IN REMEMBRANCE: 11-30-2014

BUNNY BRIGGS, TAP DANCING VIRTUOSO

By BRUCE WEBER

NOV. 26, 2014

Bunny Briggs in “No Maps on My Taps: The Art of Jazz Tap Dancing,” a film from 1979. Credit GTN Productions

• Bunny Briggs, the elegant and versatile tap virtuoso whose career bridged dance eras, from Bill (Bojangles) Robinson’s to Savion Glover’s, died on Nov. 15 in Las Vegas. He was 92.

His death was confirmed by Sandra Seaton, a playwright and librettist who was related to Mr. Briggs by marriage.

In the world of tap, which especially prizes the passing of traditions from generation to generation, Mr. Briggs was a prodigy early on and a mentor in his later years. He danced on the streets of Harlem as a small boy, and on Broadway, “The Ed Sullivan Show” and at the Newport Jazz Festival as an adult.

Known for the speed of his feet, the breadth of his repertoire and his smooth, unflappable stage demeanor, he was both a showman and a musician. He was a star performer who could hold the audience alone at center stage, as he did in the 1989 Broadway musical revue “Black and Blue,” and a jazz percussionist with the likes of Count Basie, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington, who once described Mr. Briggs as “the most superleviathonic, rhythmaturgically syncopated tapsthamaticianisamist.”

Mr. Briggs was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance in “Black and Blue,” which originated in Paris. A highlight was his tour de force solo to Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood.”

More than two decades earlier, at Ellington’s celebrated 1965 concert of sacred music at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Mr. Briggs was featured as a dancer in the composition “David Danced Before the Lord With All His Might,” a performance that Constance Valis Hill, a tap historian, wrote in her book “Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History,” “broke new ground for modern tap dancing on the concert stage.”

Ms. Hill continued: “It was not only the way Briggs shimmers across the floor — splaying 16th notes, rattling, clicking and stomping wild offbeat steps that jar everything around him — and the skimming fluidity of his rhythmic lines, and dynamics of phrasing, but the manner in which he played his feet as an accompanying musician within the orchestra.”

Along with Jimmy Slyde, Honi Coles, George Hillman, Steve Condos and others, Mr. Briggs was a busy performer in the heyday of tap, from the 1930s to the 1950s, when jazz was popular and tap masters were headliners in the swankiest nightclubs and on Broadway.

But in the 1960s, with rock ’n’ roll in ascendance and the civil rights movement gaining momentum, tap went into decline, suffering in part from a perception by some that it represented an era of black subservience in entertainment. Still, unlike some of his contemporaries, Mr. Briggs endured through those lean years, partly through his association with Hampton, with whom he performed at the Rainbow Grill in New York and elsewhere, and especially with Ellington; because of their close association, Mr. Briggs became widely known as “Duke’s dancer.”

Mr. Briggs, left, and Savion Glover in 1989 at the LeTang Studios on West 27th Street. Credit William E. Sauro/The New York Times

“I can’t really define my style,” he once said. “Dancers were dancing fast when I came up. I just wanted to make people feel relaxed. To just say, ‘Ahhh.’ ”

Tap began to re-emerge as a popular form in the 1980s with stage shows like “The Tap Dance Kid,” “Black and Blue” and, a bit later, “Jelly’s Last Jam,” along with the 1989 movie “Tap,” which featured several generations of tappers, including Mr. Briggs, Sammy Davis Jr., Gregory Hines and Mr. Glover, then a teenager. All helped emphasize the legitimacy of tap as an authentic, vernacular American art form and illustrated its torch-passing tradition.

Mr. Glover, who met Mr. Briggs when he was a boy and also appeared with him in “Black and Blue,” went on to usher tap into the era of hip-hop by, among other things, creating the Tony-winning choreography for the 1996 Broadway musical “Bring In da Noise, Bring In da Funk,” in which he starred.

“Bunny was the last of the hoofers, just about the last of the cats who mentored me,” Mr. Glover said in an interview on Tuesday. “But he was different in that, as far as dance style, he had more of an eccentric approach that made him stand out amongst the other cats.

“He’d act out his dance, like he’d have a scene going on his mind. In the middle of the dance, he’d strike these poses. I mean, our objective is always to tell a story, but he was such a sophisticated, lyrical cat.”

Information about Mr. Briggs’s early life is a bit hazy, but public records indicate that he was born Bernard Briggs in Harlem on Feb. 26, 1922. (The origin of the nickname Bunny is obscure. Asked once by the television journalist Bryant Gumbel where the name came from, Mr. Briggs said, “Well, I’m fast.”)

He was brought up by his mother, Alma Briggs, who liked to dance the Charleston. Her sister, Gladys, was a chorus girl, and the often-repeated story is that young Bunny’s mother took him, at age 3 (or 4 or maybe 5), to his aunt’s show, where he saw Bill Robinson perform.

“She danced,” Mr. Briggs recalled in a 1989 interview with The New York Times. “I started hollering. Then out walked Bill Robinson, and I knew immediately what I wanted to do. He was so calm. Everything he did was beautiful.”

One of his mother’s brothers taught him a step or two, he said, but “I never took a lesson.” He took to dancing on the streets of the neighborhood, particularly outside a record shop on Lenox Avenue and 137th Street.

“All the people came around to hear ‘Amos ’n’ Andy’ on the radio,” Mr. Briggs said. “They’d stand around in the street and listen. Then the man who owned the shop would put on a record and I’d dance. People would throw money, and I’d take it home to my mother.”

From then on he never wanted to do anything else, though he acknowledged that at one time he thought about becoming a priest — until his priest told him that God clearly wanted him to be a dancer. As a child, he performed in New York City ballrooms as part of a children’s dance group called Porkchops, Navy, Rice and Beans.

He was discovered by the pianist Luckey Roberts and danced with his orchestra on a high-society circuit of parties in the homes of Astors, Vanderbilts and others. His first movie appearance, in 1932, was in the film “Slow Poke,” with Stepin Fetchit. In the 1940s he toured with big bands, tapping to swing, and, inspired by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, adapted his style to the more complex sounds of bebop. His versatility kept him employed.

“Even when tap was in its declining days, someone would call me,” he said in 1989. “Little clubs, big clubs. Boston. Philadelphia.”

Mr. Briggs, who has no immediate survivors, married Olivette Miller, a jazz harpist, in 1982. She died in 2003.

“When it came time for him to get dressed, Bunny would have a beer or a glass of wine, and the wardrobe people would leave,” Mr. Glover recalled about the backstage scene at “Black and Blue.” “And Olivette would come in and undo everything the wardrobe person had done and dress him the way she wanted him to look. And he would just sit there, like, ‘Yeah, baby, do with me as you please.’ ”

Alain Delaquérière contributed reporting.

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FRANK YABLANS, PARAMOUNT EXECUTIVE IN FERTILE ’70S

By MICHAEL CIEPLY

NOV. 28, 2014

Frank Yablans with Diana Ross. Credit Photofest

• LOS ANGELES — Frank Yablans, a blunt-spoken filmmaker and studio executive who oversaw the release of the first two “Godfather” films while president of Paramount Pictures and later was both a producer and a writer of “Mommie Dearest” and “North Dallas Forty,” died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 79.

His son Edward, who confirmed the death, said that Mr. Yablans had been in declining health but that he did not know the precise cause.

Mr. Yablans belonged to a generation of studio chiefs who climbed quickly from street-level movie jobs to positions of power. Born in New York City on Aug. 27, 1935, to Morris and Annette Yablans — his father drove a taxi — he had a high school education and served in the Army. In early positions with Warner Bros., Walt Disney and Filmways while in his 20s, Mr. Yablans became a salesman on the theater circuit before rising as a marketing executive.

At Paramount, then owned by Gulf & Western Industries, Mr. Yablans made his mark with the selling of “Love Story,” an immense hit released in December 1970. The next year he became president of the studio, where he stood between an equally tough-minded Gulf & Western chief executive, Charles G. Bluhdorn, and a president of production, Robert Evans, who was known for his deep Hollywood connections.

That alignment yielded some of the era’s most acclaimed films, among them the first two installments of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather” trilogy, Sidney Lumet’s “Serpico” and Peter Bogdanovich’s “Paper Moon.” But there were also disappointments — among them “The Parallax View” — and Mr. Yablans was out at Paramount by 1975.

An aggressive producer with a populist streak, Mr. Yablans went on to accumulate various producing credits on “Silver Streak,” The Fury,” “The Other Side of Midnight” and “Monsignor,” among other films. (His brother Irwin is also a producer, known for horror films like “Halloween” and “Hell Night.”)

Mr. Yablans moved to Los Angeles in 1978, having been based in New York, and in 1983 he became the top film executive at MGM/UA, a studio then controlled by the investor Kirk Kerkorian.

Mr. Yablans’s tenure there was a wild ride, as he sought to revive the faltering company through deals that involved the Italian mogul Dino De Laurentiis; a producer friend, Elliott Kastner; the husband-and-wife team John and Bo Derek; and the rough-and-tumble chiefs of the Cannon Group, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.

Mr. Yablans, who was known for his candor, recalled telling Mr. Golan and Mr. Globus, “You’ve given us nothing but junk.” (His recollection was recorded in a recent documentary, “Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.”)

In addition to his son Edward and his brother Irwin, Mr. Yablans’s survivors include his companion of more than a decade, the photographer Nadia Pandolfo; another son, Robert, and a daughter, Sharon. His marriages to Ruth Edelstein and the writer Tracie Hotchner ended in divorce.Mr. Yablans, his son Edward said, had continued to work on films and other projects, though less actively than in his prime. “He never retired,” he said.

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P. D. JAMES, NOVELIST KNOWN AS ‘QUEEN OF CRIME’

By MARILYN STASIO

NOV. 27, 2014

P.D. James, in 2010. She was called the “Queen of Crime,” for her complex mysteries.   Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

• Phyllis Dorothy James White, who became Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991 but who was better known as “the Queen of Crime” for the multilayered mystery novels she wrote as P. D. James, died on Thursday at her home in Oxford, England. She was 94.

Her publisher in Britain, Faber & Faber, announced her death.

Ms. James was one of those rare authors whose work stood up to the inevitable and usually invidious comparisons with classic authors of the detective genre, like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham. A consummate stylist, she accumulated numerous awards for the 18 crime novels produced during a writing career spanning a half-century. Seven of her mysteries were adapted for the public-television series “Mystery!” and were broadcast in Britain and the United States.

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Ms. James bristled at the frequent comparisons to genre authors who wrote in the golden age of the English mystery novel, in the 1930s. “That kind of crime writing was dull,” she once said in an interview, “in the sense that it was unrealistic, prettifying and romanticizing murder, but having little to do with real blood-and-guts tragedy. One simply cannot take these as realistic books about murder, about the horror of murder, the tragedy of murder, the harm that murder does.”

Photo

Ms. James in Manhattan in 1998. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Many critics and many of her peers have said that by virtue of the complexity of her plots, the psychological density of her characters and the moral context in which she viewed criminal violence, Ms. James even surpassed her classic models and elevated the literary status of the modern detective novel. She is often cited, in particular, for the cerebral depth and emotional sensibilities of Adam Dalgliesh, the introspective Scotland Yard detective and published poet who functions as the hero of virtually all of her novels.

Her intention with Dalgliesh, she told the British critic and writer Julian Symons in 1986, was to create a detective “quite unlike the Lord Peter Wimsey kind of gentlemanly amateur” popularized by Dorothy L. Sayers. Ms. James envisioned a realistic cop as her protagonist, a dedicated and skilled professional, and yet “something more than just a policeman, you see, a complex and sensitive human being,” she said.

Her readers found this character profoundly romantic. Even Ms. James thought he was sexy. “I could never fall in love with a man who was handsome but stupid,” she said. Still, Commander Dalgliesh (pronounced DAWL-gleesh) remained a self-contained, even aloof figure. “There’s a splinter of ice in his character,” she said.

In “An Unsuitable Job for a Woman” (1972), Ms. James introduced Cordelia Gray, a young private investigator whose professional competence and independent spirit put her in the vanguard of an emerging generation of female sleuths. These included Liza Cody’s Anna Lee in Britain, and Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone in the United States.

Ms. James’s forthright portrayal of a strong, free and highly intelligent young woman delighted her readers. But it was Commander Dalgliesh who won their hearts — and the author’s.

“Perhaps Adam Dalgliesh is an idealized version of what I’d have liked to be if I had been born a man,” she once said.

Roy Marsden played Dalgliesh on the “Mystery!” adaptations. Ms. James found him to be a “good actor, but he’s not my Dalgliesh.” Unlike Mr. Marsden, Dalgliesh had a full head of hair and no mustache. And Ms. James was troubled by “the class thing.” Her commander, she said, “wouldn’t wear some of the clothes Roy does, he wouldn’t wear his signet ring on the wrong finger, he wouldn’t have talked to Lady Ursula Berowne with his hand in his pocket, as he did.”

She was born Phyllis Dorothy James on Aug. 3, 1920, in Oxford, the eldest of three children of Dorothy and Sidney James, a civil servant who did not believe in inflicting too much education on his daughter. The family settled in Cambridge when she was 11, and before she left the Cambridge High School for Girls, at 16, she already knew that she wanted to be a writer and that mysterious death intrigued her.

“When I first heard that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall,” she was fond of saying, “I immediately wondered: Did he fall — or was he pushed?” But a marriage to Ernest C. B. White, a medical student, and World War II halted her plans for a writing career.

Ms. James gave birth to the first of her two daughters in 1942, during a bombing blitz. She served as a Red Cross nurse during the war. When her husband returned from military service with a mental disability, marked by bouts of violence, that kept him confined to hospitals, Ms. James was forced to support her family. She went to work for the National Health Service and attended classes in hospital administration.

It took her three years to write her first mystery novel, “Cover Her Face,” by working in the early morning, hours before going to her hospital job. She was 42 when it was published in Britain in 1962. (Like many of her books, it was published in the United States later.) The realistic hospital settings of three early novels, “A Mind to Murder” (1963), “Shroud for a Nightingale” (1971) and “The Black Tower” (1975), owe much to her 19 years of administrative experience with the National Health Service.

When she began writing, Ms. James chose the detective-story form because she enjoyed reading such novels, and because she thought she would have a better chance of getting published if she wrote in a popular genre. She told The Paris Review in 1995 that she “thought writing a detective story would be a wonderful apprenticeship for a ‘serious’ novelist, because a detective story is very easy to write badly but difficult to write well.”

Ms. James’s last novel, “Death Comes to Pemberley” (2011), is a homage to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” Credit Patricia Wall/The New York Times

The success of the first one persuaded her to stick with the form. “I came to believe,” she said, “that it is perfectly possible to remain within the constraints and conventions of the genre and be a serious writer, saying something true about men and women and their relationships and the society in which they live.”

After the death of her husband at 44, in 1964, Ms. James took a Civil Service examination and became an administrator in the forensic science and criminal law divisions of the Department of Home Affairs. The work would supply her novels with the realistic procedural detail on which she prided herself.

Although she rarely describes actual murder, the dead bodies in her novels always make an indelible impression on the innocent bystanders who chance upon them. “To many of them, it’s a really appalling and dreadful discovery,” Ms. James said. “I think that the reader should share that horror and that shock, so I make the descriptions just as realistic as I can.”

On her retirement from government service in 1979, P. D. James (she chose the name because it was short and gender neutral) began devoting herself to her books full-time, sometimes researching them for as much as a year before writing. To depict with accuracy the nuclear power station where mayhem occurs in “Devices and Desires” (1989), she toured power plants at Sizewell and Winfrith in England, even climbing into a protective suit and standing over a nuclear reactor to observe it closely.

It was typical for her to place her stories in such dramatic settings. “Almost always, the idea for a book comes to me as a reaction to a particular place,” she said. “I like to create in books some kind of opposition between places and characters.”

Her novel “Innocent Blood,” appearing in 1980, was considered her breakthrough book in Britain and North America. Since then, her novels have sold more than 10 million copies in the United States alone and have been translated into many languages.

Reviewers frequently lauded Ms. James for “transcending the genre,” but she was a champion of the detective mystery, which she called “a literary celebration of order and reason.” She considered it a modern morality drama by virtue of its affirmation of enduring social values. In turbulent times, she said, people turn to detective stories for reassurance as much as entertainment “because they do affirm the intelligibility of the universe, the moral norm, the sanctity of life.”

“It seems to me,” she continued, “that the more we live in a society in which we feel our problems — be they international problems of war and peace, racial problems, problems of drugs, problems of violence — to be literally beyond our ability to solve, the more reassuring it is to read a popular form of fiction which itself has a problem at the heart of it. One which the reader knows will be solved by the end of the book.”

One book in which she denied her readers this comfort was her dystopian novel “The Children of Men” (1992), a futuristic look at a society in which mankind can no longer reproduce itself. (It was adapted into a film in 2006, directed by Alfonso Cuarón.)

More characteristically, the members of the educated middle class in her novels grapple with the moral disorder that murder represents in their civilized lives.

Although she claimed allegiance to no political party, Ms. James was a firm believer in the social contract between the government and its sovereign subjects. She took pride in her seat in the House of Lords, and for many years served on the bench as a local magistrate. She liked to point out that her title was bestowed not because of her literary achievements, but because of her public service. She helped gain passage of British legislation that gives adopted children the right to learn the identities of their parents. She was one of the 10 governors of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and she served on important arts councils.

Her last novel, “Death Comes to Pemberley” (2011), is a sequel and homage to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” It was adapted for a television mini-series in Britain in 2013.

Ms. James is survived by her daughters, Clare Flook and Jane McLeod; a sister, Monica; five grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

For all her fidelity in depicting the dark side of human nature, Ms. James took no joy in the chaos of criminality. “I think I’m very frightened of violence,” she once said. “I hate it. And it may be that by writing mysteries I am able, as it were, to exorcise this fear, which may very well be the same reason so many people enjoy reading a mystery.”

Correction: November 27, 2014
An earlier version of this obituary misstated the length of Ms. James’s writing career. It lasted more than half a century, not 33 years. The earlier version also misstated the number of crime novels Ms. James wrote. It was 18, not 13. The errors were repeated in a capsule summary.

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PAUL KATZ, BIG-PICTURE ARCHITECT

By JOSEPH GIOVANNINI

NOV. 24, 2014

Paul Katz Credit Jock Pottle

• Paul Katz, who as president and managing principal of one of the world’s leading architectural firms, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, was the mastermind of many of its major projects in Japan, Shanghai, London and New York, died on Nov. 20 in Manhattan. He was 57.

Mr. Katz recently learned he had cancer, and he was being treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center when he died of septic shock there, his wife, Ziva Freiman, said. He lived in Scarsdale, N.Y.

In an age of specialists in architecture, Mr. Katz was an architect of wide scope who focused as much on fine detail as on the big urban picture.

“Paul could play more than one position,” Eugene Kohn, chairman of KPF, said in a telephone interview. “He had it all in his head and put it all together — from the thickness of pipes and the shower heads in hotel rooms to stacking four or five uses around an elevator core in a skyscraper that connects to the transportation systems.”

Bridging the aspirations of developers and the firm’s architects, Mr. Katz negotiated into existence some of the tallest mixed-use buildings in the world, among them the 101-story Shanghai World Financial Center and the 118-story International Commerce Centre in Hong Kong.

His other projects for KPF, which is based in Manhattan, included Roppongi Hills, a huge complex in Tokyo encompassing an office tower, apartments, shops and restaurants, movie theaters, a museum, a hotel, a television studio, parks and an outdoor amphitheater.

In London, he was a central figure in the development of Earls Court, an entertainment and conference center; the refurbishment and expansion of Covent Garden; and the Canary Wharf redevelopment. In New York, he was involved in the master plan for Hudson Yards on the West Side of Manhattan and in KPF’s five-million-square-foot commercial structures now under construction there.

Unlike a classic designer who gives a project its physical form, Mr. Katz was known for his insights on issues like elevator configuration, construction sequence and transportation connections, which wove projects together into functional networks.

“For Paul, it was the entire assemblage, not triumphant individual pieces, that gave the project its urban value,” said James von Klemperer, the firm’s design director, who has been named to succeed Mr. Katz as president.

In his “comprehensive view” of a given project, Mr. Katz also took into consideration “the history of the place — and not just the stuff on the street, but how it got there,” said Leslie E. Robertson, an engineer who worked on the original World Trade Center and the Sony building in Manhattan and often collaborated with Mr. Katz on KPF projects.

Mr. Katz was born on Sept. 27, 1957, and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. His parents worked for a family-owned construction company, his father as an accountant and his mother running its human resources department.

Mr. Katz studied architecture at the University of Cape Town and later at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, where he received a bachelor of architecture degree in 1982. It was there that he met Ms. Freiman, a fellow South African, who was also studying architecture at the institute.

After marrying, they moved to the United States, where Mr. Katz earned a master’s degree in architecture at Princeton, studying under Michael Graves. He joined KPF as a designer in 1984 and became president and managing principal in 2008, overseeing a staff of 670.

Besides his wife, he is survived by their son, Jonathan; their daughter, Hannah; his parents, Walter and Esther Katz; and his brother, Shmuel.

Mr. Katz played competitive chess for most of his life. Last summer he played in an exhibition match in the South of France against the young Norwegian prodigy and grandmaster Magnus Carlsen.

“He thought like a chess player, always three or four moves ahead, not only for our firm, but for the sake of the projects,” Mr. von Klemperer said. “For Paul, cities were an urban chessboard.”

Correction: November 30, 2014
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary misstated the date of Mr. Katz’s death. It was Thursday, Nov. 20 — not Thursday, Nov. 27.

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INTERNATIONAL DAY OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE: NOVEMBER 29, 2014

 

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

Quick Facts

The United Nations’ (UN) International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is annually observed on November 29.

Local names

Name	Language
International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	English
Día Internacional de Solidaridad con el Pueblo Palestino	Spanish
היום הבינלאומי לסולידריות עם העם הפלסטיני	Hebrew
اليوم العالمي للتضامن مع الشعب الفلسطيني	Arabic
팔레스타인 사람들과 연대의 날	Korean
Welttag der Solidarität mit dem palästinensischen Volk	German

Alternative name

Solidarity Day

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People 2014

Saturday, November 29, 2014

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People 2015

Sunday, November 29, 2015

The United Nations’ (UN) International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is annually observed on November 29. The day is also known as Solidarity Day.

November 29 is the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, also known as Solidarity Day.

This illustration is based on artwork from ©iStockphoto.com/Joel Carillet & ©iStockphoto.com/Benoit Roussseau

What do people do?

Special meetings may be held to observe Solidarity Day in some UN offices, councils, government bodies and organizations that have a special interest in the issues encompassing the event.  The day may also be publicized through newspapers, magazines, radio and television news, and online media.  Some topics that may be publicized or discussed include the status and plight of Palestinian refugees, as well as general information on Palestinian culture and society.

Public life

The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is a global observance and not a public holiday.

Background

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution on the partition of Palestine (resolution 181 (II)). On December 2, 1977, it was recorded that the assembly called for the annual observance of November 29 as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (A/RES/32/40 B). On December 1, 2003, the assembly encouraged member states to continue to provide support and publicity to observe the day. So the day was observed on December 1 in 2003.

The assembly also requested that the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Division for Palestinian Rights of the Secretariat should continue to organize an annual exhibit on Palestinian rights or a cultural event with the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations.

Symbols

The UN logo is often associated with marketing and promotional material for this event. It features a projection of a world map (less Antarctica) centered on the North Pole, inscribed in a wreath consisting of crossed conventionalized branches of the olive tree. The olive branches symbolize peace and the world map depicts the area of concern to the UN in achieving its main purpose, peace and security. The projection of the map extends to 60 degrees south latitude, and includes five concentric circles.

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People Observances

 

Weekday	Date	Year	Name	Holiday type	Where it is observed
Thu	Nov 29	1990	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 29	1991	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 29	1992	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 29	1993	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 29	1994	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 29	1995	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 29	1996	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 29	1997	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 29	1998	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 29	1999	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 29	2000	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 29	2001	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 29	2002	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Mon	Dec 1	2003	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 29	2004	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 29	2005	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 29	2006	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 29	2007	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 29	2008	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 29	2009	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 29	2010	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 29	2011	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 29	2012	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 29	2013	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 29	2014	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 29	2015	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 29	2016	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 29	2017	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 29	2018	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 29	2019	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 29	2020	International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People	United Nations observance

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HATEWATCH HEADLINES: NOVEMBER 11-26, 2014

Here we go with another round up of hate-filled insanity, all deranged and excellent candidates for pre-frontal trans-orbital lobotomies.

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Hatewatch Headlines, 11-26-14

By SPLC Hatewatch Staff on November 26, 2014 – 8:30 am

IREHR: Tea Party faction leader claims to be plotting ‘takedown’ of President Obama with ex-military leaders.

Media Matters: Ted Nugent goes on racially charged rant about Ferguson, attacking ‘black Klansmen’ engaging in riots.

Talking Points Memo: KKK leader Frank Ancona meets with Anonymous member after Twitter hijacking.

San Francisco Chronicle: Concord man held in alleged hate crime for attempted arson at San Francisco church.

DiversityInc: What to do when you neighbor displays hate symbols.

The Herald (Everett, WA): Man with multiple pseudonyms harasses county by demanding all records dating back to 1776.

INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: NOVEMBER 25, 2014

 

INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Quick Facts

The United Nations’ (UN) International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women raises public awareness of violence against women in all countries around the world and at all levels of society. It is observed each year on November 25.

Local names

Name	Language
International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	English
Día Internacional de la Eliminación de la Violencia contra la Mujer	Spanish
יום המאבק הבינלאומי למניעת אלימות נגד נשים	Hebrew
اليوم العالمي للقضاء على العنف ضد المرأة	Arabic
여성에 대한 폭력의 근절을위한 국제의 날	Korean
Internationaler Tag gegen Gewalt an Frauen	German

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women 2014

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women 2015

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

The United Nations’ (UN) International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is an occasion for governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations to raise public awareness of violence against women. It has been observed on November 25 each year since 2000.

Violence against women is an issue that UN and many others take seriously.

©iStockphoto.com/funky-data

What do people do?

Various activities are arranged around the world to draw attention to the need for continuing action to eliminate violence against women, projects to enable women and their children to escape violence and campaigns to educate people about the consequences of violence against women. Locally, women’s groups may organize rallies, communal meals, fundraising activities and present research on violence against women in their own communities.

An ongoing campaign that people are encouraged to participate in, especially around this time of the year when awareness levels for the day are high, is the “Say NO to Violence Against Women campaign”. Through the campaign, anyone can add their name to a growing movement of people who speak out to put a halt to human rights violations against women.

Public life

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is a global observance and not a public holiday.

Background

On November 25, 1960, three sisters, Patria Mercedes Mirabal, María Argentina Minerva Mirabal and Antonia María Teresa Mirabal, were assassinated in the Dominican Republic on the orders of the Dominican ruler Rafael Trujillo. The Mirabel sisters fought hard to end Trujillo’s dictatorship. Activists on women’s rights have observed a day against violence on the anniversary of the deaths of these three women since 1981.

On December 17, 1999, November 25 was designated as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women by the UN General Assembly. Each year observances around the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women concentrate on a particular theme, such as “Demanding Implementation, Challenging Obstacles” (2008).

Symbols

Events around the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women are coordinated by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). The logo of this organization consists of “UNIFEM”. The letters “U” and “N” are in blue and the letters “I”, “F”, “E” and “M” are in a darker shade of this color. An image of a dove surrounded by olive branches is to the right of the word. The image of the dove incorporates the international symbol for “woman” or “women”. This is based on the symbol for the planet Venus and consists of a ring on top of a “plus” sign.

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women Observances

 

Weekday	Date	Year	Name	Holiday type	Where it is observed
Sat	Nov 25	2000	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 25	2001	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 25	2002	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 25	2003	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 25	2004	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 25	2005	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 25	2006	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 25	2007	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 25	2008	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 25	2009	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 25	2010	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 25	2011	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 25	2012	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 25	2013	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 25	2014	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 25	2015	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 25	2016	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 25	2017	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 25	2018	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 25	2019	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 25	2020	International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women	United Nations observance

IN REMEMBRANCE: 11-23-2014

MARION BARRY, FORMER MAYOR OF WASHINGTON

By DAVID STOUT

NOV. 23, 2014

 

Marion Barry in His Own Words

The former Washington mayor reflects on his life and his new memoir.

Video by A.J. Chavar on Publish Date July 1, 2014. Photo by Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times.

• Marion S. Barry Jr., a sharecropper’s son and civil rights pioneer who became a flamboyant and polarizing mayor of Washington, went to prison on cocaine charges and then recaptured City Hall in one of the most improbable comebacks in the history of American politics, died early Sunday in Washington. He was 78.

His death was confirmed by his family.

Mr. Barry died at United Medical Center in Southeast Washington just hours after he was released from Howard University Hospital on Saturday. He admitted himself on Thursday, saying that he did not feel well, although no specific medical problems were mentioned. On Sunday night, the medical examiner’s office ruled that he died of heart disease.

Mr. Barry had had various health problems in recent years. He had a kidney transplant in 2009 and was also treated for high blood pressure, diabetes and anemia. He underwent surgery for prostate cancer in 1995.

Related Coverage

• 

  Barry, Once Washington’s ‘Mayor for Life,’ Tries to Shape Legacy With Autobiography JULY 1, 2014

• 

  Known for Comebacks in Capital, Barry Does It Again SEPT. 16, 2004

• Times Topic: Marion S. Barry Jr.

Mr. Barry’s death comes just months after the publication of his autobiography, “Mayor for Life: The Incredible Story of Marion Barry Jr.”

Elected mayor four times — in 1978, 1982, 1986 and 1994 — Mr. Barry left the mayor’s office for good early in 1999 and then worked as an investment banker. But politics was never far from his mind. In 2004 he was elected to the District of Columbia Council from a hard-pressed section in Southeast Washington, a district he represented until his death.

Mr. Barry was a charismatic yet confounding politician. Admirers saw him as a Robin Hood who gave hope to poor black residents. His detractors saw a shameless rogue who almost ruined the city by stuffing its payroll with cronies and hacks and letting services decay. Indisputably, he was a political Lazarus with a gift for convincing his followers that their hopes and disappointments were his, too.

On Jan. 18, 1990, Mayor Barry was arrested in a Washington hotel room while smoking crack cocaine and fondling a woman who was not his wife. The arrest, videotaped in an undercover operation, caused a sensation, but it was hardly a surprise: The public had known of his womanizing for years, and there had been rumors of drug use. Nor was he a stranger to the bottle.

Convicted of a misdemeanor cocaine possession, Mr. Barry was sentenced to six months in prison. His fall from grace was especially poignant for those old enough to remember the bright promise and idealism of his youth.

He was born on March 6, 1936, in Itta Bena, Miss. His father, also named Marion, died when he was 4, and his mother, Mattie, moved to Memphis, where she remarried. Her new husband, David Cummings, was a butcher and she worked as a domestic to support eight children.

Young Marion picked cotton, waited on tables and delivered newspapers. He became an Eagle Scout and earned a degree in chemistry from LeMoyne College in Memphis in 1958.

His middle initial, S., originally stood for nothing, but in the late 1950s he adopted the middle name Shepilov, after Dmitri T. Shepilov, a purged member of the Soviet Communist Party. As a sophomore, Mr. Barry joined the LeMoyne chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He became chapter president his senior year.

While studying for his master’s degree at Fisk University in Nashville, he organized a campus N.A.A.C.P. chapter. Early in 1960, he helped organize the first lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville. That April, he and other student leaders met with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Mr. Barry became its first national chairman.

After a year as a teaching assistant at the University of Kansas, he began studying for a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Tennessee. He abandoned his studies a few credits short and began working full time for S.N.C.C.

In June 1965 he moved to Washington, where reporters occasionally referred to him as a “dashiki-clad militant.” A powerful speaker and street campaigner, he began pressing for home rule for the District of Columbia. He had found fertile political soil, since residents had only recently won the right to vote in presidential elections and had virtually no say in governing themselves.

In 1967, Mr. Barry started a jobs program for poor blacks, winning federal grants worth several million dollars. He won his first election in February 1970, to a citizens’ board created to smooth relations between police officers and black residents. He was later president of the school board and a member of the City Council.

On March 9, 1977, he was shot during a takeover of a Washington office building by members of the Hanafi Muslim sect. The bullet narrowly missed his heart, but Mr. Barry was back at work by the end of the month.

The next year he ran for mayor and defeated the incumbent, Walter E. Washington, who had become the District of Columbia’s first elected mayor four years earlier, and the City Council president, Sterling Tucker, in the Democratic primary, making his election in November a certainty in that overwhelmingly Democratic city.

“Let this day signal our drive toward greatness,” he told a cheering crowd on Jan. 2, 1979, as he was sworn in for the first time by Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court.

At first, Washington seemed to undergo a renaissance with Mr. Barry as mayor. Downtown boomed as vacant lots and abandoned buildings gave way to smart new offices, hotels and restaurants. But as the political honeymoon faded, Mr. Barry’s critics complained that conditions in the poorest black neighborhoods were deteriorating even as the mayor used the city government as an employment agency for his followers.

His detractors said he held on to power by cynically telling blacks that the only alternative to him was restoration of a quasi-colonial white power. Indeed, he exploited memories of the decades in which congressional chairmen, typically white Southerners, gave short shrift to the Washington beyond the gleaming edifices of the federal government.

Several people close to Mr. Barry were implicated in scandals. A deputy mayor was sent to prison for embezzling city funds. One of Mr. Barry’s former wives (he was married four times) went to prison for embezzling money from the job-training and antipoverty organization he had founded. When she was released, he found her another city job.

His defenders pointed to Washington’s unique situation as a city with no state to look to for financial aid, no heavy industry to tax and many tax-exempt government buildings. Many people who work in Washington commute from Maryland and Virginia and pay no District of Columbia taxes.

Part of Mr. Barry’s tenure coincided with a nationwide crack cocaine epidemic, and Washington’s poorest neighborhoods suffered as much as any in the country. At its nadir, Washington had both the highest infant mortality rate and the highest homicide rate of any city in the United States. Drugs were peddled openly on many corners, and homeless people slept on heating grates within sight of the White House. The Fire Department could handle only a single two-alarm blaze at a time.

Young black men fared badly year after year. One study found that by 1991, 42 percent of the district’s black men ages 18 to 35 were in prison, on probation or on parole, released on bond or sought by the police.

More and more middle-class people, black and white, fled to the suburbs after despairing of getting a good public education for their children, getting their garbage picked up or getting their streets plowed after snowstorms.

But the mayor seemed not to worry about such complaints, just as he seemed not to care about appearing to be hypocritical. In October 1986, for instance, he announced that he would convene a “D.C. drug summit” of experts to discuss the cocaine epidemic at a time when the mayor himself was rumored to be a user.

“I may not be perfect,” he said a month later, after his election to a third term, “but I am perfect for Washington.”

In January 1987, Mr. Barry went to Los Angeles for the Super Bowl game between the New York Giants and the Denver Broncos at the Rose Bowl. His detractors noted that while he was watching football and partying afterward in sunny Southern California, his constituents were being buried under a knee-deep snowfall that clogged Washington streets.

The mayor’s Super Bowl vacation was interrupted by a visit to a hospital. Mr. Barry said he had suffered a flare-up of his hiatal hernia. An associate said he had overdosed. There would be other medical crises in which he claimed exhaustion or indigestion and people close to him blamed alcohol or drugs.

But the mayor seemed immune to embarrassment. In early 1988, with the District of Columbia’s government slumping under debt and its payroll bloated, he led a delegation of 17 city officials to the Virgin Islands. The stated purpose of the junket was to help the islands’ officials overhaul their personnel system.

In 1989 Mr. Barry was called before a federal grand jury investigating whether a woman had sold drugs to city officials, including the mayor. He acknowledged having had a relationship with her but denied buying drugs.

He was arrested just as he was about to announce that he was running for mayor again. In 1990, after a two-month trial, he was convicted of one misdemeanor count of drug possession and acquitted of another misdemeanor. The jury could not agree on another 12 counts, including three felony charges that he had lied to the grand jury.

The verdict was a near-victory for Mr. Barry. Had he been convicted of a felony, he could not have sought office again. But in November 1990, Mr. Barry suffered the only electoral defeat of his career. As an independent, he finished third in a race for an at-large City Council seat.

After serving his sentence in a minimum-security prison in Virginia, he was easily elected to the City Council again in 1992.

In the 1994 Democratic primary for mayor, he defeated Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly, who had been unable in her single term to turn the city around, and several other candidates.

“Amazing grace, how sweet it sounds to save a wretch like me!” he exulted on the night of Sept. 13, 1994. In November, he cruised to victory over his Republican opponent.

But the problems that had dogged the city during his first three terms continued into his fourth. The government sagged under the weight of accumulated debt. The payroll remained heavy, even though the city’s population had been dwindling for years: While Mr. Barry was in office, the city lost 115,000 residents, leaving it with just over 520,000 in January 1999, the fewest since 1933. (By 2013, the district’s population had increased to about 646,000, according to the Census Bureau.)

In April 1995 an exasperated Congress created the District of Columbia Financial Control Board to oversee city spending. In August 1997, Congress stripped Mr. Barry of much of his remaining power, turning over nine major operating departments to the board.

Mr. Barry called the move a “rape of democracy.” Though he was now a figurehead, there was widespread speculation that he would try for still another term. But on May 21, 1998, he announced that he would not.

“For all of you who have supported me, I love you so much,” he said that day. “I love this city.” The control board shined a spotlight on Anthony A. Williams, a bow-tied number cruncher who had been credited with helping the city out of its mess as its chief financial officer. He was elected mayor in 1998 and served two terms marked by a more businesslike, if less colorful, approach to governing.

Although the trial on cocaine charges was Mr. Barry’s most serious encounter with the law, it was but one of many run-ins with the authorities. In July 2000 Mr. Barry was accused of shoving a female janitor in a restroom at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and was sentenced to community service.

In March 2002 he announced that he would run for City Council, but he withdrew after the United States Park Police found traces of crack cocaine and marijuana in his car, which was illegally parked, later that month. No charges were filed, and Mr. Barry said he had been framed.

Despite his clashes with the law, he won a City Council seat in 2004. The next year he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges for failing to file income tax returns for the year 2000. He was placed on probation for three years. Yet he continued to defy the Internal Revenue Service, neglecting for the next several years to file returns. He finally settled with the tax agency in 2009, saying that his failure to file had been the result of health problems.

He had no such excuse in 2010, when the City Council stripped him of a committee chairmanship and censured him for steering a consulting contract to a sometime girlfriend (who had once had him arrested for stalking her). Mr. Barry apologized for his “lack of sound judgment” on the contract.

Mr. Barry also showed lack of sound judgment as a motorist. In August 2014, after he was slightly injured in a crash while driving on the wrong side of the street, it was revealed that he had accumulated some $2,800 in fines for moving violations and parking infractions. He finally paid up.

Various theories have been advanced to explain how Mr. Barry survived scandals that made him a laughingstock for television comedians and would have destroyed lesser politicians. Writing in The New Yorker in 1994 about that year’s mayoral campaign, David Remnick observed that Mr. Barry’s flaws actually helped him, especially among impoverished black people who feared that white businessmen and other elitists were conspiring to take back the power that black Washingtonians had gained.

“No one has a more acute feeling for the divides of the city and their political possibilities than Marion Barry,” Mr. Remnick wrote after spending considerable time with the mayor on the campaign trail.

“What Barry grasps intuitively — and what comes as a shock to most whites — is the political potential of conspiracy thinking,” Mr. Remnick wrote. Indeed, years afterward, Mr. Barry blamed a racist conspiracy for his trial and imprisonment on cocaine charges. “They didn’t want me creating all of these opportunities for black folks,” he wrote in his autobiography, published by Simon & Schuster in June.

Co-written by Omar Tyree, “Mayor for Life” indulged in some revisionist history and selective amnesia. As Marc Fisher pointed out in reviewing the book for The Washington Post, Mr. Barry asserted at one point that news media reports of his womanizing “were all unfounded.” Yet a hundred pages later, Mr. Barry conceded that he “got involved with women who sometimes were not good for me.”

In an interview with The New York Times shortly after the book’s release, Mr. Barry denied that his personal troubles and run-ins with the law had hindered the progress he sought for the poorest Washington residents.

“I serve as an inspiration for those who are going through all kinds of things,” Mr. Barry said. “Whatever storm they’re going through, they can learn from me.”

Mr. Barry is survived by his wife, Cora Masters Barry, and his son, Marion Christopher Barry.

Like many successful politicians, Mr. Barry had a sizable ego. “God gave me this kind of gift,” he said to The Washington Post after his victory in the 2004 City Council election. “How good God is.”

What Mr. Barry bequeathed to Washington, and his motives, are likely to be debated for years.

“One reason he was so good at the political game, some of his friends thought, was because so little of it really meant anything to him,” David Halberstam wrote in “The Children” in 1998, about the early days of the civil rights movement. “He was largely free of causes, save his own. His agenda was always primarily about himself.”

But Mr. Fisher, in his review of Mr. Barry’s book, wrote that “no other mayor has come close to his achievement in providing first jobs for poor young black residents.” Nevertheless, Mr. Fisher added, “black poverty remains deeply entrenched in the District, and his administration had little to show for its efforts to curb crime or improve schools.”

Sam Smith, editor of The Progressive Review, who knew Mr. Barry since 1966, had a subtler perspective in the twilight of his public career:

“It’s like going out into a field and seeing an old rusting-out hulk of a car and trying to imagine what it was like when it was brand-new. What people are seeing now is that corroded shell of what Barry was, and if you don’t remember that, it’s very hard to see.”

Correction: November 23, 2014
An earlier version of this obituary misstated the position Anthony A. Williams held before being elected to succeed Mr. Barry as mayor of Washington in 1998. He had been the city’s chief financial officer — not chairman of the District of Columbia Financial Control Board.

Steve Kenny and Andrew Siddons contributed reporting from Washington.

SOURCE

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JIMMY RUFFIN, SINGER OF A MEMORABLE MOTOWN HIT

By PAUL VITELLO

NOV. 19, 2014

Jimmy Ruffin in 1972. Credit Dezo Hoffmann/Rex Features, via Everett Collection

• Jimmy Ruffin, a soul singer best known for his plaintive 1966 Top 10 hit “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” died on Monday in a Las Vegas hospital. He was 78.

His death was confirmed by his children, Philicia Ruffin and Jimmy Ruffin Jr., in a statement on Wednesday.

Mr. Ruffin was not one of the biggest stars in the Motown stable of the 1960s and ’70s, which also included, among many others, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops, the Jackson 5 and the Temptations — whose million-selling 1965 single “My Girl” featured his brother David Ruffin as lead singer. But in 1966 and 1967, he was a reliable hitmaker.

The elder of those two Ruffin brothers, he followed up “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” with records including “I’ve Passed This Way Before,” also released in 1966; “Gonna Give Her All the Love I’ve Got,” in 1967; and “Farewell Is a Lonely Sound,” in 1969.

In the hiatus between then and his last big hit, “Hold On to My Love,” released in 1980 and written and produced by Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees, Mr. Ruffin performed regularly in the United States and made several albums, including one with his brother, “I Am My Brother’s Keeper.” He moved to England, where he found an enduring audience for his work, in 1981 and settled there for many years.

Jimmy Lee Ruffin was born in Collinsville, Miss., on May 7, 1936. His father, Eli Ruffin, was a sharecropper, preacher and gospel singer. His mother, Ophelia, who bore several children before him and after him, died when Jimmy was about 5, soon after the birth of his brother Davis, who later adopted the name David.

The boys’ father enlisted them in a traveling family gospel group when they were children. By the time they were teenagers, Jimmy and David had begun performing in the South as a gospel duo, the Ruffin Brothers, according to “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” a 2010 history of the Temptations by Mark Ribowsky.

The two went their separate ways after several years but reunited in Detroit in 1959, when Jimmy arrived to seek his fame in the nascent recording industry emerging from the city’s rhythm-and-blues nightclub circuit. David, who was already part of the circle of talent recruited by Motown’s founder, Berry Gordy, helped Jimmy get a job as a backup singer there.

In various versions of the Temptations’ history, either Jimmy or David Ruffin was the founding members’ first choice to join them in 1963, when another of the founding members was being replaced. By most accounts, including Mr. Ribowsky’s, David was their choice — an account Jimmy Ruffin supported in several interviews, saying that he had always planned on being a solo performer.

Information on survivors besides his two children was not immediately available. David Ruffin died in 1991.

In an interview with the BBC in 1999, Mr. Ruffin recounted how he came to record “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.” The song, written by James Dean, William Weatherspoon and Paul Riser, was originally intended for the Spinners, another Motown group. But one day in the Motown studios, he said, he heard Mr. Dean singing it.

“The song had the kind of words one can feel,” he recalled, “and it was a beautiful, melodic song.” When told that the Spinners were scheduled to cut the song, he said, “I told him to give it to me instead,” and Mr. Dean let him record a demonstration tape.

He added, “He liked my version enough to let me have it.”

SOURCE

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KEN TAKAKURA, JAPANESE FILM ACTOR

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NOV. 18, 2014

Ken Takakura Credit Toshifumi Kitamura/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ken Takakura, who became a star playing outlaws and stoic heroes in scores of Japanese films, died on Nov. 10 in Tokyo. He was 83.

His office said he died at a hospital where he was being treated for lymphoma.

Mr. Takakura, who because of his quiet, brooding screen presence was often compared to Clint Eastwood, made his screen debut in 1956 and rose to fame in the 1960s in crime films like “Abashiri Prison” (1965). Much of his appeal stemmed from his image as a hero fighting authority figures on behalf of the poor and weak.

He won a best-actor award at the Montreal World Film Festival for his performance in the 1999 film “Railroad Man.” He also appeared in a number of American movies, notably as a police inspector in Ridley Scott’s “Black Rain” (1989), with Michael Douglas, and — in one of his rare comic roles — as a coach in “Mr. Baseball” (1992), with Tom Selleck. His first major American movie was “The Yakuza” (1974), directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Mitchum.

Though he often played outlaws, Mr. Takakura said contemporary gangster movies did not interest him. “I like movies that pierce the human heart and linger with me,” he said in an interview that appeared on the media website Japan Subculture Research Center earlier this year.

Born Goichi Oda in Fukuoka, Japan, on Feb. 16, 1931, he did not set out to be an actor but was recruited by a major film production company while applying for a managerial position. In his last film, “Dearest” (2012), Mr. Takakura played a retired prison warden who embarks on a road trip to fulfill his dead wife’s last wish. His office said he was preparing for his next project while he was in the hospital.

Last year, when Mr. Takakura received one of Japan’s highest honors in the arts, the Order of Culture, at the Imperial Palace, he noted that he was best known for playing characters far removed from those exalted precincts.

“In movies, I’m most often an ex-convict,” he said. “I’m grateful for the award despite many of these roles I’ve played.”

SOURCE

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TOMAS YOUNG, ARMY VETERAN; CRITIC OF IRAQ WAR IN FILM

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

NOV. 16, 2014

Tomas Young, who was paralyzed in the Iraq War, with his wife, Claudia Cuellar, in March 2013. Credit Jill Toyoshiba/The Kansas City Star, via Associated Press

• Paralyzed from the chest down, the Iraq War veteran is seen in a 2007 documentary film taking dozens of pills for spasms, pain and depression. He speaks agonizingly about his sexual problems. Viewers watch him marry and, eight months later, divorce.

In the film, “Body of War,” Tomas Young is the body. Co-directed and underwritten by the television personality Phil Donahue, the film sought to show, through Mr. Young, the devastating human cost of a war that the filmmakers argued should have never been fought.

Mr. Young died at 34 on Nov. 10 at his home in Seattle. When asked the cause, his mother, Cathy Smith, said, “His body just wore out.”

“Body of War” received the National Board of Review award for best documentary. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave it strong consideration for an Oscar nomination. Reviews were mixed, but almost all said it was hard hitting. Mr. Young spoke of his ordeal on “60 Minutes,” “Nightline” and “Bill Moyers Journal.”

But the film, though applauded at film festivals, was not released theatrically; its producers could not find a distributor. (It can be found, however, on Internet streaming services.) In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Donahue suggested one possible reason distributors shied from it. “It’s not a take-your-girl-to-the-movies movie,” he said.

Another reason may have been its polemic tone. Images of Mr. Young’s agony are interspersed with shots of the congressional debate over the resolution giving President George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq in March 2003. The film shows Mr. Young in the forefront of demonstrations against the war by veterans and lobbying members of Congress to stop it.

Six years after the film came out, Mr. Young drew news media coverage when he announced that pain and depression had pushed him to decide to commit suicide. He wrote an open letter to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on behalf of “the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.”

The movie had its roots in Mr. Donahue’s antiwar commentary on his MSNBC talk show in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. In February 2003, the channel canceled his show, citing low ratings, particularly compared with its direct competitor on Fox News, “The O’Reilly Factor,” whose host, Bill O’Reilly, was a strong supporter of the war.

The seeds of “Body of War” were planted in the spring of 2004 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where Mr. Young had been taken after sniper fire severed his spine on his fifth day in Iraq. By her account, Ms. Smith asked her son, who had long been interested in politics, inspired by her liberal views, if there was anybody he wanted to meet in Washington. “Ralph Nader,” he said.

She called Mr. Nader’s office, and he agreed to meet Mr. Young. He asked Mr. Donahue to accompany him. The two had met on Mr. Nader’s presidential campaign bus in 2000. Mr. Donahue said he was “blown away” by Mr. Young’s wounds and came to see the young man as a potential vehicle for showing the sacrifices the troops were making in Iraq, which he thought had been deliberately hidden from the public.

Mr. Donahue said he had considered writing a book but was persuaded that a movie would be better. He teamed with Ellen Spiro, an experienced filmmaker, who shared producing and directing duties with him. Another veteran of Mr. Nader’s presidential races, Eddie Vedder of the rock group Pearl Jam, volunteered to write and perform two songs for the film.

In the movie, Mr. Young recalls enthusiastically enlisting in the Army after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But he became disillusioned, he says, beginning when he was sent to Iraq rather than Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden had masterminded the attacks.

“If I had been shot and hurt in Afghanistan, I’d have been upset about what I have to go through, but there would be no ‘Body of War’ film,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 2008. “I’d take my government check and sit home. I would not have felt my wounds were received in an invalid war.”

Tomas Vincent Young was born in Boise, Idaho, on Nov. 30, 1979, and grew up in Kansas City, Mo. His mother and father, Thomas Young, divorced when he was a boy. Tomas enlisted in the Army at 17 but was discharged because of a shoulder problem. Returning to Kansas City, he took a succession of minimum-wage jobs. Then came Sept. 11.

“I called my recruiter after hearing Bush say he was going to smoke the evildoers out of their caves,” he told the Kansas newspaper The Topeka Capital-Journal in 2007. His shoulder passed muster in February 2002, and after basic training he landed at Fort Hood, Tex., as a private in the First Cavalry Division.

He was shot in Baghdad on April 4, 2004, while lying in an open truck as it rolled through the Sadr City neighborhood. He had emergency surgery in Germany before being flown to Walter Reed.

The documentary shows Mr. Young at one point saying goodbye to his younger brother, Nathan, as his brother deploys for the first of two combat tours in Iraq. It shows him marrying his high school sweetheart, Brie Townsend, who says she can handle the challenges they will face. And it shows them divorcing eight months later.

While Mr. Young was in a rehab center in Chicago, he met Claudia Cuellar, who had volunteered to visit hospitalized veterans to cheer them up. Though his condition had deteriorated, they wed on April 20, 2012. He decided against suicide.

The couple moved to Portland, Ore., because medical marijuana was available there. They then moved to Seattle, partly because Mr. Young had come to regard Mr. Vedder, who lives there, as a friend.

Besides his mother, Mr. Young is survived by his wife, his father and his brother Nathan; his sister, Lisa Harper; another brother, Tim Weaver; and two grandmothers.

SOURCE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Dale Carnegie, Author, Dies at 66

(Nov. 1, 1955)

Bob Kane, the Cartoonist Who Created ‘Batman,’ Dies at 83

(Nov. 3, 1998)

Henri Matisse, One of France’s Greatest Painters, Dies at 84

(Nov. 3, 1954)

Cy Young, Famed Pitcher, Dies at 88

(Nov. 4, 1955)

Leonid Brezhnev, Former Soviet Leader, Dies at 75

(Nov. 10, 1982)

Jerome Kern, Noted Composer, Dies at 60

(Nov. 11, 1945)

Lucretia Mott, 19th-Century American Feminist, Dies at 87

(Nov. 11, 1880)

Percival Lowell, Astronomer and Author, Dies at 61

(Nov. 12, 1916)

Booker T. Washington, Founder of the Tuskegee Institute, Dies at 59

(Nov. 14, 1915)

Lionel Barrymore, Veteran Screen and Stage Star, Dies at 76

(Nov. 15, 1954)

Margaret Mead, Anthropologist and Author, Dies at 76

(Nov. 15, 1978)

Sam Rayburn, 79, Who Served 17 Years as House Speaker, Dies

(Nov. 16, 1961)

Francisco Franco, Whose Iron Hand Forged a Modern Spain, Dies at 82

(Nov. 20, 1975)

Gerard Swope, 84, Ex-G.E. Head, Dies

(Nov. 20, 1957)

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, Dies at 46

(Nov. 22, 1963)

Jack London, Novelist, Dies at 40

(Nov. 22, 1916)

Eugene O’Neill, Playwright Who Won Nobel Prize, Dies at 65

(Nov. 27, 1953)

Enrico Fermi, Architect of Atomic Bomb, Dies at 53

(Nov. 28, 1954)

WORLD TELEVISION DAY: NOVEMBER 21, 2014

 

WORLD TELEVISION DAY

Quick Facts

The United Nations’ (UN) World Television Day is globally celebrated on November 21 each year.

Local names

Name	Language
World Television Day	English
Día Mundial de la Televisión	Spanish
עולם יום הטלוויזיה	Hebrew
اليوم العالمي للتلفزيون	Arabic
세계 텔레비전의 날	Korean
Welttag des Fernsehens	German

World Television Day 2014

Friday, November 21, 2014

World Television Day 2015

Saturday, November 21, 2015

The United Nations’ (UN) World Television Day is annually observed in many places around the world on November 21. The day recognizes that television plays a major role in presenting different issue that affect people.

World Television Day helps people remember the beneficial purposes of television.

©iStockphoto.com/PhotoTalk

What do people do?

World Television Day is a day to renew governments’, organizations’ and individuals’ commitments to support the development of television media in providing unbiased information about important issues and events that affect society. News about World Television Day may be shared via print, online and broadcast media. Television and radio bloggers may write comments, editors may write in the editors’ columns, and writers, academics and journalists may write feature articles about the meaning behind this event.

Educational institutions may mark World Television Day on their calendars and educators may use this day as an opportunity to invite guest speakers to discuss media and communication issues relating to television. Discussion topics may include: how television promotes cultural diversity and a common understanding; the links between democracy and television; and the role of television in social, political and economic developments.

Public life

World Television Day is a global observance and not a public holiday.

Background

The UN acknowledges that television can be used to educate many people about the world, its issues and real stories that happen on the planet. Television is one of the most influential forms of media for communication and information dissemination. It is used to broadcast freedom of expressions and to increase cultural diversity.  The UN realized that television played a major role in presenting global issues affecting people and this needed to be addressed.

On December 17, 1996, UN General Assembly proclaimed November 21 as World Television Day to commemorate the date on which the first World Television Forum was held earlier that year. The UN invited all member states to observe the day by encouraging global exchanges of television programs focusing, among other things, on issues such as peace, security, economic and social development and cultural change enhancements.

Symbols

The UN logo is often associated with marketing and promotional material for this event. It features a projection of a world map (less Antarctica) centered on the North Pole, inscribed in a wreath consisting of crossed conventionalized branches of the olive tree. The olive branches symbolize peace and the world map depicts the area of concern to the UN in achieving its main purpose, peace and security. The projection of the map extends to 60 degrees south latitude, and includes five concentric circles.

World Television Day Observances

Weekday	Date	Year	Name	Holiday type	Where it is observed
Fri	Nov 21	1997	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 21	1998	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 21	1999	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 21	2000	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 21	2001	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 21	2002	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 21	2003	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 21	2004	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 21	2005	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 21	2006	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 21	2007	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 21	2008	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 21	2009	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 21	2010	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 21	2011	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 21	2012	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 21	2013	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 21	2014	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 21	2015	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 21	2016	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 21	2017	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 21	2018	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 21	2019	World Television Day	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 21	2020	World Television Day	United Nations observance

SKYWATCH: RACE AGAINST TIME FOR COMET FINDINGS, WATCH ALGOL WINK, AND MORE

LATEST NEWS

Philae Wins Race to Return Comet Findings

With its battery power failing, Philae became the “little lander than could” and managed to return results from all 10 of its science instruments before slipping into hibernation.

Why Is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot . . . Red?

Scientists think they’ve figured out what causes the mysterious ruddy coloring in the giant planet’s enormous oval storm.

Dark Galaxies Discovered in Coma Cluster

A bizarre set of galaxies in the Coma Cluster have lost most of their stars (or star-making material), making them especially rich in dark matter.

OBSERVING HIGHLIGHTS

This Week’s Sky at a Glance – November 21 – 29

High in the northeast, the W pattern of Cassiopeia stands on end as early as 6 p.m. now, and on Tuesday, Mars shines next to a thin crescent Moon in twilight.

When Algol Winks, Will You Wink Back?

The dark ways of Algol, the Demon Star, and what it can teach us about stellar evolution.

COMMUNITY

Kavli Foundation Q&A: The Hunt for Dark Matter

On Thursday, November 20th, three astrophysicists answered questions about preparations for three recently funded dark matter experiments, and the likelihood that one of them will strike gold.

 

WORLD PHILOSOPHY DAY: NOVEMBER 20, 2014

 

WORLD PHILOSOPHY DAY

Quick Facts

World Philosophy Day is celebrated on the third Thursday of November each year.

Local names

Name	Language
World Philosophy Day	English
Día Mundial de la Filosofía	Spanish
עולם יום הפילוסופיה	Hebrew
اليوم العالمي للفلسفة	Arabic
세계 철학의 날	Korean
Welttag der Philosophie	German

World Philosophy Day 2014 Theme: “Social Transformation and Intercultural Dialogue”

Thursday, November 20, 2014

World Philosophy Day 2015

Thursday, November 19, 2015

World Philosophy Day annually observed on the third Thursday of November to honor philosophical reflections around the world. It is a day for people to share thoughts, openly explore and discuss new ideas and inspire public debate or discussion on society’s challenges.

Philosophers such as Socrates have contributed to modern thinking in society.

©iStockphoto.com/Brigida_Soriano

What do people do?

World Philosophy Day is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) initiative that draws people around the world to engage in shared reflection on contemporary issues. Various events and activities include:

• Philosophical dialogues, debates, lectures, and meetings involving renowned philosophers.
• International conferences on philosophical topics such as the connection between philosophy, education and culture.
• Exhibitions and philosophy book fairs.
• Philosophy cafes.

Different organizations, community groups and government agencies in many countries, including (but not exclusive to) Chile, France, Morocco, the Philippines, and Turkey, have participated in actively promoting World Philosophy Day.

Public life

World Philosophy day is a global observance and is not a public holiday.

Background

Philosophy has opened the door for new concepts and innovative ideas, laying the foundations of critical thinking, independence and creativity across cultures for many centuries. UNESCO introduced World Philosophy Day in 2002 to honor philosophical reflections throughout the world by opening spaces and encouraging people to share their philosophical heritage, opening their minds to new ideas, and inspire public debate on society’s challenges.

UNESCO’s Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura gave a public message about World Philosophy Day in 2004 to highlight the day’s meaning and importance. He said that philosophy gave the conceptual grounding to the principles and values that shaped the possibility of world peace – democracy, human rights, justice and equality. Reflection on contemporary society’s unsolved problems and unanswered questions was always at the heart of philosophical analysis and thinking.

World Philosophy Day Observances

 

Weekday	Date	Year	Name	Holiday type	Where it is observed
Thu	Nov 21	2002	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 20	2003	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 18	2004	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 17	2005	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 16	2006	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 15	2007	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 20	2008	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 19	2009	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 18	2010	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 17	2011	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 15	2012	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 21	2013	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 20	2014	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 19	2015	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 17	2016	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 16	2017	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 15	2018	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 21	2019	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 19	2020	World Philosophy Day	United Nations observance

UNIVERSAL CHILDREN’S DAY: NOVEMBER 20, 2014

 

UNIVERSAL CHILDREN’S DAY

Quick Facts

The United Nations’ (UN) Universal Children’s Day is an occasion to promote the welfare of children and an understanding between children all over the world. It is held on November 20 each year

Local names

Name	Language
Universal Children’s Day	English
Día Universal del Niño	Spanish
יום הילד האוניברסלי	Hebrew
عيد الطفولة	Arabic
어린이날	Korean
Weltkindertag	German

Universal Children’s Day 2014

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Universal Children’s Day 2015

Friday, November 20, 2015

The United Nations’ (UN) Universal Children’s Day, which was established in 1954, is celebrated on November 20 each year to promote international togetherness and awareness among children worldwide. UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, promotes and coordinates this special day, which also works towards improving children’s welfare.

Universal Children’s Day promotes the welfare of and understanding between children.

©iStockphoto.com/shironosov

What do people do?

Many schools and other educational institutions make a special effort to inform children of their rights according to the Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Teachers stimulate their pupils to think about the differences between themselves and others and explain the idea of “rights”. In countries where the rights of children are generally well-respected, teachers may draw attention to situations in countries where this is not the case.

In some areas UNICEF holds events to draw particular attention to children’s rights. These may be to stimulate interest in the media around the world or to start nationwide campaigns, for instance on the importance of immunizations or breastfeeding.

Many countries, including Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, hold Universal Children’s Day events on November 20 to mark the anniversaries of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, other countries hold events on different dates, such as the fourth Wednesday in October (Australia) and November 14 (India). Universal Children’s Day is not observed in the United States, although a similar observance, National Child’s Day, is held on the first Sunday in June.

Public life

Universal Children’s Day is a global observance and not a public holiday.

Background

On December 14, 1954, the UN General Assembly recommended that all countries should introduce an annual event from 1956 known as Universal Children’s Day to encourage fraternity and understanding between children all over the world and promoting the welfare of children. It was recommended that individual countries should choose an appropriate date for this occasion.

At the time, the UN General Assembly recommended that all countries should establish a Children’s Day on an “appropriate” date. Many of the countries respected this recommendation and the Universal Children’s Day has since been annually observed on November 20. There are however, some countries, such as Australia and India, which still chose various different dates during the year to celebrate this day.

On November 20, 1959, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child and on November 20, 1989, it adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Since 1990, Universal Children’s Day also marks the anniversary of the date that the UN General Assembly adopted both the declaration and the convention on children’s rights.

Symbols

Universal Children’s Day is part of the work carried out by UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. UNICEF’s logo consists of an image of a mother and child, a globe, olive branches and the word “UNICEF”. All parts of the logo are in UN’s blue color, although it may be presented in white on a blue background.

Universal Children’s Day Observances

 

Weekday	Date	Year	Name	Holiday type	Where it is observed
Tue	Nov 20	1990	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 20	1991	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 20	1992	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 20	1993	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 20	1994	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 20	1995	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 20	1996	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 20	1997	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 20	1998	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 20	1999	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 20	2000	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 20	2001	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 20	2002	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 20	2003	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 20	2004	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 20	2005	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 20	2006	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 20	2007	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 20	2008	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 20	2009	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Sat	Nov 20	2010	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 20	2011	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 20	2012	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 20	2013	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Thu	Nov 20	2014	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 20	2015	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Sun	Nov 20	2016	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Mon	Nov 20	2017	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Tue	Nov 20	2018	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Wed	Nov 20	2019	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance
Fri	Nov 20	2020	Universal Children’s Day	United Nations observance