ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
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APA & MEDIA NEWS
GUY AOKI ON "P.I."
AsianWeek's Sam Chu Lin reports that on Guy Aoki's August 23, 2001 participation in ABC's "Political Incorrect addressing racial slurs. Other participants included comedian Sarah Silverman, Anne-Marie Johnson, David Spade and MANAA's Guy Aoki.

Sarah Silverman was an obvious choice. In July 2001, she appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, during which she had used the word "chink" in a comedy sketch. Guy Aoki, who had to practically begged for a spot on the show because people weren't aware that he is the co-founder and president of Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), a watchdog organization that advocates for fair portrayal of APIAs.

"He gave an impressive display of his debating skills," said actor and activist George Takei. "It was aggressive. It was articulate. It was witty, and it was forceful. It was a powerful thing to see Guy performing like that."

ASIAN AMERICAN BANDS
Hard-working Asian American bands (KIM and Enda) were one of the top 50 qualifiers for the 'American Music Awards Presents the Coca-Cola New Music Award.' The Coca-Cola New Music Award competition was announced in June and received more than eight hundred entries. (editor's note: unfortunately, Enda recently reports that they didn't make the next stage.)

MARK HSAIO
Mark Hsiao is a Juilliard-trained pianist who works at the city's Department of Cultural Affairs. He made the news when he and his "life partner" (Howard Koeppel) are sharing their posh Upper East Side apartment with its million-dollar views of midtown Manhattan with Republican Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (and his body guard), who is presently separated from his wife, Donna Hanover

MENTAL ILLNESS TREATMENT
Despite progress treating mental illnesses, afflicted members of racial and ethnic minority groups are more likely to receive inadequate treatment or none compared with whites, according to a U.S. surgeon general's report issued Sunday in San Francisco that calls on minorities and local governments to close the health gaps.

Asian Americans, research shows, suffer no more mental disorders than do whites, but they were the least likely of the groups studied to seek treatment. Only 17% of afflicted Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, whom the report tallies together, sought care. "Shame and stigma are believed to figure prominently" in the lower use rates, the report says.

WHITE MEN AND CHRISTIANITY
A North Carolina state legislator apologized on Aug. 22 for forwarding to fellow lawmakers an e-mail that claimed, "Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity." Rep. Don Davis, a white Republican, said he received the letter on Aug. 17 and forwarded it to every member of the state House and Senate. He said he didn't consider the letter racist. "I humbly want to apologize if the e-mail forwarded from my office on Monday night was offensive or disrespectful to anyone in this General Assembly, state or nation," Davis said in a written statement.

PROTEST AT VIETNAMESE CONCERT
Close to 2,500 angry demonstrators rallied outside a Vietnamese pop music concert at the Sun Theatre in Anaheim on Sunday. The concert and protest underscored a widening cultural divide between some older refugees and younger Vietnamese Americans. Protest organizers and others said the musical event was no more than propaganda for Vietnam's Communist government. The show's organizer, John To of San Diego, said the lineup included internationally acclaimed Vietnamese singers and musicians, and that love songs, not politics, were on the evening's program. The performers included Lam Truong, a 25-year-old singer who is studying at Berkley School of Music in Boston--among the "cream of the crop," along with singer Cam Van, a Vietnamese diva who was in Orange County visiting an uncle and her drummer husband, Khac Trieu.

SUSHI CREATOR DIES
Yoshiaki Shiraishi, the man who brought sushi to the masses in Japan by serving it up on a conveyor belt in fast food-type restaurants, has died. He was 87.

A former sushi chef, Shiraishi opened his first revolving sushi bar, called "kaiten zushi" in Japanese, in 1958 in Osaka. In the restaurants, customers sit around a bar like in a traditional sushi shop. But instead of ordering directly from the chef, they pick up their raw fish morsels off a conveyor belt. That keeps labor costs down.

UPCOMING FILIPINO FILM
Pepsy Kettavong. A Laotian American, created "Let's Have Tea" - a bronze sculpture of the civil rights crusaders Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, will be officially unveiled in tiny Susan B. Anthony Square in Rochester, N.Y., on Sunday, 81 years to the day after American women were extended the right to vote.

Dispensing with pedestals, creator Pepsy Kettavong placed the pioneer feminist and the former slave face-to-face in sturdy Victorian chairs. At their side is a table holding a teapot, two cups and two volumes - one possibly a law book, the other a collection of poetry.

Douglass spent 25 of his most influential years as an orator and abolitionist in Rochester, publishing The North Star journal on Main Street. Plans are inching forward to open a "Douglass education center" in a long-vacant Victorian hotel a block from Anthony's red-brick house, which is now a museum chronicling the women's rights movement.

Both were active in the anti-slavery and suffragist movements. They met for the first time in 1848 when she was 28 and he was 33.

BROKERS SEEKING AA CLIENTS
Merrill Lynch (Evan Ling & Hugo Zhang/City of Industry), Salomon Smith Barney (Mindy S. Ross - Sr. V.P.) & other companies' efforts represent the largest multicultural marketing pitch for an industry that has taken heat for having a less-than-diverse customer base and personnel pool.

They are targeting the lucrative Asian and minrity marketplaces. The U.S. Census Bureau figures from 1999 show the median household income in the Asian/Pacific Islander community was $51,205, up from about $45,000 in the early 1990s and the highest figure for any ethnic group. The 1999 median household income was the highest ever recorded for African American ($27,910) and Latino ($30,735) households.

In June, Schwab opened its first branch catering to Korean Americans, an outlet in Los Angeles' Koreatown that brings to 15 the number of Asian-focused branches nationwide that have been launched as part of the company's Asia Pacific Services program. Late last year, the company launched its Vietnamese Services Hotline, featuring bilingual licensed representatives to give information on various financial topics.

UPCOMING FILIPINO FILM
Highlights of Hollywood's fall film lineup include the film "American Adobo" - a comedy about five Filipino-American pals coming to grips with their romantic and professional choices.

TOURISM IN FIJI
Savaged by the effects of the May 2000 nationalist coup and the country's image of instability, the tourism sector estimates it will have lost $112 million in revenue by the end of this year.

Visitors' bureau marketing director, Bill Whiting, is pushing to more than double Fiji's tourism income to $500 million over the next seven years. That will mean attracting major offshore investors to build the hotels and resorts to cater for more than 800,000 visitors a year.

FIL-AM WAR II VETERANS
Aging Filipino veterans of World War II protested at a Department of Veterans Affairs clinic in downtown Los Angeles demanding medical benefits as former soldiers who risked their lives for the United States. The orchestrated plea was the latest public event designed to build support for the veterans' decades-long fight for full pensions and other benefits from Washington.

HATE CRIME
After Richard Labbe allegedly killed his neighbor Thung Phetakoune, he told police: "Those Asians killed my brother and uncle in Vietnam, call it payback time. If you're not going to do anything about these Asians in my country, then I will."

Earlier this month, a Rockingham County, N.H. grand jury charged Labbe, a 35-year-old resident of Newmarket, N.J. with second-degree murder and hate crime.

According to police, on July 14 Phetakoune had tried to break up an argument between Labbe and Sam Chan, another neighbor who had delivered an eviction notice to Labbe from the building landlord.

The case marks the first time the state has charged anyone under the hate crime statute in a murder case, authorities said. The law was enacted in 1990.

The affidavit says Labbe told police his attack was "payback" for his losing relatives in Vietnam. His father later said Labbe lost no relatives in that war.

HAWAIIAN MOTHERS SMOKING FIGURES
Hawaiian mothers had higher rates than any other Asian or Pacific Islander women to smoke during pregnancy. This is despite the national numbers dropping a whopping one-third overall from 1990 to 1999, with the greatest successes occurring among women in their late 20s and 30s. But smoking rates for pregnant teenagers climbed during the latter part of the decade, generally mirroring the smoking habits of teens overall.

VIETNAMESE APPOINTEE OF BUSH
The 33 years old Viet Dinh is the highest-ranking Vietnamese American official in the Bush Administration, working as assistant attorney general overseeing the Office of Legal Policy.

His past included 12 days in a boat with about 75 other people, fleeing to Malaysia from Vietnam. His family's flight had to be coordinated with his father's escape from prison, or it could have meant death or jail for those remaining. They were greeted by gunfire from patrol boats in Malayasia as they pulled into harbor on June 12, 1978.

After a few months in Malaysia, they settled in Portland, Ore. For two years, they picked strawberries, scrounging to send money to Dinh's father and one of his sisters, who were hiding out in Vietnam. Dinh also went to school, learning English by reading Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books.

In 1980 the family moved to Fullerton, Calif. Dinh's mother -- who had been a teacher in Vietnam -- became a seamstress, and Dinh flipped burgers at McDonald's, served pies at Pizza Hut and swept floors. The family saved money to bring their father to the U.S.,, who the Vietnamese government had placed in jail because of his political position as a council membr. He entered the U.S. in 1983.

Dinh received a scholarship to go to Harvard for four years and another three years at Harvard Law school. He became a research assistant at a Kennedy School of Government think tank, and worked in Boston's budget office. He helped found an umbrella organization for Vietnamese students in Massachusetts.

In law school, he homed in on his passion for the Constitution and its structure -- the separation of powers. He developed a conservative philosophy in which government should hold limited powers to maximize the "zone of liberty" for each person. He was the first and only Vietnamese American law professor at Georgetown University.

BUSH'S "AA" APPOINTEES
Among the top 300 Bush appointees, the National Journal analysis found that 26 percent were women and 3 percent were Asian American.

BUSH APPOINTS 12 APA'S
Twelve Asian Pacific Americans are expected to be appointed to senior positions in the Bush administration, a move that shows President Bush's embrace of Asian American talent and ability.

STATUS OF NATIVE HAWAIIANS
Native Hawaiians, while mourning the loss of their culture are constantly fighting to reclaim their rights - as seen in the recent Rice v. Cayetano decision and reversal.

This is while Hawai'i has been called a "laboratory of race relations" based on its carefully cultivated image as a place where people of different cultures have historically lived together and "fused." This image has a certain amount of validity when Hawaii's racial "fusion" is contrasted to that found in most of the continental United States.

For Native Hawaiians, the fusion has been forced at times and cultural domination is a reality etched in daily existence.

IRABU IS DRUNK
Montreal Expo pitcher Hideki Irabu was suspended for drinking himself into a stupor before a scheduled rehabilitation start. Irabu was supposed to pitch for the Triple-A Ottawa Lynx last Sunday, but he was so drunk that he had to be taken to a hospital,

The Expos are not expected to pick up the option on Irabu's contract for next season and, if they do not recall him, Irabu's injury-plagued, two-year stay in Montreal might be over. Irabu, obtained from the New York Yankees for three prospects in 1999, has had knee and elbow surgery since he last pitched for the Expos on June 13.

EAST WEST/99 MARKET MERGER
East West Bancorp, whose banks cater to the Asian American community, are entering into a 10 year agreement with 99 Ranch Market to offer supermarket banking. Agreement will include joint promotions and shared marketing costs.

Buena Park-based 99 Ranch Market, which also caters to the Asian American community, has 20 California stores, a Seattle store and affiliates in Hawaii, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona. East West, based in San Marino, has $2.7 billion in assets and 30 branches, most of which are in Southern California.

ZHENG CAO
She, an accomplished operatic singer (mezzo-soprano), was engaged and longtime companion to the recently deceased Troy Donahue.