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Chief Inspector Micky Rosenfeld is the foreign press spokesman for the Israel Police. He was appointed to this position as an Inspector in 2005 after serving for eight years as a combat officer in the Yamam counter-terrorism unit.^[1] By 2008 he had been promoted to the rank of Chief Inspector.^[2]

References[link]

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Nir Barkat
Nir Barkat, mayor of Jerusalem
Mayor of Jerusalem
Incumbent
Assumed office 2008
Preceded by	Uri Lupolianski
Personal details
Born	(1959-10-19) 19 October 1959 (age 52) Jerusalem, Israel
Spouse(s)	Beverly Barkat
Children	3
Religion	Judaism

Nir Barkat (Hebrew: ניר ברקת‎; born 19 October 1959) is an Israeli businessman, politician and mayor of Jerusalem.

Personal life[link]

Nir Barkat was born in 1959 and raised in Jerusalem. His father, Zalman, was a professor of physics at the Hebrew University. He served in the Paratroopers Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces for six years (1977–83), as well as reserve duty, and reached the rank of Major.

Barkat received his bachelor degree in computer science at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

Barkat is married to his wife Beverly and is the father of three daughters.

Career[link]

Barkat started his career in the hi-tech industry by founding a software company called BRM in 1988, which specialized in antivirus software. Later the company became an incubator venture firm that invested in several companies such as Check Point and Backweb. He later helped found the social investment company IVN.

Barkat entered politics in January 2003 when he founded the party Yerushalayim Tatzli'ah ("Jerusalem Will Succeed") and ran in the Jerusalem mayoral race, gaining 43% of the vote and narrowly losing to Uri Lupoliansky. He became head of the opposition on the city council, until the 2008 election.

In 2007, Barkat took part in the Israeli version of Dragons' Den, the venture-capitalist television programme, which consists of entrepreneurs pitching their ideas in order to secure investment from business experts.

Barkat ran again and won the election for mayor of Jerusalem on 11 November 2008 gaining 52% of the votes, defeating his main rival Meir Porush, who won 43% of the votes. Barkat is described as a secular politician, contrasting with both Lupoliansky and Porush, who are described as Haredi.^[1]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Nir Barkat Bio (from time as Councilmember). Startupjerusalem.org
• Eli Barkat, Managing Partner biography, BRM Capital (2007).
• Nir Barkat official campaign page - Hebrew
• Cidor, Peggy (2009-03-26). "On the fast track". The Jerusalem Post. http://fr.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1237727552676&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull. Retrieved 2009-04-01. 

Michael Coren (born January 15, 1959) is an English-Canadian columnist, author, public speaker, radio host and television talk show host. He hosted the television talk show The Michael Coren Show on the Crossroads Television System from 1999 to 2011 when he moved to the Sun News Network to host an evening talk show, The Arena with Michael Coren.^[1] He has also been a long-time radio personality, particularly on CFRB radio.

He has written more than ten books, including biographies of G.K. Chesterton, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, and C. S. Lewis. His latest book, Why Catholics are Right, was published in 2011.

Life and career[link]

Coren was born in Essex, England. After obtaining a degree in politics from Nottingham University, he moved from the UK to Canada in 1987. For several years, he was a columnist for Frank and then The Globe and Mail, before he began syndicated columns for the Financial Post and Sun Media in 1995. Following his departure from Frank, he became a favourite target of that publication, culminating in a spoof ad contest to "deflower" Michael Coren (a nod to Frank's notorious "Deflower Caroline Mulroney" contest, and a satirical jab at Coren's conservative leanings.) Coren had also been a favorite target of Frank back in the days before he began writing for them. Coren took exception to being labelled a "literary prostitute" during a 1994 interview.^[2]

His career as a broadcaster began in the early 1990s when he co-hosted a political debate segment with Irshad Manji on TVOntario's Studio 2. In 1995, he began an evening talk show on CFRB. In 1999, Coren briefly moved to Talk 640 for a short stint as its morning man. He returned to CFRB, where he hosted a show from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. weekday nights, and regularly filled in for other hosts until November 2005. Coren was dismissed by CFRB as a result of complaints arising from comments ridiculing the weight of an apparent guest. In fact, the guest was an actor and the segment was scripted. According to CFRB's Operations Manager, Steve Kowch, "Pat Holiday, our general manager and myself went through the tape of Monday night's show and were shocked....it was totally out of bounds." Coren argues that it was a satire comparing in his mind public attitude to third world starvation with North America's obsession with slimming and self-indulgence. ^[2]

Despite this acrimonious termination, Coren made regular talk show appearances on CFRB in July 2006, at the start of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, as he happened to be in Israel at the time. After receiving 60% approval from CFRB listeners in an August 2006 poll, Coren returned to the CFRB airwaves in September 2006 with a Sunday evening show.^[3] As of the 22nd of April 2007, the show expanded from its usual 1 hour 7-8pm to 7-9 pm.^[4] Coren celebrated by giving away double the prizes usually given out. In the fall of 2007 he and former Liberal Party of Canada president Stephen LeDrew launched a daily hour-long afternoon show on CFRB called Two Bald Guys With Strong Opinions in which the two argue about the issues of the day.^[5] After the departure of LeDrew, Coren was joined by Tarek Fatah after several on air auditions by potential replacement co-hosts. Coren was again let go by CFRB along with 12 other staff of the Toronto radio station on 27 August 2009.^[6]

On television, Coren hosted the Michael Coren Show on the Crossroads Television System until June 2011 when he left to join the Sun News Network where he hosts The Arena with Michael Coren weeknights on beginning August 30, 2011. Coren also has a newspaper column published every Saturday in the Sun newspaper chain. He has been a columnist for the Western Standard, Catholic Insight and The Women's Post and has contributed to National Post, Reader's Digest and several other publications. A self-professed Tottenham Hotspur fan, he has appeared as a guest host on The Score's The Footy Show. Coren is also a public speaker, particularly at religious gatherings.

Political controversies[link]

In his earlier, satirical Aesthete column in Frank magazine Coren was by his own admission deliberately provocative. In response to a 1994 interview question about AIDS he responded:

"Look, people are dying all over. When it was blacks in Africa dying of AIDS, no one gave a toss. Nobody gave a toss. Suddenly, it's middleclass men in California and everyone goes crazy about it. It's a double standard. I'm trying to provoke people into rethinking comfortable points of view."^[2]

In September 2006, Coren published an article in the Toronto Sun, supporting the use of tactical nuclear strikes against Iran.^[7] This position was later retracted.^[8]

On the subject of AIDS Michael Coren wrote a column in 2006 titled "Why is AIDS so special?" in which he said "At its most simple, stop fornicating." "AIDS in the West is still overwhelmingly a threat to male homosexuals and intravenous drug users."^[9]

In an article which appeared in Sun Media in 2007, Coren said "As for Jesus not condemning homosexuality, nor did He condemn bestiality and necrophilia."^[10]

Religious Views[link]

His articles and speeches often include stories of his own personal spiritual journey. Coren's father was Jewish as was his maternal grandfather, while his maternal grandmother came from a family of Welsh coalminers and converted to Judaism. Coren's father and uncle were cab drivers. Coren has said that his father's family left Poland a few decades before the Holocaust.^[11] He has also said that his father's family emigrated from Poland in the 1890s.^[12] He said "People have called me an anti-Semite. I thought it quite rich since my father's family was massacred in the Holocaust".^[2] Michael Coren was profiled on Credo, on Vision TV, and said that his father told him he could not attend his son's wedding in a Catholic Church without becoming "physically sick."

He converted to Roman Catholicism in his early twenties while still living in England, but that didn't last long. He said that he "converted to an institution." He eventually converted to Evangelical Christianity in the 1990s, after a conversion experience as an adult, greatly influenced by Canadian televangelist Terry Winter.

In 1991 Michael Coren said in a column for a humour magazine: "The evangelical Christians may be intolerant, small-minded, and repellent, but at least they hold a consistent set of beliefs".^[2]

In a 1993 book review he said "Can anyone imagine a detective priest? Regrettably, it is easier to conjure up the image of a priest being questioned by secular detectives over abuse charges." Also in 1993, Michael Coren had a falling out with the Catholic Church over an unflattering profile he wrote of Archbishop Aloysius Ambrozic for Toronto Life magazine^{[citation needed]}. The Bishop, who made Coren a "Knight of the Holy Sepulchre" in a ceremony in October 1992, was quoted using words including "friggin" and "bitch", and said that Francisco Franco was a "conservative Roman Catholic and not a bad fellow." Coren defended himself, saying "He's an archbishop and he was vulgar...obviously what thousands of Roman Catholics expected me to do was lie. I still get hate mail about the article."

After this incident, Coren said that he didn't consider himself a Roman Catholic anymore. He said "My wife is Catholic and the children will be raised Catholic, but that's it. It's just not there for me."^{[citation needed]} Daniel Richler observed that Coren loves scandal, but hates having it come his way. In one of his columns for the satirical humour magazine Frank, Michael Coren depicted Mother Teresa getting drunk in a bar.^[2]

In early 2004, he embraced Catholicism again. He cites St. Thomas More, C. S. Lewis, Ronald Knox and his godfather Lord Longford as spiritual influences, and remains connected to the ecumenical scene in Canada and beyond.

Published books[link]

• Theatre Royal: 100 Years of Stratford East (1985) ISBN 0-7043-2474-1
• Gilbert: The Man Who Was G.K. Chesterton (1990) ISBN 1-55778-256-3
• The Invisible Man: The Life and Liberties of H.G. Wells (1993) ISBN 0-689-12119-9
• The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1993) ISBN 0-7475-1229-9
• The Man Who Created Narnia: The Story of C. S. Lewis (1994) ISBN 1-895555-78-7
• Setting It Right (1996) ISBN 0-7737-2940-2
• J.R.R.Tolkien: The Man who Created the Lord of the Rings (2001) ISBN 0-7522-6156-8
• As I See It (2009) ISBN 0-9812767-0-9
• Why Catholics Are Right (2011) ISBN 0-7710-2321-9

Awards[link]

Awards Michael Coren has won.^[13]

• 2005: The Ed Murrow Award for Broadcasting.
• 2006: The RTNDA Radio Broadcasting Award.
• 2007: The Communicator Award in Hollywood.
• 2008: the Omni TV Award.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Michael Coren's blog
• [1] Coren's column in The Toronto Sun