GAT Sept 15-30, 2012 Vol 9 No 17

www.gasiantimes.comSeptember15-30,2012Vol9.No17Covering The Multicultural Asian American Community in Georgia

Homeschooling gains traction among US families .. Pg 9

Publisher: Li WongAccount Manager: Adrian WestContributors: Andrian Putra, May Lee, Mark Ho Photographer: Ben Hioe, Rendy Tendean

Tel: 770.335.4593Advertising: [email protected]: [email protected]: www.gasiantimes.com

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GAT Calendar of Events(For latest & updated events, visit www.gasiantimes.com)

GAT welcome submission of announcement pertaining to community related events. Please email event, date, venue, and time to [email protected].

GAT does not guarantee insertion of event announcement and has the right to deny any posting.

JapanFestDate: Sept 15-16, 2012Time: 10 am -6 pm; 10 am - 5 pmVenue: Gwinnett CenterFor more info: www.japanfest.org

“Iwami Kagura” - Dynamic and theat-rical ancient Japanese dance perfor-mancePresented by Consulate General of Japan AtlantaDate: Saturday Sept 15 & Sunday Sept 16Time: 7:00 pm Sat ; 2:00 pm SunVenue: 14th Street Playhouse (Saturday) & Center for Puppetry Arts (Sunday)RSVP required.For more info: 404-926-3020

APA Law Enforcement Appreciation Banquet & Scholarship FundraiserDate: Thursday Sept 20Time: 6:00 pm -9:30 pmVenue: UPS Headquarters, 55 Glenlake Pkwy, NEFor more info: 404-889-6458

Indonesian Fall FestivalDate: Sunday, Sept 30Time: 4:00 pm - 7:00 pmVenue: OLA Church Brookhaven

Vietnamese American Community of Georgia - Mid Autumn FestivalDate: Saturday Sept 29, 2012Time: 6:00 pm - 9:00 pmVenue: Hong Kong SupermarketFor more info: Trish Nguyen, 678.820.8822

8th Atlanta Asian Film FestivalDate: Oct 5-20, 2012Venues: Emory University, GSU-Cinefest For more info: www.atlaff.org

2012 USPAACC-SE Annual MeetingDate: Thursday Oct 11Time: 8:30 am - 4:00 pmVenue: UPS HeadquartersFor more info: 678-327-7687

Georgia Asian Times September 15-30, 2012

September 15-30, 2012 Georgia Asian Times

METRO ASIAN NEWS

Ancient Japanese Myth Showcased in “Iwami Kagura”Atlanta, September 14, 2012 — The

acting Consul General of Japan hosted a special preview performance of Iwami Kagura, a colorful ancient Japanese dance at his residence in Buckhead. Acting Consul General Yohji Miyamori welcomes invited guests and friends to his residence for the special preview.

The performance of Iwami Kagura (Oro-chi) was presented by a group of thirteen performers and musicians from Iwami Kagura Shinwa-Kai in Masuda City, Shi-mane Prefecture. The performance group was formed in 1975 and has held many performances thoroughout the year and is recognized for its mastery of ancient and culturally unique Japanese art.

“We are very honored to perform this unique art form for the first time in Atlanta and the United States,” said Mr. Yoshihiro Kihara, spokesperson for the group. The group will be performing in three other cities including Murray, Kentucky, Miami, Florida, Nashville, Tennessee in its U.S. tour.

Two performance of Iwami Kagura are scheduled for the public on Saturday Sept 15 and Sunday Sept 16. The tour of Iwami Kagura is sponsored by Japan Foundation and the Consulate General of Japan.

For information on scheduled perfor-mances, visit www.atlanta.us.emb-japan.go.jp/kagura.html or call 404-240-4300

Gainesville, Sept 8, 2012 -- The 17th Atlanta Dragon Boat Festival attracted 72 teams to participate at the annual race at Olympic Rowing facility at Lake Lanier.

The festival started with a heavy downpour and followed with sunshine throughout the day.

“Despite the rain, the festival at-tracted large number of visitors and teams to participate. This has been a great event for corporate teams to build teamwork and camaraderie,” said Gene Hanratty, Director and organizer of the dragon boat festival.

A special dotting of the eye of dragon boat was performed during the opening ceremony at noon. Ms Anita Chan, Director of Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office delivered the welcome and keynote speech at the ceremony.

Visitors were treated to several multicultural performances including a colorful Dragon Dance parade at the festival plaza.

Official results of the dragon boat race based on categories are avail-able at http://gasiantimes.com/

17th Annual Dragon Boat Festival Draws Large Crowd Despite Rain

Atlanta, September 16, 2012 -- Talent Corporation Malaysia Berhad hosted a Malaysian networking event at a local restaurant. The event was organized by Malaysian Association of Georgia to inform its members of program and services offered by Talent Corporation Malaysia.

Founded in January 2011, Talent-Corp is designed to attract and to re-tain talented workforce from overseas to Malaysia. A key area of focus is to recruit talented Malaysians abroad to return home to work.

“We are keen to collaborate and network with Malaysians around the world. Even if you don’t plan to return home anytime soon, we want to make an effort to outreach to you and to net-

work,” said Hadrian Numpang Awell, a representative from Talent Corpora-tion Malaysia Berhad at the dinner gathering.

In addition to Atlanta, Talent Corpo-ration is scheduled to conduct presen-tation of its program in Los Angeles, San Jose, Vancouver, Edmonton, Dallas, Houston, and Chicago in the coming weeks.

Over 30 Malaysians living in the metro Atlanta area attended the dinner event.

For more information on Talent-Corp, visit www.talentcorp.com.my

Malaysia Seeking Skilled Talent in Metro Atlanta

Chopstix for Charity Benefiting Pan Asian Community ServicesAtlanta, Sept 15, 2012 -- This year’s

annual NAAAP’s Chopstix For Charity is scheduled for Saturday, October 20 at Andrews Entertainment District.

NAAAP Atlanta’s Chopstix for Charity connects corporations, small businesses and individuals to the lo-cal Asian Pacific Islander community through annual fundraising and grant making.

Chopstix for Charity actively sup-ports small, non-profit organizations that provide social services, education or promotes cultural awareness for the

Atlanta Asian Pacific Islander com-munity. CFC raises funds through its annual charitable event and distributes 100% of corporate donations to mon-etary grants.

Tickets are priced at $55 for non members and $45 for NAAAP Atlanta members.

For more information, visit www.naaapatlanta.org/chopstix.aspx


BUSINESS

WASHINGTON, Sept 14, 2012 (AFP) - Apple’s iPhone 5 is one of the biggest product launches ever in the sector, and may also deliver a well-timed stimulus to the US economy ahead of the presidential election, analysts say.

Apple is expected to sell as many as 10 million of the devices in just the first days of the launch starting Sep-tember 21, and upwards of 50 million in the fourth quarter, including a big chunk in the United States.

JP Morgan economist Michael Feroli said he sees the iPhone 5 add-ing between 0.25 and 0.5 percentage points to US economic activity in the fourth quarter, based on projected US sales of eight million.

Feroli said it was a simple math calculation: if the phones are worth $600, including carrier subsidies, minus $200 for import costs, that would be $3.2 billion in net sales, or $12.8 billion at an annual rate, boost-ing gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.33 points.

Cary Leahey, chief US economist at Decision Economics, said the calcula-tion “makes sense.”

“It just shows the power of an extremely popular product which is priced very dear,” Leahey said.

He said the boost was “noticeable but not earth-shattering.”

But with the US economy having expanded at a tepid 1.7 percent pace in the second quarter, the stimulus will be well-timed.

“The economy absolutely needs it, it could not come at a better time,” said Joel Naroff at Naroff Economic Advisors.

“Household incomes are flat, real disposable income is going nowhere. You don’t have any source of fuel, so it’s got to come from somewhere.”

Naroff said that US consumers will likely pull money out of savings for the iPhone and similar devices, and in some cases, it may be simply a matter of pulling the spending forward.

“The net impact on the economy is not clear,” he said.

Paul Krugman, a Princeton Univer-sity economist who blogs for The New York Times, said the stimulus effect underlines how the US economy is dependent on consumer spending.

“To believe that more spending will provide an economic boost, you have to believe -- as you should -- that demand, not supply, is what’s holding the economy back,” Krugman wrote.

“We don’t have high unemployment because Americans don’t want to work, and we don’t have high unem-ployment because workers lack the right skills.

“Instead, willing and able work-ers can’t find jobs because employ-ers can’t sell enough to justify hiring them. And the solution is to find some way to increase overall spending so that the nation can get back to work.”

Krugman added that “over time, there will be more equipment that needs replacing, more iPhone-like innovations that boost spending, and, in the long run, we will exit this eco-nomic trap.”

Even before the iPhone 5, Apple cited a study showing it has created or supported more than 500,000 US jobs, including 47,000 at Apple alone

iPhone 5 not just a phone; it’s a stimulus too

and 200,000 in the so-called “app economy.”

Apple’s launch comes amid a spate of new product releases expected to woo US consumers in the pre-holiday season.

The Consumer Electronics Associa-tion projects record sales of electron-ics of $206 billion this year, the first time above the $200 billion mark.

Along with phone launches, Micro-soft is producing its own Surface tab-let computer, Google has introduced a tablet and smartphone and Amazon has upgraded its Kindle Fire tablets.

And Apple is expected to launch a “mini iPad” in the coming weeks to cement its position in the tablet market.

All this has the potential to boost share prices, consumer spending and the so-called supply chain involving component makers. Apple’s record stock price surge has helped push the Nasdaq stock exchange to its highest level since 2000, after the dotcom collapse.

Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Hu-berty said Apple may ship between 48 million and 53 million iPhones in the fourth quarter and “up to 266 million” in 2013.

Contrary to popular belief, the largest portion of the proceeds from iPhone sales flow to the United States, not China, said Jason Dedrick, profes-sor of information studies at Syracuse University.

“Virtually none of the profits go to China,” he added.

A 2011 study by Dedrick with re-searchers Kenneth Kraemer and Greg Linden concluded that 58 percent of the iPhone cost went to Apple profits, with materials representing some 22 percent and labor costs in China just 1.8 percent.

“We estimated about $10 in wages for each iPhone going to workers in China for the iPhone or iPad,” he said.

Even with the stimulus, most economists say the iPhone and other devices probably won’t make a differ-ence in the November election.

Leahey said the introduction is too late to have an impact on jobs before November, and that more important is “the public perception of the labor market,” which is unlikely to change in the next two months.


BUSINESS

Debit cards make debut in cash-reliant MyanmarYANGON, Sept 14, 2012 (AFP)

- Myanmar introduced debit cards on Friday, paving the way for people to pay without cash for everything from meals out to flights for the first time in the former military-ruled country.

The Myanmar Payment Union (MPU) allows holders of the cards with 17 local banks to pay for goods at around a dozen businesses signed up to the scheme in Yangon, Mandalay and Naypyidaw.

Decades of junta-rule left Myanmar with a rudimentary banking system, leaving people little option but to pay in cash.

But the scheme “opens a new chapter of payment system”, said Maung Maung Win, MPU chairman and deputy governor of the Central Bank of Myanmar, heralding the step towards a less cash-reliant economy.

“An efficient payment system is needed for the development of the country,” Minister of Finance and Revenue, Win Shein, added.

“We have tried to launch the MPU card system inside the country to use international payment systems for small and medium payments and to reduce cash payments.”

The inability to pay for goods with debit or credit cards is a symptom of

years of tough international sanctions against the former military dictator-ship, which gave way to a quasi-civil-ian regime last year.

There are currently only an estimat-ed 80 ATMs across the country.

People are obliged to carry all their money in wads of cash -- a particular challenge for tourists and foreign businesses -- with even upmarket hotels only sporadically able to accept credit card payments.

International payment cards such as Visa and Mastercard will be phased in next and Myanmar hopes its own bank cards will eventually be accepted overseas, Win Shein added.

Last week MasterCard said it had signed a deal with a Myanmar bank that it hopes will pave the way for electronic payments with its own cards, following on from rival Visa which in August said it was preparing to enter the market.

The influx of international visitors following the easing of some interna-tional sanctions on Myanmar has cre-ated new business opportunities and demand for customers who may not wish to carry cash, the company said.

Indonesia’s Lion Air to launch airline in MalaysiaKUALA LUMPUR, Sept 11, 2012

(AFP) - Indonesia’s PT Lion Mentari Airlines said Tuesday it will launch a new low-cost airline with Malay-sian firm NADI that could challenge regional budget giant AirAsia.

The new Malindo Airways will start regional flights by May next year with a fleet of 12 Boeing 737s, said Indonesia’s largest privately run air-line, which operates as Lion Air, and Malaysia’s National Aerospace and Defense Industries (NADI).

Lion Air president Rusdi Kirana said the companies were counting on an increase in travel, with the Asia Pacific region expected to have 2.2 billion passengers in 2030 and need 11,450 new airplanes to meet the demand.

NADI, which specialises in main-tenance, repair and overhaul ser-vices, will own 51 percent of the joint venture. Lion Air will supply the fleet, based out of Kuala Lumpur, AirAsia’s home market.

“We are giving affordable prices but with better services” than other bud-get airlines, such as in-flight enter-tainment, Kirana told reporters before the joint venture signing ceremony in Kuala Lumpur.

The airline plans to initially fly to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia as well as destinations across Indonesia, Manila, Hanoi and cities in Australia and China.

Over the next decade it hopes to expand its fleet to 100 planes, includ-ing five flagship 787 Ddreamliners to arrive in 2015, when Malindo plans to fly to Europe.

OSK Research aviation analyst Ahmad Maghfur Usman said Lion Air working with a local partner to break into Malaysia’s regulated airspace could pose a “real challenge” to AirA-sia.

“Lion Air already has a strong infrastructure to begin with,” he said. “As long as they offer a competitive compelling fare, it will put a fight to AirAsia... The winners here will be the consumers.”

AirAsia has become one of the avia-tion sector’s biggest successes, since Tony Fernandes, a former record industry executive, plucked it from insolvency in 2001 and quickly turned it into a profitable, rapidly expanding company.

Last month, the budget carrier an-nounced that it would buy Indonesia’s Batavia Air for $80 million, as it spreads its wings in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

It also recently set up a regional headquarters in Jakarta to direct its expansion.

Lion Air flies to 72 destinations with 600 daily departures. It also flies to Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia while its long-haul arm Batik Air will begin operations in March next year with six Boeing 737s and five Boeing B787 Dreamliners.

This year Lion Air sealed a record $22.4 billion deal for 230 Boeing 737 jets. The first aircraft will be delivered in 2017, and the deliveries will run up until 2026.


TECH

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 13, 2012 (AFP) - Nintendo on Thursday an-nounced that its next-generation Wii U video game consoles will hit the coveted US market on November 18 with a starting price of $300.

The Japanese electronic games titan is counting on the Wii U to recapture the glory, and profits, seen after it opened play to masses of “casual play-ers” by introducing motion-sensing controls on the original Wii consoles launched in 2006.

“The wait is almost over -- in just 66 days, Wii U will arrive with the strongest lineup of launch software in Nintendo history,” said Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime.

“With the integrated second screen of the included GamePad and features that instantly enhance the way people play games, watch video and inter-act with each other, consumers will see how Wii U delivers a completely unique experience.”

At the E3 video game industry gathering in Los Angeles in June, Nintendo boasted that Wii U would start a “revolutionary” trend in “asym-metrical play” that lets players using GamePad tablets act as wily adversar-ies in multi-person matches.

“At its core, the Wii U does three different things,” Reggie Fils-Aime said during a Nintendo press event at E3.

“Change your gaming, change how you interact with gaming friends and change the way you enjoy your TV,” he continued.

“It stands to revolutionize your liv-ing room.”

Nintendo on Thursday unveiled a “TVii” application that lets people use the Wii U tablet-style “GamePad” con-trollers to access television programs or video online at services such as YouTube and Netflix.

More than 50 games tailored for play on Wii U will be available when the consoles hit the market, according to Nintendo.

Titles will include “Assassin’s Creed III” by French video game giant Ubi-soft and a version of beloved “Call of Duty” from Activision.

“The integrated second screen of the GamePad creates new possibilities for how games can be played,” said Activision chief executive Eric Hirsh-berg.

“We’re excited for our fans to expe-rience the biggest franchises, like Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Skylanders Gi-ants and Transformers Prime, in new ways made possible on Wii U.”

Nintendo in July said that its net loss for the April-June quarter shrank by about a third, and that it still hoped to return to profit this year as it battles fierce competition and a strong yen.

The Kyoto-based firm posted a net loss of 17.23 billion yen ($220 mil-lion) for the three months through June, compared with a loss of 25.51 billion yen a year earlier.

Nintendo Wii U consoles to hit US in November

MENLO PARK, California, Sept 13, 2012 (AFP) - Facebook on Thursday said that it has shaken up its engineering teams to make targeting smart phones a top priority at the world’s leading social network.

“We have really just re-organized the company to build faster on mobile,” Face-book director of product management Peter Deng said during a briefing with reporters at the company’s campus in Menlo Park, California.

“In the past six months we transplanted mobile engineers to the other teams,” he continued. “Slowly, over time we are mak-ing everyone a mobile engineer.”

Facebook users have been shifting from accessing the social network on desktop computers or laptops to smart phones and tablet computers, where the company doesn’t serve-up money-making ads.

About 7,000 different models of mobile devices are used daily to connect with Facebook and the challenge is to tailor experiences for each gadget, according to Facebook product manager Mick Johnson.

A focus on HTML 5 technology to con-nect across the spectrum of smart phones using mobile Web browsers resulted in lackluster results, according to Facebook.

“The performance wasn’t what our us-ers expected and we weren’t happy with it either,” Johnson said.

Facebook released a rebuilt application for iPhones a few weeks ago and saw its rating in Apple’s online App Store go from two to four stars.

“Internally, we are psyched,” Johnson said. “This is really just the start of the road for us; there are many things we want to do.”

Facebook director of developer products Dough Purdy pulled an iPhone from one pocket of his jeans and an Android-pow-ered smartphone from another, referring to them as the most social devices people have ever had.

Giving outside developers tools to opti-mize Facebook-synched applications for users of Apple or Android gadgets is part of the company’s intensified focus on mobile, according to Purdy.

“Facebook has become a powerful engine for third-party developers to acquire new users,” Purdy said. “And gaining new users is the name of the game; it is how you make money in this new world.”

About 225 million people each month go to the Facebook App Center, which helps people find “social” applications based on factors such as what friends at the social network like.

“We are trying to deliver the best user experience whatever platform is available,” Purdy said, noting that Facebook engineers remain bullish on HTML 5 technology for connecting with people through Web browsing software.

“HTML 5 is great to give us reach be-cause most devices have some kind of Web browser,” he explained. “We are building native applications for Android and iOS, but we can’t build for all the devices that exist.”

Android and Apple devices dominate the smartphone market. Facebook has started Android and iOS training sessions and expected to have 200 to 300 engineers trained by year’s end.

Purdy saw “huge” potential for Facebook to make money from the shift to mobile devices, including getting revenue from helping people find things from shops or restaurants to “apps.”

“What is Facebook really?” he asked rhe-torically. “Word of mouth at scale.”

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday the social network giant is focused on mobile devices and should be seen as a smart bet despite a “disappointing” stock market debut.

“It is really clear from the stats and my own personal intuition that a lot of energy in the ecosystem is going to mobile, not desktop (computers),” Zuckerberg said dur-ing an on-stage interview at a TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.

“That is the future,” he continued. “We are going to be doing killer stuff there.”

Zuckerberg was adamant that the com-pany was being underestimated and was on track to make “more money on mobile than we make on desktop.”

Facebook shakes up engineering teams in mobile move


FEATURE

Homeschooling gains traction among US families

WASHINGTON, Sept 10, 2012 (AFP) – For a small but growing number of young Americans, the living room is the classroom when it comes to the “three R’s” of reading, ‘riting and ‘rith-metic.

Homeschooling is growing in the United States, as parents who question the ability of conventional teaching to properly educate their children take matters into their own hands — with help from the Internet.

The Department of Education estimates that 1.5 million children aged five through 17, or 2.9 percent of all American youngsters, were home schooled in 2007, the most recent year for which figures are available.

That’s a 74 percent increase from 1999 when the number stood at 850,000 youngsters.

The National Home Education Research Institute, which conducts ongoing research into homeschooling, puts its own estimate of home schooled children at 2.2 million in 2010.

Childhood education is mandatory throughout the US, but rules vary be-tween the 50 states — all of which per-mit homeschooling, but half of which have no regulations over how parents teach their kids.

Sarah Tiller, a scientist and mother of eight who lives in Washington, embraced homeschooling four years ago, starting by helping her eldest child with mathematics.

“I chose to teach them myself so that they would have a strong foundation in math and a knowledge of history from prehistoric to modern times,” she said.

“I also wanted them to become inde-pendent thinkers and pursue subjects they were very interested in,” added Tiller, whose husband is a surgeon.

School at the Tillers starts in the morning with math “every day” plus history, Latin and Italian. In the after-noon, the older children do exercises or projects.

Fourteen-year-old Katherine Tiller said she appreciates the “one-on-one” nature of homeschooling, while sister Helena, a year younger, values “lots of time for reading.”

Anti-government sentiment

Homeschooling was commonplace in the early days of the US, when pio-neer families had few other options in remote places without schools.

In its modern incarnation, however, homeschooling took hold in the 1970s among two very different groups of people, said Milton Gaither, a profes-sor of education at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania.

“It started among left-leaning young people influenced by the countercul-ture of the 1960s,” said Gaither, who blogs about homeschooling at gaither.wordpress.com, in an email exchange.

He said home schoolers rejected

what they took to be the “deadening industrialization” of formal schooling and opted instead for a “more natural, more organic” approach.

“A little later, some very conservative religious groups turned to homeschool-ing as part of a rejection of the per-ceived secularization of public schools and the expense of private schools.”

In both of those contexts, Gaither said, homeschooling capitalizes on “a significant tradition of anti-govern-ment sentiment” going back to the founding of the republic in the 18th century.

New technology, particularly the In-ternet, has propelled the trend forward by making it easier for parents to swap ideas and build a curriculum that costs little if anything, Gaither said.

Christopher Lubienski, an expert in alternative education at the University of Illinois, said there have always been Americans unhappy with public educa-tion for theological or cultural reasons.

And he estimated that two-thirds of children are home schooled for reli-gious or moral reasons.

“Some of the families I know, they see it like a mandate from God that they need to take control of their own children’s education,” he said.

Other motivating factors, according to a Department of Education report, include fear of drugs, violence or sub-standard teaching in public schools, and more practical considerations such

as travel time, distance and cost.

The majority of home schooled students belong to families of three or more children, with both parents — white, educated and middle class — living with them under the same roof.

While advocates of homeschooling insist their children benefit, Lubienski said that’s impossible to know, given how other variables associated with successful learning — such as growing up in a household with two parents interested in education — are equally important.

Christina, a mother in the Wash-ington area who asked for her family name not to be used, said she prefers “unschooling” for her seven children.

“I want independent children with their own ideas and their own centers of interest,” she said, so instead of class schedules they get museum visits, lectures and personal projects.

“Children learn 24 hours a day,” said Christina, an American who was raised in France and who bitterly remembers the “could do better” notations on her own school report cards.

In France, she said, “you’re never told you’ve done well, while in the United States your child is always wonderful. There has to be a happy medium.”


EVENTS

17th Atlanta Dragon Boat Festival , Sept 8, 2012, Lake Lanier

Photos by: Rendy Tendean


EVENTS

17th Annual Atlanta Dragon Boat Festival, Sept 8, 2012, lake Lanier

“Iwami Kagura”, September 14, 2012, CG Japan Residence


ENTERTAINMENT

Unlikely Korean pop star conquers the US — ‘Gangnam Style’

SEOUL, Sept 13, 2012 (AFP) – A chubby thirty-something with wacky dance moves, Park Jae-Sang falls far short of the prettified, teenage ideal embodied by the stars of South Korea’s phenomenally successful K-pop industry.

But Park, known as “Psy,” has suc-ceeded where the industry-manufac-tured girl and boy bands have tried and failed, making a huge splash on the mainstream US music scene thanks to a viral video and a rare sense of irony.

Since being posted on YouTube in July, Psy’s video for “Gangnam Style” — the title song of his sixth album — has racked up more than 150 million views and spawned a host of admiring parodies.

The accompanying worldwide pub-licity has earned him a US contract with Justin Bieber’s management agency, a guest appearance at last week’s MTV awards in Los Angeles and a spot on NBC’s flagship “Today” show.

Earlier this week he was given the opportunity to school US pop diva

Britney Spears on his increasingly fa-mous signature dance moves on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show”.

The breakout success of “Gangnam Style” has been viewed with a mixture of pride and surprise in Psy’s home country, with industry analysts scrab-bling to identify the magic ingredient that made it such a phenomenal suc-cess abroad.

The Gangnam of the title is Seoul’s wealthiest residential and shopping district, lined with luxury boutiques, top-end bars and restaurants fre-quented by celebrities and well-heeled, designer-clad socialites.

The video pokes fun at the district’s lifestyle, with Psy breezing through a world of speed boats, yoga classes and exclusive clubs — all the while performing an eccentric horse-rid-ing dance accompanied by beautiful models.

Humor, especially satirical humor, is rare in the mainstream Korean mu-sic scene, and that coupled with the 34-year-old’s embrace of his anti-pop idol looks has helped set him apart.

According to Simon Stawski, the Canadian co-founder of the popu-lar “Eat Your Kimchi” blog on K-pop and Korean culture, Psy is the “antithesis of K-pop” and its stable of preen-ing, sexualised, fashion-conscious young stars.

“K-pop bands are ex-ceptionally controlled by their management. Psy doesn’t buy into that at all, and that’s partly why

he’s such a breath of fresh air,” said Stawski .

“Above all, Psy doesn’t take himself seriously and uses irony and self-depre-cation that are absent from K-pop,” he said.

This, Stawski adds, is what has allowed Psy to jump the English language barrier and find a wider audience for a song which, apart from its title, is al-most entirely in Korean.

“Someone people would want to party with”

In South Korea, “Gangnam Style” has won Psy a new fan base by appeal-ing to those for whom the sanitised image of K-pop bears little resem-blance to their actual lives.

“His somewhat ‘normal’ appear-ance makes him feel familiar, and the comic dancing and wacky fashion style give off a friendly image, brand-ing Psy as someone people would want to party with,” the daily Munhwa Ilbo commented.

Psy himself says he invites laughter, not ridicule.

“My motto is to be funny, but not stupid,” he said in an interview with the Yonhap news agency.

“I want everyone who sees my per-formance to feel the efforts I’ve made so far as a singer rather than a lucky guy who got here without anything,” he said.

A relative veteran after 11 years on the Korean music scene, Psy has always had a small but loyal fan base

that has stuck with him through nu-merous ups and downs, including an early brush with the law for smoking marijuana.

In 2007, he was forced to serve a second period of compulsory military service after it was revealed that he had continued with his showbiz inter-ests during his first two-year stint.

His overnight leap from relative obscurity to global sensation came as a personal, if welcome, shock.

“It’s all so surreal to me,” he told Yonhap. “I never thought such a day would come in my life as a singer.”

It remains to be seen if “Gangnam Style” will prove to be anything more than a one-hit wonder, but its success so far, especially in the United States, is likely to prompt a review of market-ing strategies in the Korean music industry.

“It’s not going to be a revolution, but more of a baby-steps evolution,” said Esther Oh, online news editor at CJ Entertainment, the country’s larg-est media conglomerate.


SPORTS

Schoolboy breaks 200m breaststroke world recordTOKYO, Sept 15, 2012 (AFP) - Ja-

pan’s precocious 18-year-old Akihiro Yamaguchi set a new world record in the men’s 200-metre breaststroke on Saturday, then vowed to be the next Kosuke Kitajima.

The high-school student clocked two minutes 07.01 seconds, breaking the previous world mark of 2:07.28 set by Daniel Gyurta of Hungary on August 1 at the London Olympics.

“To tell the truth, I targeted to clock 2:06:00s,” Yamaguchi said after his record-breaking swim at the national games in Gifu, central Japan, adding that he was eager to show off his tal-ent on the world stage.

“I’m really looking forward to the world championships next year. I want to be a swimmer who can suc-ceed Kitajima, whom I admire a lot,” he added.

Yamaguchi failed to qualify for the Olympic 100m and 200m races after he finished third over both distances in the national championships, which were won by two-time double Olym-pic gold medallist Kitajima.

However, Kitajima, 29, did not win a medal in the 100m and 200m breaststroke in London.

Yamaguchi came close to Gyurta’s 200m world mark when he swam 2:07.84 at a national high-school meet on August 17.

“Since I started working under the wing of coach Norimasa Hirai, I be-came stronger mentally and my body became bigger. I think I can compete against the world in the 200 metres. I also want to compete in the 100 metres,” he said.

“At the moment I started the race, I felt ‘I made it’. I felt I was fine dur-ing the warm-up, so I had thought I would be able to rewrite my personal best,” said Yamaguchi, who started swimming at the age of four.

“I’m really happy about it, but I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t cut the 2:07:00,” he added.

Yamaguchi sprang to prominence when he rewrote the 100m breast-stroke Japanese high-school record and then went on to take the 100m and 200m titles at the world junior championships in July.

India to wear ‘lucky shirt’ for World Twenty20 NEW DELHI, Sept 14, 2012 (AFP)

- India’s cricketers have been ordered to wear the same jersey design that won them the World Cup last year for next week’s World Twenty20 in a bid to bring them good luck.

Nike, the Indian team’s cloth-ing sponsor, had earlier this month unveiled a new Twenty20 design that displayed the national colours promi-nently and even paraded top stars in the new outfit at a media launch.

But India’s cricket chiefs have asked the players to wear the same blue shirts in which they won the 50-over World Cup in order to bring good luck to the team, the Times of India reported on Friday.

“It’s our decision to ask the players to wear the jersey which they had used during the 2011 World Cup,” Indian cricket board official Ratnakar Shetty told the newspaper.

India won the inaugural World Twenty20 in 2007 but failed to make the semi-finals of the next two editions in 2009 and 2010.

The new T20 design had been wel-comed by skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni and senior batsman Virender

Sehwag when it was launched.

Dhoni said the design would help fans identify with the shortest format of the game.

“When we see players in white, we know they are playing Test cricket,” he said. “Similarly, when you see them in blue, you know an ODI is going on.

“Now that we have a different T20 shirt, there will be a strong association between the format and the jersey.”

Sehwag had said he liked the new jersey because it displayed the national colours of red, white and green.

“I play with my heart and I play for the national flag,” he said. “I like this jersey because the national colours are on my heart.”

The World Twenty20 opens in Sri Lanka on Tuesday.


SPORTS

SINGAPORE, Sept 13, 2012 (AFP) - Singapore’s state-of-the-art new stadium will host an annual football tournament featuring top European teams as one of its cornerstone events when it opens in 2014, organizers have revealed.

The 55,000-seat facility, center piece of a billion-dollar complex near the city centre, is also likely to hold interna-tional rugby and Twenty20 cricket, and is the confirmed venue for the 2015 Southeast Asian Games, they said.

The dome-shaped National Stadium, with a retractable roof and seating cooled by ducted air, is currently under construction along with two indoor arenas, an aquatics centre and water-sports facility, plus a large shopping mall.

Andrew Georgiou, chief operating officer of commercial partner World Sport Group, admitted the roster of events was a “huge talking point” for the stadium, in a city with a patchy sporting calendar.

He said the aim was to create new events that return on a regular basis, along the lines of Hong Kong’s Bar-clays Asia Trophy football tournament, which draws visits from English Pre-mier League teams.

“I wouldn’t call it an exhibition but I’d call it a regular event that we’ll host in June, July or August during the summer break,” Georgiou said of the new tournament involving European clubs.

He added: “We’re trying to avoid only having events which come in one year and then don’t happen again.

“So football is be going to be a main staple of the event calendar and we’re working with the FAS (Football As-sociation of Singapore) and regional football bodies to make sure that foot-ball will be a regular, recurring content at the venue.”

Georgiou was speaking at the sales

launch of 62 executive suites, avail-able at a cost of up to Sg$272,000 ($221,000) a year for corporate enter-taining, on Wednesday.

With Singapore’s government guaranteed a return on its investment, private-sector backers bear the risk of the project failing to make a profit.

Details of the new stadium’s roster are still under wraps but Twenty20 cricket is a priority, possibly featuring Indian Premier League or Australian, New Zealand and South African sides.

Rugby’s Bledisloe Cup between Aus-tralia and New Zealand is on the “hit list” as well as appearances by Super 15 teams and an event on the popular international Sevens series.

“We’re getting to the final stretch of being able to get people to confirm (events) going forward and I think Singapore will be pleasantly surprised at the content we can deliver,” Geor-giou said.

Singapore fans can also expect pop concerts as well as “spectaculars” like Ben Hur live and Cirque du Soleil -- and even monster truck derbies.

The 2015 Southeast Asian Games is one of the few confirmed events, along with Singapore’s annual national day parade.

The “sports hub” complex, which replaces Singapore’s previous national stadium, follows a drive to pep up the once-staid Asian state that now has a casino and a glittering Formula One night race.

The tiny but wealthy country also hosts one of Asia’s richest golf tourna-ments, the $6 million Barclays Singa-pore Open, a Super Series badminton competition and World Cup short course swimming.

But there is little in the way of home-grown sports, with the S-League football competition often struggling to attract support.

New Singapore stadium to host top teams

WASHINGTON, Sept 14, 2012 (AFP) - President Barack Obama was in his element as the self-styled “fan-in-chief” on Friday as he feted US Olympians and Paralympians at the White House.

“We could not be prouder of you,” Obama told a crowd of athletes that included Olympic swimming super-star Michael Phelps and Paralympic swimming gold medallist Brad Snyder, a Navy lieutenant who was blinded in 2011 by a bomb blast in Afghanistan.

“You gave us a summer that we will never forget,” he added.

The sports-mad president poked fun at his fandom, saying he was jealous that his wife, Michelle, was able to attend the Games and that watching them on television spurred his own workout efforts.

“Somehow, it didn’t quite work on me,” Obama said, drawing a laugh.

“I was able to catch a little bit of everything,” Obama said. “It was a great way to end the day, watching you guys do things that I did not think were humanly possible.”

The first lady, who led the official US delegation to the London Games open-ing ceremony in July, noted that US competitors won more than 200 med-als at the Olympics and Paralympics.

They topped the medals table in the Olympics with 46 gold medals and brought home a total of 104 med-als before grabbing 98 medals in the Paralympics.

“I want you to know how inspired we are by all of you -- your passion, your dedication, your courage,” the First Lady said.

“This summer, people across the country -- including some of the young people with us today -- watched you compete and thought to themselves, you know what, if they can set a goal and work hard to reach it, maybe I can too, and maybe I can go a little farther and do a little better than people think I can.”

Obama did his best to make good on his promise to shake hands with every-one as the Marine band played.

The US flag-bearers at the Games, Olympic fencer Mariel Zagunis and Paralympic flag-bearer Snyder, pre-sented the Obamas with flags carried during the opening ceremonies of both events.

After the White House welcome for the Olympians and Paralympians, Obama attended a somber homecom-ing for the remains of four Americans killed this week in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Obama fetes US Olympians, Paralympians

WASHINGTON, Sept 12, 2012 (AFP) - US researchers are questioning how the United States protects against whooping cough, a disease that killed 11 babies and sickened thousands of people in a major outbreak in 2010.

The current vaccine known as DTaP, which is designed to protect against whooping cough but also tetanus and diphtheria, wanes greatly in efficiency in the five years following the fifth shot given to children as per recommen-dations from the Centers for Disease control, the study said.

It was carried out in California by the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center and published in the online version of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study period included a major whooping cough outbreak in Califor-

nia in 2010. It killed 11 newborns and more than 8,000 people fell ill. The disease is also known as pertussis.

In the United States, the CDC recom-mends children get five shots, starting at two months and with the last coming between the ages of four and six, right before they start school.

The research was the first to focus specifically on a large population of highly vaccinated children who had ex-clusively received DTaP vaccines since birth and for whom enough time had passed since their fifth dose that the vaccine waning could be assessed.

“The findings suggest that whooping cough control measures may need to be reconsidered. Prevention of future outbreaks may be best achieved by de-veloping new pertussis-containing vac-cines or reformulating current vaccines

to provide long-lasting immunity,” said Nicola Klein, lead author of the study.

In the study, researchers compared 277 children, aged four to 12 and who were positive for whooping cough, with 3,318 children who were negative for pertussis and separately with 6,086 matched controls.

They assessed the risk of pertussis in children from 2006 to 2011 in Califor-nia relative to the time since the fifth dose of DTaP. The researchers found that protection from pertussis after the fifth dose of DTaP vaccine wanes more than 40 percent each year.

The amount of protection remaining after five years depends heavily on the initial effectiveness of the fifth dose of DTaP, according to Klein.

HEALTH

PARIS, Sept 14, 2012 (AFP) - Work-ers who suffer job strain are 23-per-cent more likely to have a heart attack than stress-free counterparts, but the risk is far smaller than smoking or a sedentary lifestyle, a large study pub-lished in The Lancet on Friday says.

“Job strain is associated with a small, but consistent, increased risk of experiencing a first CHD (coronary heart disease) event such as a heart attack,” said Mika Kivimaki, an epi-demiologist at University College of London who led the probe.

The investigation seeks to shed light on an issue that has turned up confus-ing results, mainly because research-ers have used different definitions and varying methods.

The new paper is a meta-analysis -- an overview of 13 studies conducted between 1985 and 2006 in seven European countries that adopted the

same approach: participants without CHD were first interviewed and their health was then monitored, for 7.5 years on average.

In all, 197,473 took part in these studies, of whom 30,214 reported job strain, defined as having excessive workloads, time pressures and little freedom to make decisions at work.

During the monitoring period that followed, doctors recorded 2,356 heart attacks, fatal or otherwise.

The risk was 23 percent higher among the “job strain” group, even when age, gender and socio-economic factors, which all influence risk, were taken into account.

Three studies each took place in Denmark and Finland, two each were conducted in the Netherlands and Sweden, and the others were carried out in Belgium, Britain and France.

The authors say the findings are significant.

But they also note that prevention of workplace stress to reduce heart disease would be much less effective than efforts to combat smoking and physical inactivity, where the risk of CHD is more than 10 and nearly four times greater respectively.

In a commentary also carried by The Lancet, Bo Netterstrom of Bispelbjerg Hospital in Copenhgean cautioned that work-related health problems in Europe “will almost cer-tainly increase” because of job insecu-rity driven by the economic crisis.

Job strain boosts risk of heart disease by 23 percent: study

Whooping cough vaccine efficiency questioned


West Nile virus deaths up 35% in USWASHINGTON, Sept 12, 2012 (AFP)

- Deaths linked to the West Nile virus jumped 35 percent in the United States over the past week, amid one of the worst US outbreaks of the mosquito-borne disease, officials said Wednes-day.

As of Tuesday, a total of 118 fatalities have been blamed on West Nile virus infections since the beginning of the year, up from 87 on September 2, the Centers for Disease Control and Pre-vention said. The number of cases rose to 2,636 from 1,993 during the same time frame, a 32 percent increase.

“The 2,636 cases reported thus far in 2012 is the highest number of West Nile virus disease cases reported to CDC through the second week in Sep-tember since 2003,” the agency said on its website.

The virus was first detected in the United States in 1993. This year could see a record of cases deemed neuroin-vasive, or capable of penetrating the central nervous system -- currently 1,405, or 53 percent, are classified as such.

Two thirds of the cases have been reported from six states -- Texas, Louisiana, South Dakota, Mississippi, Michigan and Oklahoma. Forty percent of all cases are concentrated in Texas, according to the CDC.

The soaring number could be due to a relatively mild winter, an early spring and hot summer.

Other factors potentially contribut-ing to the outbreak are birds transport-ing the virus and the exploding mos-quito population.

First identified in Uganda in 1937, the virus manifests itself in a number of different ways and 80 percent of the time does not spark serious symptoms.

However, it can also cause potential-ly fatal complications such as meningi-tis or encephalitis.


Misc Asia

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 14, 2012 (AFP) - Britain’s Prince William declared Friday that he is no fan of du-rian, the spiky and notoriously pungent Southeast-Asian fruit, after sampling it on a visit to Malaysia.

The future king and his wife Cathe-rine were served durian, revered in the region as the “king of fruits”, during a welcome lunch with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak after their arrival Thursday for a three-day visit.

But during a lunch Friday with busi-ness executives in the capital Kuala Lumpur, he quipped: “I’d just like to say how delicious lunch was, but I was delighted to see that durian wasn’t on the menu.”

“Having tasted it yesterday, I feared for the safety of the people I met thereafter,” he said, causing the crowd of more than 1,000 business figures to erupt in laughter.

Durian is popular in Malaysia and neighboring countries, where it is prized for its distinctive flavor. But many are disgusted by its powerful odor and the fruit is banned from vari-ous venues and some public transpor-tation in the region.

Britain’s younger royals are tour-ing the globe throughout 2012 as part of celebrations marking the 60-year reign of William’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.

They are now on a nine-day trip that started in Singapore and will move on this weekend to the Solomon Islands and later Tuvalu.

However, a French magazine say-ing it would publish topless photos of Catherine has threatened to sully the tour.

The couple were “saddened” by the report, said a royal source traveling with them on Friday.

Prince William no fan of ‘king of fruits’

Doctors’ orders: improve your handwritingMUMBAI, Sept 14, 2012 (AFP)

- Doctors’ handwriting has never been renowned for its elegance, but an Indian medical group is so concerned about sloppy scrawls that it has started an awareness drive to prevent fatal errors.

More than 100 doctors across Maharashtra state met last week and found handwriting legibility to be one of the most alarming issues they faced, according to the non-profit umbrella body Medscape India.

“Due to lack of clarity in doctors’ written prescriptions, the number of deaths caused in India and inter-nationally are on a shocking rise,” a statement from the group’s president Dr Sunita Dube said, without provid-ing details.

She now has government backing for the drive after writing to the state health minister, explaining that many chemists, especially in smaller Indian towns and villages, are unable to un-derstand drug prescriptions.

Owing to misinterpretation, “an incorrect drug is administered to the patient which a lot of times proves fatal or nearly fatal”, Dube wrote.

Medscape India plans to produce a handbook to serve as a quick guide for doctors, and will be offering small workshops on simple techniques for writing quickly and clearly, said Dube.

“We have to reach the right drugs so we can save lives,” she said, encourag-ing doctors to write in capital letters and check spellings in drug reference books.

She said improvements could also prevent litigation against doctors, who have long been associated with illeg-ible scribbles.

“I keep on getting so many jokes,” Dube said. “Jokes apart, it’s a serious note we’re putting out.”

New Zealand man throws away $22.5 million lottery ticketWELLINGTON, Sept 14, 2012

(AFP) - A New Zealand man threw away a winning lottery ticket worth NZ$27 million ($22.5 million) after reading the wrong results and think-ing it was useless.

It was not until the following day, when he heard the lucrative prize had not been claimed, that he searched for the ticket and found he had won.

The man, in his 20s, who did not wish to be identified, had bought the ticket on a whim, spending money he had set aside for a haircut after he went to his hairdresser and found the shop closed.

“I originally checked the results on my phone, but I must have got the

wrong draw so I thought my ticket was a loser. I chucked it aside and thought ‘that was that’ and went to work,” he told Fairfax News on Fri-day.

“It was only when there was so much talk in the town about the un-claimed prize that I thought it might pay to recheck the ticket.”

The NZ$27 million prize consists of NZ$25,592,110 in cash, a Lam-borghini Gallardo, an Audi Q7, a speedboat, a credit card topped up to NZ$50,000, as well as NZ$50,000 worth of travel and NZ$675,000 cash towards a holiday home.

Misc AsiaGeorgia Asian Times September 15-30, 2012

JOHOR BAHRU, Malaysia, Sept 15, 2012 (AFP) - Asia’s first Legoland theme park opened to packed crowds Saturday in southern Malaysia, with its cluster of attractions expected to trans-form the sleepy region into a thriving tourist hub.

An eager crowd of 10,000 people visited the 76-acre theme park in Johor state -- across a narrow waterway from Singapore -- which features a variety of rides and thousands of Lego models made out of the popular toy bricks.

The visitors were greeted by cos-tumed characters as confetti and bal-loons were launched into the air amid a special performance by a marching brass band from Denmark.

Back in 2011 earth movers had flattened a vast expanse of oil palm-covered hills to make way for the 31-hectare theme park, one of the main attractions of a new city and economic zone called Iskandar Malaysia.

Malaysia launched the economic hub as part of a five-year, 200 billion-ringgit ($65 billion) spending plan to transform the economy in the sleepy Johor state.

European visitor attractions operator Merlin Entertainments, whose stable includes Madame Tussauds, the Lon-don Eye and SEA LIFE, is the operator of Legoland Malaysia.

With the opening, the theme park will be the sixth of its kind in the world after those in Denmark, Britain, Cali-fornia, Florida and Germany.

Legoland Malaysia is divided into seven sections such as “Lego King-dom”, “Lego City” and “Lego Technic”.

Most rides are for children under the age of 12, but the theme park also has a variety of attractions for the whole family like the “4D Lego Studios” and the “Miniland” -- featuring recreated Asian landmarks like Cambodia’s Angkor Wat and Petronas Towers, the world’s tallest twin towers.

John Jakobsen, managing director of Legoland Parks for Merlin Entertain-ments, expects the new park to be a “great success” owing to its proximity to Singapore, which attracted 13.2 mil-lion tourists last year.

“It’s incredible to see Asia’s first Le-goland Park come to life,” he said.

It is targeting as many as two mil-lion visitors a year from markets across Asia including India China and Hong Kong as it rolls out new attractions.

Malaysia hopes to draw 36 million tourists arrivals by 2020. Last year 25 million tourists visited Malaysia, gen-erating 58 million ringgit in earnings.

Asia’s first Legoland opens in Malaysia

MasterCard has first swipe in Myanmar

BANGKOK, Sept 6, 2012 (AFP) - Mas-terCard on Thursday said it had signed a deal with a Myanmar bank that it hopes will pave the way for electronic payments, in an impoverished country where most transactions are made in cash.

A licence deal with Myanmar’s Co-Op-erative Bank lays the groundwork for its cards to be issued and accepted in the country, the company said, a move that follows the easing of United States finan-cial restrictions to reward reforms.

The inability to pay for goods or with-draw cash with credit cards is a symptom of years of tough international sanctions against the former military dictatorship, which gave way to a quasi-civilian regime last year.

People are currently obliged to carry all their money in wads of cash -- a particular challenge for tourists and foreign busi-nesses -- with even upmarket hotels only sporadically able to offer credit-card pay-ments.

MasterCard said in a statement that the move towards a credit-card network in

the country would have a “huge impact on tourism and travel” and would be “crucial in helping Myanmar connect to the global economy”.

The firm also said it would help bring more of Myanmar’s population -- estimat-ed at over 50 million -- into the financial system.

Georgette Tan, of MasterCard World-wide in Singapore, said the entire process of getting cards issued and accepted in Myanmar “would take some months”, adding that the move showed the firm’s commitment to entering the country.

She added that there were around 80 ATMs in Myanmar -- which are not cur-rently connected to international banking -- and the Co-Operative Bank accounts for about 30 percent of those.

The US announced the easing of restric-tions on the financial sector following Myanmar’s landmark April by-elections in which democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi won a seat in parliament.

Philippine leader signs law to combat cyber crimes MANILA, Sept 15, 2012 (AFP) - Phil-

ippine President Benigno Aquino has signed into law a bill to combat cyber-crime, his spokeswoman said Saturday, in a bid to stamp down on everything from forgery to child pornography.

The bill will be a boost to law-enforc-ers who have previously complained of difficulty charging people who use the Internet to commit crimes as there were no legal codes that penalise their acts.

Aquino’s spokeswoman Abigail Valte said the bill covered most forms of hacking, defining cyber crimes to include “offenses against the confiden-tiality, integrity and availability” of a computer system, as well as gaining illegal access to or interception of data.

The bill also defines “computer-relat-ed offenses” for forgery, fraud, identity

theft, cybersex and child pornography.Spamming as well as “cyber-squat-

ting” -- the use of an Internet domain name to mislead consumers, destroy other’s reputations or prevent them from using their name -- were included in the bill.

The law also punishes libel, Valte said, though asked if this would cover even messages sent on social network websites such as Twitter, she added the state would “leave it up to other lawyers to determine”.

The bill also calls for the creation of a “Cybercrime Investigation and Coordi-nating Center” that will implement the law, she said.

Valte did not say what penalties will be imposed for different offenses under the new law.

Georgia Asian Times September 15-30, 2012 Page 20

GAT Sept 15-30, 2012 Vol 9 No 17

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