The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago. NBC is sometimes referred to as the "Peacock Network," due to its stylized peacock logo, created originally for color broadcasts.

Formed in 1926 by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), NBC was the first major broadcast network in the United States. In 1986, control of NBC passed to General Electric (GE), with GE's $6.4 billion purchase of RCA. GE had previously owned RCA and NBC until 1930, when it had been forced to sell the company as a result of antitrust charges.

After the 1986 acquisition, the chief executive of NBC was Bob Wright, until he retired, giving his job to Jeff Zucker. The network is currently part of the media company NBCUniversal, which is a joint venture of Comcast and General Electric since 2011 (and before that, jointly owned by GE and current Universal Music Group parent Vivendi). As a result of the merger, Zucker left NBC and was replaced by Comcast executive Steve Burke.

News is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third-party or mass audience.

One theory claims that the English word "news" developed in the 14th century as a special use of the plural form of "new". In Middle English, the equivalent word was newes, like the French nouvelles and the German neues. Similar developments are found in the Slavic languages – the Czech and Slovak noviny (from nový, "new"), the cognate Polish nowiny and Russian novosti – and in the Celtic languages: the Welsh newyddion (from newydd) and the Cornish nowodhow (from nowydh).

Before the invention of newspapers in the early 17th century, official government bulletins and edicts were circulated at times in some centralized empires.

The first documented use of an organized courier service for the diffusion of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers for the diffusion of their decrees in the territory of the State (2400 BC). This practice almost certainly has roots in the much older practice of oral messaging and may have been built on a pre-existing infrastructure.

Paul Davis Ryan (born January 29, 1970) is the U.S. Representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district, serving since 1999. He is a member of the Republican Party, and has been ranked among the party's most influential voices on economic policy.

Born and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan graduated from Miami University in Ohio and later worked as a marketing consultant for Ryan Incorporated Central, run by a branch of his family. In the mid to late 1990s, he worked as an aide to United States Senator Bob Kasten, as legislative director for Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, and as a speechwriter for former U.S. Representative and 1996 Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp of New York. In 1998, Ryan won election to the United States House of Representatives, succeeding the two-term incumbent, fellow Republican Mark Neumann.

Ryan currently chairs the House Budget Committee, where he has played a prominent public role in drafting and promoting the Republican Party's long-term budget proposal. He introduced a plan, The Path to Prosperity, in April 2011 as an alternative to the budget proposal of President Barack Obama, and helped introduce The Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal in March 2012, in response to Obama's 2013 budget. Ryan is one of the three co-founders of the Young Guns Program, an electoral recruitment and campaign effort by House Republicans. He endorsed Republican presidential candidate and former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney for the 2012 United States presidential election. Ryan has been considered as a possible running mate for Romney.