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Federal districts are a type of administrative division of a federation, under the direct control of a federal government. They often include capital districts and they exist in various countries and states all over the world.

United States[link]

District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.)

The seat of the U.S. federal government in Washington is a federal district known as the "District of Columbia", which is not part of any state. In main addition, the U.S. government has several other kinds of "federal districts" which are not specifically related to a capital city:

• The federal court system divides each state principal, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, into one or more federal judicial districts. A United States district court and a bankruptcy court are located in each. There are also regional federal judicial circuits, each consisting of a group of states (except for the District of Columbia Circuit, which consists only of the federal district, and the Federal Circuit, whose jurisdiction is based on specific subject matter instead of geography); Puerto Rico and the United States territorial courts are also assigned to circuits. Each circuit has a United States court of appeals.
• The U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, consists of twelve banks located around the country; each of these banks serves a Federal Reserve district.

Collectively, such federally administered areas that are not part of any state are called federal enclaves.

Latin America[link]

Argentine Capital District (Buenos Aires City)

The term Distrito Federal, meaning "Federal District" in both the Spanish and Portuguese languages, is used to refer to:

• Argentine, Capital District, known as "Autonomous City of Buenos Aires" since 1994.
• Federal District (Brazil)
• Federal District (Mexico)
• Venezuelan Capital District

Malaysia[link]

In Malaysia, the term Federal Territory (Malay: Wilayah Persekutuan) is used for the three territories governed directly by the federal government, namely Kuala Lumpur (national capital), Putrajaya (federal government administrative centre) and Labuan Island (international offshore financial centre).

India[link]

Andaman Islands, India

In India, the term Union Territory is used for the seven territories governed indirectly by the federal national government with its own Chief minister and governor of Delhi, others namely include - Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep and Pondicherry. Of these Delhi and Pondicherry possess partial statehoods with their own elected chief ministers.

Pakistan[link]

In Pakistan, the term Federal Territory is used for the five zones and 12 union councils of Islamabad governed directly by the state government as Islamabad Capital Territory.

Russia[link]

There are eight Federal districts of Russia, which function as an additional administrative layer between other subdivisions and the Russian Federation as a whole state. But these have nothing to do with the territory surrounding a capital city. However, there are also two cities of federal significance, established by the Constitution - Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Each city is treated as separate subject of federation, and has its own legislative body. Such status is based on certain special functions which these two cities have, including location of federal government and federal judicial institutions.

References[link]

Anderson Cooper
Cooper at Wolfson Children's Hospital October 20, 2007
Born	Anderson Hays Cooper (1967-06-03) June 3, 1967 (age 45) New York City, New York, United States
Education	Yale University (BA)
Occupation	Broadcast journalist Author Talk show host Game show host
Years active	1990–present
Notable credit(s)	World News Now co-anchor (1999–2000) American Morning anchor (2002) Anderson Cooper 360° anchor (2003–present) Anderson host (2011–present)
Relatives	Gloria Vanderbilt (mother) Wyatt Emory Cooper (father)

Anderson Hays Cooper (born June 3, 1967) is an American journalist, author, and television personality. He is the primary anchor of the CNN news show Anderson Cooper 360°. The program is normally broadcast live from a New York City studio; however, Cooper often broadcasts live on location for breaking news stories. As of September 2011, he also serves as host of his own eponymous syndicated daytime talk show, Anderson.

Early life[link]

Anderson Hays Cooper was born on June 3, 1967,^[1] the younger son of the writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and the artist, designer, writer, and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, and is a great-great-great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt of the prominent Vanderbilt shipping and railroad fortune.^[2] Cooper's media experience began early. As a baby, he was photographed by Diane Arbus for Harper's Bazaar.^[3][4] He is also a descendant, through his mother, of Brevet Major General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick who was with Union General William T. Sherman in his March through Georgia.

At the age of 3 Cooper was a guest on The Tonight Show on September 17, 1970, appearing with his mother.^[5] At the age of 9, he appeared on To Tell the Truth as an impostor.^[6] From age 10 to 13 Cooper modeled with Ford Models for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Macy's.^[7]

Cooper's father suffered a series of heart attacks while undergoing open-heart surgery, and died January 5, 1978, at the age of 50. Cooper considers his father's book Families to be "sort of a guide on...how he would have wanted me to live my life and the choices he would have wanted me to make. And so I feel very connected to him."^[7]

Cooper's older brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, committed suicide on July 22, 1988, at age 23, by jumping from the 14th-floor terrace of Vanderbilt's New York City penthouse apartment. Gloria Vanderbilt later wrote about her son's death in the book A Mother's Story, in which she expresses her belief that the suicide was caused by a psychotic episode induced by an allergy to the anti-asthma prescription drug salbutamol. Anderson cites Carter's suicide for sparking his interest in journalism. "Loss is a theme that I think a lot about, and it’s something in my work that I dwell on. I think when you experience any kind of loss, especially the kind I did, you have questions about survival: Why do some people thrive in situations that others can’t tolerate? Would I be able to survive and get on in the world on my own?"^[7]

Education[link]

Cooper was educated at the Dalton School, a co-educational independent school in New York City. During the second semester of his senior year at the School at the age of 17, Cooper went to southern Africa in a "13-ton British Army truck" during which time he contracted malaria and required hospitalization in Kenya. Describing the experience, Cooper wrote "Africa was a place to forget and be forgotten in."^[7][8] Cooper graduated from the Dalton School in 1985. He went on to attend Yale University, where he resided in Trumbull College, and claimed membership in the Manuscript Society. He majored in political science and graduated in 1989.^[9]

Life and career[link]

During college, Cooper spent two summers as an intern at the Central Intelligence Agency. Although he technically has no formal journalistic education, he opted to pursue a career in journalism rather than stay with the agency after school,^[10] having been a self-proclaimed "news junkie" since he was "in utero."^[11] After his first correspondence work in the early 1990s, he took a break from reporting and lived in Vietnam for a year, during which time he studied the Vietnamese language at the University of Hanoi.^[12]

Career history[link]

Channel One[link]

Anderson Cooper at Qualcomm Stadium during the California wildfires of October 2007

After Cooper graduated from Yale University, he tried to gain entry-level employment with ABC answering telephones, but was unsuccessful. Finding it hard to get his foot in the door of on-air reporting, Cooper decided to enlist the help of a friend in making a fake press pass. At the time, Cooper was working as a fact checker for the small news agency Channel One, which produces a youth-oriented news program that is broadcast to many junior high and high schools in the United States.^[13] Cooper then entered Myanmar on his own with his forged press pass and met with students fighting the Burmese government.^[11] He was ultimately able to sell his home-made news segments to Channel One.

After reporting from Burma, Cooper lived in Vietnam for a year to study the Vietnamese language at the University of Hanoi. Persuading Channel One to allow him to bring a Hi-8 camera with him, Anderson soon began filming and assembling reports of Vietnamese life and culture that aired on Channel One. He later returned to filming stories from a variety of war-torn regions around the globe, including Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda.

On assignment for several years Cooper had very slowly become desensitized to the violence he was witnessing around him; the horrors of the Rwandan Genocide became trivial: "I would see a dozen bodies and think, you know, it's a dozen, it's not so bad."^[8] One particular incident, however, snapped him out of it:

On the side of the road [Cooper] came across five bodies that had been in the sun for several days. The skin of a woman's hand was peeling off like a glove. Revealing macabre fascination, Cooper whipped out his disposable camera and took a closeup photograph for his personal album. As he did, someone took a photo of him. Later that person showed Cooper the photo, saying, "You need to take a look at what you were doing." "And that's when I realized I've got to stop, [...] I've got to report on some state fairs or a beauty pageant or something, to just, like, remind myself of some perspective."^[8]

ABC[link]

In 1995, Cooper became a correspondent for ABC News, eventually rising to the position of co-anchor on its overnight World News Now program on September 21, 1999. In 2000 he switched career paths, taking a job as the host of ABC's reality show The Mole.

My last year at ABC, I was working overnights anchoring this newscast, then during the day at 20/20. So I was sleeping in two- or four-hour shifts, and I was really tired and wanted a change. I wanted to clear my head and get out of news a little bit, and I was interested in reality TV — and it was interesting.^[11]

Cooper was also a fill-in co-host for Regis Philbin for the TV talk show Live with Regis and Kelly in 2007 when Philbin underwent triple-bypass heart surgery.^[14]

CNN[link]

Cooper left The Mole after its second season to return to broadcast news in 2001 at CNN, commenting, "Two seasons was enough, and 9/11 happened, and I thought I needed to be getting back to news."^[11] His first position at CNN was to anchor alongside Paula Zahn on American Morning. In 2002 he became CNN's weekend prime-time anchor. Since 2002, he has hosted CNN's New Year's Eve special from Times Square. On September 8, 2003, he was made anchor of Anderson Cooper 360°.

Describing his philosophy as an anchor, Cooper has said:

I think the notion of traditional anchor is fading away, the all-knowing, all-seeing person who speaks from on high. I don't think the audience really buys that anymore. As a viewer, I know I don't buy it. I think you have to be yourself, and you have to be real and you have to admit what you don't know, and talk about what you do know, and talk about what you don't know as long as you say you don't know it. I tend to relate more to people on television who are just themselves, for good or for bad, than I do to someone who I believe is putting on some sort of persona. The anchorman on The Simpsons is a reasonable facsimile of some anchors who have that problem.^[11]

Cooper covered a number of important stories in 2005, including the tsunami damage in Sri Lanka; the Cedar Revolution in Beirut, Lebanon; the death of Pope John Paul II; and the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

Cooper marching on January 11, 2007, in New Orleans against violence

During CNN coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he confronted Sen. Mary Landrieu, Sen. Trent Lott, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson about their perception of the government response. As Cooper said later in an interview with New York magazine, “Yeah, I would prefer not to be emotional and I would prefer not to get upset, but it’s hard not to when you’re surrounded by brave people who are suffering and in need.”^[7] As Broadcasting & Cable magazine noted, "In its aftermath, Hurricane Katrina served to usher in a new breed of emo-journalism, skyrocketing CNN's Anderson Cooper to superstardom as CNN's golden boy and a darling of the media circles because of his impassioned coverage of the storm."^[15]

In August 2005, he covered the Niger famine from Maradi. In September 2005 the format of CNN's NewsNight was changed from 60 to 120 minutes to cover the unusually violent hurricane season. To help distribute some of the increased workload, Cooper was temporarily added as co-anchor to Aaron Brown. This arrangement was reported to have been made permanent the same month by the president of CNN's U.S. operations, Jonathan Klein, who has called Cooper "the anchorperson of the future."^[16] Following the addition of Cooper, the ratings for NewsNight increased significantly; Klein remarked that "[Cooper's] name has been on the tip of everyone's tongue."^[17] To further capitalize on this, Klein announced a major programming shakeup on November 2, 2005. Cooper's 360° program would be expanded to 2 hours and shifted into the 10 p.m. ET slot formerly held by NewsNight, with the third hour of Wolf Blitzer's The Situation Room filling in Cooper's former 7 p.m. ET slot. With "no options" left for him to host shows, Aaron Brown left CNN, ostensibly having "mutually agreed" with Jonathan Klein on the matter.^[18] In early 2007 Cooper signed a multi-year deal with CNN, which would allow him to continue as a contributor to 60 Minutes as well as doubling his salary from $2 million annually to a reported $4 million.^[19]

In October 2007 Cooper began hosting the documentary Planet in Peril, with Sanjay Gupta and Jeff Corwin on CNN. In 2008 he, Gupta, and Lisa Ling from National Geographic Explorer teamed up for a sequel, "Planet in Peril: Battle Lines," which premiered in December 2008. In 2007 he also began hosting CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute, a show which honors and recognizes extraordinary deeds by ordinary people.

Syndicated talk show[link]

Warner Bros. and Telepictures (both corporate siblings of CNN) announced in September 2010 that Cooper had signed an agreement to host a nationally syndicated talk show. The New York Times' Brian Stelter reported on Twitter that the new Warner Bros. daytime talk show would be named Anderson.^[20] The show premiered on September 12, 2011,^[21] and, as part of negotiations over the talk show deal, Cooper signed a new multi-year contract with CNN to continue as the host of Anderson Cooper 360°.^[22][23]

CBS[link]

Cooper has been a correspondent for the CBS News program 60 Minutes since 2007 while concurrently serving as a CNN correspondent.

Broadway[link]

Cooper can be heard as the voice of the narrator for the 2011 Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, directed by Rob Ashford and starring Daniel Radcliffe.^[24]

Writings[link]

A freelance writer, Cooper has authored a variety of articles that have appeared in many other outlets, including Details magazine.^[25]

In May 2006, Cooper published a memoir for HarperCollins, Dispatches from the Edge, detailing his life and work in Sri Lanka, Africa, Iraq and Louisiana over the previous year. Some of the book's proceeds are donated to charity.^[26] The book topped the New York Times bestseller list on June 18, 2006.^[27]

Personal life[link]

Cooper has two older half-brothers, Leopold Stanislaus "Stan" Stokowski (born 1950), and Christopher Stokowski (born 1952), from Gloria Vanderbilt's ten-year marriage to the conductor Leopold Stokowski.^[28]

He lives in his home in Westhampton Beach on Long Island ^[29] and a penthouse duplex on New York City's 38th Street.^[30]

The Fire Patrol building prior to his purchase

In September 2009 Cooper bought a firehouse in Greenwich Village.^[30]

He said to Oprah Winfrey – while promoting his book – that he had suffered from dyslexia as a child.^[31] In August 2007 he confirmed his "mild dyslexia" on The Tonight Show to Jay Leno, who also has dyslexia.

Cooper has never married and has actively avoided discussing his private life, citing a desire to protect his neutrality as a journalist. His public reticence deliberately contrasts with his mother's life spent in the spotlight of tabloid journalists and her publication of memoirs explicitly detailing her affairs with celebrities. Cooper vowed "not to repeat that strategy." ^[32][33][34] Independent news media have reported that Cooper is gay,^[35] and in May 2007, Out magazine ranked him second behind David Geffen in its list of the fifty "Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America."^[36] When asked about his sexuality, he stated, "I understand why people might be interested. But I just don’t talk about my personal life. It’s a decision I made a long time ago, before I ever even knew anyone would be interested in my personal life. The whole thing about being a reporter is that you're supposed to be an observer and to be able to adapt with any group you’re in, and I don’t want to do anything that threatens that."^[7] He has, however, discussed his desire to have a family and children.^[8]

Awards[link]

Year of award unknown

• Silver Plaque from the Chicago International Film Festival for his report from Sarajevo on the Bosnian War^[37][50]
• Bronze Award from the National Education Film and Video Festival for a report on political Islam^[37][50]

Career timeline[link]

• 1999–2000: World News Now co-anchor^[51]
• 2001–2002: The Mole host^[51]
• 2003–present: Anderson Cooper 360° anchor^[51]
• 2005: NewsNight co-anchor^[51]
• 2007–present: 60 Minutes correspondent^[51]
• 2011–present: Anderson

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Anderson Cooper

• Anderson Cooper 360° Blog
• CNN: Anchors & Reporters: Anderson Cooper (profile)
• Anderson Cooper on Twitter
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Anderson Cooper on Charlie Rose
• Anderson Cooper at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Anderson Cooper in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Anderson Cooper collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Anderson Cooper: The Silver Fox - slideshow by Life magazine

Vaughn Walker
Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California
In office October 30, 2004 – December 31, 2010
Preceded by	Marilyn Patel
Succeeded by	James Ware
Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California
In office November 27, 1989 – February 28, 2011
Appointed by	George H. W. Bush
Preceded by	Spencer Williams
Succeeded by	Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers
Personal details
Born	Vaughn Richard Walker[1] 1944 (age 67–68) Watseka, Illinois, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Stanford University
Signature

Vaughn Richard Walker (born 1944) served as a district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California from 1989 to 2011.

Biography[link]

Walker was born in Watseka, Illinois, in 1944. He graduated from the University of Michigan (1966) and Stanford Law School (1970).^[2] During 1966-67, he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in economics at the University of California, Berkeley.^[3]

After clerking for United States District Court for the Central District of California Judge Robert J. Kelleher (1971–72), he practiced in San Francisco at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro.

Walker was originally nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. However, this nomination stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee because of controversy over his representation of the United States Olympic Committee in a lawsuit that prohibited the use of the title "Gay Olympics".^[4][5] Two dozen House Democrats, led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, opposed his nomination because of his perceived insensitivity to gays and the poor.^[6]

On September 7, 1989, Walker was re-nominated by President George H. W. Bush to the seat on the federal district court vacated by Spencer M. Williams.^[2] He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on November 21, 1989, on unanimous consent and received his commission on November 27, 1989.

On September 29, 2010, Walker announced he would retire at the end of 2010 and return to private practice.^[7] He retired at the end of February 2011. On April 6, 2011, Walker told reporters that he is gay and has been in a relationship with a male doctor for about ten years.^[8] He was the first known gay person to serve as a United States federal judge,^[9] though he did not publicly confirm his sexual orientation until after retiring from the federal bench.^[10]

Views[link]

Walker generally believes in a legal approach known as law and economics.^[11]

Walker has been called an "unorthodox" and "independent-minded conservative" judge; he has called for policies including the auctioning of lead counsel status in securities class action suits and the legalization of drugs.^[4] In a 2003 case, United States v. Gementera, as a condition of supervised release, Walker required a defendant who had pled guilty to mail theft to stand in front of a San Francisco post office wearing a sandwich board that read: "I stole mail. This is my punishment."^[12] The condition was upheld on appeal.^[12]

A San Francisco Chronicle columnist and reporter wrote in a commentary that Walker has an "aversion to harsh sentences for well-educated, well-heeled criminals and, in particular, perpetrators of securities fraud."^[13]

The New York Times at the time of his initial Reagan nomination stated he was active in Republican politics;^[14] Wired magazine describes Walker as having libertarian leanings.^[15]

Cases[link]

Walker has presided over such notable cases as lawsuits over NSA warrantless surveillance;^[16] the criminal sentencing of radio host Bernie Ward; the breach of TD Ameritrade's customer information database; the Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation copyright infringement case;^[17] antitrust litigation over the Hearst Corporation's purchase of the San Francisco Chronicle; and Oracle's merger/hostile takeover of PeopleSoft, which was approved despite Justice Department opposition.^[18]

On January 11, 2010, Walker began hearing arguments in Perry v. Brown. The case was a federal-constitutional challenge to California Proposition 8, a voter initiative constitutional amendment that eliminated the right of same sex couples to marry, a right which had previously been granted after the California Supreme Court found that Proposition 22 was unconstitutional.^[19] On August 4, 2010, Walker ruled that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional "under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses" and prohibited its enforcement.^[20][21]

Following Walker's decision in Perry, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and other proponents of Proposition 8 raised the issue of Walker's homosexuality, already discussed in the press during the trial.^[22] Discussing his homosexuality after retiring from the bench, Walker said he did not consider recusing himself from the Perry case because he thinks using characteristics like sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin or gender as the grounds for recusal is "a very slippery slope."^[8] On April 25, 2011, supporters of Proposition 8 filed a motion in district court to vacate Walker's decision, citing Walker's own post-trial statement that he has been in a long-term relationship with another man. They argued he should have recused himself or disclosed his relationship status, and unless Walker "disavowed any interest in marrying his partner", he had "a direct personal interest in the outcome of the case".^[23] District Court Judge James Ware heard arguments on the motion on June 13 and denied it the next day, writing that "the presumption that Judge Walker, by virtue of being in a same-sex relationship, had a desire to be married that rendered him incapable of making an impartial decision, is as warrantless as the presumption that a female judge is incapable of being impartial in a case in which women seek legal relief."^[24][25] Legal experts noted that similar efforts to remove Hispanic judges from immigration cases or female judges from gender-discrimination cases have also failed in the past.^[26]

References[link]