CategoryIn Society

Can religion become a force for peace? This question guided students in a Soka University of America Learning Cluster taught by university professor Testushi Ogata. The students traveled to Boston to visit 10 different places of worship and met with scholars, religious representatives and peers at other universities. By studying real cases and engaging in

From January to February, all seven other planets in our solar system are lining up across the night sky before dawn or after sunset. They include Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn—as bright points of light, all visible to the naked eye—with Uranus and Neptune visible only with a telescope. With the next visible planet

OSLO, Norway—The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo—a grassroots movement of hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivors, from Hiroshima and Nagasaki—for its efforts “to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.” In its Oct. 11, 2024, announcement, the Norwegian

Shortly after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock—a symbolic piece that conveys the time that remains before the extinction of the human race. This year, the hands of the Doomsday Clock moved to 90 seconds to midnight, largely because of the war

A middle-school U.S. history textbook from one of the top three educational publishers in the country features a quote from Daisaku Ikeda in its 2023 edition. McGraw Hill Education describes the primer United States History: Voices and Perspectives as designed to “empower students to make connections between the past and present as they experience history

On Aug. 28, Hawaii’s Honolulu Little League won the Little League World Series championship with a 13-3 win against Curaçao. This was the the fourth time in 17 years a team from Hawaii has won the youth baseball tournament and the second championship for Honolulu, who won the title in 2018. Gerald Oda, head coach

Italy’s national airline, ITA Airways, dedicates a plane to Roberto Baggio, Italian soccer legend and longtime SGI member. The only Italian to score in three World Cups, Baggio is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. His journey is chronicled in the Netflix documentary Baggio: The Divine Ponytail. As an homage

The most distant star ever seen, Earendel, was recently discovered after being photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. The star is an estimated 12.9 billion light years away, nearly 4 billion light years farther than the next known most distant star. Earendel was visible thanks to a rare alignment with another galaxy that functioned as

Did you know that some seeds can stay alive for centuries or even millennia? Seventy years ago in 1951, archaeologists excavated ancient lotus seeds from a 2,000-year-old site in Chiba, Japan. Paleobotanist Ichiro Oga revived one of the seeds, which began to sprout two months later in May 1951, the same month Josei Toda became

Staying Safe Online

Netflix releases biopic of SGI-Italy member Roberto Baggio’s rise as one of the world’s greatest soccer players.

Some say Miss Eloise is the secret weapon to Netflix’s most popular show, Bridgerton. She draws the attention of viewers as an independent and strong-minded female protagonist in the period drama set in London in 1813. She is played by Claudia Jessie, an SGI-UK young women’s division member, who will celebrate her 14th year of

On Dec. 16, in a monumental change for the sport, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced it was elevating the 1920–48 Negro Leagues to major league status. The “long overdue recognition,” as MLB called it in a news release, will add the names of some 3,400 Negro Leaguers from seven distinct leagues in the 1920s, ’30s

Meet 15-year-old Gitanjali Rao, of Lone Tree, Colorado: Time magazine’s first Kid of the Year (see its December 2020 issue). Among her many contributions as a scientist and inventor, she created a phone and web device that can recognize early signs of cyberbullying. Currently, she is working on a tool to easily detect biocontaminants in

On Oct. 24, United Nations Day, Honduras became the 50th member state to ratify the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The treaty, the first international instrumental to comprehensively ban nuclear weapons, will enter into force on Jan. 22, 2021. To read more, click here.

What does Charlie Chaplin have to do with Buddhism?

On Aug. 2, two NASA astronauts returned safely to Earth, landing by parachute in the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola, Florida. The two-month mission, manned by Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley, was conducted by SpaceX, the first private company to send astronauts into space (NASA retired its space shuttle program in 2011). Adding to

The following is adapted from a work of findings by the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, on skills and strategies that support positive dialogue, relationships and understanding among groups or individuals across political, racial, religious and other distinctions. The study was based on decades of research, interviews with dozens of

“When I see you smile / I can face the world … / you know I can do anything / When I see you smile / I see a ray of light … / I see it shining right through the rain.” There might be some truth to these power ballad lyrics made famous by the

Every year since 1974, the United Nations has honored World Environment Day on June 5, promoting “worldwide awareness and action for the environment.” The U.N. calls for the protection and improvement of the natural environment, which affects the well-being of people and economic development across the globe.  Millions of people in over 100 countries observe