In honor of the National Day of Action to End State Violence Against Black Women, Girls and Femmes, lawyer, researcher and activist Andrea J. Ritchie presents some policy ideas to eliminate police sexual violence, gendered racial profiling and other ways officers target Black girls, women and gender nonconforming people.
On the heels of her just-released memoir, “Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil,” Michael Brown’s mother, Lezley McSpadden, shares how she’s healing, how protestors should treat victims’ families, and how it feels be famous for the worst possible reason.
People, non-governmental organizations and governments unite on World No Tobacco Day to draw attention to the health problems that tobacco use can cause. It is held on May 31 each year.
World No Tobacco Day is a day for people, non-governmental organizations and governments organize various activities to make people aware of the health problems that tobacco use can cause. These activities include:
Public marches and demonstrations, often with vivid banners.
Advertising campaigns and educational programs.
People going into public places to encourage people to stop smoking.
The introduction of bans on smoking in particular places or types of advertising.
Meetings for anti-tobacco campaigners.
Moreover, laws restricting smoking in particular areas may come into effect and wide reaching health campaigns may be launched.
Public Life
World No Tobacco Day is not a public holiday.
Background
Tobacco is a product of the fresh leaves of nicotiana plants. It is used as an aid in spiritual ceremonies and a recreational drug. It originated in the Americas, but was introduced to Europe by Jean Nicot, the French ambassador to Portugal in 1559. It quickly became popular and an important trade crop.
Medical research made it clear during the 1900s that tobacco use increased the likelihood of many illnesses including heart attacks, strokes, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), emphysema and many forms of cancer. This is true for all ways in which tobacco is used, including:
Cigarettes and cigars.
Hand rolling tobacco.
Bidis and kreteks (cigarettes containing tobacco with herbs or spices).
Pipes and water pipes.
Chewing tobacco.
Snuff.
Snus (a moist version of snuff popular in some countries such as Sweden).
Creamy snuff (a paste consisting of tobacco, clove oil, glycerin, spearmint, menthol, and camphor sold in a toothpaste tube popular in India).
Gutkha (a version of chewing tobacco mixed with areca nut, catechu, slaked lime and other condiments popular in India and South-East Asia).
On May 15, 1987, the World Health Organization passed a resolution, calling for April 7, 1988, to be the first World No Smoking Day. This date was chosen because it was the 40th anniversary of the World Health Organization. On May 17, 1989, the World Health Organization passed a resolution calling for May 31 to be annually known as World No Tobacco Day. This event has been observed each year since 1989.
Themes
The themes of World No Tobacco Day have been:
2009 – Tobacco health warnings.
2008 – Tobacco-free youth.
2007 – Smoke free inside.
2006 – Tobacco: deadly in any form or disguise.
2005 – Health professionals against tobacco.
2004 – Tobacco and poverty, a vicious circle.
2003 – Tobacco free film, tobacco free fashion.
2002 – Tobacco free sports.
2001 – Second-hand smoke kills.
2000 – Tobacco kills, don’t be duped.
1999 – Leave the pack behind.
1998 – Growing up without tobacco.
1997 – United for a tobacco free world.
1996 – Sport and art without tobacco: play it tobacco free.
1995 – Tobacco costs more than you think.
1994 – Media and tobacco: get the message across.
1993 – Health services: our windows to a tobacco free world.
1992 – Tobacco free workplaces: safer and healthier.
1991 – Public places and transport: better be tobacco free.
1990 – Childhood and youth without tobacco: growing up without tobacco.
1989 – Initial observance.
Symbols
Images that symbolize World No Tobacco Day are:
Clean ashtrays with flowers in them.
Ashtrays with images of body parts, such as the heart and lungs, which are damaged by tobacco use.
No smoking signs.
Symbols of death, such as gravestones and skulls, with cigarettes.
Images of the diseases caused by tobacco use.
These images are often displayed as posters, on Internet sites and blogs, on clothing and public transport vehicles.
BILL HERZ, LAST OF THE ‘WAR OF THE WORLDS’ BROADCAST CREW
Fourth from right, Bill Herz with cast and crew members of “Too Much Johnson” in 1938 (including Orson Welles, seated).Credit Theater of Orson Welles
Bill Herz, the last surviving crew member of Orson Welles’s mock “War of the Worlds” newscast, which terrified American radio listeners in 1938 with vivid bulletins warning Newark residents to evacuate as invading Martians incinerated central New Jersey, died on May 10 in Manhattan. He was 99.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, said Bill Kux, a cousin.
Mr. Herz, who worked on other radio and theater productions as stage manager and casting director for Welles’s Mercury Theater company, staked one additional claim to fame. Until about six months ago, he had been a regular customer at Sardi’s restaurant, the caricature-bedecked gathering place for celebrities and starry-eyed tourists in the theater district, for some 82 years — beginning in 1933, just six years after it opened.
That longevity alone distinguished him as a bon vivant in a shrinking cadre of original Broadway personalties. But he was also singled out periodically in the wider world as a relic of a bygone era, when a bogus radio news broadcast could provoke panic as war was brewing in Europe — however much that hysteria may have been overstated then and since.
Welles’s CBS show “The Mercury Theater on the Air” presented an adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel “The War of the Worlds” for its Halloween episode on Sunday, Oct. 30, 1938. The live hourlong program began with an updated prelude to the original novel eerily warning that superintelligent beings had been coveting “this Earth with envious eyes.”
Then music, a weather report and other regular features were interrupted by simulated news bulletins and fake feeds from ham-radio operators in the field. Mr. Herz, playing Operators Three and Five, took part in this exchange:
Operator Three: This is Newark, New Jersey. … This is Newark, New Jersey. … Warning! Poisonous black smoke pouring in from Jersey marshes. Reaches South Street. Gas masks useless. Urge population to move into open spaces. … Automobiles use Routes 7, 23, 24. … Avoid congested areas. Smoke now spreading over Raymond Boulevard. …
Operator Five: This is 8X3R … coming back at 2X2L.
Operator Four: How’s reception? How’s reception? K, please. (Pause.) Where are you, 8X3R? What’s the matter? Where are you?
John Houseman, Welles’s producer, wrote in his 1972 memoir, “Run-Through”: “Our actual broadcasting time, from the first mention of the meteorites to the fall of New York City, was less than 40 minutes. During that time men traveled long distances, large bodies of troops were mobilized, cabinet meetings were held, savage battles fought on land and in the air. And millions of people accepted it — emotionally if not logically.” (Mr. Houseman went on to a distinguished career in theater and Hollywood.)
Mr. Herz also read Welles’s part, that of a Professor Pierson at a New Jersey observatory, during rehearsals. He said he was surprised by the public’s response to the radio show.
Mr. Herz in 2010 at Sardi’s, where he was a regular for eight decades.Credit Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
“During the broadcast, outside, policemen were coming,” he told CBS News in 2013. “They were told on the radio that the Martians were coming, the Martians were coming!”
(Later scholarship about the incident suggested that the broadcast provoked far less fear among the public than has been popularly portrayed.)
In a 2010 profile in The New York Times, Mr. Herz was quoted as saying: “I had done Orson’s part in the dress rehearsal, and after I did it, I thought to myself, ‘Nobody’s going to believe this in a million years.’ Boy, was I wrong.”
William Herz Jr. was born in Detroit on Aug. 2, 1916, the son of Harold William Herz, a girdle salesman, and the former Fannie Lichtig. (Bill Herz called himself Jr., even though he wasn’t one.)
He graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh before moving to New York. He was briefly married to Susanne Guettel, whose brother Henry was a producer and film executive. No immediate family members survive.
Mr. Herz had met Welles in Pittsburgh, where Welles, a young director at the time, had stopped while touring with a production of “Romeo and Juliet.” They discovered that they had a common acquaintance in the actress Edith Meiser, a friend of Mr. Herz’s parents.
Mr. Herz started working for Welles as a gofer. He later moved into Welles’s Manhattan home — Mr. Herz had been living with an aunt in Brooklyn — so that he could constantly be on call. They worked together on “Julius Caesar,” “The Cradle Will Rock” and “Too Much Johnson.”
Mr. Herz joined the Army Air Forces during World War II, managed a summer theater in Connecticut and produced and managed several plays in New York (including a few flops, one inauspiciously titled “The Strangler Fig”).
After one failure, Vincent Sardi Sr., the founder of Sardi’s, generously invited him to keep an open tab in good times and bad. Another advantage to eating there was that Mackey’s Ticket Agency next door, where Mr. Herz later worked, had no restroom.
Ivan Lesica, Sardi’s maître d’hôtel, said on Thursday that Mr. Herz would eat there once or twice a week and sit at Table Four, to the left of the dining room entrance, under his caricature. He would have coffee delivered in his own white mug, and typically order the chicken potpie or, appropriately enough for an habitué whom his cousin described as a confirmed curmudgeon, the crab meat sandwich.
Correction: May 23, 2016 A picture caption with an earlier version of a photograph accompanying this obituary misidentified Mr. Herz. He was third from the right, not fourth, in the photograph of cast and crew members of “Too Much Johnson,” which had been cropped. (He is fourth from the right in the full photograph, which replaced the earlier version.)
EMILIO NAVAIRA, TEJANO STAR ON BOTH SIDES OF BORDER
Emilio Navaira at the Latin Grammy Awards in Miami in 2003.Credit Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press
Emilio Navaira, a Tejano singer from Texas who successfully straddled borders both musically and geographically, died on May 16 in New Braunfels, Tex., near San Antonio. He was 53.
His brother, Raulito, told The Associated Press that he might have suffered a heart attack after jogging. Family members found him unresponsive at his home.
Mr. Navaira, known to his fans simply as Emilio, was one of the leading voices in Tejano music, an accordion-based blend of polka, Latin pop and country with origins along the Texas border. He found enthusiastic audiences in Mexico and the United States, lifting the Tejano style to greater prominence in the United States while breaking into the wider country music landscape in the 1990s.
Over a recording career that began in the 1980s, he released numerous albums, in Spanish and English, including “Acuérdate,” which won a Grammy in 2003. Often seen in a black cowboy hat and roper boots, Mr. Navaira had a country hit in 1995 with “It’s Not the End of the World,” which reached No. 27 on the Billboard country singles chart.
Getting American country music fans in the 1990s to embrace a Mexican-American crooner who sang in Spanish and English was not easy. But record executives bet that he could do it, and sponsors lined up behind him. He would go on to promote Wrangler jeans and Stetson hats, and the name of his first English-language country album, “Life Is Good,” was a tie-in with a Miller Lite advertising campaign.
Mr. Navaira was born in San Antonio on Aug. 23, 1962, and majored in music at Texas State University. He grew up listening to the contemporary country music of Willie Nelson and the western swing of Bob Wills and hoped to sing country music, but he could get gigs on the south side of San Antonio only by playing Latin music, he told The New York Times in a 1996 interview.
In that interview, he disputed the idea that a Spanish-language artist like him could not find mainstream success in the United States.
“Hey, man,” he said. “I was born in America, too.”
In March 2008, Mr. Navaira was in a car accident that left him with severe brain trauma, and he later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor driving while intoxicated. He did not perform for several years while recovering.
In addition to his brother, survivors include his wife, Maru Navaira; his mother, Mary H. Navaira; three sons, Emilio IV, Diego Ramon and Pani Antonio; two daughters, Emely Ann Navaira and Freeda Luna Navaira; and his sister, Yvette Navaira.
BETH HOWLAND, ACCIDENT-PRONE WAITRESS FROM THE SITCOM ‘ALICE’
From left, Polly Holliday, Beth Howland and Linda Lavin in the CBS sitcom “Alice.”Credit CBS, via Everett Collection
Beth Howland, who made high anxiety an art form as the ditsy, accident-prone waitress Vera Louise Gorman on the 1970s and ’80s sitcom “Alice,” died on Dec. 31, 2015, in Santa Monica, Calif., her husband said on Tuesday. He had refrained from announcing her death earlier in keeping with her wishes. She was 74.
The cause was lung cancer, her husband, the actor Charles Kimbrough, said, adding that she had not wanted a funeral or a memorial service.
“It was the Boston side of her personality coming out,” Mr. Kimbrough said. “She didn’t want to make a fuss.”
Ms. Howland was a modestly successful television actress, with a handful of Broadway credits on her résumé, when Alan Shayne, the president of Warner Bros. Television, began casting roles for “Alice.” The CBS series, based on the 1974 Martin Scorsese film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” required three waitresses for Mel’s Diner, the locus of the action, one of them the high-strung Vera, played in the film by Valerie Curtin.
Mr. Shayne had seen Ms. Howland on Broadway in the Stephen Sondheim musical “Company,” where, as a nervous prospective bride named Amy, she sang a lightning-fast patter song, “Getting Married Today.”
“Vera was written as a taut wire, ready to go to pieces at any minute,” he wrote in “Double Life: A Love Story From Broadway to Hollywood” (2011), a memoir written with Norman Sunshine. He recalled Ms. Howland, in the musical, “going to pieces in front of the audience’s eyes.”
Ms. Howland won the role, and for nine seasons, from 1976 to 1985, she kept television audiences amused with her wide-eyed, jumpy performances. Asked to describe her character, she told Knight Newspapers in 1979: “Insecure and vulnerable. Probably works the hardest of anybody in the diner. Very gullible, very innocent.”
Elizabeth Howland was born on May 28, 1941, in Boston. She studied dance at the Hazel Boone Studio and, after graduating from high school at 16, headed to New York, where she landed a replacement role as Lady Beth in “Once Upon a Mattress” and a role as a dancer in “Bye Bye Birdie.” She also appeared, alongside Valerie Harper and Donna Douglas, the future Elly May Clampett on “The Beverly Hillbillies,” as a dancer in the 1959 film “Li’l Abner.”
At 19 she married Michael J. Pollard, one of the lead actors in “Bye Bye Birdie.” The marriage ended in divorce. In addition to her husband, who played the anchorman Jim Dial on the television series “Murphy Brown,” she is survived by a daughter from her first marriage, Holly Howland.
Small parts on Broadway and in the Off Broadway hit “Your Own Thing,” a musical version of “Twelfth Night,” led to her breakthrough role in “Company” and her tour-de-force rendition of “Getting Married Today.”
“It was a perfect song for me,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 2004. “I’m not a singer, and it has maybe four notes.”
She performed it again when most of the original cast reassembled in 1993 for concert performances at the Terrace Theater in Long Beach, Calif., and the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center.
After being cast as the wife of a character played by Bert Convy on an episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” she moved to Los Angeles to work in television. She appeared on “Love, American Style,” “Cannon,” “The Rookies” and other shows before taking the role of Vera on “Alice.”
Unlike many actors, Ms. Howland had never worked as a waitress. “But I just kept sitting around coffee shops and watching how it’s done, and now I can carry four dinners,” she told Knight Newspapers.
One of Vera’s most memorable moments on the show occurred a scant few seconds after the beginning of the first episode. A customer’s cheery “Hi, Vera,” caused her to throw a boxful of drinking straws into the air. The freak-out became part of the show’s opening credit sequence.
For nine years, Vera remained overwrought, but changes did occur. Toward the end of the series, she married a police officer, Elliot Novak, played by Charles Levin. In the final episode, she announced that she was pregnant.
Ms. Howland acted sporadically after “Alice” went off the air. She had small guest roles on “Eight Is Enough,” “Little House on the Prairie,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” and “The Tick.”
She and the actress Jennifer Warren were the executive producers of the documentary “You Don’t Have to Die,” about a 6-year-old boy’s successful battle against cancer. It won an Academy Award in 1989 for best short-subject documentary.
The project leader said “added detail” in oral histories was “very important”.
Workers at the Government Code and Cypher School in Buckinghamshire used the Bombe machine to break codes generated by the Enigma machine, which was used by the German navy, air force and army to send encrypted messages.
Michael Smith’s book Station X documented how codebreakers deciphered a message from General Hans Jeschonnek who was concerned over the fate of a relative who was on the Bismarck – the German navy’s flagship.
He was told the ship was making for the safety of Brest.
It was subsequently destroyed by Allies on 27 May 1941 with the loss of 2,090 men.
Bletchley Park was the home of the Government Code and Cypher School Hut 6 of Bletchley Park has been described as “arguably one of the most important buildings of its type in the world”
Ms Fawcett, who now lives in London, was 18 when she started work on Enigma translations in Hut 6 and decided their priority.
“I spoke German so I had [to decide] whether [a message] was so important it had to go straight to Whitehall or whether it was going to be something very minor,” she said.
“I suddenly got a thing on my plate from the Enigma machine which said Brest.
“I just thought that might be very important so I read it right through. That was how we found out about it.
The Bismarck was the “newest and most important battleship” in the German fleet, said Ms Fawcett
“We all thought she was going back into the [Norwegian] fjords but what she was actually doing was streaking away into Brest so we got her.
“The whole thing was turned round and off they went in pursuit and sunk her.”
Archive officer Jonathan Byrne said Ms Fawcett’s detail about the incident reminded us how “ordinary people were involved in such an amazing thing”.
Mr Byrne said his team had interviewed 108 people this year, compared to 98 in total during the previous two years, including two people over 100-years-old.
The International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers is a day to remember those who served in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations. They also honor the memory of people who died in the name of peace.
Many activities are organized on this day. Activities include:
Notes in official UN documents and schedules.
Presentations during UN meetings and events.
Memorial services and wreath laying events for those who died in peace keeping missions.
Presentation of the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal as a way to honor military, police and civilian personnel who lost their lives while working for UN peacekeeping operations.
Awarding peacekeeping medals to military and police officers who are peacekeepers.
The launch of photographic and multimedia exhibitions on the work of UN peacekeepers.
The events take place in places such as the UN headquarters in New York in the United States, as well as Vienna, Australia, and other locations worldwide.
Public Life
The International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers is not a public holiday.
Background
The UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) was founded on May 29, 1948. UNTSO’s task was to assist peacekeepers to observe and maintain a cease-fire. This cease-fire marked the end of the hostilities between Israel and the Arab League forces. The hostilities started after the end of the British Mandate of Palestine on May 14, 1948. On December 11, 2002, the UN General assembly designated May 29 as the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers. The day was first observed on May 29, 2003.
The International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers is a tribute to people who serve or have served in UN peacekeeping operations. The peacekeepers are honored for their high level of professionalism, dedication and courage. People who died for peace are also remembered.
Symbols
UN Peacekeepers are usually clearly recognizable. They often display the UN flag and the letters “UN” on their clothing, equipment and vehicles. They also wear hats, helmets or other clothing with UN colors.
A galaxy in the midst of a merger isn’t forming stars, even though it could. Astronomers think the galaxy’s central black hole might be the reason why.
Watch the Saturn-Mars-Antares triangle change shape as the planets shift in the sky. With the last-quarter Moon rising late on Sunday, the skies are perfect for some deep-sky hunting.
Antares and Betelgeuse may be colossal stars, but we take it to the next level of stellar monstrosity with a visit to UY Scuti, a star that makes our Sun seem no bigger than a pinpoint.
May 23 is the United Nations’ (UN) International Day to End Obstetric Fistula, which promotes action towards treating and preventing obstetric fistula, a condition that affects many girls and women in developing countries.
Celebrate the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula
Fundraisers, media announcements and mobile van campaigns driven by health professionals are a few of many events and activities that promote the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula.
Public Life
The International Day to End Obstetric Fistula is a global observance and not a public holiday.
About the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula
Obstetric fistula is a hole in the birth canal caused by prolonged labor without prompt medical intervention, such as a Caesarean section. An estimated 2 to 3 million women and girls in developing countries are living with obstetric fistula.
In 2003 the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and its partners launched the global Campaign to End Fistula, a collaborative initiative to prevent fistula and restore the health of those affected by the condition. In 2012, the UN announced that it would observe International Day to End Obstetric Fistula on May 23 each year, starting on 2013.
On May 22, 1992, the text of the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted by the of the United Nations at a conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Since 2001, the International Day for Biological Diversity is celebrated each year on the anniversary of this date.
A wide range of events are organized globally to increase the understanding of the important role of biodiversity in our future. Celebrations are organized by: the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which forms part of the United Nations Environmental Programme; many national governments; and a range of non-governmental organizations.
Activities include:
Translating booklets, leaflets and other educational resources into local languages.
Distributing information on biodiversity via schools, colleges, universities, newspapers, radio and television.
Exhibitions and seminars for students, professionals and the general public.
Showings of movies on environmental issues.
Presentations of programs to preserve endangered species or habitats.
Planting trees and other plants that help prevent erosion.
Politicians may also give speeches on local environmental issues and other events may include competitions for children and young people to take photographs or create artwork centered on the annual theme of the day.
Public Life
The International Day for Biological Diversity is an observance and not a public holiday.
Background
In 1992 state and government leaders agreed on a strategy for sustainable development at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also known as “The Earth Summit”, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Sustainable development is a way to meet the needs of people all over the world and ensuring that planet earth remains healthy and viable for future generations. One of the most important agreements reached during the Earth Summit was the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The Convention on Biological Diversity came into force on December 29, 1993, and each anniversary of this date was designated the International Day for Biological Diversity. From 2001 onwards the date of this celebration was moved to May 22 due to the number of holidays that fell in late December. On this date in 1992, the text of the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted at a United Nations at a conference in Nairobi, Kenya.
Each year, the International Day for Biodiversity focuses on a particular theme. Recently, the themes have been: Biodiversity and Poverty Alleviation (2003); Biodiversity: Food, Water and Health for All (2004); Biodiversity: Life Insurance for our Changing World (2005); Protect Biodiversity in Drylands (2006); and Biodiversity and Climate Change (2007); and Biodiversity and Agriculture (2008).
Symbols
The International Day for Biological Diversity is part of a series of activities to focus attention on the Convention on Biological Diversity. The symbol of this convention is a stylized image of a twig or branch with three green leaves. Depending on the background, the leaves may be just outlines or green blocks. Each year a piece of artwork is commissioned to reflect the theme. Details of the artwork are used as symbols for different aspects of the International Day for Biological Diversity.
2016 Theme: “Mainstreaming Biodiversity; Sustaining People and their Livelihoods”
MORLEY SAFER, LONGTIME NEWSMAN OF “60 MINUTES” AND VIETNAM WAR REPORTING FAME
MAY 19, 2016
Morley Safer
CBS News
Morley Safer, the CBS newsman who changed war reporting forever when he showed U.S. Marines burning the huts of Vietnamese villagers and went on to become the iconic 60 Minutes correspondent whose stylish stories on America’s most-watched news program made him one of television’s most enduring stars, died today in Manhattan. He was 84. He had homes in Manhattan and Chester, Conn.
Safer was in declining health when he announced his retirement last week; CBS News broadcast a long-planned special hour to honor the occasion on Sunday May 15 that he watched in his home.
Newsmakers
Morley Safer: A Reporter’s Life
A look back at longtime CBS newsman Morley Safer’s career which spanned seven decades, unmatched for its impact, scope and style
A huge presence on 60 Minutes for 46 years — Safer enjoyed the longest run anyone ever had on primetime network television. Though he cut back a decade ago, he still appeared regularly until recently, captivating audiences with his signature stories on art, science and culture. A dashing figure in his checked shirt, polka dot tie and pocket square, Morley Safer — even his name had panache — was in his true element playing pool with Jackie Gleason, delivering one of his elegant essays aboard the Orient Express or riffing on Anna Wintour, but he also asked the tough questions and did the big stories. In 2011, over 18.5 million people watched him ask Ruth Madoff how she could not have known her husband Bernard was running a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme. The interview was headline news and water cooler talk for days.
“This is a very sad day for all of us at 60 Minutes and CBS News. Morley was a fixture, one of our pillars, and an inspiration in many ways.”
In some of his later 60 Minutes pieces, Safer profiled the cartoonists of The New Yorker, interviewed the founder and staff of Wikipedia and reported on a billion-dollar art trove discovered in a Munich apartment. In his last story broadcast on March 13, he profiled the visionary architect Bjarke Ingels.
Morley Safer, 1931-2016
60 Minutes Overtime takes a look back at a few memorable moments from longtime CBS newsman Morley Safer’s career
“Morley was one of the most important journalists in any medium, ever,” said CBS Chairman and CEO, Leslie Moonves. “He broke ground in war reporting and made a name that will forever be synonymous with 60 Minutes. He was also a gentleman, a scholar, a great raconteur – all of those things and much more to generations of colleagues, his legion of friends, and his family, to whom all of us at CBS offer our sincerest condolences over the loss of one of CBS’ and journalism’s greatest treasures.”
“This is a very sad day for all of us at 60 Minutes and CBS News. Morley was a fixture, one of our pillars, and an inspiration in many ways. He was a master storyteller, a gentleman and a wonderful friend. We will miss him very much,” said Jeff Fager, the executive producer of 60 Minutes and Safer’s close friend and one-time 60 Minutes producer.
CBS News President David Rhodes said, “Morley Safer helped create the CBS News we know today. No correspondent had more extraordinary range, from war reporting to coverage of every aspect of modern culture. His writing alone defined original reporting. Everyone at CBS News will sorely miss Morley.”
Safer was a familiar reporter to millions when he replaced Harry Reasoner on 60 Minutes in 1970. A much-honored foreign correspondent, Safer was the first U.S. network newsman to film a report inside Communist China. He appeared regularly on the CBS Evening News from all over the world, especially Vietnam, where his controversial reporting earned him peer praise and government condemnation.
“Morley Safer helped create the CBS News we know today. No correspondent had more extraordinary range, from war reporting to coverage of every aspect of modern culture.”
Safer’s piece from the Vietnamese hamlet of Cam Ne in August of 1965 showing U.S. Marines burning the villagers’ thatched huts was cited by New York University as one of the 20th century’s best pieces of American journalism. Some believe this report freed other journalists to stop censoring themselves and tell the raw truth about war. The controversial report on the “CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite” earned Safer a George Polk award and angered President Lyndon Johnson so much, he reportedly called CBS President Frank Stanton and said, “Your boys shat on the American flag yesterday.” Some Marines are said to have threatened Safer, but others thanked him for exposing a cruel tactic. Safer said that the pentagon treated him with contempt for the rest of his life.
He spent three tours (1964-’66) as head of the CBS Saigon bureau. His helicopter was shot down in a 1965 battle, after which Safer continued to report under fire. In 1990, he penned a memoir of his Vietnam experience, “Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam” (Random House), in which he goes back to reminisce and to interview the enemy’s veterans.
When he joined Mike Wallace at the beginning of 60 Minutes’ third season, they toiled to put stories on the air for a program that dodged cancellation each season. But their work was immediately recognized with an Emmy for Safer’s 1971 investigation of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that began America’s war in Vietnam. The two pressed on for five years, moving the broadcast from the bottom fourth to the middle of the rankings. Then in August 1975, with a new Sunday evening timeslot, Safer put 60 Minutes on the national stage. Interviewing Betty Ford, the first lady shocked many Americans by saying she would think it normal if her 18-year-old daughter were having sex. The historic sit-down also included frank talk about pot and abortion.
By 1978, the broadcast was in Nielsen’s Top 10. Safer’s eloquent, sometimes quirky features balanced out the program’s “gotcha” interviews and investigations, perfecting the news magazine’s recipe. It became the number-one program for the 1979-’80 season – a crown it won five times. 60 Minutes remained in the top 10 for an unprecedented 23 straight seasons.
It was another Safer story that would become one of the program’s most honored and important. “Lenell Geter’s in Jail,” about a young black man serving life for armed robbery in Texas, overturned Geter’s conviction 10 days after the December 1983 segment exposed a sloppy rush to injustice. Safer and 60 Minutes were honored with the industry’s highest accolades: the Peabody, Emmy and duPont-Columbia University awards. 60 Minutes founder Don Hewitt often pointed to the story as the program’s finest work.
60 Minutes Overtime
Morley Safer’s Pick: Lenell Geter’s in Jail
Long before there was DNA testing, how did a convicted man escape a life sentence?
Safer hit more journalistic home runs, but sought out the odd stories that piqued his curiosity. The offbeat tales were more suited to his raconteur style and cultural sensibility. He found esoteric subjects all over the world and here in the U.S., ranging from a tiny Pacific island nation economically dependent on guano to the strange choice of tango dancing as a national hobby for the shy people of Finland to the strange yet harmonious stew of cowboys and artists in the Texas town of Marfa — all narrated in his drolly delivered and precise prose. His conversational wit with his subjects was just as sharp as his written word. In a profile of the prim Martha Stewart, a smirking Safer passed her livestock pen and said to the domestic diva, “Your barnyard? It’s remarkably odor-free.”
Some of these features had national impact, however, like his November 1991 report, “The French Paradox,” which connected red wine consumption to lower incidents of heart disease among the free-eating French. Wine merchants say this report was single-handedly responsible for starting the red wine boom in America. His 1993 segment “Yes, But is it Art?” enraged the modern art community when it criticized expensive, contemporary installations featuring household items like toilets and vacuums. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City may have held a grudge; years later, it refused to allow Safer onto its premises to review a Jackson Pollock retrospective for CBS Sunday Morning.
Safer’s life was a work of art into which 60 Minutes fit seamlessly. He vacationed in Europe, often combining field trips for his stories. He made a regular pilgrimage to The American Academy in Rome to hone his painting skills, a hobby he began from an early age. He mounted a small exhibition of his paintings in 1985. He also had a special affinity for cars and did 60 Minutes segments on England’s Rolls Royce and Italy’s legendary Lamborghini. He owned a silver 1985 Ferrari convertible, which he had raced occasionally and also owned a Bentley when he lived in London, bought with his winnings from a card game.
Other highlights from Safer’s 60 Minutes work include a poignant segment in 1978 called “The Music of Auschwitz,” about an inmate who played in an orchestra to avoid the Nazi gas chambers; his 1979 profile of Katharine Hepburn; “The Beeb,” a 1985 Emmy-winning take on BBC Radio; “The Enemy,” the 1989 story for which Safer returned to Vietnam; and in 1979, “Marva,” about Chicago teacher Marva Collins, whose alternative school for disadvantaged kids proved such students could excel. Safer’s follow-up on “Marva” in 1996, in which he debunked a subsequent book that claimed Collins’ students would not succeed in the long run, earned him his fourth duPont-Columbia University award.
In addition to the four duPonts, Safer won every major award, including the Paul White Award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association in 1966 when he was only 35 — an award usually given for lifetime achievement. The other awards given to Safer over his long career include three Peabody awards, three Overseas Press Club awards, two George Polk Memorial awards, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism first prize for domestic television, the Fred Friendly First Amendment award, 12 Emmys and a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Government.
CBS News hired the Canadian-born Safer in 1964 in London, where he was a correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He got the job in an odd turn of events. One of Safer’s CBC colleagues seeking a job with CBS sent a demo tape of a roundtable he anchored that included Safer. CBS news executives liked Safer better and gave him a job in the London Bureau. The young correspondent took over his new job behind the desk once occupied by another CBS legend, the late Edward R. Murrow. After a year, he was asked to open the Saigon Bureau to report on the simmering conflict in Vietnam. He was then named bureau chief in London in 1967 and reported on a variety of foreign stories beyond Britain, many of them risky assignments, including the Nigerian-Biafran War, the Middle East conflict and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.
During this period he also filmed the historic CBS News Special Report “Morley Safer’s Red China Diary” (August 1967), the first broadcast by a U.S. network news team from inside Communist China. Safer’s Canadian citizenship helped get him into the country posing as a tourist interested in archeology. He and his cameraman, John Peters, were able to film the everyday lives of Chinese with a home movie camera. In a close call, suspicious authorities took Safer and Peters to meet an archeologist, who tested his knowledge. Safer knew enough about China’s archeological periods to avoid arrest.
Safer’s reporting and writing also appeared on the CBS News documentary series, “CBS Reports.” He had a regular feature on CBS Radio, “Morley Safer’s Journal,” that ran in 1970s. In May 1994, he hosted “One for the Road: A Conversation with Charles Kuralt and Morley Safer,” a CBS News special marking Kuralt’s retirement.
Safer was born Nov. 8, 1931 in Toronto and eventually became an American citizen, holding a dual citizenship. Telling MacLeans he felt “stateless,” he believed this status was an advantage. “I bring a different perspective and I have no vested interests,” he told the magazine in 1998.
Growing up, he was influenced by the writing of Ernest Hemingway and decided he would be a foreign correspondent. He attended the University of Western Ontario for only a few weeks when he dropped out to begin writing for newspapers. He first wrote for the rural Woodstock Sentinel-Review before landing a job with the much larger London (Ontario) Free-Press. He then went on to England with the help of the Commonwealth Press Union, which promised to place him in a job there. After a short stint on the Oxford Mail and Times, Reuters hired Safer in London in 1955. When he returned late that year, he found work as an editor and reporter in the Toronto headquarters of the CBC. He was chosen to produce “CBC News Magazine” in 1956, on which he also occasionally appeared . His first on-camera work was on assignment for the CBC covering the Suez Crisis in November 1956.
The CBC sent him back to London in 1961, from which he covered major stories in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, including the war for Algerian Independence, until he joined CBS. He was the only Western correspondent in East Berlin the night the Communists began building the Berlin Wall in August 1961.
Safer was asked to characterize his legacy as a journalist in a November 2000 interview with the American Archive of Television. “I have a pretty solid body of work that emphasized the words, emphasized ideas and the craft of writing for this medium. It’s not literary, I wouldn’t presume to suggest that. But I think you can elevate it a little bit sometimes with the most important part of the medium, which is what people are saying — whether they’re the people being interviewed or the guy who’s telling the story. It’s not literature, but it can be very classy journalism.”
He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Jane, one daughter, Sarah Bakal, her husband, Alexander Bakal, three grandchildren, a sister, and brother, both of Toronto.
Funeral arrangements are private. A memorial service will be announced at a later date.
Alan Young as Wilbur Post with the star of “Mister Ed,” which ran from 1961 to 1966 on CBS.Credit CBS, via Photofest
Alan Young, a comedian and veteran supporting actor who found wide fame as an unlikely sort of second fiddle — the hapless straight man to a talking horse in the 1960s sitcom “Mister Ed” — died on Thursday in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 96.
His publicist, Jaime Larkin, said he died at the Motion Picture & Television Home, where he had been living for four years.
Mr. Young had been a popular radio and television personality and had appeared in several films, including “Tom Thumb” (1958) and “The Time Machine” (1960), when, in his early 40s, he landed the role of Wilbur Post, the bumbling, well-meaning architect who owned a loquacious, fun-loving horse named Mr. Ed.
“Mister Ed” became a hit, running from 1961 to 1966 on CBS. The episodes usually revolved around Wilbur’s clumsy attempts to undo Ed’s mischief, situations made more difficult by the fact that Ed would speak only to Wilbur.
Mr. Young had a mischievous streak himself: Many years after the fact, he said he had started the rumor that the crew got Ed to “talk” by coating his mouth with peanut butter. Actually, the crew would place a piece of nylon in Ed’s mouth; the horse would then try to remove it by moving his lips, giving the illusion that he was talking when the voice of Allan Lane, a star of B westerns, was added. (Mr. Lane died in 1973).
Mr. Young made his movie debut in “Margie,” a 1946 high school comedy set in the flapper era. He played the village piper in “Tom Thumb,” and in the 1960 film adaptation of H. G. Wells’s “The Time Machine” he played both David Filby, a friend of the time traveler (Rod Taylor), and Filby’s son as a grown man. Mr. Young also had a cameo role, again as Filby, in the 2002 remake of the film.
Early in his film career Mr. Young, a native of England, was often cast in what he called “all-American” supporting roles, for which he had to lose his accent. One of his few leading roles was as the title character in the 1952 musical “Aaron Slick From Punkin Crick,” opposite Dinah Shore.
He was born Angus Young in North Shields, England, on Nov. 19, 1919. His family moved to Edinburgh when he was a toddler and then to Canada when he was about 6. He made his radio debut at 13, and by the time he was 17 he was both a writer and a performer on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation show.
Mr. Young’s radio career took off in 1944 with “The Alan Young Show”; originally a summer replacement for Eddie Cantor, it proved so popular that it remained on the air for five years. After the show was canceled in 1949, he hit the theater circuit, playing the bagpipes and doing stand-up comedy.
In 1950 he brought “The Alan Young Show” to TV. It remained on the air until 1953. In 1951 it won the Emmy Award for best variety show, and Mr. Young won for best actor. (Sketch actors were included in that category at the time.)
Throughout the ’50s he appeared in numerous TV roles and on the variety shows of Steve Allen, Ed Sullivan, Dinah Shore and others. In later decades he made guest appearances on dozens of series, including “Death Valley Days,” “The Love Boat,” “Coach” and “ER.”
His last film was “Em & Me” (2004), an independent feature in which he played an elderly man traveling cross-country to visit his ex-wife’s grave.
Mr. Young was also a frequently heard voice in animated movies like “The Great Mouse Detective” and television cartoon series like “The Ren & Stimpy Show” and “The Smurfs.” He was the voice of Scrooge McDuck in several Disney projects.
He published two autobiographies: “Mister Ed and Me” (with Bill Burt) in 1995 and “There’s No Business Like Show Business … Was” (2006), an account of his career and life in Hollywood.
Mr. Young’s first marriage, to Mary Ann Grimes, with whom he had two children, ended in divorce. He married Virginia McCurdy, a singer, in 1948 and had two children with her; she died in 2011. His family declined to release information about survivors, his publicist said.
A poet’s poet and a raconteur, Guy Clark filled his country-folk songs with eternal truths that made him one of the most respected singer-songwriters of his generation.
The Texas native died Tuesday in Nashville after a long illness, according to a statement from his publicist. He was 74.
Although he never found widespread fame, Clark recorded albums for almost 40 years, wrote hit songs for other artists and was revered by the Nashville music community for his songcraft and generosity of spirit. His best-known songs, such as “L.A. Freeway” and “Desperados Waiting For A Train,” were evocative tales of ramblers and dreamers, inspired by his own life.
Clark’s songs were recorded by a who’s who of country and Americana music, including Johnny Cash, Ricky Skaggs, Emmylou Harris, Brad Paisley, Alan Jackson, George Strait, Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Chesney and many others.
Guy Clark performs at the Paradiso in 1992 in Amsterdam,
“Oh Lord, just heard Guy Clark passed away. He was a huge influence on me, and an amazing writer. God bless his soul. What a life,” Paisley said on Twitter.
“Travel safe, old friend. I would not be the songwriter I am if I hadn’t sat at your table and learned from a master,” added singer Roseanne Cash, also on Twitter.
Born in the dusty west Texas town of Monahans on November 6, 1941, Clark flirted with college and the Peace Corps before opening a guitar-repair shop in Houston. He spent his spare time playing coffee shops and nightclubs, where he joined a bluegrass band and befriended such fellow songwriters as Townes Van Zandt and Jerry Jeff Walker.
As a young man, he moved to Los Angeles, seeking fame and fortune. But he didn’t stay long, moving with his wife Susanna to Nashville in 1971. After he left California, he wrote the song “L.A. Freeway” — later recorded by many other artists — which included the line, “If I can just get off of this L.A. freeway without getting killed or caught.”
He later said it took him years after O.J. Simpson’s famous slow-speed Bronco chase before he could sing that line without breaking into laughter.
Clark released his debut album, “Old No. 1,” for RCA Records in 1975 and scored a No. 1 country hit in 1982 with Ricky Skaggs’s take on “Heartbroke.” He recorded 13 albums and toured consistently over the next three decades, sometimes with such fellow artists as Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt.
“It’s what I enjoy,” he once said of songwriting. “It gets harder, all the time. It doesn’t fall out of the sky, you know. But I have joy doing the work, I enjoy the creative process. I write and build guitars in the same space, and I find that one is right brain and one is left brain, and they kind of feed off of one another. But, I don’t know. It’s just a way to while away the time until you die.”
Despite a gruff demeanor, Clark was considered one of country music’s nicest men. He enjoyed helping young musicians and was perpetually looking for artists who might record a song written by one of his friends.
Clark was unpretentious in the extreme — a blue jeans type of guy — with down-home values summed up in songs like, “Stuff That Works,” with its opening line: “I got an old blue shirt and it suits me just fine / I like the way it feels so I wear it all the time.”
Clark won his first and only Grammy late in life in 2014, for a folk album called “My Favorite Picture of You.” The album title referred to a snapshot of his wife, Susanna, who had died two years earlier.
World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development is annually held on May 21 to help people learn about the importance of cultural diversity and harmony.
Various events are organized to increase the understanding of issues around cultural diversity and development among governments, non-governmental organizations and the public. Many of these include presentations on the progress of implementing the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity.
Events include:
Seminars for professionals.
Educational programs for children and young adolescents.
The launch of collaborations between official agencies and ethnic groups.
Exhibitions to help people understand the history of various cultural groups and the influence on their own identities.
Celebrations to create greater awareness of cultural values and the need to preserve them.
The World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development tends to be marked in countries that embraced their varied cultural history and acknowledged the importance of embracing it.
Public Life
The World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development is an observance and not a public holiday.
Background
The General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity in Paris, France, on November 2, 2001. It was the 249th resolution adopted at the 57th session of the United Nations General Conference. Although the declaration was the culmination of years of work, it was adopted in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. This reaffirmed the need for intercultural dialogue to prevent segregation and fundamentalism.
The year 2002 was the United Nations Year for Cultural Heritage. At the end of that year, on December 20, 2002, the General Assembly of the United Nations declared May 21 to be the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development. The General Assembly emphasized links between the protection of cultural diversity and the importance of dialogue between civilizations in the modern world. The World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development was first observed in 2003.
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 