What's Happening in San Jose Vietnamese Community & Interested News:

May 31, 1999: Small Viet businesses await fate. City Hall: About 25 stores would be displaced, others could reap benefits. Huong Le, who also goes by the name Henry, can still see East Santa Clara Street as it was in the early 1980s: empty storefronts, trash on the sidewalk, the threat of crime everywhere. Le and his family were among the first wave of Vietnamese refugees who helped turn that half-abandoned business district into the cradle of Vietnamese commerce in San Jose. Now there are many commercial hubs catering to the city's large Vietnamese-American population, but for a decade Santa Clara Street stood alone.

``The neighborhood in those years was not as good as now, but it gave us an opportunity to go there,'' said Le, whose family owns several businesses, including the largest lunch-truck company in Northern California. ``To the credit of the Vietnamese community, they are the ones who moved in and brought the area back to life,'' said Charles Huang, president of the East Santa Clara Neighborhood Business Association.

If the redevelopment plan is approved June 8, the first steps would include building a $214 million City Hall complex and a symphony hall along Santa Clara between Fourth and Sixth streets.So Nguyen stews. He worries about having to pay higher rent and moving so far away his customers won't follow. And even more than that, he worries about setting up his kitchen all over again.

Establishing a new restaurant is expensive, he says, and all the costs may not be covered. ``My god, it's my life! When I went in here three years ago, I didn't know about the project,'' he said. ``I spent $100,000. I never wanted to move. I don't have that kind of money again.''  For residential relocations, there is a simple formula for benefits. But business relocation is very complex, Ekern said. There is no easy formula and many variables.  Still, the agency has come up with an estimated cost of $1.7 million to relocate businesses for the civic center and symphony hall projects.

Some in the Vietnamese-American community believe the city is trying to push them out because they don't fit the upscale image of a rejuvenated downtown. Redevelopment in other parts of downtown has caused small, ethnic businesses to disappear, said Do Duc Hein, an assistant professor of social science at San Jose State University who has written about the experience of Vietnamese refugees. As they look to the future, some community leaders challenge the city to help the remaining Vietnamese- and Mexican-American shops survive, building on the area's multicultural flavor. Full story SJ Mercury News.

Vietnamese names share commonality. What's in a Vietnamese name — or rather, who? Few names are exclusively masculine or feminine. In Vietnam, which has more than 70 million people, there are only 100 family names, with a handful that are found frequently. These include Le, Pham, Tran, Truong and especially Nguyen — which is so common that Nguyens ranked No. 1 among Orange County's homebuyers in 1998. They also led the pack five and 10 years before that, helping to explain why Vietnamese immigrants often are not called by their surnames.

Middle names are generally used to distinguish Vietnamese men from women. Many first names have meanings, and parents
like to pick ones that reflect ideals or aspirations. For example, Trung is for fidelity, Hung for courage. A Vietnamese woman often keeps her own name after marriage, though the Western practice has prompted some to hyphenate their names.

A desire to fit in in America pushes some refugees to completely change their names. Names in Vietnam are monosyllabic. Most Vietnamese have the surname of one of 16 royal families who ruled their homeland. In chronological order, they are: Thuc, Trung, Trieu, Mai, Khuc, Ly, Phung, Kieu, Ngo, Dinh, Le, Tran, Ho, Mac, Trinh and Nguyen Bao Dai, the dynasty's last emperor, who abdicated in 1945.

Cultural history reveals various reasons for having these last names: A person may be an actual descendant of a royal
family. To show loyalty, some voluntarily changed their names to that of the ruling dynasty. An emperor may have granted
the use of his name to reward his subjects.

A family may have been forced to change its name, especially when new royals took over the throne, their rise achieved by force or political manipulation.

Then, people having the same name as the previous rulers would be pressured to drop it, wiping out all references to the old reign and reducing the threat of insurgence. Historians say more than 5 million Vietnamese answer to Nguyen. Locally, 166 advertise in the new edition of the Vietnamese Yellow Pages, from bakers and doctors to jewelers and mortgage brokers. Full story OC. Register.

Vietnamese veterans will get their own military cemetery in June. Right now it's a strawberry patch. But come June, the berries will be plowed under and the small corner of Westminster Memorial Park will be transformed into a military cemetery for Vietnamese veterans of the Vietnam War. The cemetery is the first major undertaking of the Coalition of Veteran Associations of the Republic of Vietnam in Southern California — composed of 18 Vietnamese veterans groups representing an estimated 80,000 men in Orange County. The coalition bought enough land for 300 grave sites in the last five months, and already has sold 150 of them.Veterans also can buy plots for members of their families. Each plot sells for $4,875.
Full story OC. Register.

May 30, 1999: Vietnamese, Korean and other tongues are slowly making their way onto school course lists statewide as well as in Orange County. Adding to a growing list of Asian languages offered at Orange County high schools, Westminster will offer at least one class of Vietnamese as part of its foreign-language curriculum, according to the Huntington Beach Union High School District. The course will meet the foreign-language entrance requirement for the California State University and University of California systems.

Nearly 39 percent of students at the school — or 982 of 2,532 — are of Vietnamese descent. Some educators say it signals a shift to languages that California pupils are most likely to use in future employment, with the state's close trade and economic ties to Pacific Rim nations.Immigrants, say others, are calling for curricular changes because they want their children to retain their native tongue, and along with it their heritage. "With our world becoming smaller and with communities and industry becoming international, there's a need to provide students with the appropriate educational experience to succeed in the international marketplace," said George Giokaris, assistant to the superintendent of Fullerton Joint Union High School District, who was principal of Sunny Hills high when Korean was introduced. Full story OC. Register.

May 28, 1999: Fighter-jet technology may be most dangerous thing Chinese stole. China already is locked in an arms race with archrival Taiwan -- which Beijing considers a renegade province -- that threatens to drawn in Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia. Full story SJ Mercury News.

Slurs Aired Amid Tran Protest Not First Time. Investigation: Tipster had reported 1996 and 1998 incidents to authorities. Police lack evidence to make an arrest, however. On Wednesday, police confiscated radio equipment from the offices of California Crime Control, the private security company hired to patrol the strip mall where the demonstrations occurred. Scott Knowles, owner of the company and a licensed radio operator, was questioned by police in connection with the radio transmissions.

He acknowledged that the radio equipment was for his recreational use but denied making the statements. Westminster officers were led to Knowles' company by a tip from Michael Obermeier, 39, a Santa Ana College broadcast engineer and amateur radio enthusiast. Obermeier is designated by the Amateur Radio Relay League to monitor airwaves for violations of FCC regulations and league standards. His specialty is what hobbyists call "fox hunting"--tracking down transmitter signals. When news reports came out about the slurs, Obermeier said he felt he had to go to police.  "It was eating at me. Full story LA. Times.

Legal Immigrants Promised Public Benefits Without Penalty. Chance of becoming citizens unaffected, White House says. After months of delays that frustrated advocates for children's health, the Clinton administration Tuesday guaranteed that legal immigrants may get public housing, food stamps and health insurance for their children without jeopardizing their chances of becoming U.S. citizens. Enrollment in Healthy Families has fallen far short of expectations, particularly among Latino children,  who make up 75 percent of the 328,000 uninsured children eligible for that program, and 60 percent of the 824,000 uninsured eligible for Medi-Cal.

Only about one-third of the eligible children have signed up with the Healthy Families program, which was introduced with great fanfare by the Wilson administration. Grant noted that the new rules still do not apply to immigrants who arrived in the United States after Aug. 22, 1996, under a so-called five- year rule that forbids use of benefits until a legal immigrant has lived in the United States for five years. A new Clinton budget proposal would provide health-care benefits to pregnant women and children in this group. Full story SF Chronicle.

May 27, 1999:Westminster queries store owner over slur aired during protests. INVESTIGATION: The security provider denies he breached police frequencies and broadcast racist comments. Investigators searched the offices of California Crime Control on Wednesday and seized radios that they said were capable of breaching police frequencies during a tense standoff between officers and bottle-throwing demonstrators. The business is almost directly above Hi Tek Video, target of the 53-day protest.California Crime Control provides security to the shopping center. No arrests were made Wednesday, and security business owner Scott Knowles, 35, denied responsibility for the four radio transmissions made over a police frequency Feb. 20 and 22.

On at least three occasions, an ethnic slur commonly used by American soldiers during the Vietnam War was heard on the airwaves. In one instance, an unidentified voice advocated that someone take a gun and "shut these (expletive) down." All four transmissions occurred over the Orange South police channel, which the 10 police agencies detailed to the protest were all capable of using.Knowles said he offered to have a voice print made to prove his innocence. Lewis said such tests are unreliable. Dahn Quach, a general partner in Terra Bushard Ltd., owner of the shopping center, said he doesn't know whether to believe the security firm he employs is behind the racist broadcasts. But "if somebody did that to my people, I'd get mad. I'd get angry," said Quach, 59. Full story OC. Register.

May 26, 1999: Judge Rejects Tran's Plea to Disqualify D.A.From His Case. Attorneys for Tran, who set off a series of protests in Little Saigon by placing Communist symbols in his shop earlier this year, argued that Dist. Atty. Anthony J. Rackauckas was biased because he had spoken at a political rally in support of the protesters. They wanted the case to be handled instead by the state attorney general's office. The protests ended March 5 when police raided Tran's store and confiscated more than 17,000 videotapes of Asian soap operas. Tran was arrested a week later on suspicion of video piracy. His arraignment is set for June 9. Full story LA. Times.

County allows purge by sheriff. Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith won approval Tuesday of her controversial reorganization plan, which fires one of her political opponents, demotes another and leaves the department's top ranks without any Asian-American or Latino leadership. As a result, Assistant Sheriff Ruben Diaz, who is Latino, will be laid off, and Assistant Sheriff Tom Sing, who is Asian-American, will be demoted three ranks to sergeant. Sing's annual salary of about $104,000 will be slashed nearly in half.

The changes will be effective July 12. Neither Sing nor Diaz responded Tuesday to repeated requests for comment. About 70 percent of the department's sworn officers are white, partly because of a decade-long hiring and promotion freeze that was lifted two years ago. A spokesman for the union representing the department's rank and file said there are no minority candidates eligible for the top-ranking positions of undersheriff, commander or captain. Smith herself leaped from the rank of sergeant -- the second-lowest rank in the department -- to assistant sheriff -- the second-highest rank -- nine years ago  when the sheriff was under pressure to diversify the department, which had been run by white men since it was founded in 1850. Full story SJ Mercury News.

May 25, 1999: Khrushchev's son to become a U.S. citizen .The son of the man who ruled the Soviet Union and its Communist Party at the peak of its Cold War with the United States is to become an American citizen next month. Khrushchev and his wife, Valentina Golenko, are scheduled to become citizens June 23 at the Immigration and Naturalization Service regional headquarters in St. Albans, Vt., according to his Seattle-based immigration lawyer, Dan Danilov. Khrushchev, a senior research scholar and lecturer at Brown University's Center for Foreign Policy Development, is a rocket engineer and computer scientist who once headed the Soviet Missile Design Bureau. He received his "green card," granting him permanent resident status, in 1993, with the support of former President Nixon, President Bush and Robert McNamara, defense secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, as well as top officials in the Central Intelligence Agency. Full Story Seattle P-I.

May 22, 1999: Watch Out: Phony money scheme revealed. The new real $100 bills have a detailed portrait of Franklin, watermarks visible on both sides, and green ink that looks black when viewed from an angle. It also has polymer threads with the words "USA 100" that are visible under a bright light. Also, the thread glows red under ultraviolet light. The fake bills have a fuzzy watermark and its threads do not have the words "USA 100," Coleman said. Full story Seattle-PI.

Court Order Hobbles Protest in Little Saigon Controversy. Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert D. Monarch ordered the handful of demonstrators, who have been calling for Lam's recall since mid-March, to stay 300 yards away from his Garden Grove restaurant. In effect, they won't be allowed within blocks of his sidewalk, parking lot or adjoining properties.Full story LA. Times.

POLITICS: Protesters are ordered to stay 300 yards from a councilman's restaurant.Lam was advised by Westminster city attorney Richard Jones to remain neutral because getting involved could create legal problems for the city. Lam said the ruling, by Judge Robert D. Monarch, was a great relief. He said he has spent $40,000 in legal fees and $10,000 for a security guard at the restaurant, and has lost about half of his restaurant earnings.Orange County Supervisor Chuck Smith showed up at the end of Lam's hearing to extend support. "What the protesters are doing is wrong. They're motivated for political, self-serving reasons, and they're trying to economically destroy one of the finest leaders from the Vietnamese community," he said.Full story OC. Register.

May 21, 1999: Vitamin price-fixing settled by 3 huge firms. Fines total $725 million for carving up markets a price-fixing conspiracy estimated by government prosecutors to have cost U.S. consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. The companies collaborated systematically and with an elaborate set of rules, according to government lawyers, meeting several times a year to establish market share -- right down to half a percentage point. Their goal was to forge agreements about precisely how much of each vitamin would be sold by each company, carving up the globe and establishing sales targets for vitamins such as A, B2, C and E. For instance, a company might be granted 15 percent of the market for vitamin C and given the right to serve certain customers and regions. Those who exceeded their targets were punished at the end of the year by being forced to buy excess products from their co-conspirators, the government alleged.

``This conspiracy has affected more than $5 billion of commerce in products found in every American household, ''Government lawyers said that the vitamin cartel developed highly formal rituals and regulations. Each year, the marketing heads and products managers would convene for what was called the ``top-shot'' meeting. The group would agree on price increases and sales volumes for the coming year, a task referred to as the ``budget process.'' The settlements announced Thursday involve three companies that command nearly 80 percent of the $3 billion-a-year vitamin market, F. Hoffman-La Roche of Switzerland, BASF of German and Rhone-Poulenc of France. Full story by SJ Mercury News.

May 20, 1999: Asian Children Finally Get Part of $550-Million Estate. Six weeks into his new life in America, Nguyen Be Lory is doing the things you would expect a 4-year-old to do. He's discovered Teletubbies and developed a taste for Fruit Loops. At preschool, he makes friends easily and ranks recess as his favorite activity. Full story LA. Times.

Thailand detains Viet exile on immigration charges. Fundraising in U.S. ran afoul of state law. BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- The leader of an overseas Vietnamese anti-communist group has been detained by Thai immigration authorities, his colleagues and Thai officials said Tuesday. Nguyen Huu Chanh, a Southern California resident who is general secretary of the self-styled ``Government of Free Vietnam,'' was detained May 12 in the southern city of Hat Yai ``for a minor infraction of immigration rules,'' said a news release faxed from his group. Full story.

May 19, 1999: S.J. mayor to fight pro-cardroom policy. ``I consider them a unique business, but I don't consider them legitimate,'' said Gonzales, who is about to get his first chance to clamp down on cardrooms. ``I do not feel it's our responsibility to set up policies that allow them to compete. . . . It's inconsistent with my philosophy that cardrooms are not a good thing to have in our community.'' Full story SJ Mercury News.

May 18, 1999: Star Wars: Basic training. The highly anticipated film — which costs an estimated $115 million —reacquaints audiences with slightly younger versions of Yoda and Jabba, and a pair of familiar droids named C-3PO and R2-D2. It also introduces a Jedi elder played by Samuel L. Jackson. There's an underwater battle, lots of light-saber play, and a fast-paced contest involving dragster-like "pods." Full story by SF. Examiner.
A fans's guide to the star wars hype. Full story by SF. Examiner.

Barak wins landslide victory in Israel. A shaken Netanyahu immediately resigned as head of the Likud party. In the parallel vote for the Knesset, Israel's 120-seat parliament, the Likud received only 18 seats -- cutting the parties representation almost in half. Barak's One Israel bloc garnered 33. ``I'd like to congratulate Ehud Barak in his electoral success, `` Netanyahu said. ``The nation has decided and we have to respect its wishes. That's how it is in a democracy.''  With 31 parties running, several of the smaller parties logged particular gains, notably the anti-Orthodox Shinui party, led by television personality Tommy Lapid, which received 6 seats, the same number as Natan Sharansky's Yisrael B'Aliya immigrant party. The Orthodox Sephardic Shas advanced from 10 to 15 seats, so the party remains a forces to be reckoned with despite the recent conviction on bribery charges of its leader, Aryeh Deri. Full story SJ Mercury News.

May 17, 1999:Top Republican backs doubling U.S. President's pay.``You know, the president has been making $200,000 for over 30 years, and it is time to bring his salary up to scale,'' DeLay said on the NBC program ``Meet the Press.''DeLay said members of Congress, whose yearly salary is more that $133,000 a year, also should get a pay raise to offset the costs of inflation. Full story by SJ Mercury News.

The 2,543rd birthday of Buddha. An estimated 25,000 Vietnamese Americans gathered at Santa Ana College on Sunday to join the celebration, watching traditional dances, listening to songs and paying homage to the figure who embraced compassion and isdom as keys to life.  "This is the beginning of a new turning point for religious freedom in Vietnam and the restoration of the  Unified Buddhist Church in Vietnam," said Penelope Faulkner, vice president of Vietnam Committee on Human Rights, one of the organizing groups for the event. Full story LA.Times.

RELIGION: Delegates came from Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, Thailand, India, Laos, Cambodia, China, South Korea, Burma, and other U.S. states. They championed two goals: to celebrate Buddha's birth and to solemnly call for religious freedom in nations like Vietnam. The annual festival underscored this duality. Many festivities included a serious message. "Lotuses grow in muddy, mucky waters. Yet they emerge clean and beautiful," Ngo explained. "In the same way, Buddha tells us to rise above the world's evils. He wants us to pursue the pure, the virtuous." "Buddha, the model of compassion, sought to end suffering for all things in our universe. If other people are not free, we cannot be truly free. Full story OC. Register.

May 14, 1999: Upcoming event: 1. VIETNAMESE AMERICAN ALUMNI CRUISE PARTY: Date:  Saturday, June 5th, 1999, Thuy«n Tình Hµi Ngµ. Place: V.A.A. will depart at Fisherman's Wharf  Pier 39 in San Francisco Time:  7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. Refreshment will be serve at 7:00 p.m. 8:00 - Boat Departure.

2. SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY KARAOKE CONTEST: At 6:30 PM until Midnight on 18th of June 1999, the event will take place at "Preet Hall" 1125 E. Santa Clara St. across 24th. St.

Refugee agency's embattled director resigns. Kim Long Nguyen and the Refugee Federation Service Center Board of Directors quietly decided to sever relations and made a pact not to discuss the situation publicly, according to three agency officials who asked not to be named.

An independent audit, ordered by Gov. Gary Locke, has examined whether refugees received promised services from the Southeast Seattle social-service agency. Refugee Federation officials have maintained the agency has done nothing wrong and say they've welcomed the inspection. Since 1984, Nguyen has led the private, nonprofit agency that serves more than 1,600 refugees and immigrants a year with employment services and job-skills training.

The agency has an annual budget of about $2 million, mostly from state and federal funds. In the 1980s, conflict-of-interest questions were raised because Nguyen's brother and his brothers' friends were living in an agency-funded apartment for young refugees. Full Story, By Seattle Times.

Director of refugee aid center resigns amid dispute. State orders audit after agency's claims questioned.In February, the Post-Intelligencer published the results of a six-month investigation of Kim Long, the Refugee Federation and other groups he headed or organized. In examining the federation, which has a $2 million annual budget and provides job-related social services to about 1,500 people, the P-I documented major inconsistencies in claims Kim Long made about his background, education and accomplishments.

Numerous examples of questionable billing for services provided by the federation were also found. If the client sample examined by the P-I was representative of all federation billings over four years, the amount billed from questionable cases would be about $3 million. Kim Long insisted he had nothing to do with the federation's billing or day-to-day operation.
"I really don't know what they do every day," he said in an earlier interview. Detail by Seattle P-I.

May 13, 1999: O.C. Vietnamese feel new hope for vision of freedom in their homeland: A trip to Capitol Hill leaves activists convinced that their representatives are paying more heed to human-rights issues. Full story.

May 12, 1999:Activists call for tying Vietnam trade to rights. About 300 Vietnamese emigrants worldwide, including about 30 from Orange County, carried their campaign for human-rights improvements in their native land to the U.S. capital Tuesday. A congressional review of the waiver for the Jackson-Vanik Amendment comes up next month, and attendees Tuesday found some sympathetic ears. Several Congress members urged them to lobby about 100 legislators to change their votes. Full story.

May 11, 1999: Vietnam Human Rights Day May 11, was proclaimed by Congress in 1994, when it adopted political dissident Que Dan Nguyen's 1990 manifesto urging Hanoi to respect human rights, to accept political pluralism and to hold free and fair elections. Leonard Tran is among 50 local activists attending a human-rights day in D.C. Details by O.C. Register.

May 10, 1999:In a phone interview with CBS's Face the Nation from inside the U.S. compound, Ambassador James Sasser said nearly every window had been shattered in the embassy building, its chancery and his residence, forcing his wife and son to take refuge elsewhere. "No question that we're hostages here," Sasser said.  The demonstrations were the biggest in China since the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square almost exactly a decade ago. But this time the protesters had the approval of the Chinese government, which has condemned the missile attack in Belgrade as "barbaric" and a "crime of war."

Even before the attack on the embassy in Belgrade, the Chinese media were criticizing NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. China doesn't like to see the West interfering in a country's dealings with its provinces. Its leaders believe if the West can attack Yugoslavia to help ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, there's nothing stopping it from attacking China on behalf of Tibetans or Taiwanese. Details by USA Today.

Special links: NATO Home Page,  U.S. Department of Defense,  Bristish Ministry of Defense. Kosovo faq. Interactive Guides with background history, who's who and military forces from  MSNBC. Also, on April 6, 1999 our page has links to interesting info to see.

Man Robs 20 Visitors of $5,000 at Vietnamese Temple. A masked man burst into the Garden Grove temple of an obscure Vietnamese sect Saturday night. The temple-goers, mostly women, belong to a sect worshiping a goddess known as the Lady of the Sam Mountains, which is in the southern part of Vietnam.

Despite the incident, Tam said there are no plans to increase security or cut back the temple's hours. The temple is open 11 to 12 hours daily, he said. Details LA. Times.

Lam said Friday he has spent at least $30,000 pursuing a suit against protesters and $25,000 in hiring private security guards, and has lost an inestimable amount of business. He said he and his family are prepared to sell their home if necessary to finance the battle, but he will refuse to leave office, even if it also means losing his business. Details LA. Times.