Nation Briefs
May 25, 2007
Gothamist Editor Wins ‘Wired’ Award
NEW YORK — Jen Chung, co-founder/editor of Gothamist and executive editor for all Gothamist sites, has won a Wired Rave Award for blogs. The Rave Awards highlight people that are “innovators, instigators, and inventors” in their field.
Wired lauded Chung, saying: “Gothamist got big by thinking small: Chung keeps her sites trained on what’s going on in readers’ backyards. ‘As we were starting the site, I thought, how many people know who their city council member is?’ says Chung, whose day job is an advertising exec in Manhattan. ‘We’re relentlessly focused on stories that larger outlets might have mentioned in passing but have otherwise neglected.”
—Gothamist
Dragon Boats for Women Over 40
PORTLAND, Ore. — Wasabi Power Surge, dragon boat champions for women age 40 and up, are taking over the Willamette River. The oldest being a spry 76, almost two dozen paddlers propel the 400-pound fiberglass craft.
Drummers sit in the bow, pounding out a beat that sets the paddlers’ cadence. The drummer in the winning boat leans out and plucks a flag from a buoy.
Team Wasabi Power Surge plans to race in the world championships in Australia.
Dragon boat racing, which began in China about 2,000 years ago, has spread around the world. There are about 50 million paddlers in China, about 90,000 in North America, and thousands more globally.
Push to Achieve Tied to Suicide in APA Women
Asian American women ages 15-24 have the highest suicide rate of women in any ethnic group for that age group, and suicide is the second leading cause of death for Asian American women.
One study showed that Asian-American girls have the highest rate of depression, so severe they’ve contemplated suicide.
Experts say pressure from Asian-American families for children to be high achievers is partially to blame.
“Family pressure often affects girls more than boys,” said Dr. Dung Ngo, a psychologist at Baylor University in Texas. “Asian-American parents are stricter with girls than with boys. The cultural expectations are that Asian women don’t have that kind of freedom to do the kinds of things most teenagers growing up want to do.”
—CNN.com
Asian Americans Receive President’s Volunteer Service Award
In celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, President George W. Bush awarded Volunteer Service Awards to six Asian Pacific Americans for their contributions as compassionate and selfless individuals.
Awards were presented to Angela An, a Peace Corps volunteer; Anna DeSanctis, founder of the Odyssey Project in China; Kay Hiramine, founder of Humanitarian International Services Group; Adeel Khan, president of the Student Body at Virginia Tech; Linda Uehara, youth volunteer in Hawaii; and Jonathan Wu, founder of Science Alliance.
“The volunteers we recognize have set a powerful example for all Americans. They have served important causes — from providing aid to victims of natural disasters, to sharing the joy of science with students, to raising money for libraries in far away lands,” said Bush.
Honda Faces Foes in Japan
WASHINGTON—Michael M. Honda, a Democratic congressman and third-generation Japanese-American, is receiving flak from conservative Japanese politicians for his resolution calling on the Japanese government to unequivocally acknowledge its history of wartime sex slavery and apologize.
The resolution drew surprising reaction in Japan, having accused a bemused Honda, 65, of being an agent of a Chinese government bent on humiliating Japan on American soil.
During one television interview, an announcer asked Honda how he could back such a resolution when he has a Japanese face.
“I told her I could have a black face, a brown face, a white face I could be Mexican, I could be Indian, it doesn’t matter,” Honda recalled. He said he saw the resolution, which has received strong backing from Korean-American groups, as an affirmation of universal human rights.
—The New York Times
Filipino Mother of Conjoined Twins Making Ends Meet
SCARSDALE,NY—Arlene Aguirre, 33, mother of twins with the tops of their heads interwoven, is not living a Cinderella story. After coming to New York in 2003 to get her 17-month old twins medical help, she is now trying to survive as best she could.
Though Aguirre lives in Scarsdale, one of the wealthiest villages in the world, she still has trouble finding money for bus fare, haircuts, clothes, shampoo or dentists.
“I got things for free, but I’m struggling because I can’t support myself,” she said.
A registered nurse, Aguirre is not allowed to work or apply for welfare; doing so would violate her renewable six-month visa for her sons’ medical care. She is currently trying to obtain a work visa.
Under an arrangement, she lives rent-free in a village-owned cottage and has a $165-a-month account she can draw on at DeCicco Marketplace.
—The New York Times
Citizenship Exam Changed
WASHINGTON — Federal officials are adding more test subjects for a new citizenship exam in response to concerns that those participating are more educated and have higher -level English skills than average test takers.
Citizenship and Immigration Services tried out 142 civics questions and 72 English reading and writing questions for the new exam the agency hopes to launch next year.
Practice questions were used among students taking citizenship and adult learning classes in 10 cities.
Fred Tsao, policy director for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said “We want to know how immigrants view this new test - more difficult or less - and whether it will effect how likely they are to undertake the citizenship process.”
‘Heritage Speakers’: It’s a Matter of Pride
CLOSTER, NJ — “Heritage speaker” is a term that describes immigrants who have come to the U.S. as children and those who were born here to immigrant parents, language experts say.
“As more and larger immigration groups are represented in the United States, what we’re seeing is sort of a renewed sense of ethnic pride taking hold among the younger generations,” said Kathleen E. Dillon, associate director of the National Heritage Language Resource Center at UCLA.
A survey by the Modern Language Association of America says enrollment in certain languages exploded from 1970 to 2002, mirroring immigration patterns.
Enrollment in Chinese classes grew to 34,000 students from 6,200.
The Modern Language Association estimates that about half of the college students who are taking classes in Korean, Vietnamese, Hindi and Tagalog, one of the main languages spoken in the Philippines, are heritage speakers.
—NY Times
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