A crowned republic is a form of constitutional monarchy where the monarch's role is ceremonial and all the royal prerogatives are prescribed by custom and law in such a way that the monarch has little or no discretion over governmental and constitutional issues.

The term has been used to describe governments of various realms, including the Kingdom of Norway, and some of the Commonwealth realms. It can refer to a nation that is a nominal monarchy but in which the people by their citizenship may be seen as ultimately holding power over the nation's affairs. This may apply to a constitutional monarchy where the sovereign personally exercises little political influence, whether vested with executive authority or not.

There is no one definition as to when constitutional monarchy is a crowned republic and different authorities have described different monarchies as such. For example James Bryce wrote in 1921 that "By Monarchy I understand the think not the Name i.e. not any State the head of which is called King or Emperor, but one in which the personal will of the monarch is constantly effective, and in the last resort predominant, factor of government. Thus, while such a monarchy as that of Norway is really a Crowned Republic, and indeed a democratic republic, monarchy was in Russia before 1917, and in Turkey before 1905, and to a less degree in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy till 1918, an appreciable force in the conduct of affairs".

John Winston Howard, OM, AC, SSI, (born 26 July 1939) was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies.

Howard was a member of the House of Representatives from 1974 to 2007, representing the Division of Bennelong, New South Wales. He served as Treasurer in the Fraser government of from 1977 to 1983. He was Leader of the Liberal Party and Coalition Opposition from 1985 to 1989, which included the 1987 federal election against Bob Hawke. He was re-elected as Leader of the Opposition in 1995.

Howard led the Liberal-National coalition to victory at the 1996 federal election, defeating Paul Keating's Labor government and ending a record 13 years of Coalition opposition. The Howard Government was re-elected at the 1998, 2001 and 2004 elections, presiding over a period of strong economic growth and prosperity. Major issues for the Howard Government included taxation, industrial relations, immigration, the Iraq war, and Aboriginal relations. Howard's coalition government was defeated at the 2007 election by the Labor Party led by Kevin Rudd. Howard also lost his own parliamentary seat at the election; he was the second Australian Prime Minister, after Stanley Bruce in 1929, to do so.

StarStruck is a Philippine over-all talent competition (singing, dancing, acting, hosting) airing on GMA Network. It debuted on October 27, 2003, and has since become one of the most popular shows on Philippine television.

The program seeks to discover new celebrities in the country through a series of nationwide auditions. The Filipino public votes for the outcomes of the later stages through text voting and half of the results are from the judges (more popularly known as council). The judges give critiques of the contestants performances depending on the challenges that are being given to the contestants. Since season 1, the council had a lot of members including Joey de Leon (actor, singer-songwriter and comedian), Joyce Bernal (multi-awarded directress), Ida Henares (GMA Networks Artist Center Head) Christopher de Leon (multi-awarded actor), Louie Ignacio (StarStrucks director), Lorna Tolentino (a grandslam actress), and the late Douglas Quijano (one of showbiz industrys respected talent manager).