Filed under: New America Media
SAN FRANCISCO — Automakers take note: a majority of Californians are considering buying a hybrid or electric car as their next vehicle. It’s not the alluring sleekness of the Toyota Prius driving people to consider spending premium rates on fuel-efficient vehicles; Californians are choosing what will both save money in the long run and be better for the environment.
Filed under: New America Media
PALO ALTO — With a crowd of TV cameras and adults with microphones towering over them, Adrian, Yadira and Adriana Ramirez – 6, 10 and 12 years old – sat on a bench outside of First United Methodist Church in Palo Alto yesterday, and shyly told the news crews that though they wanted to stay at their home in Palo Alto, they would go to Mexico to be with their father, who was deported an hour after his arrest by Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers.
The Ramirez children are among thousands of U.S. citizen children of undocumented parents who are facing deportation and have to decide whether to bring their children with them — taking them away from the educational opportunities they have a right to in the United States — or let them stay and be forced into foster care.
Filed under: New America Media
TACOMA, Wash. — Locked away in a detention center in Tacoma, Wash., Rosemary Okere, a Nigerian journalist, refuses to give up her and her son’s bid for asylum in the United States.
On one side she faces death at the hands of her husband’s killers if she is deported to Nigeria. But every day she spends behind bars — she’s been held for nearly one and a half years — separates her from her teenage son, who is living with relatives outside of Tacoma. The cost of her prolonged absence is a deepening depression that led him to try to end his life last summer.
On the other side is Nigeria, a country her son doesn’t remember and where her life fell apart. She fears the impact of uprooting him from the only community he calls home and moving to a tumultuous and unfamiliar country.
Filed under: New America Media
SAN FRANCISCO — Russian-language media in the United States are divided over whether the Nov. 24 death-by-poison of writer and former Russian secret agent Alexander Litvinenko was government-backed or intended to frame President Vladimir Putin, though most agree Alexander Litvinenko is a curious target.
Filed under: New America Media
SAN FRANCISCO — On May 23, 2006, Mayor Gavin Newsom and PG&E President Tom King flipped a symbolic human-sized plastic light switch off in front of a large crowd, celebrating the closure of the Hunters Point Power Plant. The ceremony was held outside under the silent and non-smoking stacks of the 77-year-old power plant.
“For the first time, I can look out and see no smoke coming out of the smoke stacks. I want to respect the fact that PG&E has kept its word,” said James Bryant, president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a national organization of black trade unionists.
Filed under: New America Media
FRESNO — Five years ago, Adrián López left his job on a Central Valley farm for better pay and working conditions as a house detailer for a construction company. A farm worker for some 13 years, López says changes in the weather made the job unbearable.”In the last years, I’ve noticed that it’s became hotter here,” says López. “Also, the rain arrived later and it rained longer.”
As reports of climate change predict its likely effects on business and nature — from California’s wine industry to the Siberian permafrost — what’s missing in the discussion is who bears the brunt of the negative impact of global warming.
