The rumored death of Kim Jong Un is taking China’s biggest microblogging service Weibo– and now Twitter– by storm. With headlines and captions asking questions like “Did Twitter Assassinate Kim Jong-Un?” by Gawker, everyone wants to know if there is any truth behind the purported North Korean Leader’s Assassination.

Unfortunately, North Korea is not known for being forthcoming with news. So, just two months after becoming the country’s supreme leader after the death of his father, the rumor mill is on overload about Kim Jong Un’s reported demise at 28. Between speculation that he was assassinated in Beijing or that he’s on the run (but not dead), most of the claims imply that some sort of coup is taking place. Reports about the rumors are being picked up by various mainstream news sources such as Forbes, Gawker, National Post, and more. Everyone is trying to figure out if anything actually happened or if this is the biggest social media death hoax since Jon Bon Jovi’s.

If you live in China, Gawker is asking for help to confirm this story. And if you can confirm if Kim Jong Un is dead, let us know, too.

Photo credit: Gawker screenshot

By Emily,

My name is Emily and I am the Publicity and Media Director of Team Janet. After Janet was diagnosed with leukemia in 2009, she and her closest friends immediately set up a website to encourage people to register to be bone marrow donors and to promote awareness about the dearth of minority donors. I became involved by volunteering to help with registration drives in Northern California. After Janet went into remission in June 2010, Team Janet disbanded.

Janet’s relapse in December 2011 brought about the need for a larger, more cohesive team.

New volunteers were recruited, including a new CEO (as Janet herself does not have the energy to oversee the entire campaign), regional coordinators, web designers, photographers, and a media contact. All current team members are Janet’s personal friends and people she trusts. Some of us know each other well, and some of us have never met, but we are all in constant contact with one another.
Janet is a very shy person, which is why I was surprised to see how she publicly laid her emotions bare in her wrenching plea for help. She recorded and uploaded the video herself, without any input from her team, and the results were astounding. My heart nearly shattered when I saw the video, because Janet is someone I love, but I never thought the public would react just as strongly as I did. I was awed to see that Janet had the ability to touch the hearts of complete strangers.

One such stranger ingeniously uploaded Janet’s video to Reddit, and her video was featured on the front page. The “likes” on the Helping Janet Facebook page jumped to over 1,000 within that day. The Reddit post was the beginning of the swell of awareness, and I will forever be indebted to the man who launched us to large-scale Internet recognition. Another stranger, dancer/singer Victor Kim, used his Facebook, YouTube channel, and Twitter to promote Janet’s campaign. He hosted a bone marrow registry drive at UC Irvine and sold a song on iTunes as a fundraiser for Janet. Janet has never met Victor. No one from Team Janet reached out to him to ask for his help, but his feverish crusade to help Janet find her match is one that has inspired countless individuals to do the same.

Since the Reddit post, we have had thousands of people – ordinary citizens, celebrities, newspapers, radio stations, and television news – help promote our campaign. We now have over 8,700 likes on Facebook, and we are growing every day. We at Team Janet are so grateful for all the support, love, and prayers, but Janet still has not found her match, and she still needs help. Please continue to spread the word and encourage people to register, especially people of Chinese descent.

Please help us keep the momentum going and save Janet’s life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: I met Janet in September 2005, the very beginning of our freshman year at UCLA, and we have been close friends ever since. I am the Media and Publicity Director of Team Janet, so if you have media inquiries, please contact me at helpingjanet[at]gmail.com.

Hacienda-La Puente, California School Board Member Jay Chen this week announced his run for California’s 39th Congressional District. His announcement is posted on his campaign site and blog as well as his background:

Jay Chen, a Democrat, was raised and educated in Hacienda Heights. A first-generation American, Jay’s parents came to the United States from Taiwan to seek a better future and taught him the value of hard work, the importance of a good education and the responsibility to serve the community. A product of the public school system, Jay earned a scholarship to Harvard University.

After graduating with honors he worked in the business world as a strategy consultant to Fortune 500 companies. Today, Jay is a successful small businessman and serves our country as an intelligence officer in the United States Naval Reserve.  He was elected to the Hacienda-La Puente Unified School District Board of Education in 2007 and after four years of academic success and innovation in the district, he was re-elected with the top vote in 2011.

If his name sounds familiar, it’s because I covered Chen when he interviewed for The Daily Show regarding the “controversy” of his school district’s ““Confucius Classroom” – Chinese language programs partially funded by Chinese government. Chen’s background sounds pretty solid, if not a little too perfect – almost like California State Senator Ted Lieu.

Chen will be going up against an incumbent Republican Congressman, Representative Ed Royce, who has been in Washington for over twenty years and already has $3 million for his re-election campaign. Another challenge that Chen faces is that his Congressional district is about 40 percent Republican and 32 percent Democrat. The district is close to 30% Asian, so Chen may pique the interest of some who may not have considered a Democrat. But no doubt about it, Chen has a huge challenge ahead of him.

[Photo courtesy of Jay Chen for Congress website]

Michelle Kwan honored at the U.S. Championships during a break in the women’s competition Saturday, January 28th evening.

Last week to no one’s surprise, figure skater Michelle Kwan was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in San Jose, California:

“Kwan was the face of figure skating for a decade, beloved as much for her grace and humility in defeat as her long list of triumphs. Though she won five world and nine U.S. titles, she is best remembered for her heartbreaking finishes at the Nagano and Salt Lake City games. The favorite at each, she settled instead for a silver (1998) and a bronze (2002). Indeed, the image of her sobbing as she stood below a beaming Tara Lipinski on the Nagano medals podium is as enduring as her majestic performance at the national championships a month earlier.”

I was at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games and saw Kwan perform live in the women’s figure skating finals, short program, where she came in first. Unfortunately, a few days later, she fell short in the long program. But I think it is safe to say, Kwan is probably the most well known and beloved American figure skating icon since Peggy Flemming, if not ever, in the United States. For a recent interesting interview with Kwan, a Chicago Tribune sports writer who has covered her entire career interviews her reflecting on her legacy as a skater.

After graduating from the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University, she moved to Washington, D.C. to pursue a career involved in public policy – but no details to date have emerged as to what her actual next steps are. Personally, I do hope she helps inspire a new generation of Americans to become more civically involved in one way or another by example as what she has done for young figure skaters across America. Kwan has truly lived an amazing and inspiring life and I continue to look forward to what she does in her next career.

Bruce Lee. Do I really have to write anymore? Those two words are worth more than anything I will write, mainly because there’s just some many different takes and angles on this incredible person who influenced the world in more ways than one. But too many people don’t realise, he was far more than the punchs and kicks, he was someone who was fully in tandem with how life incorporates both the body and the mind. With the trailer release of the new documentary, I Am Bruce Lee, maybe people might see Bruce as being more than just a guy who can kick ass.

As a kid (some say I still am!) I would often play dress up and run around being my favourite superheroes on tv. Egged on by my sister, I wanted at various times in my life to be the bodyguard of Justice Pao, Jackie Chan (who hasn’t!), the Monkey King from Journey to the West (the Hong Kong series version) and Jet Li. I will always remember my first Bruce Lee movie though, mainly because there was no CG effects, no wild camera angles to add to the fighting, just a clean simple view of Bruce smashing his way through a ton of people. I was pretty mesmerised by it, and since my Dad was a martial arts fan who prodded me in the same direction, I decided to pursue this interest. After 14 years, can I say I understand a bit more of Bruce Lee and his concepts? Definitely not. Even his most famous quote “Be like Water,” simple enough to understand, incredibly difficult to implement.

I remember in primary school, most of my classmates had never heard of Bruce Lee, or quite simply thought Jackie Chan was better. I even heard the blasphemous idea that Chuck Norris could beat Bruce and I considered it to be my responsibility to defend Bruce’s honor (which being small at the time, I often failed). But for many early years, I always saw Bruce in the sense of being a fighter, a person who could beat someone much bigger than him, someone who stood out as defending asians and in the words of one lady from the trailer, “put balls on Chinese men”. He put balls on all Asian men! But what most people miss is the fact that Bruce was more than a guy who could fight. His martial arts was a way of living, the shining example to what it really meant to practice “martial arts.”

Having said that, there are those who discount Bruce as being a fighter, those who discount his achievements and consider his lackluster fight record as proof that he is over-rated. I have even run across those who claim that his body was inherently unhealthy and that he learned his best moves from other martial art practitioners. A publication on letters to the superstar in Dear Bruce Lee show the animosity demonstrated by many people who discounted Bruce and his ideas. I say his lack of fighting record only further shows how he considered it to be empty to be fighting without reason. He wasn’t out to show he had balls. Looking back now, his name is remembered for a reason while others are not.

Whatever the truth, I feel there’s no point arguing over something that is gone. What cannot be denied is the legacy that exists, the impact he had and the continued effects. Do we question the legacy of something great, merely because the person behind it was flawed? I think more than anyone, Bruce realised that progress cannot be made without debate and discussion, that without new input the evolution of martial arts will stop and that the journey never ends, even in death. He may have died before his time, but his influence in the world today has never been stronger.

Janet Liang is a recent UCLA graduate of Chinese descent. On August 24, 2009, she was diagnosed with lymphoblastic leukemia. In order to survive, she needs to find a bone marrow donor by April. The most likely match for a donor will be a Chinese American. The process of registering as a donor is easy, and testing if you are a match is a simple, painless cheek swab.

There are several big names in the APA community asking anyone out there to register as a donor and get tested in search of a match. Check them out after the jump.

Victor Kim from Quest Crew is hosting a jam at UC Irvine for those in the Southern California Area. He is also giving 100% of the revenue from iTunes sales of his song featuring rapper Dumbfoundead to help Janet search for a donor.

ISA, including KevJumba, Ryan Higa, Wong Fu Productions, and Far East Movement, are also shedding light on this cause, with this informative video about how much more as a community we could be involved to help find donors.

If you are interested in registering as a donor and getting tested to see if you are a match, please follow these links:

• HelpingJanet.com
• AADP
• A3M
• Join the Be The Match Registry for Team Janet

Thank you. Together, we can save a life.