Jonathan Lee, the 13 year-old American activist from Mississippi, who traveled to North Korea last summer on a mission of peace, staged a brief protest in Beijing Nov. 22, before being stopped by police. According to the Associated Press, in an attempt to get the Chinese president’s attention, Jonathan unfurled a sign saying “peace treaty” [...]
Blogger Phil Yu is on the November cover of KoreAm magazine, a monthly Korean American publication. Phil Yu is arguably one of the most popular and widely regarded Asian American bloggers in the country. His site features Asian American-related news stories, arts, pop culture, advocacy, and of course, his sarcastic and oftentimes scathing commentary. The [...]
South Carolina elected its first woman governor Nov. 2, opting for a Tea Party-backed Republican lawmaker to succeed scandal-stained Gov. Mark Sanford. According to the Huffington Post, Nikki Haley will become the nation’s second Indian American governor when she replaces Sanford, whose term-limited tenure ends in January. Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal also is Indian American. She [...]
More Korean kids are getting fatter and less healthy from eating instant noodles and fast foods at least once a week, according to a survey by the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. The Korean government surveyed 19,400 students at 749 schools and learned that 75.6 percent of grade schoolers, 85.4 percent of middle [...]
Experts say aging “baby boomers” will create profound implications on the road as the years go on, reported the Associated Press. Within 15 years, more than one in five licensed drivers will be 65 or older, the National Transportation Safety Board said. Their number will nearly double, from 30 million today to about 57 million [...]
Filipino sailors aboard foreign-flagged ocean-going vessels wired home a total of $2.461 billion in the eight months to August this year, up $250 million or 11.31 percent of the $2.211 billion they remitted over the same period in 2009, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines told the Filipino-focused news publication, the Inquirer. “The foreign [...]
Little Saigon’s First Vietnamese American Bank, which opened five years ago in Orange County, Calif. as the first U.S. bank with a core clientele of Vietnamese immigrants, was recently shut down by regulators, reported the OC Weekly. First Vietnamese American opened in 2005 as a new twist on the Asian American banks that had thrived [...]
The San Francisco Chronicle recently profiled the story of Steve Li, a San Francisco City College student who is currently being held in an Arizona detention center and facing deportation to Peru. His hearing set for Nov. 15 was delayed. On Sept. 15, Immigration Customs and Enforcement raided Steve’s home and arrested his family. Steve [...]
Asian Americans are the only ethnic segment whose median household incomes have not fallen since 2007, according to data released by the U.S. government last month. The Associated Press reported that Asian incomes remained flat at $65,469, 32 percent higher than the overall U.S. median household incomes which dipped to $49,777, the lowest since 1997. [...]
Rookie point guard Jeremy Lin was named to the Golden State Warriors’ 15-man roster on October 25, reported the Associated Press. Harvard standout Lin has become the first Asian American on an NBA roster since Japanese American Wat Mikasa played for the New York Knicks in the 1947 – 48 season. The 6-3, 200-pound Chinese [...]
Former Army infantry officer Lt. Dan Choi, who has become one of the most visible and outspoken activists against the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, re-enlisted in the armed forces — this time, as an “out” gay man. On Oct. 19, the military announced that it had instructed its recruiters to accept all [...]
University of California Student Regent Jesse Cheng has made a name for himself as the leader of a new wave of student activists. As the Associated Press reported earlier this year, Cheng is “comfortable talking with both administrators and anarchists” and is “a presence at protests but avoids getting arrested.” The UC-Irvine Asian American Studies [...]
Anirvan Chatterjee and Barnali Ghosh devised and embarked on their “Year of No Flying” project, with the goal of traveling around the world without boarding a single airplane. According to Sepia Mutiny, “techie” Chatterjee and landscape architect Ghosh were surprised to learn that their carbon footprint was bigger than 90 percent of Americans, despite their [...]
According to the latest study on global social network usage by Internet marketing research firm ComScore.com, the Philippines has the fifth “most engaged social networking audience” in the world. The study, reported by GMANews TV, covered the usage habits of various countries and encompassed a broad range of social networking sites, from global services such [...]
Congratulations Hyeok! WASHINGTON – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to key administration posts: · Sefa Aina, Member, President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders · Debra T. Cabrera, Member, President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders [...]
On August 7, news broke that in Afghanistan, ten members of a medical team — six Americans, a Briton, a German and four Afghans — were shot and killed by militants as they were returning home from a remote aid mission, reported the New York Times. The attack, the largest massacre in years of aid [...]
Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel, who has been doing press for his role as Zuko in “The Last Airbender”, recently spoke out to CNN Entertainment about Hollywood’s institutional racism, saying that “Asian actors are limited to roles as terrorists, taxi drivers or geeks.” He added, “Because ‘Slumdog’ was such a big hit there was a [...]
The death toll from landslides in northwestern China more than doubled August 10 to 702, as crews in three countries across Asia struggled to reach survivors from flooding that has afflicted millions of people, according to the Associated Press. Rescuers digging by hand through mud found a 52-year old man who had been trapped for [...]
An American warship docked August 10 in central Vietnam where the former foes planned to conduct naval training in a sign of growing military ties amid new warnings from China for the U.S. to stay out of its backyard, according to the Associated Press. The USS John S. McCain’s port call comes as the U.S. [...]
The Associated Press reported that on August 10, Japan apologized to South Korea for its colonial rule over the country, seeking to strengthen ties between the two countries ahead of the 100th anniversary of the Japanese annexation of the Korean peninsula. During Japan’s occupation from 1910-45, many Koreans were forced to fight as front-line soldiers, [...]
Hundreds of Filipino guestworkers lured to teach in Louisiana public schools were cheated out of tens of thousands of dollars and forced into exploitative contracts by an international trafficking ring run by labor contractors. A federal class action lawsuit was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of more than 350 Filipino teachers [...]
The police raided the office of Google Korea in Seoul on August 10 over allegations of illicitly collecting sensitive personal information from wireless networks reports the Korea Herald. Investigators from the Cyber Terror Center of the National Police Agency confiscated computer hard disk drives and paper documents from the office. The local unit of Google [...]
San Francisco could become the first city in the country to adopt green standards for its nail salons. It’s a move advocates hope will kick-start a movement toward greener and healthier products that has been stuck for years, despite a pioneering state law aimed at making cosmetics safer. A new ordinance, introduced by Board of [...]
The Los Angeles Times reported that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger nominated 3rd District Court of Appeal Justice Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye as the next chief justice on July 28, which would make her the first Asian American to lead the state’s judiciary and give the California Supreme Court a female majority for the first time in its [...]
Via New America Media Imagine a not too distant future when China has taken over the United States. The US is not indebt to China, butt its been literally invaded by China. Chinese soldiers with guns on Californian streets; San Francisco segregated into militarizes zones; you need a pass to go through the Van Ness [...]
In Baltimore, Maryland, four Filipina ex-staffers of Bon Secours Hospital say they were fired from their jobs in April, allegedly because they spoke in Tagalog during their lunch break. According to the ABS-CBN North America News Bureau, Corina Capunitan-Yap, Anna Rowena Rosales, Jazziel Granada and Hachelle Natano were fired from their jobs at the Bon [...]
When South Philadelphia High School erupted into racial violence on December 3, community liaison Violet Sutton-Lawson was one of the few school staff members who did something about it—apparently risking serious injury—to protect Asian students who were being beaten by mobs, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. She worked with pregnant students and teenage mothers, was [...]
For the Vietnamese Americans living in the Gulf Coast region, the oil disaster is especially complicated. It’s made murky by language barriers, cultural misunderstandings and a history of challenges that have shaped them for more than half a century, reports CNN. The Vietnamese interpreters BP first brought in for safety and cleanup training stirred painful [...]
Tension is mounting between BP and the neighborhood retailers that sell its gasoline. As more Americans shun BP gasoline as a form of protest over the Gulf oil spill, station owners are insisting BP do more to help them convince motorists that such boycotts mostly hurt independently owned businesses, not the British oil giant, reports [...]
The advocacy organization, Restore Fairness, profiled Filipina Shirley Tan and her experience as a homosexual woman, mother, and potential deportee. According to the Restore Fairness site, Tan came to the United States from the Philippines over two decades ago, and built a life with her partner Jay Mercado, giving birth to twin boys. Now, Tan [...]
