Dame Mary Anne Salmond, DBE, FRSNZ, FBA (born 1945) is a New Zealand historian, anthropologist and writer.

Salmond was born in Wellington in 1945 and grew up in Gisborne, before being sent to board at Solway College in Masterton. She was educated at the University of Auckland and the University of Pennsylvania.

She and her husband Jeremy live in Auckland and have three children. In 2000, she and her husband initiated the ecological restoration of Longbush Reserve in Gisborne.^{[citation needed]}

Salmond is a Distinguished Professor of Maori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland. For many years she worked closely with Eruera Stirling and Amiria Stirling, noted elders of Te Whānau-ā-Apanui and Ngati Porou. Their collaboration led to three books about Maori life:

Salmond's work then turned to cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific, resulting in a series of works:

In 2004, Salmond received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement for non-fiction. She is currently writing a book about William Bligh in Tahiti.^{[citation needed]}

William Landry Aronson (b. 1981, New Haven, Connecticut) is a contemporary American composer and writer for musical theater.

Will Aronson holds a B.A. in music from Harvard University. As an undergraduate, Aronson was the composer of Hasty Pudding Theatricals' 154th production, Snow Place Like Home (1), and co-author/lyricist of its 155th production, It's a Wonderful Afterlife (2).

After graduation from Harvard, Aronson studied Music Theory as a Fulbright Scholar at Universität der Künste in Berlin (3).

Aronson holds an M.F.A. from the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. While studying at NYU, he received the ASCAP Frederick Loewe Scholarship (4) and a 2006 Baryshnikov Fellowship (5). In 2007 he was named by the Dramatists Guild of America as one of "50 to Watch."

Aronson wrote the score for a musical version of the Korean movie My Scary Girl (book and lyrics by Kyoung-ae Kang), which ran in Seoul, South Korea. The show won Best Original Musical (small theater category) at the 2009 Korea Musical Awards (6). An English language version of the show, with book co-written by Mark St. Germain and additional lyrics by William Finn, ran at Barrington Stage Company's Stage II, July 10–26, 2008 (7). The New York Musical Theater Festival (NYMF) presented the Korean version of My Scary Girl October 1–4, 2009. My Scary Girl was named the Outstanding New Musical at NYMF for 2009 (8).

Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond ( /ˈsæmənd/; born 31 December 1954) is a Scottish politician and current First Minister of Scotland. He became Scotland's fourth First Minister in May 2007. He is the Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), having served as Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Gordon. From 1987 to 2010 he served as Member of Parliament for Banff and Buchan in the UK House of Commons. Salmond previously held the position of leader of the SNP from September 1990 until he stepped down in September 2000.

Originally from Linlithgow, West Lothian, Salmond is a graduate of the University of St Andrews, where he achieved a Joint Honours MA in Economics and History. After earning his degree he began his career in the Government Economic Service (GES), and later joined the Royal Bank of Scotland as an energy economist where he wrote and broadcast extensively for both domestic and international media outlets.

Following the establishment of the devolved Scottish Parliament in 1999, he was elected MSP for Banff and Buchan, thus simultaneously representing the area as both Member of Parliament (MP) and MSP. Salmond resigned as SNP leader in 2000 and did not seek re-election to the Scottish Parliament. He did however retain his Westminster seat in the 2001 general election. Salmond was once again elected SNP leader in 2004 and the following year held his Banff and Buchan seat in the 2005 general election. In 2006 he announced his intention to contest the Gordon constituency in the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, an election in which Salmond defeated the incumbent MSP and in which nationally, the SNP emerged as the largest single party. Salmond was voted First Minister by the Scottish Parliament on 16 May 2007.

Anne McLaughlin (born 8 March 1966) is a Scottish National Party (SNP) politician and was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Glasgow between 2009 and 2011. She has since unsuccessfully contested the Glasgow Provan constituency in the May 2011 Scottish Parliament election and the June 2011 UK Parliament by-election for the Inverclyde constituency.

McLaughlin comes from Port Glasgow but has lived in Glasgow for many years. She contested Glasgow Springburn in the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, finishing second, and had previously contested the Glasgow Rutherglen seat at the 2001 UK General Election (again finishing second) and the similar Glasgow Rutherglen seat at the 2003 Scottish Parliament election. She was SNP campaign co-ordinator when John Mason won the Glasgow East by-election, 2008.

McLaughlin became a regional member for Glasgow (Scottish Parliament region) on 6 February 2009, following the death of Bashir Ahmad, as the next person on the SNP's regional list. Before this she was employed as a researcher for the MSP Bob Doris. She caused controversy^{[dubious – discuss]} by blogging photographs taken within the Scottish Parliament building. She has championed the cause of English language skills in Glasgow school-children. She was a member of the Public Audit and Public Petitions parliamentary committees (2009–2011).

Matthew "Matt" McCarten (born 1959) is a New Zealand political organiser. He has been involved with several leftist or centre-left political parties, and is also active in the trade-union movement. As of 2010^[update] he writes a weekly column for the Herald on Sunday. He suffers from liver cancer which is likely to be fatal.

McCarten started his political career^[when?] as a member of the Labour Party, but grew dissatisfied with the party's direction under Minister of Finance Roger Douglas. Douglas was a strong promoter of free-market economics and deregulation, which McCarten and others saw as a betrayal of Labour's roots. Eventually, one of Labour's MPs, Jim Anderton, broke away to found NewLabour, and McCarten became the president of the new organisation. NewLabour later joined with several other parties to form the Alliance – McCarten became president of this new party as well.

After the 1999 elections, the Alliance became the junior partner in a coalition government with Labour (which had now moved away from its programme of economic reforms). However, some members of the Alliance, including McCarten, felt that their grouping had made too many concessions to the more centrist Labour, and that the Alliance was abandoning its left-wing principles. Eventually, a rift developed between McCarten (serving as the Alliance's organisational leader) and Jim Anderton (serving as its political leader) – the party's governing Council backed McCarten, but most of its MPs backed Anderton.