Gerhard Richter is a German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German artists and several of his works have set record prices at auction.

Chester Bliss Bowles was an American diplomat and ambassador, Governor of Connecticut, Congressman and co-founder of a major advertising agency, Benton & Bowles, now part of Publicis Groupe. Bowles Is best known for his influence on American foreign policy during Cold War years, when he argued that economic assistance to the Third World was not only the best means to fight communism, and even more important, to create a more peaceable world order. During World War II, he held high office in Washington as director of the Office of Price Administration, and control of setting consumer prices. Just after the war, he was the chief of the Office of Economic Stabilization, but had great difficulty controlling inflation. Moving into state politics, he served a term as governor of Connecticut. He promoted liberal programs in education and housing, but was defeated for reelection by conservative backlash.

As ambassador to India, he established a good relationship with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, an emerging leader of the nonalignment movement. Bowles promoted rapid economic industrialization in India, and repeatedly called on Washington to help finance it.

The Arab Cold War was a period of political rivalry in the Arab world that occurred as part of the broader Cold War between, approximately, the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 that brought President Gamal Abdel Nasser to power in that country, and the 1979 Iranian Revolution which led Arab-Iranian tensions to eclipse intra-Arab strife. On one side were newly-established republics, led by Nasser's Egypt, and on the other side were traditionalist kingdoms led by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

Nasser espoused secular, pan-Arab nationalism and socialism as a response to the Islamism and rentierism of the kingdoms, as well as their perceived complicity in Western meddling in the region. He also established himself as the foremost defender of Arab and Palestinian honor against the humiliation brought on by the independence of Israel and its victory in the 1948 war. Gradually, so-called Nasserism gained the support of other Arab presidents as they replaced monarchies in their countries, notably in Syria, Iraq, Libya, North Yemen, and Sudan. A number of attempts to unite these states in various configurations were made, but all ultimately failed.