Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company. Since 4 June 2008 Slate has been managed by The Slate Group, an online publishing entity created by the Washington Post Company to develop and manage web-only magazines.

A French version (slate.fr) was launched in February 2009 by a group of four journalists, including Jean-Marie Colombani, Eric Leser, and economist Jacques Attali. Between them, the founders hold 50% in the publishing company, while the Slate Group holds 15%.

Since June 2008, David Plotz has served as the editor of Slate. He had been the deputy editor to Jacob Weisberg, Slate's editor from 2002 until his designation as the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of The Slate Group. The Washington Post Company's John Alderman is Slate's publisher.Slate (ISSN 1091-2339), which is updated daily, covers politics, arts and culture, sports, and news. The magazine is known (and sometimes criticized) for adopting contrarian positions. It is ad-supported and has been available to read free of charge since 1999.

The fifth series of Britain's Got Talent was broadcast on ITV between 16 April and 4 June 2011. After initial rounds of auditions, forty semi-finalists were chosen to perform across five live shows, with eight appearing in each of the semi-finals. The act from each show who received the highest number of public votes went through to the final automatically. They were joined by either the second or third placed act, with the four judges declaring who they wanted to go through. In the event of a tie, the second finalist was determined by the public vote.

Each of the acts performed again in the final on 4 June 2011. Jai McDowall won the competition after finishing with the highest number of public votes. Ronan Parke finished in second place, with the difference in the votes being 2.5% between the first and second place contestants. Singing group New Bounce finished in third place, followed by dancer Razy Gogonea and singer/guitarist Michael Collings. Paul Gbegbaje (6th), Les Gibson (9th), Steven Hall (7th), James Hobley (8th), and Jean Martyn (10th) were the other finalists.

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (/ˈstɛfəniː dʒʌrməˈnɑːtə/ STE-fə-nee jurr-mə-NAH-tə; born March 28, 1986), known by her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American singer and songwriter. Born and raised in New York City, she primarily studied at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and briefly attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts before withdrawing to focus on her musical career. She began performing in the rock music scene of Manhattan's Lower East Side, and was signed with Streamline Records by the end of 2007. During her employment as a songwriter for the record company, her vocal abilities captured the attention of recording artist Akon, who signed her to his label Kon Live Distribution.

Lady Gaga came to prominence as a recording artist following the release of her debut album The Fame (2008), which was a critical and commercial success that topped charts around the world and included the international number-one singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face". After embarking on the The Fame Ball Tour, she followed the album with The Fame Monster (2009), which spawned the worldwide hit singles "Bad Romance", "Telephone" and "Alejandro". The album's success allowed her to embark on the eighteen-month long Monster Ball Tour, which later became one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time. Her most recent album Born This Way (2011) topped the charts of most major markets and generated more international chart-topping singles, including "Born This Way", "Judas" and "The Edge of Glory". Besides her musical career, she involves herself with humanitarian causes and LGBT activism.

Emily Bazelon (born 1971) is an American journalist, senior editor for online magazine Slate, and a senior research fellow at Yale Law School. Her work as a writer focuses on law, abortion, and family issues. Bazelon appeared on the March 28, 2012 edition of The Colbert Report to discuss The Affordable Health Care Act.

Bazelon is a writer and senior editor of Slate. She has written articles about controversial subjects, such as the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld trial and post-abortion syndrome. Bazelon edits Slate's legal columns, "Jurisprudence", and is co-editor of its blog on women's issues, XX Factor (also known as DoubleX), and regularly appears on The Political Gabfest, a weekly Slate podcast with David Plotz and John Dickerson.

She is also a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. Before joining Slate, Bazelon was a senior editor of Legal Affairs. Her writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, as well as other publications. She has worked as a reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area and, in 1993 and 1994, as a freelance journalist in Israel.

Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American businessman and the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for President of the United States in the 2012 election. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts (2003–07).

The son of Lenore and George W. Romney (Governor of Michigan, 1963–69), he was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. In 1966, after one year at Stanford University, he left the United States to spend thirty months in France as a Mormon missionary. In 1969, he married Ann Davies, and the couple had five children together. In 1971, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Brigham Young University and, in 1975, a joint Juris Doctor and Master of Business Administration from Harvard University as a Baker Scholar. He entered the management consulting industry, which in 1977, led to a position at Bain & Company. Later serving as Chief Executive Officer, he helped bring the company out of financial crisis. In 1984, he co-founded the spin-off Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm that became highly profitable and one of the largest such firms in the nation. His net worth is estimated at $190–250 million, wealth that has helped fund his political campaigns. Active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he served as Ward Bishop and later Stake President in his area near Boston. He ran as the Republican candidate in the 1994 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts, losing to long-time incumbent Ted Kennedy. In 1999, he was hired as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics and Paralympics; and he helped turn the fiscally troubled games into a success.