Algeria

The Arab Maghreb Union is a trade agreement aiming for economic and some sort of future political unity in North Africa between the Arab countries... Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. The union is inactive and frozen due to deep political and economical disagreements between Morocco and Algeria regarding, among others, the issue of Western Sahara. The idea for an economic union of the Maghreb began with the independence of Tunisia and Morocco in 1956. It was not until thirty years later, though, that five Maghreb states - Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia - met for the first Maghreb summit. The following year, in 1989, the agreement was signed by all member nations. According to the Constitutive Act, its aim is to guarantee cooperation “with similar regional institutions [to] take part in the enrichment of the international dialogue... [to] reinforce the independence of the member states and... [to] safeguard... their assets....
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The African Union is a union consisting of 54 African states. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established on 9 July 2002,... the AU was formed as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity . The most important decisions of the AU are made by the Assembly of the African Union, a semi-annual meeting of the heads of state and government of its member states. The AU's secretariat, the African Union Commission, is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Among the objectives of the AU's leading institutions are: The African Union is made up of both political and administrative bodies. The highest decision-making organ is the Assembly of the African Union, made up of all the heads of state or government of member states of the AU. The Assembly is chaired by Yayi Boni, president of Benin, elected at the 18ordinary meeting of the Assembly in January 2012. The AU also has a representative body, the Pan African Parliament, which consists of 265 members elected by the national parliaments of the AU member states. Its president is Idriss Ndele Moussa.
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The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is an intergovernmental organization of twelve oil-producing countries made up of Algeria, Angola,... Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. OPEC has maintained its headquarters in Vienna since 1965, and hosts regular meetings among the oil ministers of its Member Countries. Indonesia withdrew in 2008 after it became a net importer of oil, but stated it would likely return if it became a net exporter again. According to its statutes, one of the principal goals is the determination of the best means for safeguarding the organization's interests, individually and collectively. It also pursues ways and means of ensuring the stabilization of prices in international oil markets with a view to eliminating harmful and unnecessary fluctuations; giving due regard at all times to the interests of the producing nations and to the necessity of securing a steady income to the producing countries; an efficient and regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations, and a fair return on their capital to those investing in the petroleum industry.
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The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries is a multi-governmental organization headquartered in Kuwait which coordinates energy... policies between oil–producing Arab nations, and whose main purpose is developmental. On 9 January 1968, three of the then–most conservative Arab oil states Kuwait, Libya, and Saudi Arabia agreed at a conference in Beirut, Lebanon to found the Organization of Arab Petroleum Engineering Countries, aiming to separate the production and sale of oil from politics in the wake of the halfhearted 1967 oil embargo in response to the Six Day War. Such use of the economic weapon of oil embargo in the struggle against Israel had been regularly proposed at Arab Petroleum Congresses, but it took the Six Day War for the embargo happen. However Saudi Arabia's oil production was up by 9% that year, and the main embargo lasted only ten days and was completely ended by the Khartoum Conference. OAPEC was originally intended to be a conservative Arab political organization which, by restricting membership to countries whose main export was oil, would exclude governments seen as radical such as Egypt and Algeria.
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Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy. He is... credited with popularising Mother Teresa and in his later years became a Catholic and morals campaigner. Muggeridge's father, Henry , served as a prominent Labour Party councillor in the local government of Croydon, South London, as a founder-member of the Fabian Society, and as a Labour Member of Parliament for Romford . His mother was Annie Booler. One of five brothers, Muggeridge was born in Sanderstead, Surrey and grew up in Croydon and attended Selhurst High School there, and then Selwyn College, Cambridge, for four years, graduating in 1924 with a pass degree in natural sciences. He then went to India to teach. While still a student he had taught for brief periods in 1920, 1922 and 1924 at the John Ruskin Central School, Croydon, where his father was Chairman of the Governors.
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Daniel Auteuil is a French film, television and theatre actor. He was born in Algiers, French Algeria. His starring role in the historical drama... film Jean de Florette and its sequel Manon des Sources brought him international recognition. Auteuil has since become one of the best-known, best-paid and most popular actors in France. Through his appearances in films including the swashbuckler Le bossu , the comedy The Closet , the romantic comedy After You , the thriller Caché and the comedy My Best Friend , he has since gained greater international recognition.
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Roger Hanin is a French actor , best known for playing the title role in the 1989–2006 TV police drama, Navarro. Born as Roger Lévy, his... brother-in-law was a former President of France, the late François Mitterrand, whose wife, Danielle, was the sister of Hanin's wife, Christine Gouze-Rénal. With Claude Chabrol, Hanin co-wrote the scripts for a pair of spy films in the mid-1960s. Chabrol directed Code Name: Tiger and Our Agent Tiger , both featuring Hanin in the starring role of secret agent Le Tigre.
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Annie Fratellini was a French circus clown and film actress. She was born Annie Violette Fratellini in Algiers, French Algeria to a Pied-noir family... of Italian descent. The fourth generation of one of Europe's most famous circus families, The Fratellini Family. Her father was Victor Fratellini. Her mother was Suzanne Fratellini. Her grandfather was Paul Fratellini, one of the Fratellini brothers a trio of famous European circus clowns. For years she avoided following her father, grandfather and 22 other relatives into the ring. Instead, she sang in music halls and nigtclubs. Fratellini launched her career with the Medrano and Pinder circuses when she was 14. Much later in her career, Fratellini became the first female circus clown in France, was a founder of the country's first circus school, and went on to a successful stage and motion picture career. In 1969, she starred in The Great Love and married the director of the film, Pierre Étaix, the person she credited with making her take her talent for clowning seriously. She was first married in 1954 to Pierre Granier-Deferre, she starred in his film, Metamorphose.
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Niger , officially the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the... south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east. Niger covers a land area of almost 1,270,000 km, making it the largest nation in West Africa, with over 80 percent of its land area covered by the Sahara desert. The country's predominantly Islamic population of just above 15,000,000 is mostly clustered in the far south and west of the nation. The capital city is Niamey, located in the far southwest corner of Niger. Niger is a developing country, and consistently ranks as one of the lowest ranks of the United Nations' Human Development Index , 186th of 187 countries in 2011. Much of the non-desert portions of the country are threatened by periodic drought and desertification. The economy is concentrated around subsistence and some export agriculture clustered in the more fertile south, and the export of raw materials, especially uranium ore.
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Libya is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast,... Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west. With an area of almost 1.8 million square kilometres , Libya is the third largest country in Africa by area, and the 17th largest in the world. The largest city, Tripoli, is home to 1.7 million of Libya's 6.4 million people. The three traditional parts of the country are Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica. In 2009 Libya had the highest HDI in Africa and the fourth highest GDP per capita in Africa, behind Seychelles, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world and the 17th-highest petroleum production. As a result of the Libyan civil war, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, which had at that time been in existence for 34 years, collapsed and Libya entered a period of governance by a transitional administration called the National Transitional Council.
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Tunisia , officially the Republic of Tunisia , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is an Arab Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the... west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area is almost 165,000 square kilometres , with an estimated population of just under 10.7 million. Its name is derived from the capital Tunis located in the northeast. Tunisia is the smallest of the nations situated along the Atlas mountain range. The south of the country is composed of the Sahara desert, with much of the remainder consisting of particularly fertile soil and 1,300 kilometres of coastline. Tunisia has relations with both the European Union—with whom it has an association agreement—and the Arab world. Tunisia is also a member of the Arab Maghreb Union, the Arab League, and the African Union. Tunisia has established close relations with France in particular, through economic cooperation, industrial modernization, and privatisation programs.
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Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of about 35 million and an area of... 710,850 km², including the disputed region of the Western Sahara, seen by and mostly administered by Morocco as the Southern Provinces. Morocco is part of the Maghreb region, in addition to Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, and Libya, with which it shares cultural, historical and linguistic ties. Morocco is a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament. The King of Morocco holds vast executive powers, including the power to dissolve the parliament. Executive power is exercised by the government but more importantly by the king himself. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, the Assembly of Representatives and the Assembly of Councillors. The king can also issue decrees called dahirs which have the force of law. The latest Parliamentary elections were held in November 25, 2011, and were considered by some neutral observers to be mostly free and fair.
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