Shavit (Hebrew: "comet" - שביט) is a space launch vehicle produced by Israel to launch small satellites into low earth orbit. It was first launched on September 19, 1988 (carrying an Ofeq satellite payload), making Israel the eighth country to have a space launch capability after the USSR, United States, France, Japan, People's Republic of China, United Kingdom and India.

Shavit rockets are launched from Palmachim Airbase by the Israeli Space Agency into a highly retrograde orbit over the Mediterranean Sea to prevent debris coming down in populated areas and also to avoid flying over nations hostile to Israel to the east; this results in a lower payload-to-orbit than east-directed launches would allow. The launcher consists of three stages powered by solid fuel rocket motors, with an optional liquid fuel fourth stage, and is manufactured by IAI.

The development of Shavit began in 1982. Shavit was a three-stage, solid-propellant launcher designed to carry payloads up to 250 kg into low earth orbit. It was speculated for some time and later confirmed that the first two stages of the Shavit were that of the Jericho II missile.

Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. (born January 5, 1942) is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993. He has also co-anchored CBS This Morning since January 2012. Rose, along with Lara Logan, has hosted the revived CBS classic Person to Person, a news program during which celebrities are interviewed in their homes, originally hosted from 1953 to 1961 by Edward R. Murrow.

Rose was born in Henderson, North Carolina, the only child of Margaret Frazier and Charles Peete Rose, Sr., tobacco farmers who owned a country store. As a child, Rose lived above his parents' store in Henderson and helped out with the family business from age seven. Rose admitted in a Fresh Dialogues interview that as a child his insatiable curiosity was constantly getting him in trouble. A high school basketball star, Rose entered Duke University intending to pursue a degree with a pre-med track, but an internship in the office of Democratic North Carolina Senator B. Everett Jordan got him interested in politics. Rose graduated in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in history. At Duke, he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity. He earned a Juris Doctor from the Duke University School of Law in 1968. He met his wife, Mary (née King), while attending Duke.

David Remnick (born October 29, 1958) is an American journalist, writer, and magazine editor. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. Remnick has been editor of The New Yorker magazine since 1998. He was named "Editor of the Year" by Advertising Age in 2000. Before joining The New Yorker, Remnick was a reporter and the Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post. He has also served on the New York Public Library's board of trustees. In 2010 he published his sixth book, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.

Remnick was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, the son of a dentist and an art teacher. He was raised in Hillsdale, New Jersey, in a secular Jewish home with, he has said, "a lot of books around". He is also childhood friends with comedian Bill Maher. He graduated from Princeton University in 1981 with an A. B. in comparative literature; there, he met writer John McPhee and helped found The Nassau Weekly. Remnick has implied that after college he wanted to write novels, but due to his parents' illnesses, he needed a paying job—there was no trust fund to rely upon. Remnick wanted to be a writer, so he chose a career in journalism, taking a job at the Washington Post. He is married to reporter Esther Fein of The New York Times and has three children, Alex, Noah, and Natasha. He enjoys jazz music and classic cinema and is fluent in Russian.