Howard Waring French (born 1957) is an associate professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism as well as a journalist, author and photographer. He was most recently a senior foreign correspondent with The New York Times.

French taught at university in the Ivory Coast in the 1980s before becoming a reporter. He has reported extensively on the political affairs of Western and Central Africa. These reports were the basis for the book A Continent for the Taking.

French has also reported on the political and social affairs in China, where he covered on the government crackdown of dissent in the Dongzhou protests of 2005. His most recent work for The New York Times is centered on China where he was the paper's Shanghai bureau chief.

French was New York Times bureau chief for the Caribbean and Central America from 1990 to 1994, covering Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and numerous other countries.

From 1994 to 1998, French covered West and Central Africa for the Times, reporting on wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Central Africa, with particular attention to the fall of the longtime dictator of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko.

The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois (editor), Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W.S. Braithwaite, M. D. Maclean.

The original title of the journal was The Crisis: A Record of The Darker Races. From 1997 to 2003, it appeared as The New Crisis: The Magazine of Opportunities and Ideas, but the title has since reverted to The Crisis. The title derives from the poem "The Present Crisis" by James Russell Lowell. Published monthly, by 1920 its circulation had reached 100,000 copies. Du Bois proclaimed his intentions in his first editorial:

Predominantly a current-affairs journal, The Crisis also included poems, reviews, and essays on culture and history. Du Bois' initial position as editor was in line with the NAACP's liberal programme of social reform and racial equality, but by the 1930s Du Bois was advocating a form of black separatism. This led to disputes between Du Bois and the NAACP resulting in his resignation as editor in 1934. He was replaced by Roy Wilkins.

James Newton Howard (born June 9, 1951) is an American composer best known for his scores to motion pictures. He is one of the most popular and respected composers for cinema, and has scored over 100 films. The recipient of eight Academy Award nominations, some of Howard's best known film scores include The Prince of Tides (1991), The Fugitive (1993), Dinosaur (2000), King Kong (2005), I Am Legend (2007), and, most recently Green Lantern (2011) and The Hunger Games (2012). He is also known for his collaboration with director M. Night Shyamalan, having scored all his films since The Sixth Sense (1999).

Howard was born in Los Angeles, California. Twenty-five years after the death of his father, Howard learned that his father's family was Jewish (Howard later became a practicing Reconstructionist Jew).

Throughout his career as a composer/musician/songwriter, he has scored films of all scales and genres, earning multiple award nominations for his work. Howard began studying music as a child and went on to attend the Thacher School in Ojai, California, the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, and then majored in piano performance at the University of Southern California.

James W. Newton (born May 1, 1953, Los Angeles, California, United States) is an American jazz flautist, composer, and conductor.

From his earliest years, James Newton grew up immersed in the sounds of African American music, including urban blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel. In his early teens he played electric bass guitar, alto saxophone, and clarinet. In high school he took up the flute, influenced by Eric Dolphy and Roland Kirk. In addition to taking lessons in classical music on flute, he also studied jazz with Buddy Collette. He completed his formal musical training at California State University, Los Angeles.

From 1972 to 1975, together with David Murray, Bobby Bradford, and Arthur Blythe, Newton was a member of drummer (and later critic) Stanley Crouch's band Black Music Infinity. From 1978 to 1981 he lived in New York, leading a trio with pianist and composer Anthony Davis and cellist Abdul Wadud. These three played extended chamber jazz and Third Stream compositions by Newton and Davis. With Davis, Newton founded a quartet and toured successfully in Europe in the early 1980s. Afterwards, he performed with a wide variety of musicians, including projects by John Carter and the Mingus Dynasty. Newton has released four recordings of his solo improvisations for flute. He has also worked with Herbie Hancock, Bobby Hutcherson, Lester Bowie, Leroy Jenkins, Chet Baker, Kenny Burrell, David Murray and Andrew Cyrille. Since the 1990s Newton has often worked with musicians from other cultural spheres, including Jon Jang, Gao Hong, Kadri Gopalnath, and Shubhendra Rao, and has taken part in many cross-cultural projects.

Russell Joseph Howard^{[citation needed]} (born 23 March 1980) is an English comedian and presenter best known for his TV show Russell Howard's Good News and his appearances on the topical panel TV show Mock The Week. He won "Best Compère" at the 2006 Chortle Awards and was nominated for an if.comedy award for his 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show.

Howard has two younger siblings, twins, Kerry, an actress, and Daniel, a systems analyst who suffers from epilepsy, a fact which Howard often references during his act. Indeed, in April 2010, Howard ran the Virgin London Marathon for the first time with both his brother and sister, to raise money for the National Society for Epilepsy. He completed the 26 mile course in 4 hours and 15 minutes, beating his target time of 5 hours. Sponsorship has raised over £7,000 to date.

Howard supports Liverpool Football Club and says that he is "deadly serious" about football. "I still go down the pub and play football with my mates", he commented in 2010.

In terms of political views, Howard appeared at Friends of the Earth's LIVEstock comedy and music event at the Hammersmith Apollo in support of the green campaign group's Food Chain Campaign for planet-friendly farming, on 12 November 2009.