Buenos Aires, Argentina

The Casa Rosada, Argentina's "White House".

Buenos Aires, Argentina

The Casa Rosada, Argentina's"Capitol"

Buenos Aires

The Casa Rosada is the"Capitol" of Argentina.

Buenos Aires

The Casa Rosada is the"Capitol" of Argentina.

Buenos Aires

The Casa Rosada is the"Capitol" of Argentina.

Buenos Aires

The Casa Rosada is the "Capitol" of Argentina.

Ana De La Reguera

Reguera began her performance arts studies in the Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura and was the host of Pasarela on Televisa Veracruz. She left the Televisa's CEA, and then studied with Rosa María Bianchi, Patricia Reyes Spíndola and Rafael Miranau. She also studied with Raúl Quintanilla in the Centro de Formación Actoral de TV Azteca (CEFAC). Her acting career began with her role in the Telenovela Azul (1996) followed by Pueblo chico, infierno grande (1997) for which she received the Heraldo award for best female acting, and Desencuentro which was her third telenovela under the direction of Ernesto Alonso. Tentaciones (1998) marked her beginning with the production company Producciones Argos. She was immediately offered a role in Destino and Todo por amor, for which she received the Palmas de oro award. Cara o Cruz was the first telenovela co-production between Argos Comunicación and Telemundo, that was made exclusively for the hispanic audience living in the United States. It was later rebroadcasted in Mexico, by independent channel CNI. She was also seen playing María in the telenovela Por tí for TV Azteca and the mini-series that followed up on Pedro El Escamoso, Como Pedro por su casa which was a co-production between Caracol from Colombia and Telemundo. Reguera has been in many commercials and television shows in Mexico, such as: Mujer, casos de la vida real, Al derecho y al Dérbez, Íntimamente Shanik, Chiquitos pero picosos, La venta increíble, Llévatelo and Cómplices en familia. In theatre she has participated in El cartero directed by Raúl Quintanilla, for which she received two awards from the 'Mexican Association of Theatre Journalists. Her introduction to film began in Por la Libre, under the direction of Juan Carlos de Llaca. Later she acted in the film Un Secreto de Esperanza and in 2003 Ladies Night, alongside Ana Claudia Talancón. In 2005 she played the starring role in Gitanas which aired on Telemundo in the United States. She is perhaps best known world wide for her role as Sister Encarnación in Nacho Libre, a film by Jared Hess, director of Napoleon Dynamite. Throughout her career, Reguera has often been mistaken for Penélope Cruz. In 2006, she hosted the MTV Video Music Awards Latin America along with Mexican alternative rock group Molotov. Reguera can also be seen in recent movies including Sultanes del Sur and Paraiso Travel released in 2006, and A Happy Death due for release sometime in 2007. She has never been married and has no children, she is currently dating Jorge Ramos, an anchor at Univision and in 2006 dated Austin Ryan Fuentes. She is currently working with Argos Comunicación on the HBO Latin American series "Capadocia" along with Rebecca Jones.

italy

Italy [ˈɪtəli] (help·info) (Italian: Italia), officially the Italian Republic, (Italian: Repubblica Italiana), is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within the Italian Peninsula, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. Italy has been the home of many European cultures, such as the Etruscans and the Romans, and later was the birthplace of the universities and of the movement of the Renaissance, that began in Tuscany and spread all over Europe. Italy's capital Rome was for centuries the center of Western civilization, it also spawned the Baroque movement and seats the Catholic Church. Italy possessed a colonial empire from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Today, Italy is a democratic republic and a developed country with the 8th-highest Quality-of-life index,[7] rating in the world. It is a founding member of what is now the European Union (having signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957), and a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It is a member of the G8 (having the world's 7th largest nominal GDP), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Trade Organization (WTO), the Council of Europe, the Western European Union, the Central European Initiative, and a Schengen state. It has the world's 8th largest defence budget and shares NATO's nuclear weapons. On January 1, 2007, Italy began a two year term as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The origin of the term Italy (It: Italia), from Latin Italia,[8] is uncertain. According to one of the more common explanations, the term was borrowed through Greek, from Oscan Víteliú, meaning "land of young cattle" (cf. Lat vitulus "calf", Umb vitlo "calf") and named for the god of cattle, Mars.[9] The bull was a symbol of the southern Italian tribes and is often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Samnite Wars. The name Italia applied to a part of what is now southern Italy. According to Antiochus of Syracuse, it originally only referred to the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula (modern Calabria), but by his time Oenotrians and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name "Italia" to a larger region, but it was not until the time of the Roman conquests that the term was expanded to cover the entire peninsula.[10] Government and politics Main article: Politics of Italy See also: List of Prime Ministers of Italy Giorgio Napolitano, 11th President of the Italian RepublicThe 1948 Constitution of Italy established a bicameral parliament (Parlamento), consisting of a Chamber of Deputies (Camera dei Deputati) and a Senate (Senato della Repubblica), a separate judiciary, and an executive branch composed of a Council of Ministers (cabinet) (Consiglio dei ministri), headed by the prime minister (Presidente del consiglio dei ministri). The President of the Italian Republic (Presidente della Repubblica) is elected for seven years by the parliament sitting jointly with a small number of regional delegates. The president nominates the prime minister, who proposes the other ministers (formally named by the president). The Council of Ministers must obtain a confidence vote from both houses of Parliament. Legislative bills may originate in either house and must be passed by a majority in both. The houses of parliament are popularly and directly elected through a complex electoral system (latest amendment in 2005) which combines proportional representation with a majority prize for the largest coalition (Chamber). All Italian citizens older than 18 can vote. However, to vote for the senate, the voter must be at least 25 or older. The electoral system in the Senate is based upon regional representation. During the elections in 2006, the two competing coalitions were separated by few thousand votes, and in the Chamber the centre-left coalition (L'Unione; English: The Union) got 345 Deputies against 277 for the centre-right one (Casa delle Libertà; English: House of Freedoms), while in the Senate L'Unione got only two Senators more than absolute majority. The Chamber of Deputies has 630 members and the Senate 315 elected senators; in addition, the Senate includes former presidents and appointed senators for life (no more than five) by the President of the Republic according to special constitutional provisions. As of May 15, 2006 there are seven life senators (of which three are former Presidents). Both houses are elected for a maximum of five years, but both may be dissolved by the President before the expiration of their normal term if the Parliament is unable to elect a stable government. In the post war history, this has happened in 1972, 1976, 1979, 1983, 1994, 1996 and 2008. A peculiarity of the Italian Parliament is the representation given to Italian citizens permanently living abroad (about 2.7 million people). Among the 630 Deputies and the 315 Senators there are respectively 12 and 6 elected in four distinct foreign constituencies. Those members of Parliament were elected for the first time in April 2006 and they have the same rights as members elected in Italy. The Italian judicial system is based on Roman law modified by the Napoleonic code and later statutes. The Constitutional Court of Italy (Corte Costituzionale) rules on the conformity of laws with the Constitution and is a post-World War II innovation.

milano

Milan (Italian: Milano; Western Lombard: Milan (listen)) is one of the largest cities in Italy, located in the plains of Lombardy. The municipality (Comune di Milano) has a population of 1.3 million. The Milan metropolitan area, depending on the specific definition, has a population ranging from 2.9 to 7.4 million. The municipal border covers a relatively small area (about one-eighth of that of Rome) because of the historical development of high density centres in agriculturally rich Lombardy. Milan is renowned as one of the world capitals of design and fashion.[2] The English word milliner is derived from the name of the city. The Lombard metropolis is famous for its fashion houses and shops (such as along via Montenapoleone) and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in the Piazza Duomo (reputed to be the world's oldest shopping mall). The city hosted the World Exposition in 1906 and will host the Universal Expo in 2015. Inhabitants of Milan are referred to as "Milanese" (Italian: Milanesi or informally Meneghini or Ambrosiani). The Olona river, the Lambro river and the Seveso creek run through Milan. Olona and Seveso run mostly underground. History[edit] Etymology The Celtic name for the settlement of the Insubres is not attested, but in the Roman name Mediolanum the name element -lanum is the Celtic equivalent of -planum "plain'", thus Mediolanum: "in the midst of the plain", due to its location in a plain close to the confluence of two small rivers, the Olona and the Seveso. The origin of the name and of a boar as a symbol of the city are fancifully accounted for in Andrea Alciato's Emblemata (1584), beneath a woodcut of the first raising of the city walls, where a boar is seen lifted from the excavation, and the etymology of Mediolanum given as "half-wool",[3] explained in Latin and in French. The foundation of Milan is credited to two Celtic peoples, the Bituriges and the Aedui, having as their emblems a ram and a boar;[4] therefore "The city’s symbol is a wool-bearing boar, an animal of double form, here with sharp bristles, there with sleek wool."[5] Alciato credits the most saintly and learned Ambrose for his account.[6]The German name for the city is Mailand, while in the local Western Lombard dialect, the city's name is Milán, similar to the French. Milan in 1621. View of Milan in early 1900s. Castello Sforzesco, sign of the power of the House of Sforza. Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. [edit] Roman times Main article: Mediolanum Around 400 BC, the Celtic Insubres inhabited Milan and the surrounding region. In 222 BC, the Romans conquered this settlement, which received the name Mediolanum. After several centuries of Roman control, Milan was declared the capital of the Western Roman Empire by Emperor Diocletian in 293 AD. Diocletian chose to stay in the Eastern Roman Empire (capital Nicomedia) and his colleague Maximianus the Western one. Immediately Maximian built several gigantic monuments, like a large circus (470 x 85 meters), the Thermae Erculee, a large complex of imperial palaces and several other services and buildings. In the Edict of Milan of 313, Emperor Constantine I guaranteed freedom of religion for Christians. The city was besieged by the Visigoths in 402, and the imperial residence was moved to Ravenna. Fifty years later (in 452), the Huns overran the city. In 539, the Ostrogoths conquered and destroyed Milan in the course of the so-called Gothic War against Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. In the summer of 569, the Longobards (from which the name of the Italian region Lombardy derives) conquered Milan, overpowering the small Byzantine army left for its defence. Milan surrendered to the Franks in 774 when Charlemagne, in an utterly novel decision, took the title "King of the Lombards" as well (before then the Germanic kingdoms had frequently conquered each other, but none had adopted the title of King of another people). Subsequently Milan was part of the Holy Roman Empire. [edit] Middle Ages During the Middle Ages, Milan prospered as a center of trade due to its command of the rich plain of the Po and routes from Italy across the Alps. The war of conquest by Frederick I Barbarossa against the Lombard cities brought the destruction of much of Milan in 1162. After the founding of the Lombard League in 1167, Milan took the leading role in this alliance. As a result of the independence that the Lombard cities gained in the Peace of Constance in 1183, Milan became a duchy. In 1208 Rambertino Buvalelli served a term as podestà of the city, in 1242 Luca Grimaldi, and in 1282 Luchetto Gattilusio. In 1395, Gian Galeazzo Visconti became duke of Milan. In 1447 Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, died without a male heir; following the end of the Visconti line, the Ambrosian Republic was enacted. However, the Republic collapsed when in 1450, Milan was conquered by Francesco Sforza, of the House of Sforza, which made Milan one of the leading cities of the Italian Renaissance. [edit] Periods of Spanish, French and Austrian domination The French king Louis XII first laid claim to the duchy in 1492. At that time, Milan was defended by Swiss mercenaries. After the victory of Louis’s successor Francis I over the Swiss at the Battle of Marignano, the duchy was promised to the French king Francis I. When the Habsburg Charles V defeated Francis I at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, northern Italy, including Milan, passed to the House of Habsburg. In 1556, Charles V abdicated in favour of his son Philip II and his brother Ferdinand I. Charles’s Italian possessions, including Milan, passed to Philip II and the Spanish line of Habsburgs, while Ferdinand’s Austrian line of Habsburgs ruled the Holy Roman Empire. However, in 1700 the Spanish line of Habsburgs was extinguished with the death of Charles II. After his death, the War of the Spanish Succession began in 1701 with the occupation of all Spanish possessions by French troops backing the claim of the French Philippe of Anjou to the Spanish throne. In 1706, the French were defeated in Ramillies and Turin and were forced to yield northern Italy to the Austrian Habsburgs. In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht formally confirmed Austrian sovereignty over most of Spain’s Italian possessions including Lombardy and its capital, Milan. [edit] 19th Century Napoleon conquered Lombardy in 1796, and Milan was declared capital of the Cisalpine Republic. Later, he declared Milan capital of the Reign of Italy and was crowned in the Duomo. Once Napoleon’s occupation ended, the Congress of Vienna returned Lombardy, and Milan, along with the Veneto, to Austrian control in 1815. During this period, Milan became a centre of lyric opera. Here Mozart wrote three operas, and in a few years La Scala became the reference theatre in the world, with its premieres of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini and Verdi. Verdi himself is now tumulated in a precious Institute, the "Casa di Riposo per Musicisti", the Verdi's present to Milan. In the 19th century other important theatres were La Cannobiana and the Teatro Carcano. On March 18, 1848, the Milanese rebelled against Austrian rule, during the so-called "Five Days" (It. Cinque Giornate), and Field Marshall Radetzky was forced to withdraw from the city temporarily. However, after defeating Italian forces at Custoza on July 24, Radetzky was able to reassert Austrian control over Milan and northern Italy. However, Italian nationalists, championed by the Kingdom of Sardinia, called for the removal of Austria in the interest of Italian unification. Sardinia and France formed an alliance and defeated Austria at the Battle of Solferino in 1859. Following this battle, Milan and the rest of Lombardy were incorporated into the Kingdom of Sardinia, which soon gained control of most of Italy and in 1861 was rechristened as the Kingdom of Italy. The political unification of Italy cemented Milan’s commercial dominance over northern Italy. It also led to a flurry of railway construction that made Milan the rail hub of northern Italy. Rapid industrialization put Milan at the centre of Italy’s leading industrial region, though in the 1890s Milan was shaken by the Bava-Beccaris massacre, a riot related to an high inflation rate. Meanwhile, as Milanese banks dominated Italy’s financial sphere, the city became the country’s leading financial centre. Milan’s economic growth brought a rapid expansion in the city’s area and population during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. [edit] 20th Century Santa Maria delle Grazie after the Anglo-American bombings in 1944In 1919, Benito Mussolini organized the Blackshirts, who formed the core of Italy’s Fascist movement, in Milan. In 1922, Mussolini started his March on Rome from Milan. During World War II, Milan suffered severe damage from British and American bombing, Even though Italy quit the war in 1943, the Germans occupied most of northern Italy until 1945. Some of the worst Allied bombing of Milan was in 1944. Much of the bombing focused around Milan's main train station. In 1943, anti-German resistance in occupied Italy increased and there were explosions in Milan. As the war came to an end, the American 1st Armored Division advanced on Milan as part of the Po Valley Campaign. But even before they arrived, members of the Italian resistance movement rose up in open revolt in Milan and liberated the city. Nearby, Mussolini and several members of his Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana, or RSI) were captured by the resistance at Dongo and executed. On 29 April 1945, the bodies of the Fascists were taken to Milan and hung unceremoniously upside-down at Piazzale loreto a public square. After the war the city was the site of a refugee camp for Jews fleeing from Austria. During the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of Italians, particularly from Southern Italy, moved to Milan to seek jobs within the city’s rapidly expanding economy and the popul