as the New York City Police Commissioner (1994–1996 and 2014–2016). He previously served as the Commissioner of the Boston Police Department (BPD) (1993–1994) and Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) (2002–2009). He is the only person to have led the police departments of the United States' two largest cities – New York and Los Angeles.
Bratton began his police career at the Boston Police Department before becoming Police Commissioner in New York City, where his quality-of-life policy has been credited with reducing petty and violent crime. He was recruited to lead the Los Angeles Police Department in 2002. It was a period when the LAPD was struggling to rebuild trust after the 1991 videotaped beating of Rodney King, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the pervasive Division corruption involved in the late 1990s Rampart scandal, and the individual perjury by former LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman in 1995 that helped produce an acquittal in the O. J. Simpson murder case. He presided over an era of reform and crime reduction. In January 2014, Bratton returned to the post of Police Commissioner in New York City, and served until September 2016.Bratton has served as an advisor on policing in several roles, including advising the British government and is currently the chairman of the Homeland Security Advisory Council for the U.S. government.Bratton's policing style is influenced by the broken windows theory, a criminological theory of the norm-setting and signalling effect of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behavior. He advocates having an ethnically diverse police force representative of the population, being tough on gangs and having a strict no-tolerance of anti-social behavior.

Thomas Roy Skerritt (born August 25, 1933) is an American actor who has appeared in over 40 films and more than 200 television episodes since 1962. He is known for his film roles in M*A*S*H, Alien, The Dead Zone, Top Gun, A River Runs Through It, Poltergeist III, and Up in Smoke, and the television series Picket Fences and Cheers. Skerritt has earned several nominations and awards, including winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1993 for Picket Fences.

Michel Jean-Pierre Debré (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl dəbʁe]; 15 January 1912 – 2 August 1996) was the first Prime Minister of the French Fifth Republic. He is considered the "father" of the current Constitution of France. He served under President Charles de Gaulle from 1959 to 1962. In terms of political personality, Debré was intense and immovable and had a tendency to rhetorical extremism.

Marcel Aymé (29 March 1902 – 14 October 1967) was a French novelist and playwright, who also wrote screenplays and works for children.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (March 16, 1927 – March 26, 2003) was a racist American politician and diplomat. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented New York in the United States Senate from 1977 until 2001 after serving as an adviser to President Richard Nixon, and as the United States' ambassador to India and to the United Nations.
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Moynihan moved at a young age to New York City. Following a stint in the navy, he earned a Ph.D. in history from Tufts University. He worked on the staff of New York Governor W. Averell Harriman before joining President John F. Kennedy's administration in 1961. He served as an Assistant Secretary of Labor under Presidents Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson, devoting much of his time to the War on Poverty. In 1965, he published the controversial Moynihan Report on black poverty. Moynihan left the Johnson administration in 1965 and became a professor at Harvard University.
In 1969, he accepted Nixon's offer to serve as an Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and he was elevated to the position of Counselor to the President later that year. He left the administration at the end of 1970, and accepted appointment as United States Ambassador to India in 1973. He accepted President Gerald Ford's appointment to the position of United States Ambassador to the United Nations in 1975, holding that position until early 1976; later that year he won election to the Senate.
Moynihan served as Chairman of the Senate Environment Committee from 1992 to 1993 and as Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee from 1993 to 1995. He also led the Moynihan Secrecy Commission, which studied the regulation of classified information. He emerged as a strong critic of President Ronald Reagan's foreign policy and opposed President Bill Clinton's health care plan. He frequently broke with liberal positions, but opposed welfare reform in the 1990s. He also voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Congressional authorization for the Gulf War. He was tied with Jacob K. Javits as the longest-serving Senator from the state of New York until they were both surpassed by Chuck Schumer in 2023.

Frederick II (German: Friedrich II.; 24 January 1712 – 17 August 1786) was the monarch of Prussia from 1740 until 1786. He was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled King in Prussia, declaring himself King of Prussia after annexing Royal Prussia from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Silesian wars, his reorganisation of the Prussian Army, the First Partition of Poland, and his patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment. Prussia greatly increased its territories and became a major military power in Europe under his rule. He became known as Frederick the Great (German: Friedrich der Große) and was nicknamed "Old Fritz" (German: der Alte Fritz).
In his youth, Frederick was more interested in music and philosophy than in the art of war, which led to clashes with his authoritarian father, Frederick William I of Prussia. However, upon ascending to the Prussian throne, he attacked and annexed the rich Austrian province of Silesia in 1742, winning military acclaim for himself and Prussia. He became an influential military theorist, whose analyses emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy, tactics, mobility and logistics.
Frederick was a supporter of enlightened absolutism, stating that the ruler should be the first servant of the state. He modernised the Prussian bureaucracy and civil service, and pursued religious policies throughout his realm that ranged from tolerance to segregation. He reformed the judicial system and made it possible for men of lower status to become judges and senior bureaucrats. Frederick also encouraged immigrants of various nationalities and faiths to come to Prussia, although he enacted oppressive measures against Catholics in Silesia and Polish Prussia. He supported the arts and philosophers he favoured, and allowed freedom of the press and literature. Frederick was almost certainly homosexual, and his sexuality has been the subject of much study. Because he died childless, he was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick William II. He is buried at his favourite residence, Sanssouci in Potsdam.
Nearly all 19th-century German historians made Frederick into a romantic model of a glorified warrior, praising his leadership, administrative efficiency, devotion to duty and success in building Prussia into a great power in Europe. Frederick remained an admired historical figure through Germany's defeat in World War I, and the Nazis glorified him as a great German leader prefiguring Adolf Hitler, who personally idolised him. His reputation became less favourable in Germany after World War II, partly due to his status as a Nazi symbol. Historians in the 21st century tend to view Frederick as an outstanding military leader and capable monarch, whose commitment to enlightenment culture and administrative reform built the foundation that allowed the Kingdom of Prussia to contest the Austrian Habsburgs for leadership among the German states.

Kathryn Dawn Lang (born November 2, 1961), known by her stage name k.d. lang, is a Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Lang has won Juno Awards and Grammy Awards for her musical performances. Hits include the songs "Constant Craving" and "Miss Chatelaine".
A mezzo-soprano, lang has contributed songs to movie soundtracks and has collaborated with musicians such as Roy Orbison, Tony Bennett, Elton John, The Killers, Anne Murray, Ann Wilson, and Jane Siberry. She performed at the closing ceremony of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, and at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she performed Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".
Lang has also been active as an animal rights, gay rights, and Tibetan human rights activist. She is a tantric practitioner of the old school of Tibetan Buddhism.

Jacques René Chirac (French: [ʒak ʁəne ʃiʁak] ; UK: , US: ,; 29 November 1932 – 26 September 2019) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He was previously Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and 1986 to 1988, as well as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.
After attending the École nationale d'administration, Chirac began his career as a high-level civil servant, entering politics shortly thereafter. Chirac occupied various senior positions, including minister of agriculture and minister of the interior. In 1981 and 1988, he unsuccessfully ran for president as the standard-bearer for the conservative Gaullist party Rally for the Republic (RPR). Chirac's internal policies initially included lower tax rates, the removal of price controls, strong punishment for crime and terrorism, and business privatisation. After pursuing these policies in his second term as prime minister, he changed his views. He argued for different economic policies and was elected president in 1995, with 52.6% of the vote in the second round, beating Socialist Lionel Jospin, after campaigning on a platform of healing the "social rift" (fracture sociale). Chirac's economic policies, based on dirigisme, allowing for state-directed investment, stood in opposition to the laissez-faire policies of the United Kingdom under the ministries of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, which Chirac described as "Anglo-Saxon ultraliberalism".He was also known for his stand against the American-led invasion of Iraq, his recognition of the collaborationist French government's role in deporting Jews, and his reduction of the presidential term from seven years to five through a referendum in 2000. At the 2002 presidential election, he won 82.2% of the vote in the second round against the far-right candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and was the last president to be re-elected until 2022.
In 2011, the Paris court declared Chirac guilty of diverting public funds and abusing public confidence, giving him a two-year suspended prison sentence.

Caitlyn Marie Jenner (born William Bruce Jenner; October 28, 1949; known as Bruce Jenner until 2015) is an American media personality and former Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete.
Jenner played college football for the Graceland Yellowjackets before incurring a knee injury that required surgery. Convinced by Olympic decathlete Jack Parker's coach, L. D. Weldon, to try the decathlon, Jenner had a six-year decathlon career, culminating in winning the men's decathlon event at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, setting a third successive world record and gaining fame as "an all-American hero". Jenner established a career in television, film, writing, auto racing, business, and as a Playgirl cover model.Jenner has six children with three successive wives – Chrystie Crownover, Linda Thompson, and Kris Jenner – and from 2007 to 2021 appeared on the reality television series Keeping Up with the Kardashians with Kris, their daughters Kendall and Kylie Jenner, as well as Kris's other children from her previous marriage, Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, and Rob Kardashian.
Jenner publicly came out as a trans woman in April 2015, announcing her new name in July of that year. From 2015 to 2016, she starred in the reality television series I Am Cait, which focused on her gender transition. At the time of her coming out, she had been called the most famous trans woman in the world. Jenner is a transgender rights activist, although her views on transgender issues have been criticized by many other LGBTQ+ activists.A member of the Republican Party, Jenner ran in the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election, finishing 13th with one percent of the vote. Six months after the election, Jenner was hired by Fox News as an on-air contributor.

Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu (UK: , US: , French: [ʒeʁaʁ ɡzavje maʁsɛl dəpaʁdjø] ; born 27 December 1948) is a French actor, known to be one of the most prolific in film history. He has completed over 250 films since 1967, almost exclusively as a lead. Depardieu has worked with over 150 film directors whose most notable collaborations include Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Maurice Pialat, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Ridley Scott and Bernardo Bertolucci. He is the second highest-grossing actor in the history of French cinema behind Louis de Funès. As of January 2022, his body of work also includes countless television productions, 18 stage plays, 16 records and 9 books. He is mostly known as a character actor and for having portrayed numerous leading historical and fictitious figures of the Western world including Georges Danton, Joseph Stalin, Honoré de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Auguste Rodin, Cyrano de Bergerac, Jean Valjean, Edmond Dantès, Christopher Columbus, Obélix, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.Depardieu is a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur and Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite. He was granted citizenship of Russia in January 2013 (officially adopted name in Russian: Жерар Ксавие Депардьё, romanized: Zherar Ksavie Depardyo), and became a cultural ambassador of Montenegro during the same month.
Depardieu has received acclaim for his performances in The Last Metro (1980), for which he won the César Award for Best Actor, in Police (1985), for which he won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, Jean de Florette (1986), and Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), for which he won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival and his second César Award for Best Actor as well as garnering a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He co-starred in Peter Weir's comedy Green Card (1990), winning a Golden Globe Award, and later acted in many big-budget Hollywood films, including Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996), Randall Wallace's The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), and Ang Lee's Life of Pi (2012).
Depardieu has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault. The French authorities have charged him with rape and, since 2021, have had him under formal investigation. Depardieu has denied any wrongdoing and has not been convicted in connection with any of the accusations against him, but he was stripped of the National Order of Quebec in 2023.