Daily Dose: 08/13/08
August 13, 2008
» AsianWeek Market Report
» Cambodian American Community Denounces ICE Sweeps
» Chiwa Chan Found Dead-NYC Woman Accused
» Schwarzenegger Sues Chiang
» State Workers Praise Controller Chiang in SF
» Cheech and Chong Reunite as Feud Goes Up in Smoke
» Margaret Cho Looks Forward to Cable Freedom With ‘The Cho Show’
» Last Chance for Wie Begins Thursday
» Wong Shows Skill Far Above Her Age in Competitions
» How I Made It: Stephen Chao
» Billionaire Opens Nursing School in Jamaica
» Spain’s ‘Slant Eye’ Team Photo Stirs Ire
Compiled by Miriam Ling
| AsianWeek Market Report | ||||
| Asian Stock Indexes | ||||
| NIKKEI 225 | Tokyo | 13,023.05 | -280.55 | -2.11% |
| HANG SENG | Hong Kong | 21,293.32 | -347.57 | -1.61% |
| KRX | Busan | 3,240.45 | -30.28 | -0.93% |
| SSE IX | Shanghai | 8,249.64 | 56.84 | 0.69% |
| BSE | Bombay | 15,093.12 | -119.01 | -0.78% |
| HOSE | Ho Chi Minh | 464.01 | 4.12 | 0.90% |
| SET | Bangkok | 777.17 | -10.42 | -1.32% |
| Asian American Market Report | ||||
| Yahoo! | YHOO | 20.19 | -0.24 | (-1.17%) |
| Citigroup | C | 17.74 | -0.80 | (-4.32%) |
| Amkor Technology, Inc | AMKR | 8.74 | -0.17 | (-1.91%) |
| Sybase | SY | 36.36 | -0.02 | (-0.06%) |
| UnionBancal Corp | UB | 66.12 | 0.62 | (0.95%) |
| East West Bank Corp,Inc | EWBC | 12.58 | -0.94 | (-6.95%) |
NATION
Cambodian American Community Denounces ICE Sweeps
LOWELL, Mass. - Affected family, community members and local leaders are gathering in solidarity against the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency sweeps.
In the past five days, ICEA has targeted Lowell, where it has the second largest Cambodian American community in the U.S. and has thus far detained approximately 25 Cambodian American individuals. Most are transferred out of state within 24 hours of detention, cut off completely from family and legal assistance.
Families and community members are facing difficulties in connecting with their loved ones in detention centers because of quick detainee transference without sufficient information provided to families.
A Lowell community vigil is planned to demonstrate the solidarity community members have with those detained and for those who may be deported on August 14 to Cambodia.
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Chiwa Chan Found Dead-NYC Woman Accused
NEW YORK - A Brooklyn woman has been arrested on charges of torturing her boyfriend Chiwa Chan to death by binding him to a chair and stabbing him repeatedly with a kitchen knife.
Police found 45-year-old Chan Monday in his home with a trash bag duct-taped around his head.
Police also found the 53-year-old woman there. She told them two men had told her to kill Chan.
The investigation is continuing.
The woman was arrested on a second-degree murder charge shortly after Chan was found. It isn’t clear whether she has an attorney.
- Newsday
BAY/CALIFORNIA
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The Schwarzenegger administration sued state Controller John Chiang on Aug. 11 in an effort to force him to comply with the governor’s order to reduce the pay of most state workers to the federal minimum wage until a state budget is enacted.
The lawsuit was filed in Superior Court in Sacramento hours after Chiang, who controls the state payroll, formally answered Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s directive. Chiang’s office wrote to the governor’s staff that compliance with the pay-cut directive, issued late last month, would be a complex process and that the controller’s office needed until at least the end of the week to determine if it was possible.
Administration officials responded that they would not wait.
“Absent a commitment that the controller will implement” the pay cuts, said a letter from the state personnel department, the administration “must seek legal action to compel the controller to comply with the law.”
-Los Angeles Times
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State Workers Praise Controller Chiang in SF
SAN FRANCISCO - John Chiang, who is battling Schwarzenegger in court, told the union workers that there was no reason their pay should be cut to the federal minimum wage.
“We have enough money to pay all the state’s obligations through the month of September and into October,” Chiang told the cheering protestors.
The governor ordered the pay cuts in order to pressure state lawmakers into passing a state budget, which is six weeks overdue.
-CBS 5
ARTS/ENTERTAINMENT
Cheech and Chong Reunite as Feud Goes Up in Smoke
LOS ANGELES - Their feud finally having gone up in smoke, Cheech and Chong say they’re eager to get back on the road for their first comedy tour in more than 25 years.
“We had such a legacy, such a history. We couldn’t escape it, even if we tried,” Tommy Chong told reporters at a news conference last month at the Troubadour, the Los Angeles nightclub where the pair were discovered more than 35 years ago.
The duo said their “Light Up America” tour will kick off Sept. 12 in Philadelphia.
“It’s going to be very theatrical,” said Cheech Marin.
If Wednesday’s news conference was an indication, it won’t spare the pothead humor, either.
“We’re definitely still smoking,” Chong said when asked.
Marin said earlier this month that he and the 70-year-old Chong had recently decided that if ever they were to reunite the time was now because, “You’re not getting any younger and neither am I.”
-Associated Press
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Margaret Cho Looks Forward to Cable Freedom With ‘The Cho Show’
Comedian Margaret Cho will make another stab at television when her new show, The Cho Show, opens on VH1 on Aug. 21.
Her last experience with ABC was not so successful. “It was very difficult, and one of the things that I remembered was after I did my first screen test, one executive freaked out and said, ‘Please never, ever, ever show your stomach in public ever again. Never.’ So that’s why I’m like naked in the show all the time, as you’ll see.”
Working in cable frees Cho up for her off-color jokes, a consummation not necessarily to be desired.
“Television has changed a lot, and also it’s wonderful to be working with VH1, who have been incredible in really allowing us to be ourselves, which is a major problem in television when you work with an artist and you try to create a show.”
- Ventura County Star
SPORTS
Last Chance for Wie Begins Thursday
The Canadian Women’s Open begins on Thursday with Michelle Wie in the field on the basis of her sixth and final LPGA Tour sponsor exemption of 2008. And so the CWO is Wie’s last chance of 2008 to earn an LPGA membership in 2009 without having to go through Qualifying School.
Wie is not a member of the LPGA and therefore does not appear on the tour’s money list. However, if a non-member earns enough money that she would rank 80th or better on that money list, were she eligible, she gets a Tour card for the following season.
So that is what Wie has to do to avoid Q-School: Win enough money that she would finish 80th or better on the money list. Wie appeared primed to do just that, finishing the third round in second place, before being disqualified for forgetting to sign her scorecard.
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Wong Shows Skill Far Above Her Age in Competitions
Jennifer Wyatt’s golfing home these days is mainly on the Savage Creek Driving Range in Richmond, where the former LPGA Tour winner has a burgeoning teaching business. One of her clients is 16-year-old Christine Wong of Richmond.
Wong broke 80 a long time ago and shot a course record nine-under 64 at Kelowna Golf & Country Club during the recent B.C. Summer Games. Last summer, at age 15, she finished second at the Canadian Junior Girls Championship in London, Ont., and last month tied for third at the B.C. Junior Girls Championship in Courtenay.
That event was won by Langley junior sensation Sue Kim, who finished the 54-hole event 12-under par.
On Friday, Wong tied for fourth at this year’s Canadian Junior tourney in Winnipeg, which was won in a playoff by Soo-Bin Kim of Port Coquitlam.
- The Vancouver Sun
COMMERCE
Stephen Chao is chief executive of WonderHowTo.com, which calls itself the world’s largest catalog of free instruction videos. Before making the leap to new media, Chao, in the early 1990s, was president of Fox Television, where he helped create Cops and America’s Most Wanted. He later became president of USA Network, where he was responsible for bringing Monk to cable TV. He also wrote for the National Enquirer and fried potatoes at McDonald’s.
Chao applied for jobs at The New York Times and Wall Street Journal after working for the Enquirer writing about UFOs and Farrah Fawcett. Both newspapers rejected him, but he was determined to be in media in some way, so he got a job at News Corp. as the vice president of acquisitions and corporate development. It wasn’t long before he starting brainstorming ideas for TV shows.
- Los Angeles Times
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Billionaire Opens Nursing School in Jamaica
MANCHESTER, Jamaica - Describing it as an investment for the future, Jamaican Canadian billionaire Michael Lee Chin on Sunday formally opened the Hyacinth Chen School of Nursing at the Northern Caribbean University in Mandeville.
As principal donor, Lee Chin, who is chairman of the National Commercial Bank and its parent company, the Canadian money management firm AIC, spent $247 million over the last year on the construction and the equippment of the nursing school, which is named after his mother, Hyacinth Chen.
The new building boasts state-of-the-art facilities and will accommodate 800 nursing students, doubling the number currently accommodated in the NCU’s Department of Nursing.
Addressing a large audience during a thunderstorm and driving rain, Lee Chin said his investment was motivated in large measure by a recognition that “there is a desperate shortage of nurses in Jamaica.”
- The Jamaica Observer
GLOBAL
Spain’s ‘Slant Eye’ Team Photo Stirs Ire
A pre-Olympics “slant eye” pose by the Spanish men’s basketball team could leave the gold medal contenders with a black eye as they compete in Beijing.
An advertisement for the Spanish Basketball Federation that appeared in the Spanish daily sports newspaper Marca featured Spain’s 15 national team members in uniform pulling back the skin on their eyelids with smiles on their faces. The team photo was taken at a center court bearing a dragon logo.
It’s a racially pejorative pose not often associated with goodwill in the United States and many other countries, where a similar gesture is more likely to be seen on a school playground than coming from Olympic statesman.
“It’s something that I haven’t seen since I was a kid,” said Sarah Smith, a spokesman for the Organization of Chinese Americans in Washington, D.C. “I can’t speak for what is considered funny in Spain.”
- ABC News
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