Millions of Buddhists celebrate Vesak Day, an officially recognized United Nations (UN) holiday that celebrates the birth of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism.
The UN celebrates Vesak Day (or the Day of Vesak) with Buddhist organizations and communities worldwide. Celebrations include:
Cultural performances featuring song and dance.
Plays about Buddha’s life and teachings.
Public messages given by religious and community leaders.
Temples are adorned with decorations and flowers on Vesak Day. Some community groups organize acts of charity, like releasing caged animals or donating food and gifts to the poor.
Public Life
Vesak Day is a global observance, as well as a public holiday in some countries, such as India.
About Vesak Day
Siddhartha Gautama, also commonly known as Buddha (enlightened one), lived in present-day India and Nepal between the sixth and fourth century BCE. His teachings focused on messages about compassion, peace and goodwill. Millions around the world follow the teachings of the Buddha today. The Day of Vesak commemorates Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death.
In 1999, the UN recognized internationally Vesak Day to acknowledge the contribution that Buddhism, one of the oldest religions in the world, has made for over 2500 years. This day is commemorated annually at the UN Headquarters and other UN offices and missions.
The United Nations (UN) has a two-day global observance that occurs on May 8 and 9 each year. It is known as the “Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives during the Second World War”.
This two-day observance gives people, non-government organizations, and governments the chance to remember people who died during World War II. The dates for this observance are marked in calendars and noted in organizations throughout the world. Articles about remembering World War II victims may be published in magazines, newspaper, or online during this time of the year.
Some organizations, including embassies, may have special wreath laying ceremonies at cemeteries or memorials to remember World War II soldiers who died fighting for their country, as well as Holocaust victims and those who died in concentration camps.
Public Life
The UN’s Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives during the Second World War is not a public holiday.
Background
The UN General Assembly noted in November 2004 that 2005 marked the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. The assembly held a special meeting to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II during the second week of May in 2005. The meeting gave participants a chance to commemorate the sacrifices that people made during the war.
The UN also declared May 8 and 9 as a time of remembrance and reconciliation, to be observed annually worldwide on either day or both days. These dates serve as a tribute to all those who died during World War II. This observance is not to be confused with the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.
Symbols
The UN emblem may be found in material promoting the Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation for Those Who Lost Their Lives during the Second World War. The emblem consists of a projection of the globe centered on the North Pole. It depicts all continents except Antarctica and four concentric circles representing degrees of latitude. The projection is surrounded by images of olive branches, representing peace. The emblem is often blue, although it is printed in white on a blue background on the UN flag.
Dove released as part of the ceremony in observance of International Day of Peace. UN Photo/Mark Garten
DON GORDON, STEVE McQUEEN’S SIDEKICK ONSCREEN AND IN LIFE
Don Gordon, right, and Steve McQueen, in the 1968 film “Bullitt.”Credit Warner Bros., via Photofest
Don Gordon, an Emmy-nominated character actor who often starred alongside his close friend Steve McQueen, died on April 24 in Los Angeles. He was 90.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Denise.
Mr. Gordon found steady work in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s as a supporting actor on television and in the movies, often playing tough guys. In 1962, he was nominated for an Emmy for his role as Joey Tassili, a troubled young man, on “The Defenders,” a CBS courtroom drama that starred E. G. Marshall and Robert Reed.
Early on, Mr. Gordon appeared on shows like “Space Patrol,” in the 1950s, and on McQueen’s CBS Western, “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” in 1959 and 1960. He was also cast as Lt. Hank Bertelli on the short-lived 1960s show “The Blue Angels.”
His most memorable film roles were alongside McQueen in “Bullitt” (1968); “Papillon” (1973), which also starred Dustin Hoffman; and “The Towering Inferno” (1974), a disaster film with Paul Newman and Faye Dunaway.
As neighbors in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles, Mr. McQueen and Mr. Gordon shared a hobby. “We both liked motorcycles, and we used to go bike riding together. And we had a lot of common interests,” Mr. Gordon told The Oklahoman in 2005.
While filming “Bullitt,” Mr. Gordon and McQueen, who died in 1980, were contractually banned from riding bikes off set, but they threw caution to the wind, Mr. Gordon said.
“We’d ride two, three hours, four hours sometimes,” Mr. Gordon said. “We’d just go up and down the hills of San Francisco. And then — you know when the car goes over the hill and takes off in the ‘Bullitt’ car chase — well, he was such a good bike rider, much better than I was. And he would hit one of those hills, and he’d get airborne and, plop, hit down below.”
Donald Walter Guadagno was born on Nov. 13, 1926, in Los Angeles. At age 8, he started selling newspapers on the street to help his family during the Depression, his wife said.
He enlisted in the Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was only 15 but convinced his mother to sign a statement saying he was 18, Ms. Gordon said. He went on to receive 11 battle stars.
After he left the Navy, he attended drama school, where he changed his last name, his wife said. Standing outside the school at Sunset Boulevard and Gordon Street, a classmate told him that he would never make it in show business with the surname Guadagno. The student then pointed to the street sign and said, “Your name should be Don Gordon,” Ms. Gordon said.
He and Ms. Gordon were married in 1979. Besides his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Gabrielle Adelman, from a previous marriage.
Mr. Gordon also appeared in sci-fi horror anthology series of the era, including two episodes of “The Twilight Zone” (“The Four of Us Are Dying,” 1960, and “The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross,” 1964) and two 1964 episodes of “The Outer Limits” (“The Invisibles” and “Second Chance”).
SOLLY WALKER, TRAILBLAZNG ST. JOHN’S BASKETBALL PLAYER
As a senior, Solly Walker led St. John’s in scoring, with 14 points per game, and rebounding, with 12.2 per game.Credit St. John’s University Athletics
Solly Walker, who as St. John’s University’s first black basketball player broke another racial barrier when in 1951 he played in a game against the University of Kentucky on its home court, died on Friday at his home in Brooklyn. He was 85.
His wife, Minta Walker, said that he had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease but that she was not certain what caused his death.
Walker was a 6-foot-4 standout at Boys High School in Brooklyn before he earned a scholarship to St. John’s, which was in Brooklyn at the time. (The main campus is now in Queens.) Led by the future Hall of Fame coach Frank McGuire, the St. John’s basketball program was becoming a national contender when Walker joined it in 1950, the first black player to do so.
He quickly hit his stride, leading the freshman team to a 17-2 record and averaging 15.1 points per game. He was accepted by his teammates, but his on-campus reception could be frosty, he would say later.
It was in his sophomore year, during his first varsity season, that Walker faced overt racism, when St. John’s was scheduled to play Kentucky on its home court, Memorial Coliseum, in Lexington.
Kentucky, coached by Adolph Rupp, innovator of the fast-break offense and one of college basketball’s most dominant figures, had won the previous year’s N.C.A.A. championship.
In 1951, the University of Kentucky remained a primarily white bastion, refusing admission to undergraduate blacks. (It had started admitting blacks to its graduate programs in 1949 but would not admit them as undergraduates until 1954. Its basketball team remained all-white until 1970.)
Rupp flatly refused to let Walker play on his home court.
“You can’t bring that boy down here to Lexington,” Rupp said, as quoted by Dave Anderson of The New York Times in a column in 1994.
“Then cancel the game,” McGuire snapped.
Rupp relented, and the game took place, with Walker in the St. John’s lineup, making him by all accounts the first black to play against Kentucky in Lexington.
The game itself was a rout — Kentucky won, 81-40 — and Walker was injured and taken out after hitting six of his first seven shots.
Ms. Walker said her husband had rarely talked about the game. “He didn’t want to relive it,” she said. But he told her in recent months that Coach McGuire and some of his teammates had stayed with him when he was barred from segregated hotels and dining rooms.
“I learned a great deal from my experience with Coach McGuire as to how to treat people,” Walker was quoted as saying in “100 Years of St. John’s Basketball,” a 2008 coffee table book written and compiled by Jim O’Connell and Paul Montella of The Associated Press. “The situation against Kentucky was uncomfortable. After all, I was only 20 years old. My confidence in my coach made me feel very secure.”
St. John’s faced Kentucky again that March, in the 1952 N.C.A.A. tournament’s round of 8. This time, St. John’s won, 64-57, largely thanks to 32 points from center Bob Zawoluk.
St. John’s beat Illinois in the national semifinals, but lost to Kansas, 80-63, in the championship game. Walker, a sophomore, averaged 4.4 points and 3.8 rebounds during the season, in which St. John’s was 25-6.
In the 1952-53 season, Walker helped St. John’s to a 17-6 record. St. John’s said that in his senior year, he led the team in scoring, with 14 points per game, and rebounding, with 12.2 per game. He was drafted by the Knicks but chose not to play at a time when professional basketball players made far less money than they do today. He became a teacher instead.
Solly Walker was born on April 9, 1932, to Zodthous Walker and the former Eva Utsey in South Carolina. (His wife was not certain of the town.) The family moved to Brooklyn when he was young.
He met Minta Gillespie at a church in Brooklyn in 1950. They married three years later.
After college, he began a long career in the New York City educational system, working with special-needs children. He was eventually named principal of P.S. 58 Manhattan High School (now P.S. 35) and retired in 1999.
In addition to his wife, with whom he lived in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, he is survived by a brother, Thomas; two sons, Kevin and Gregory; four daughters, Debra Lesane, Cheryl Davis, Minta R. Walker and Wendy Walker; 15 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
Daliah Lavi and Dean Martin in “The Silencers” from 1966.Credit Columbia Pictures, via Everett Collection
Daliah Lavi, an Israeli actress who transitioned from serious parts in foreign cinema and in dramatic films like “Lord Jim” to lighthearted turns in 1960s spy-movie spoofs like “Casino Royale,” died on Wednesday at her home in Asheville, N.C. She was 74.
Her husband, Charles Gans, confirmed her death but did not specify the cause.
Ms. Lavi, who spoke several languages, became an actress as a teenager while studying ballet in Sweden. Her first movie was a 1955 Swedish adaptation of August Strindberg’s novel “The People of Hemso.”
She went on to play a reporter in the German thriller “The Return of Dr. Mabuse” (1961), the romantic lead flogged in Mario Bava’s lurid Italian horror film “The Whip and the Body” (1963), and Cunégonde to Jean-Pierre Cassel’s Candide in a 1960 French film adaptation of Voltaire’s novel.
“A new actress by the name of Dahlia Lavi is impressive along the lines of Brigitte Bardot or Claudia Cardinale as the lustrous Cunégonde,” Bosley Crowther wrote in a review in The New York Times, which, like many reviews and film credits from the period, misspelled Ms. Lavi’s first name.
Her first American film was “Two Weeks in Another Town” (1962), Vincente Minnelli’s drama, starring Kirk Douglas, about filming a movie in Rome. Ms. Lavi said Mr. Douglas had discovered her as a child in Israel and started her on the path to becoming an actress.
“Lord Jim” (1965), Richard Brooks’s adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novel starring Peter O’Toole, was to be the breakout American role for Ms. Lavi, who played Mr. O’Toole’s love interest. But the movie flopped, and Ms. Lavi accepted a new career path as scantily clad femmes fatales in a number of parodies that sprung up after the initial success of the James Bond films.
She appeared in “The Silencers” (1966), the first of Dean Martin’s Matt Helm films, and “The Spy With a Cold Nose” (1966), a British comedy built around the conceit of a bugged bulldog. It also starred Lionel Jeffries and Laurence Harvey.
Perhaps the best example of the subgenre was the discursive, psychedelic “Casino Royale” (1967), which had almost nothing in common with Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel besides the titular casino. The movie had an ensemble cast that included Peter Sellers, Orson Welles, Ursula Andress, Deborah Kerr and Woody Allen; and an ensemble of directors that included John Huston, Ken Hughes and Joseph McGrath, each shooting a segment.
Ms. Lavi played a British agent who tricks Mr. Allen’s character into poisoning himself with an atomic pill.
Casino Royale Official Trailer #1 – David Niven Movie (1967) HDVideo by Movieclips Trailer Vault
The critical response was largely negative, but audiences enjoyed it, making it a financial success, as was the soundtrack by Burt Bacharach. But it marked the beginning of the end of Ms. Lavi’s American film career.
Daliah Levinbuck was born on Oct. 12, 1942, in Haifa, in what was then British Palestine. (Her last name at birth is spelled differently by some sources online).
Ms. Lavi told The New York Post that she was 10 when she met Mr. Douglas, who was in Israel filming “The Juggler,” and told him that she wanted to become a dancer.
He helped persuade her parents to send her to Stockholm for dance instruction when she was 12. Her father died when she was 16, and she returned to Israel, where she worked for a time as a swimsuit model before becoming a full-time actress.
Her last American feature film was “Catlow” (1971), a western directed by Sam Wanamaker and based on a Louis L’Amour novel; it also starred Yul Brynner, Richard Crenna and Leonard Nimoy. She continued to act on German television and had a successful career as a singer in Germany, recording and performing in German.
Ms. Lavi was married four times. In addition to her husband, she is survived by a sister, Michal Vizansky; three sons, Alexander, Rouven and Stephen Gans; a daughter, Kathryn Rothman; and six grandchildren.
In 1964, before “Lord Jim” opened, Ms. Lavi told The Boston Globe that she took the vicissitudes of her film career in stride.
“I like acting and it pays well, and they say one day I will become a big star,” she said. “But I don’t really care about an acting career. I’d rather be a dancer.”
Astronomers have discovered an “iceball Earth” orbiting a star 13,000 light-years away. Multiple eyes on the sky have revealed some of this world’s secrets.
A new galaxy survey suggests that a supervoid isn’t responsible for the Cold Spot seen in the cosmic microwave background — the oddity may have a far more ancient origin.
The waxing gibbous Moon is now stepping eastward across Virgo, past Jupiter and Spica. Jupiter is highest for viewing by about 10 or 11 p.m. local time.
Astrophotography expert Jerry Lodriguss tells you how to remove light pollution from your astrophotos so you can have dark skies instead of red-brown ones.
Ten years ago the Spanish island of La Palma was declared a “Starlight Reserve” to protect its astronomical observatories from light pollution and guarantee a dark sky for everyone. The measures seem to have worked.
The pastor and activist—widely known for his arrest during Ferguson protests—calls for resistance over blues- and gospel-derived tracks on “In Times Like These.” Listen to the full album here ahead of its May 5 release.
In this excerpt from his new book, “The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell,” the comedian describes a White show business figure’s duplicitious and patronizing treatment.
The alt-right is as misogynist as it is racist; Black Americans have a lot to worry about now; Stone says Trump talks with Alex Jones on occasion; and more.
World Press Freedom Day is annually observed on May 3 to inform the international community that freedom of the press and freedom of expression are fundamental human rights. This day reminds people that many journalists brave death or face jail to bring daily news to the public.
World Press Freedom Day gives people the chance to pay tribute to media professionals who risked or lost their lives in the line of duty. Many communities, organizations and individuals take part in this day through various events such as art exhibitions, dinners featuring keynote speakers, and awards nights to honor those who risked their lives to bring news to the world.
Public Life
World Press Freedom Day is a global observance and not a public holiday.
Background
World Press Freedom Day was established by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1993 as an outgrowth of the Seminar on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press. This seminar took place in Namibia in 1991 and led to the adoption of the Windhoek Declaration on Promoting Independent and Pluralistic Media.
The Windhoek Declaration called to establish, maintain and foster an independent, pluralistic and free press. It emphasized the importance of a free press for developing and maintaining democracy in a nation, and for economic development. World Press Freedom Day is celebrated annually on May 3, the date on which the Windhoek Declaration was adopted.
Although World Press Freedom Day has only been celebrated since 1993, it has much deeper roots in the United Nations. Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights states that everyone “has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.
Each year since 1997, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize is awarded to honor the work of an individual or an organization defending or promoting freedom of expression, especially if it puts the individual’s life at risk. The award is named after a journalist murdered in 1986 after denouncing drug barons. Last year it was awarded posthumously to a Russian investigative reporter who was murdered in a contract-style killing in 2006.
2017 Theme: “Critical Minds for Critical Times: Media’s role in advancing peaceful, just and inclusive societies”
With fallout from the radioactive disaster known as Fukushima, Japan, causing more harm each day to life in the sea, the day known as World Tuna Day should cause pause and thought on how the Earth’s oceans are affected by the poisoning from radiation.
Tuna fish catch. Photo: FAO
What happens in another part of the world does not stay there. It encompasses the globe, and has life-threatening and future effects in the long run.
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FROM THE WORLD TUNA DAY WEBSITE:
The Movement for Sustainable Tuna Has Gone Global
By Susan Jackson
May 2, 2017
World Tuna Day is upon us again, on May 2. Every year, the observance gives stakeholders on the march toward sustainable management of the world’s tuna resources a chance to reflect on recent progress, both material advances as well as symbolic ones.
First celebrated globally in 2012, World Tuna Day was established in 2011 by the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA). It has increased in importance year after year, as increased concern, resources and conservation measures have been directed to promoting more sustainable practices in tuna fisheries.
Last December, the United Nations General Assembly voted without objection to acknowledge World Tuna Day as an internationally recognized event — reinforcing the importance of tuna to the world. We now have a global unified front of NGOs — including ISSF — as well as scientists, industry participants and others sharing best practices, teaming up on advocacy efforts and dedicating scientific and technological resources to improve tuna conservation. (In fact, our upcoming 2016 annual report will focus on “best practices, better solutions.”)
When World Tuna Day began, this level of collaboration and the unified will to effect change didn’t exist the way it does today.
There is still a great deal of work ahead, but the movement has gone global, it has scientific integrity, and it has the support of much of the tuna industry. It is so much more than just a day.
Ann
