WORLD NO-TOBACCO DAY [WHO]: MAY 31, 2017

World No Tobacco Day

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 focuses on informing people about health problems associated with tobacco use.

©iStockphoto.com/Anneke Schram

What Do People Do?

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.

2017 Theme: “Tobacco – A Threat to Development”

World No Tobacco Day Observances

 

Weekday	Date	Year	Name	Holiday Type
Mon	May 31	2010	World No Tobacco Day	United Nations observance
Tue	May 31	2011	World No Tobacco Day	United Nations observance
Thu	May 31	2012	World No Tobacco Day	United Nations observance
Fri	May 31	2013	World No Tobacco Day	United Nations observance
Sat	May 31	2014	World No Tobacco Day	United Nations observance
Sun	May 31	2015	World No Tobacco Day	United Nations observance
Tue	May 31	2016	World No Tobacco Day	United Nations observance
Wed	May 31	2017	World No Tobacco Day	United Nations observance
Thu	May 31	2018	World No Tobacco Day	United Nations observance
Fri	May 31	2019	World No Tobacco Day	United Nations observance
Sun	May 31	2020	World No Tobacco Day	United Nations observance

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPERS: MAY 29, 2017

International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers

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 UN workers are remembered for their work in peacekeeping operations.

©iStockphoto.com/ Sean_Warren

What Do People Do?

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.

International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers Observances

 

Weekday	Date	Year	Name	Holiday Type
Sat	May 29	2010	International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers	United Nations observance
Sun	May 29	2011	International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers	United Nations observance
Tue	May 29	2012	International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers	United Nations observance
Wed	May 29	2013	International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers	United Nations observance
Thu	May 29	2014	International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers	United Nations observance
Fri	May 29	2015	International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers	United Nations observance
Sun	May 29	2016	International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers	United Nations observance
Mon	May 29	2017	International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers	United Nations observance
Tue	May 29	2018	International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers	United Nations observance
Wed	May 29	2019	International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers	United Nations observance
Fri	May 29	2020	International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers	United Nations observance

IN REMEMBRANCE: 5-28-2017

BARBARA SMITH CONRAD, SINGER AT CENTER OF INTEGRATION

By WILLIAM GRIMES

MAY 24, 2017

Barbara Smith Conrad at her home in Manhattan in 2011. Credit Robert Caplin for The New York Times

In spring 1957, two weeks before the opening of Henry Purcell’s opera “Dido and Aeneas” at the University of Texas at Austin, Barbara Smith, a 19-year-old mezzo-soprano, received some bad news. She would not be appearing as Dido, a role she had been rehearsing for months.

Ms. Smith was black. The singer cast as Aeneas was white. In the South, then emerging only slowly from strict segregation, this was a problem, even though the two principal characters do not kiss, embrace or even touch.

Joe Chapman, a Democrat in the State Legislature from Ms. Smith’s own district in the pine country of Northeast Texas, had taken the matter up with Logan Wilson, the university’s president. During their conversation, Mr. Chapman had told him that the opera’s casting might be bad publicity for the school, especially since the Legislature was preparing to vote on an appropriations bill.

Three days before the opera was scheduled to open, The Houston Post broke the story, under the headline “Negro Girl Out of UT Opera Cast.” The Daily Texan, the student newspaper, followed with an article the next day. Its reporter asked Mr. Chapman, a former Texas railroad commissioner, if he believed that the Legislature had the right to dictate policy to the university.

“There’s no question about it,” Mr. Chapman said.

In a statement, the university said that it had made the casting change “to ensure Miss Smith’s well-being and to squelch any possibility that her appearance would precipitate a cut in the university’s appropriations.”

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More than 100 students rose in protest. Eight state legislators expressed indignation. A petition circulated, gathering 1,500 signatures. Mr. Chapman was hanged in effigy from a balcony in the State Capitol.

Ms. Conrad just before entering the University of Texas in 1956. Credit Ward Photo, via Dolph Briscoe Center for American History

Ms. Smith tried to smooth matters over. “After the first shock and hurt had passed,” she told The Daily Texan, “I began to realize that the ultimate success of integration at the university is much more important than my appearance in the opera.”

As wire services and Time magazine picked up the story, national figures spoke out, including Sidney Poitier and Eleanor Roosevelt. The singer Harry Belafonte stepped forward, offering to pay for Ms. Smith’s musical education at any school in the world.

She chose to remain at Texas and, after earning her music degree in 1959, went on to a successful operatic career under the name Barbara Smith Conrad, appearing at major opera houses around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and performing in concert with leading symphony orchestras.

“My heart wanted to go to Fisk,” Ms. Conrad told The New York Times in 2011, referring to the historically black university in Nashville. “But you didn’t run away if your staying could make a difference — it could encourage other black kids. Mostly, it was a matter of pride.”

Ms. Conrad died on Monday in Edison, N.J. She was 79. The cause has not yet been determined, said Bettye Neal, a cousin. Ms. Conrad had advanced Alzheimer’s disease.

Barbara Louise Smith was born on Aug. 11, 1937, in Atlanta, Tex., south of Texarkana. Growing up, she divided her time between Queen City, where she attended school, and the family house in Center Point, an all-black town near Pittsburg, Tex., that had been founded by freed slaves, among them her forebears. It no longer exists.

Both her parents were college-educated teachers. Her mother was the former Jerrie Lee Cash. Her father, Conrad, served in the Army during World War II and the Korean War. When Barbara began her singing career and applied for an Actors Equity card, she took his name to avoid confusion with another Equity member with the same first, middle and last name.

Ms. Conrad as Amneris in the Cincinnati Opera’s production of “Aida” in 1976. Credit via University of Texas at Austin

She grew up singing in the town’s Baptist choir and at home, where an older brother accompanied her on the piano. She idolized Marian Anderson, the black contralto and civil rights activist, whom she later played on television in the 1977 mini-series “Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years.”

In 1956, she became one of 104 black undergraduates admitted to the University of Texas for the first time. (The first black graduate students had been admitted in 1950.) “I didn’t grow up around theaters or operas or concert halls,” she told The Austin American-Statesman in 2009. “I just wanted to be a singer. I didn’t know the specifics.”

In her sophomore year, a member of the music faculty heard her singing in a practice room and invited her to audition for the part of Dido. She did, successfully.

As word spread, she began receiving threatening phone calls. Two men attacked her as she walked home one evening to her off-campus housing. “They meant to scare me,” she told The American-Statesman. “They did. But I wasn’t going to let go of the role.”

The prize was wrested from her after an anonymous employee at the university complained to Jerry Sadler, a Democratic legislator from Percilla. At a weekly breakfast attended by 40 legislators from East Texas, including Mr. Chapman, Mr. Sadler railed against the mixed-race casting.

“I mentioned appropriations and as a matter of fact voted against those for the university because they have Negro undergraduates,” he later told The Houston Post. “Two hours after I spoke, Chapman called to tell me that Wilson said the Negro girl would not be in the cast.”

After graduating, Ms. Smith, as she was still known, went to New York, where Mr. Belafonte introduced her to his friends in the arts. Mrs. Roosevelt paid her fare.

In 1965, she appeared as Bess in the New York City Opera’s production of “Porgy and Bess,” a work she revisited in 1985, when she sang the role of Maria at the Metropolitan Opera, with Grace Bumbry as Bess and Simon Estes as Porgy.

She performed mezzo roles with several opera companies in the 1960s and ’70s. After a year with the Vienna State Opera in 1981, she signed a contract with the Met, where she sang for the next seven years. She made her debut as Annina, in Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier,” with Tatiana Troyanos, Kiri Te Kanawa and Kurt Moll, who died in March. She gave her final performance at the Met as Amneris in Verdi’s “Aida,” with Aprile Millo and Plácido Domingo in 1989.

She also sang from the mezzo repertoire with leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and the London, Boston, Cleveland and Detroit symphonies. She was a founder and the vocal director of the Wagner Theater Program at the Manhattan School of Music, which trained students for Wagnerian roles.

In the 1980s, the University of Texas approached Ms. Conrad to make amends, naming her a distinguished alumna in 1985 and a year later creating a scholarship in her name. The university’s Dolph Briscoe Center for American History later produced a documentary about her life, “When I Rise,” which was broadcast on PBS in 2011.

“She was someone who needed apologizing to, and no one had done it,” Don Carleton, the executive director of the Briscoe Center, said in a telephone interview. Ms. Conrad taught master classes at the school, for which she made several promotional ads, and donated her papers to its library.

Ms. Conrad, whose marriage ended in divorce, leaves no immediate survivors.

In 2009, the Texas Legislature passed a resolution honoring Ms. Conrad for her achievements. In return, she gave a performance of “Amazing Grace” in the rotunda of the Capitol.

“She believed in forgiveness and reconciliation,” Dr. Carleton said. “She wanted to be treated as someone who accomplished things. She did not regard being a victim as an accomplishment.”

Correction: May 26, 2017
An obituary on Thursday about the opera singer Barbara Smith Conrad misstated the relationship between Ms. Conrad and Bettye Neal, who confirmed her death. Ms. Neal is Ms. Conrad’s cousin, not her niece.SOURCE

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GREGG ALLMAN, INFLUENTIAL FORCE BEHIND THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND

By BILL FRISKICS-WARREN

MAY 27, 2017

From left, Duane Allman, Dickey Betts, Gregg Allman, Jai Johanny Johanson, Berry Oakley and Butch Trucks in 1969. Credit Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Gregg Allman, a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, the incendiary group that inspired and gave shape to both the Southern rock and jam-band movements, died on Saturday at his home in Savannah, Ga. He was 69.

His publicist, Ken Weinstein, said the cause was complications of liver cancer.

The band’s lead singer and keyboardist, Mr. Allman was one of the principal architects of a taut, improvisatory fusion of blues, jazz, country and rock that — streamlined by inheritors like Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Marshall Tucker Band — became the Southern rock of the 1970s.

[ Listen to 10 definitive Gregg Allman songs ]

The group, which originally featured Mr. Allman’s older brother, Duane, on lead and slide guitar, was also a precursor to a generation of popular jam bands, like Widespread Panic and Phish, whose music features labyrinthine instrumental exchanges.

Mr. Allman’s percussive Hammond B-3 organ playing helped anchor the Allman Brothers’ rhythm section and provided a chuffing counterpoint to the often heated musical interplay between his brother and the band’s other lead guitarist, Dickey Betts.

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Gregg Allman’s vocals, by turns squalling and brooding, took their cue from the anguished emoting of down-home blues singers like Elmore James, as well as from more sophisticated ones like Bobby Bland. Foremost among Mr. Allman’s influences as a vocalist, though, was the Mississippi-born blues and soul singer and guitarist known as Little Milton.

In 1977, Mr. Allman and the singer Cher, who were then married, performed in Brussels on tour for their album, “Two the Hard Way.” The project was poorly received by critics and the record-buying public alike. Credit Bettmann

“‘Little Milton’ Campbell had the strongest set of pipes I ever heard on a human being,” Mr. Allman wrote in his autobiography, “My Cross to Bear,” written with Alan Light (2012). “That man inspired me all my life to get my voice crisper, get my diaphragm harder, use less air and just spit it out. He taught me to be absolutely sure of every note you hit, and to hit it solid.”

The band’s main songwriter early on, Mr. Allman contributed expansive, emotionally fraught compositions like “Dreams” and “Whipping Post”to the Allman Brothers repertoire. Both songs became staples of their epic live shows; a cathartic 22-minute version of “Whipping Post” was a highlight of their acclaimed 1971 live album, “At Fillmore East.”

More concise originals like “Midnight Rider” and “Melissa,” as well as Mr. Allman’s renditions of blues classics like “Statesboro Blues” and “Done Somebody Wrong,” revealed his singular affinity with the black Southern musical vernacular.

Mr. Allman also enjoyed an enduring, if intermittent, career as a solo artist, both while a member of the Allman Brothers Band and during periods when he was away from the group. His recordings under his own name were typically more subdued, more akin to soulful singer-songwriter rock, than his molten performances with the Allmans.

A remake of “Midnight Rider” from “Laid Back,” his first solo album, reached the pop Top 20 in 1973. “Laid Back” also featured a cover of “These Days,” an elegiac ballad written by Jackson Browne, who on occasion roomed with Mr. Allman while he was living in Los Angeles in the 1960s.

“Low Country Blues,”Mr. Allman’s sixth studio recording as a solo artist, was nominated for a Grammy Award for best blues album in 2011. Produced by T Bone Burnett, it consisted largely of interpretations of blues standards made popular by performers like Junior Wells and Muddy Waters.

Gregg Allman and the Allman Brothers Band at the Beacon Theater in New York in 2011. Credit Chad Batka for The New York Times

His final studio album, “Southern Blood,” produced by Don Was, was scheduled to be released this year. All his 2017 tour dates, including 10 nights at City Winery in New York in July, were canceled in mid-March.

In 1977, Mr. Allman and the singer Cher, to whom he was married at the time, released the album “Two the Hard Way.” (They were billed on the cover as Allman and Woman.) The project was poorly received by critics and the record-buying public alike.

Mr. Allman struggled for years with alcohol, heroin and other drugs, and entered treatment for them numerous times, before embarking on a path of recovery in the mid-1990s. He was later found to have hepatitis C and received a liver transplant in 2010.

As a member of the Allman Brothers Band, Mr. Allman was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. He was admitted to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2006 and, with the Allman Brothers, received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 2012.

Gregory LeNoir Allman was born on Dec. 8, 1947, in Nashville. He and his older brother were raised by their mother, the former Geraldine Alice Robbins, after their father, Willis Turner Allman, a combat veteran of World War II, was murdered by a hitchhiker in 1949.

The brothers attended Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tenn., until their mother, who was working as an accountant, moved the family to Daytona Beach, Fla., in 1959. Gregg Allman’s early aspiration was to become a dentist.

The band’s lead singer and keyboardist, Mr. Allman — performing here in Macon, Ga., in 1978 — also enjoyed an enduring, if intermittent, career as a solo artist. Credit Jerome McClendon/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated Press

He took up the guitar before Duane did, but he was a keyboardist and vocalist by the time the two worked together in local bands while they were in high school. As the Allman Joys, they played clubs in the South and recorded a single, a version of Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful.”

The brothers moved to Los Angeles in the late ’60s and formed a group called the Hour Glass, which released a pair of psychedelic-leaning pop albums for Liberty Records. Neither was successful.

In 1968, everyone in the band, except for Gregg, moved back to Florida after being released from their recording contract. He stayed behind when executives at Liberty decided he had commercial potential.

Duane joined a Jacksonville band, called the 31st of February, led by the future Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks. (Mr. Trucks died in January at 69.)

Duane also worked as a session guitarist in Muscle Shoals, Ala., and New York, recording with Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, the saxophonist King Curtis and other artists before talking Gregg into becoming the lead singer for Mr. Trucks’s band. Gregg had by then grown disenchanted with the West Coast music scene.

The group later added the bassist Berry Oakley, the percussionist Jai Johanny Johanson (known as Jaimoe) and Mr. Betts and became the Allman Brothers Band. They released their debut album in 1969 on Capricorn Records, an Atlantic imprint based in Macon, Ga. They also toured widely and developed a devoted following with their next two albums, “Idlewild South” and “At Fillmore East.”

Mr. Allman at the Palace Theater in Stamford, Conn., in 2011. “There’s that old saying,” he said in his autobiography, “‘Fun for ages 6 to 60,’ and by God, that’s what our audience is.” Credit Chad Batka for The New York Times

On Oct. 29, 1971, just before the group achieved mainstream popularity, Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident. Mr. Oakley, the band’s bassist, died in another motorcycle crash — both accidents were in Macon — a little more than a year later.

The Allman Brothers Band continued to perform and record, for various labels and with a variety of musicians, over the next four decades, despite disbanding and regrouping at points during the 1970s and ’80s. They sold out upward of 200 shows during their annual residencies, beginning in 1989, at the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side of Manhattan before finally calling it quits after an appearance there in 2014.

Mr. Allman is survived by his wife, Shannon Allman; his sons, Michael, Devon and Elijah Blue; his daughters, Island and Layla; and three grandchildren. All of Mr. Allman’s five children except Island — each of the five has a different mother — have played music professionally.

“All My Friends: Celebrating the Songs and Voice of Gregg Allman,” an album recorded live in Atlanta that paid tribute to Mr. Allman’s enduring influence and reach, was released in 2015. It featured performances by Mr. Allman and by contemporaries and inheritors like the soul singer Sam Moore, the country star Vince Gill, Widespread Panic and the steel guitarist Robert Randolph, another jam-band favorite.

“It’s an exceptional feeling to see all those young folks at the shows,” Mr. Allman wrote in his autobiography, discussing the intergenerational appeal of the music that he and the Allmans created in the ’60s and ’70s.

“When I was a kid, I didn’t listen to Tommy Dorsey,” he continued. “There was a generational line drawn when it came to music. Kids today love Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead — all kinds of good music. They love the Allman Brothers. There’s that old saying, ‘Fun for ages 6 to 60,’ and by God, that’s what our audience is.”

SOURCE

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DINA MERRILL, ACTRESS AND PHILANTHROPIST

By ALJEAN HARMETZ

MAY 22, 2017

Dina Merrill and Larry Blyden in “What Makes Sammy Run?” Credit Photofest

Dina Merrill, the actress and heiress to two fortunes who wintered at her family’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., as a child before becoming a leading lady in movies, most often in upper-class roles, died on Monday at her home in East Hampton, N.Y. She was 93.

Her death was confirmed by her son, Stanley H. Rumbough, who said she had Lewy Body dementia.

An elegant presence in most of her 30 or so mid-20th-century movies, Ms. Merrill played the betrayed wife who loses both her husband, Laurence Harvey, and her mink coat to Elizabeth Taylor in “Butterfield 8” (1960); the chic fashion consultant who loses Glenn Ford to Shirley Jones in “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (1963); and the steadfast socialite wife of an assistant district attorney played by Burt Lancaster in “The Young Savages” (1961).

In the submarine comedy “Operation Petticoat” (1959), her stranded Navy nurse ends up married to a slick lieutenant played by Tony Curtis.

The daughter of the Wall Street broker E. F. Hutton and the cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, Ms. Merrill grew up in luxury, spending up to six months a year on the Sea Cloud, the family yacht. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were among the guests on what has been described as a “floating palace” equipped with fireplaces, marble bathrooms, a barber shop and a wine cellar.

Home during the winter was the 115-room Mar-a-Lago estate, which was bought by Donald J. Trump in 1985 and converted into a private club. (Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump slept in the same children’s suite that Ms. Merrill had used.)

As a child, born into the American aristocracy of money and high society, Ms. Merrill wished she could take the bus “like the other kids,” she said, instead of being driven to school by the family chauffeur. After she became a successful actress, she told Quest magazine, “It’s fascinating to lead someone else’s life for a while.”

But as it turned out, the “someone else” was almost always a coolly sophisticated patrician woman not that different from the real Dina Merrill. Typical of her parts, in the 1959 television version of Budd Schulberg’s “What Makes Sammy Run?” she was the glamorous daughter of a Wall Street banker.

Dina Merrill in 2002 at a Museum of Television & Radio gala in Beverly Hills. Credit Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

Although her father’s investments had earned her a million dollars by the time she became an actress, against his wishes, Ms. Merrill supported herself by modeling clothes for Vogue at $10 an hour.

“It never occurred to me to ask my father or mother to pay for something they didn’t believe in,” she said in a 1979 interview. “My ambitions were my own — not exactly the ones they had for me.”

Her father wanted her to become a lawyer and then to run for Congress. Instead, Ms. Merrill made her Broadway debut — speaking three lines — in John Van Druten’s “The Mermaids Singing” in 1945.

She was born Nedenia Marjorie Hutton on Dec. 29, 1923, in New York City and nicknamed Deenie. Her parents divorced when she was 10.

She attended George Washington University, but dropped out after a year to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. In 1946 she married Stanley M. Rumbough Jr., heir to the Colgate-Palmolive consumer products fortune, and spent much of the next decade raising their three children. By the time she got her first movie role — as a young research assistant to Katharine Hepburn in “Desk Set” (1957), with Spencer Tracy — she was over 30.

Her subsequent roles included the bored upper-class wife of an Australian sheep rancher in the Deborah Kerr movie “The Sundowners” (1960), and the alcoholic wife of an entrepreneur played by the comedian Alan King in “Just Tell Me What You Want” (1980).

She also had a thriving career as a guest star on television series, including “Bonanza,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Murder, She Wrote,” and as an actress in made-for-TV movies.

E.F. Hutton with Ms. Merrill, his daughter, on the deck of the family yacht on a vacation in Honolulu. Her mother was Marjorie Merriweather Post. Credit Bettmann/Getty

She returned to Broadway in 1975, starring as a wife whose husband is trying to drive her mad in a revival of the play “Angel Street.” In 1983 she played the manager of the Russian Ballet in a well-received Broadway revival of the Rodgers and Hart musical “On Your Toes.”

Divorced from Mr. Rumbough and married to the actor Cliff Robertson in 1966, she was partly responsible for bringing down the head of a Hollywood studio. When David Begelman, the president of Columbia Pictures, embezzled $10,000 by forging Mr. Robertson’s name to a check, no one paid much attention, Ms. Merrill said, until she called her friend Katharine Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post.

“Cliff took the telephone and told the whole story,” she recalled. “Kay put an investigative reporter on it, and then it really became public.”

With an inheritance from her parents estimated at more than $50 million, Ms. Merrill became a philanthropist. A liberal Republican, she was vice chairwoman of the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition, an advocate on women’s health issues and vice president of the New York City Mission Society. After her son David, who had diabetes, died in a boating accident at age 23 in 1973, Ms. Merrill created a yearly award for scientific excellence in his name for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

After divorcing Mr. Robertson in 1986, Ms. Merrill married Ted Hartley, a former Navy fighter pilot, actor and investment banker, who survives her. Shortly after their marriage in 1989, their company, Pavilion Communications, bought a controlling interest in RKO Pictures, but they had little success in returning that studio to its former glory.

In addition to her son and her husband, Ms. Merrill is survived by a daughter from her first marriage, Nina Rumbough Roosenburg; a stepson, Philippe Hartley; six grandchildren; four stepgrandchildren; and two stepgreat-grandchildren. Heather Robertson, her daughter with Mr. Robertson, died of cancer in 2007. Mr. Robertson died in 2011.

Ms. Merrill had some regrets about her late-blooming acting career, which had been forestalled because of her child-rearing responsibilities.

“You didn’t go to work then if you had young children,” she said in 1979. “But the 20s are very important years to an actress. If I had it to do over again today, I might continue working.”

Correction: May 24, 2017
An obituary on Tuesday about the actress Dina Merrill misstated the date of her birth in 1923. It was Dec. 29, not Dec. 9.

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.

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ROGER MOORE, WHO PLAYED JAMES BOND 007 TIMES

By ANITA GATES

MAY 23, 2017

Roger Moore in 1968. His first James Bond film was “Live and Let Die” (1973), and his last was “A View to a Kill” (1985). Credit Peter Ruck/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images

Roger Moore, the dapper British actor who brought tongue-in-cheek humor to the James Bond persona in seven films, eclipsing his television career, which had included starring roles in at least five series, died on Tuesday in Switzerland. He was 89.

The death, attributed to cancer, was confirmed in a family statement on Twitter. His family did not say where in Switzerland he had died.

Mr. Moore was the oldest Bond ever hired for films in the official series — although David Niven was in his 50s when he played Bond in the spoof “Casino Royale” — taking on the role when he was 45. (Sean Connery, who originated the film character and with whom Mr. Moore was constantly compared, was 32 when the first Bond film, “Dr. No,” was released.) Mr. Moore also had the longest run in the role, beginning in 1973 with “Live and Let Die” and winding up in 1985 with “A View to a Kill.”

When he became 007, the author Ian Fleming’s sexy secret agent with a license to kill, Mr. Moore was already well known to American audiences. After playing the title role in a British medieval-adventure series, “Ivanhoe,” shown in the United States in syndication in 1958, and starring in “The Alaskans,” a short-lived (1959-60) ABC gold-rush series, he replaced the departing James Garner in the fourth season (1960-61) of the western hit “Maverick.” His decidedly non-Western accent was explained away by the British education of his character, Beauregard Maverick, the original hero’s cousin.

Mr. Moore, with Jane Seymour in “Live and Let Die,” was often compared with his 007 predecessor, Sean Connery. Credit United Artists, via Photofest

From 1962 to 1969, Mr. Moore was Simon Templar, the title character of “The Saint,” a wildly popular British series about an adventurous, smooth-talking thief. It did so well in syndication in America that NBC adopted it for its prime-time schedule from 1967 to 1969. Two years later, Mr. Moore and Tony Curtis starred in ABC’s one-season series “The Persuaders” as playboy partners solving glamorous European crimes

After surrendering the Bond role to Timothy Dalton, Mr. Moore appeared in a half-dozen largely unexceptional movies, made a few television appearances and did voice work in animated films. Mostly, however, he turned his attention elsewhere, becoming a Unicef good-will ambassador in 1991. He was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1999 and was knighted in 2003.

Mr. Moore in the Bond adventure “Moonraker” (1979). He was the oldest Bond ever hired, taking on the role when he was 45. Credit United Artists

Roger George Moore was born on Oct. 14, 1927, in Stockwell, South London, the only child of George Alfred Moore, a London police officer who dabbled in amateur theater, and the former Lily Pope. Early on, Roger expressed interest in becoming a commercial artist and worked while a teenager at an animation company. But he fell into movie extra work, was encouraged by a director to pursue acting and entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1944.

He was drafted during the final year of World War II, serving as a second lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps. After the war he did stage work in London and Cambridge, England, and appeared in mostly uncredited movie parts. He left for the United States in 1953.

Mr. Moore made his American television debut that year playing a French diplomat on an episode of NBC’s “Robert Montgomery Presents.” His first credited film role was a small one, as a tennis pro in “The Last Time I Saw Paris” (1954), starring a young Elizabeth Taylor. His second movie was the romantic melodrama “Interrupted Melody” (1955), with Eleanor Parker. But he soon returned to Britain and spent the rest of his career doing a mix of British, American and European projects.

Jacqui Chan and Mr. Moore in “The Saint,” a wildly popular British series about a smooth-talking thief. He played the title character from 1962 to 1969. Credit BBC America

During his tenure as James Bond, Mr. Moore played almost a score of unrelated acting roles, most notably in “The Cannonball Run” (1981), the car-race comedy with Burt Reynolds, and the television movie “Sherlock Holmes in New York” (1976), in which he starred as Holmes and John Huston played Professor Moriarty.

Mr. Moore’s only visits to Broadway were brief and, in different ways, unpleasant. In 1953 he had a small role in the British drama “A Pin to See the Peepshow,” which opened and closed on the same night. Exactly 50 years later he appeared as the mystery guest star in Hamish McColl and Sean Foley’s comedy “The Play What I Wrote” and collapsed onstage. He received a pacemaker at a New York hospital the next day. (He was already a 10-year survivor of prostate cancer.)

In between, Andrew Lloyd Webber cast him in his 1989 musical, “Aspects of Love,” in London, but Mr. Moore dropped out a month before the opening. (He said at the time that he was unhappy with his singing voice, but he later said that he had left at Mr. Lloyd Webber’s request.)

Mr. Moore and Barbara Bach at a screening for “The Spy Who Loved Me” at the Cannes Film Festival in 1977. Credit Associated Press

His last film appearance was a supporting role in “The Carer” (2016), about an aging and ailing British actor (Brian Cox).

Mr. Moore married four times and was divorced three. He met his first wife (1946-53), Doorn Van Steyn, at acting school in London. He married Dorothy Squires in 1953 and left her in the early ’60s for Luisa Mattioli, whom he had met making an Italian film, but their divorce was not final until 1968. He married Ms. Mattioli the next year and had three children with her. They divorced in 1996, and in 2002 he married the Swedish-born Kristina Tholstrup, who survives him.

He is also survived by his sons, Geoffrey and Christian; a daughter, Deborah; and grandchildren.

With Grace Jones in “A View to a Kill.” After the film, the role of Bond was taken over by Timothy Dalton. Credit MGM/United Artists, via Everett Collection

Mr. Moore had definite opinions about playing heroic adventurers long before he became Bond. “I would say your average hero has a super ego, an invincible attitude and an overall death wish,” he told The New York Times in 1970. “He’s slightly around the twist, isn’t he?”

“In theatrical terms, I’ve never had a part that demands much of me,” he added. “The only way I’ve had to extend myself has been to carry on charming.”

Correction: May 23, 2017
An earlier version of this obituary misspelled the given name of Mr. Moore’s wife. She is Kristina Tholstrup, not Christina.

Correction: May 23, 2017
An earlier version of this obituary misstated the ages of both Sean Connery and Mr. Moore when they first played James Bond. Mr. Connery was 32, not 33, when “Dr. No” was released; and Mr. Moore was 45, not 46, when he began filming “Live and Let Die.”

SOURCE

SKYWATCH: FIRST RESULTS FROM JUNO AT JUPITER, EXPLORE THE SUMMER TRIANGLE, AND MORE

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HATEWATCH: HEADLINES FOR 5-25-2017

May 25, 2017

 

Hatewatch Staff

Trump seeks funds for immigration crackdown; Radical Christians attack LGBT presence in the military; DeVos apparently fine with LGBT discrimination in schools; and more.

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Mother Jones: Trump asks for $4.6 billion to pay for his immigration crackdown, including $1.6 billion towards border wall.

AlterNet: The alt-right is furious with Trump for his shift on Syria that surfaced during his trip abroad.

Newsweek: The ‘Trump effect’ inspires radical Christian contingent in the military, eager to combat LGBT members.

Scientific American: Inside social media’s battle to contain viral hatred that feeds the growth of terrorism.

The Guardian (UK): How Facebook flouts Holocaust-denial laws except where it fears being sued.

Kansas City Star: ACLU seeks sanctions against Kris Kobach, along with disclosure of Trump documents.

Oregonian: Milo Yiannopoulos leads alt-right social-media attack on Ariana Grande as ‘pro-Islam’ in wake of Manchester bombing.

Huffington Post: Betsy DeVos says if states discriminate against LGBT students, it’s just fine with her.

Media Matters: Four facts reporters should include in stories about Texas’ pending attack on the transgender community.

Raw Story: Fearing ‘white genocide in space,’ racist fans seethe at all the diversity in the new ‘Star Trek’ series.

INTERNATIONAL DAY TO END OBSTETRIC FISTULA: MAY 23, 2017

International Day to End Obstetric Fistula

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.

Pregnant woman in rural Africa.

Pregnant women in developing countries need access to proper healthcare to avoid problems like obstetric fistula.

©iStockphoto.com/GomezDavid

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.

International Day to End Obstetric Fistula Observances

 

Weekday	Date	Year	Name	Holiday Type
Thu	May 23	2013	International Day to End Obstetric Fistula	United Nations observance
Fri	May 23	2014	International Day to End Obstetric Fistula	United Nations observance
Sat	May 23	2015	International Day to End Obstetric Fistula	United Nations observance
Mon	May 23	2016	International Day to End Obstetric Fistula	United Nations observance
Tue	May 23	2017	International Day to End Obstetric Fistula	United Nations observance
Wed	May 23	2018	International Day to End Obstetric Fistula	United Nations observance
Thu	May 23	2019	International Day to End Obstetric Fistula	United Nations observance
Sat	May 23	2020	International Day to End Obstetric Fistula	United Nations observance

INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY: MAY 22, 2017

International Day for Biological Diversity

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.

The International Day for Biological Diversity raises awareness about preserving endangered habitats.

©iStockphoto.com/Terraxplorer

What Do People Do?

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.

International Day for Biological Diversity Observances

Weekday	Date	Year	Name	Holiday Type
Sat	May 22	2010	International Day for Biological Diversity	United Nations observance
Sun	May 22	2011	International Day for Biological Diversity	United Nations observance
Tue	May 22	2012	International Day for Biological Diversity	United Nations observance
Wed	May 22	2013	International Day for Biological Diversity	United Nations observance
Thu	May 22	2014	International Day for Biological Diversity	United Nations observance
Fri	May 22	2015	International Day for Biological Diversity	United Nations observance
Sun	May 22	2016	International Day for Biological Diversity	United Nations observance
Mon	May 22	2017	International Day for Biological Diversity	United Nations observance
Tue	May 22	2018	International Day for Biological Diversity	United Nations observance
Wed	May 22	2019	International Day for Biological Diversity	United Nations observance
Fri	May 22	2020	International Day for Biological Diversity	United Nations observance

IN REMEMBRANCE: 5-21-2017

STANLEY GREENE, TELLER OF UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS

By JAMES ESTRIN

MAY 19, 2017

Stanley Greene. Credit Goran Galic

Stanley Greene, whose visceral and brutally honest images of conflict and his fearlessness in the most perilous of places made him one of the leading war photographers of his generation, died on Friday in Paris. He was 68.

A founding member of the photographer-owned agency Noor Images, Mr. Greene, who lived in Paris, had been treated for liver cancer for several years, associates said.

Mr. Greene was one of the few African-American photographers who worked internationally. He traveled widely, making powerful images of conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and the republics of Chechnya and Georgia, among other places. Some pictures were too raw for many publications.

“You want to sit there comfortably with your newspaper and blueberry muffin, and you don’t want to see pictures that are going to upset your morning,” Mr. Greene said in a 2010 interview with the Lens blog of The New York Times. “That is the job of a journalist, to upset your morning.”

Mr. Greene’s commitment to telling the unvarnished truth extended to his assessments of the ethical questions facing photojournalism. He railed against the use of computer programs like Photoshop to alter the scenes of news images, a practice that he said turned photos into “cartoons.” And he scorned photographers who staged images in an attempt to recreate a missed moment after arriving late to a news scene.

“We have to be ambassadors of the truth,” he told Lens in 2015. “We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard, because the public no longer trusts the media. We are considered merchants of misery and therefore get a bad rap.”

Mr. Greene had once aspired to be a painter, like Matisse, or a musician, like Jimi Hendrix, but he discovered his true instrument the first time he picked up a camera, he told Michael Kamber in the 2010 Lens interview. Mr. Kamber, a former conflict photographer himself and the author of “Photojournalists on War: The Untold Stories From Iraq,” compared Mr. Greene to a jazz musician.

Slide Show

 

Slide Show|21 Photos

Stanley Greene, Teller of Uncomfortable Truths, Dies at 68

CreditStanley Greene/Noor

“Stanley is like the Charles Mingus of photography,” Mr. Kamber, the founder of the Bronx Documentary Center, said in an interview this week. “Stanley is about his heart, his emotions and his feelings. His photos are very impressionistic, like a stream of consciousness.”

Among the many honors Mr. Greene received were five World Press Photo awards. His books include the autobiographical “Black Passport” and “Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003.” Anne Tucker, former curator of photography for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, featured Mr. Greene in “War/Photography,” a comprehensive exhibition and book.

“He was one of those journalists who went toward the bullet,” Ms. Tucker said, “because that’s where the story was.”

Stanley Greene was born in Brooklyn on Feb. 14, 1949, and grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y. His father, also Stanley, was an actor, producer, filmmaker and director; his mother, Javotee Sutton Greene, was an actress. His father, an activist devoted to black culture, was blacklisted as a Communist in the 1950s and was reduced to taking anonymous bit parts.

Aleppo, 2013. Credit Stanley Greene/Noor

The younger Mr. Greene had a “somewhat privileged yet traumatic childhood,” said his longtime friend Jules Allen. “There was a loneliness there that was insatiable, but he was blessed enough to at least partially deal with his pain through photography.”

As a teenager, Mr. Greene joined the Black Panthers and was active in the antiwar movement. His dreams of becoming a painter gave way to photography, and he was encouraged in that pursuit by the renowned photojournalist W. Eugene Smith.

In the 1970s, Mr. Allen and Mr. Greene shared a darkroom and a studio in San Francisco while Mr. Greene studied photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. Some of his early work was published in “The Western Front,” a book that chronicled the city’s punk music scene in the 1970s and ’80s.

He cut as striking a figure as some of the musicians he photographed. “Stanley was a punk rocker who drove a Mustang,” Mr. Allen said. “He wore a black leather motorcycle jacket, a black beret, two scarves, three watches and four bracelets, as well as two great cameras and a bandoleer of film strapped across his chest.”

A woman holding a gun. Chechnya. Credit Stanley Greene/Noor

Mr. Greene worked as a fashion photographer in the 1980s and moved to Paris, where he later joined the Vu photo agency. He worked extensively in Africa and the former Soviet Union. He was the only Western photographer in Russia’s White House in 1993 during an attempted coup against the president, Boris Yeltsin. Trapped inside, amid shelling and gunfire, Mr. Greene continued to photograph throughout the building, capturing two images that received World Press Photo awards.

“The fact that I thought I was going to die gave me courage,” he wrote in “Black Passport.” “Courage is control of fear. I think that this incident is the one that steeled me. I’m no hero, but it made me so that once I commit to a story, I have to see it through.”

A 1992 Moscow encounter with Kadir van Lohuizen, a fellow member of Vu, marked the beginning of a close friendship that would lead to their founding Noor Images in Amsterdam, a collective of photojournalists.

Given the emotional toll and the physical dangers of his work, Mr. Greene discouraged others from following in his footsteps.

An injured person carried on a stretcher in Moscow during a military clash between then President Boris Yeltsin of Russia and the vice president, Aleksandr Rutskoyi. Credit Stanley Greene/Noor

“Though I’m bombarded by young photographers who ask me how to become a conflict photographer, I tell them, ‘Get a life,’” he wrote in “Black Passport.” “If they persist, I tell them about the consequences. I tell them there is no glory.”

Even as his health was failing, Mr. Greene continued to work, returning last month from a road trip through northern Russia, where he and Maria Turchenkova began a project on the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

At the end of “Black Passport,” Mr. Greene reflected on the centrality of storytelling to the human experience. Wars are fought, he said, because people have different views of the same story.

“Photography is my language and it gives me the power to tell what otherwise is not told,” he said. “Eugene Smith told me vision is a gift, and you have to give something back. He haunts me like that. It’s not the bang-bang that compels me. It never was. At the end of the day it is not about death, it is about life.

“The quest is to try to understand why human beings behave the way they do,” he continued. “The question is, How does this happen? And sometimes, the only way to find out is to go to where it is happening. One day the neighbors are talking to each other over the fence, and the next they are shooting at each other. Why is it that we don’t consider life precious, and instead we literally let it drip through our fingers?”

SOURCE

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IAN BRADY, UNREPENTANT KILLER OF BRITISH CHILDREN

By ALAN COWELL

MAY 16, 2017

Ian Brady in police custody. Credit William H. Alden/Getty Images

LONDON — Ian Brady, whose murders of five children in the company of his lover horrified Britons and were viewed by generations as the distillate of evil, died on Monday night at a high-security psychiatric hospital in Liverpool, England. He was 79.

Julie Crompton, a spokeswoman for the facility, Ashworth Hospital, confirmed his death there. No cause was given. The Associated Press reported that at a court hearing in February, lawyers said Mr. Brady had been bedridden for the last couple of years and that it was “fair to say” he was terminally ill with emphysema and other ailments.

His accomplice, Myra Hindley, died at 60 in a hospital in November 2002. Despite appeals for parole, she was never released from prison.

Mr. Brady and his lover, Myra Hindley, became known as the Moors Murderers. Credit Greater Manchester Police, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Brady, who went on a hunger strike in 1999 and was force-fed on the orders of judges who had ruled him mentally ill, never expressed remorse for the killings, some of them involving beatings, torture and sexual abuse. He had been held at the psychiatric hospital since 1985.

Related Coverage

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  The Moors Murders: A Notorious Couple and Their Young Prey MAY 17, 2017

Jailed for life in 1966, the couple were known as the Moors Murderers, a headline writers’ sobriquet derived from their practice of burying their victims on Saddleworth Moor, a remote and hilly area near Manchester, in northwest England. The BBC once called them “British society’s benchmark for evil.”

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The Moors Murders: A Notorious Couple and Their Young Prey

The details of the case, how Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were caught, and who their victims were.

EXPLORE Feature

At the time of their arrest, in 1965, only three bodies had been found. One murder in particular, that of 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, evoked rage and revulsion when it was discovered that the killers had made a tape-recording of her pleading for her life and photographed her naked, bound and gagged. Her body was found in a shallow grave with her clothes at her feet. The recording was played in court.

The pair preyed on unaccompanied young people from July 1963 to October 1965, abducting them near a dance hall, from an open market and from a fairground. Their trial judge, Fenton Atkinson, described Mr. Brady as “wicked beyond belief, without hope of redemption.”

Even from prison the couple exerted a strong fascination, she with her attempts to depict herself as a remorseful reborn Christian, he with his hunger strike, tirades against normal society and abiding demands for the right to euthanasia.

In 2001 Mr. Brady published a book about serial killers, titled “The Gates of Janus: Serial Killing and Its Analysis,” after a high court judge, to much protest from the relatives of the dead, lifted a ban on its publication.

Mr. Brady published a book about serial killers in 2001. Credit Feral House

Addressing readers in the book, Mr. Brady wrote: “You will presently discover that this work is not an apologia. Why should it? To whom should I apologize, and what difference would it make to anyone? You contain me till death in a concrete box that measures only eight by ten and you expect remorse as well? Remorse is a purely personal matter, not a circus performance.”

Ian Brady was born on Jan. 2, 1938, in a hardscrabble slum area of Glasgow, Scotland, called the Gorbals. His unmarried mother, Margaret Stewart, was a waitress, and his father, whom she never identified by name, was a local journalist who died shortly before Mr. Brady was born.

While he initially went by the surname Stewart, he changed it to Brady when he moved from Scotland to Manchester to live with his mother and a stepfather, Patrick Brady. As a child he was described by teachers as having above-average intelligence but as lazy and prone to misbehavior.

His teenage years were marked by a series of brushes with the law on charges of house breaking and burglary, leading to his detention both in prison and in young offenders’ facilities. There he developed a close and abiding interest in the works of Hitler and the Marquis de Sade.

Mr. Brady and Ms. Hindley met when they were both working at a small chemicals company in Manchester, she as a typist and he as a stock clerk. Ms. Hindley later depicted herself as having been in thrall to Mr. Brady, who, she said after they were sentenced, had beaten and blackmailed her.

Writing from prison in 2000, he disputed that version of their relationship. “Myra is a chameleon, who simply reflects whatever she believes will please the person she is addressing,” he wrote in a letter to Liverpool-based journalists, after seeing a BBC program in which Ms. Hindley said she had been “overwhelmed by Brady’s powerful personality.”

Mr. Brady several years before his arrest. Credit Mirrorpix, via Getty Images

“She can kill in cold blood or rage,” Mr. Brady said. “In that respect we were an inexorable force.”

Their first-known victim was Pauline Reade, 16, whom the pair lured onto the moors and killed in July 1963. Four months later they abducted John Kilbride, 12, from a marketplace in the town of Ashton-under-Lyne near Manchester.

On the day after Christmas in 1964, they took Lesley Ann Downey from a fairground, sexually abused her and killed her. One year later, in 1965, they sought to implicate Ms. Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, by making him watch as they murdered Edward Evans, 17, with an ax. But Mr. Smith reported them to the police, bringing their killing spree to an end.

At trial, they claimed innocence. Mr. Brady was found guilty of killing John Kilbride, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans. Ms. Hindley was found guilty of murdering Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans. She was also convicted of sheltering Mr. Brady after the killing of John Kilbride.

The couple later confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade, whose body was found on Saddleworth Moor, and Keith Bennett, 12, whose remains have never been found; Mr. Brady ignored calls by the boy’s family to reveal where the body was buried.

British newspapers reported his death with grim satisfaction. The Daily Mirror, in a headline filling much of its front page on Tuesday, said, “Burn in hell Brady.”

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.

SOURCE

The Moors Murders: A Notorious Couple and Their Young Prey

Here are the details of the case, how Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were caught, and who their victims were.

By AMISHA PADNANI

May 17, 2017

THE MIND OF THE RACIST WHITE SUPREMACIST: “LOVERS”, BY ERNEST CRICHLOW

 

Lovers, by Ernest Crichlow.  Lithograph, 35.5 x 29.7 cm. (14 x 11.7 in.), 1938.

WORLD DAY FOR CULTURAL DIVERSITY FOR DIALOGUE AND DEVELOPMENT: MAY 21, 2017

World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development

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.

World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development is a chance for people to celebrate cultural diversity and harmony.

©iStockphoto.com/skynesher

What Do People Do?

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.

World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development Observances

 

Weekday	Date	Year	Name	Holiday Type
Fri	May 21	2010	World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development	United Nations observance
Sat	May 21	2011	World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development	United Nations observance
Mon	May 21	2012	World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development	United Nations observance
Tue	May 21	2013	World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development	United Nations observance
Wed	May 21	2014	World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development	United Nations observance
Thu	May 21	2015	World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development	United Nations observance
Sat	May 21	2016	World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development	United Nations observance
Sun	May 21	2017	World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development	United Nations observance
Mon	May 21	2018	World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development	United Nations observance
Tue	May 21	2019	World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development	United Nations observance
Thu	May 21	2020	World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development	United Nations observance