Hamid Karzai, GCMG (Pashto: حامد کرزی, Hāmid Karzay; born 24 December 1957) is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001. During the December 2001 International Conference on Afghanistan in Germany, Karzai was selected by prominent Afghan political figures to serve a six month term as Chairman of the Interim Administration.

He was then chosen for a two year term as Interim President during the 2002 loya jirga (grand assembly) that was held in Kabul, Afghanistan. After the 2004 presidential election, Karzai was declared winner and became President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. He won a second five-year-term in the 2009 presidential election.

Karzai was born on 24 December 1957 in the Karz area of Kandahar City in southern Afghanistan. He is an ethnic Pashtun of the Popalzai tribe. His father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, served as the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament during the 1960s. His grandfather, Khair Mohammad Khan, had served in the 1919 Afghanistan's war of independence and as the Deputy Speaker of the Senate. Karzai's family were strong supporters of Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan. His uncle, Habibullah Karzai, served as representative of Afghanistan at the UN and is said to have accompanied King Zahir Shah in the early 1960s to the United States for a special meeting with U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior United States Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to then President George W. Bush.

The son of an Army Air Corps serviceman, Kerry was born in Aurora, Colorado. He attended boarding school in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and went on to graduate from Yale University class of 1966, where he majored in political science. He enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1966 and, during 1968-1969, served a four-month tour of duty in South Vietnam as officer-in-charge (OIC) of a Swift Boat. For that service he was awarded several combat medals that include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in which he served as a nationally recognized spokesperson and as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war. During that period, he appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs where he deemed United States war policy in Vietnam to be the cause of "war crimes".

Yalda Hakim is an Australian video journalist and presenter of the international current affairs program Dateline for SBS.

She came to Australia in the 80s after her father smuggled his young family out of Afghanistan on horseback to escape the Soviet invasion to Pakistan and then to Australia in 1983. She was a Prefect, Sports Captain and played violin at Macarthur Girls High School in Parramatta, Sydney.

She returned to Kabul for a her first Dateline report in 2008 and since then has reported from across the world for Dateline and SBS’s World News Australia, winning the United Nations Media Peace Prize for best Australian Television News Coverage in 2009. She’s also been a finalist for the Walkley Young Australian Journalist of the Year Award.

Hakim co-hosts Dateline with fellow video journalist Mark Davis. The two take it in turns to present the program in approximately six week blocks, while the other is away on assignment.

Yalda studied a Bachelor of Arts in Media from 2002 to 2004 at Macquarie University where she was also a board member of the Macquarie University Union. She graduated with a journalism degree via distance education from Monash University in 2007 and started a cadetship at the Special Broadcasting Service. She can speak 5 languages - English, Urdu, Hindi, Mandarin and Persian language (native tongue) - and often puts her language skills to use interviewing for Dateline.

Arnab Goswami (Assamese: অৰ্ণব গোস্বামী) is an Indian journalist who is the Editor in Chief and News anchor of the Indian news channel Times Now. He is an important contributor to the rise of the Times Now news channel since its launch in January 2006. His show The Newshour is aired at 9 pm (IST)on weekdays with live news coverage. Arnab Goswami also hosts a special television program Frankly Speaking with Arnab, which has featured eminent personalities. Arnab is a recipient of a number of awards for his journalistic abilities and has also written a book named Combating Terrorism: The Legal Challenge.

Arnab Goswami was born in Guwahati, Assam. He comes from a family of eminent jurists. His paternal grandfather, Rajani Kanta Goswami, was a well known lawyer, a Congress leader and a freedom fighter. His maternal grandfather, Gauri Sankar Bhattacharya, was a leader of the opposition in Assam for many years. He was a freedom fighter, an intellectual writer and a recipient of the Asom Sahitya Sabha Award. As an army officer's son, he attended schools in various cities. He passed his 10th Standard board examinations from Mount St. Mary's School in Delhi Cantonment, his 12th Standard board exams from Kendriya Vidyalaya in Jabalpur Cantonment. Arnab graduated in Sociology from Hindu College. He completed his Master's degree in Social Anthropology from Oxford University (St. Antony’s College, 1994) where he was a Felix Scholar. In 2000, he was a visiting fellow at the International Studies Department at Cambridge University (Sidney Sussex College) where he was a D C Pavate fellow.