news from all around

1-Child Policy Has Exceptions After China Quake: The Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee has announced that the country's one-child policy exempts families with a child killed, severely injured or disabled in the devastating earthquake that hit China's Sichuan province this month.

Turning Point: Cracking My Family's Mysteries: Here's an interesting piece by Carol Lin for NPR's Day to Day about the long, difficult process—both as a journalist and a daughter—of getting her mom to talk about her past, and uncovering the untold secrets of her family's history.

The Ides of May: With Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in full swing, Jeff Yang's latest "Asian Pop" column wonders whether the Asian American community is out of date, out of touch—and running out of time to bring the next generation of Asian Americans into the mix.

The Asian-American Minority Swing Vote: APAs are the third largest ethnic minority—sometimes stereotypically called the "quiet minority." Making up 5 percent of the U.S. population and as much as 12 percent in states like California, their power and influence remains largely untapped.

Expanded Wing Luke Asian Museum's treasures are its stories: Housed in a restored 1910 social center for Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino immigrants, the Wing Luke Asian Museum opens in its new location in Seattle's Chinatown International District on Saturday.

A monument to Japanese Americans in the Antelope Valley is restored: After being vandalized during World War II, a memorial erected in 1938 to honor Japanese citizens who had lived and died in California's Antelope Valley was finally restored and rededicated earlier this month.

Speak English, Child! This Is Korea: South Koreans, anxious to ensure their children are well-schooled, and driven by a competitive edge to learn English, spend around $5 billion dollars a year to educate their kids abroad—equivalent to nearly 20 percent of the annual total allocated to education by the government.

Disconnected: According to a 2006 survey of Boston schoolchildren conducted by the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center, Vietnamese teenagers are more likely to feel disconnected from their parents and are less inclined to open up to them about their problems than other teenagers in Boston.

Racial Discrimination Has Different Mental Health Effects On Asians: The first national study of Asians living in the United States shows that for some individuals, strong ties to their ethnicity can guard against the negative effects of racism, but for others, strong ties can actually make the effects worse.