Meet Maya, the Asian side of Barack Obama's family

July 2, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO---- The throng of Asian-American donors drew closer, drinks in hand, to hear Barack Obama's sister describe the wide arc of his life: beyond politics and Chicago, into his childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii.

To many in this crowd Obama's Asian-American half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, represents yet another aspect of Obama's identity that makes him unique as a presidential candidate, although it has been underplayed amid the excitement surrounding his shot at becoming the first black president.

Maya Soetoro-Ng of Honolulu is the half sister of Barack Obama; (inset) Obama, 9, right, with his mother Ann Dunham, center, his Indonesian step-father Lolo Soetoro, and his sister Maya Soetoro in 1970. (AP files)

''It would be the first time that the first family is comprised in part of Asian-Americans -- as well as African-Americans, of course,'' said Keith Kamisugi, a coordinator with Asian-Americans for Obama. In early June he organized a fundraiser along with two other Obama events focusing on Asian-American voters in San Francisco.

Discussion of those ties has taken a back seat to the Obama campaign's efforts to win the Hispanic vote and his ability to rouse young and black voters. In spite of the drawn-out primary season, many voters have heard little about Obama's years in Jakarta -- he lived there between 1967 and 1971, while his mother was married to Soetoro-Ng's father, an Indonesian businessman -- or about his years in Hawaii, where Asian-Americans are a majority.

Soetoro-Ng and Obama have different fathers and the same mother. Her father is Indonesian, his is Kenyan. Her husband is Chinese-Canadian.

Initially, as the campaign focused on fighting out the primaries, state by state, ''the idea was to downplay to some degree race and ethnicity,'' said Soetoro-Ng in an interview with The Associated Press. ''A lot of the emphasis had been on reaching out, making connections, closing the gaps.''

That theme resonated among Obama supporters of all backgrounds, said Soetoro-Ng, who is nine years younger than Obama and considers him ''the strong male force'' in her life after her parents' divorce.

It was with Obama she attended her first blues concert and her first voter registration drive, she said. The two remain close: She was there when Obama's oldest daughter, Malia, 9, was born, and plans to help celebrate her 10th birthday on the 4th of July, on the campaign trail.

Soetoro-Ng's appearances give voters a chance to get to know Obama as a person, not just an elected official. Her stories illustrate the development of his character, from his days as a teenager who loved basketball and bodysurfing and didn't always get the strongest grades, to his growing sense of civic duty in the summers she spent with him in Chicago.

But she also has a political role to play. She plans to spend her summer vacation -- she is a teacher at an all-girls' school in Hawaii -- introducing her brother to crowds such as this one.

''We are ready for a more complex construction of identity as a country,'' she said, dismissing the possibility some voters might find it hard to relate to Obama's multiethnic background and foreign experience.

''Maybe not everybody is as mixed or as hybrid as he is. But he gets Kansas, because we have Kansas,'' she said, referring to their mother's background. ''He gets the Midwest. He gets the south side of Chicago.''

And he ''has a lot of affection for Asian cultures, in all of their various forms,'' she said.

That cultural variety is among the reasons Asian-American and Pacific Islander voters have gotten less attention than other ethnic groups from the media -- or even from the Obama campaign -- during the primary season.

Asian-American voters represent about 5 percent of the population, or about 15.4 million people, but their communities are scattered around the country and harbor deep cultural and geopolitical differences that bleed into their voting behavior and ensure that many remain independent, harder to court.

''I'm not surprised we haven't had as much attention as Latinos and African-Americans,'' said Kamisugi. ''We're underdeveloped and under-recognized'' as voters.

In 2004, 56 percent of Asian-Americans voted for Democrat John Kerry and 44 percent for President Bush, according to exit poll data.

''It's not an easily definable vote,'' said Tony Quinn, a California political analyst. ''You can't talk about it as a voting bloc -- it's not.''

Asians make up one-fourth of the foreign-born population in the United States; many are first-generation immigrants. That presents a challenge to politicians, said Gautam Dutta, executive director of the Asian American Action Fund,a political action committee whose goal is to increase Asian-American political participation.

''You can't have a one-size-fits-all approach,'' Dutta said.

This may explain why an event billed as the community's first National Presidential Town Hall, which drew about 2,000 Asian-American and Pacific Islander leaders, elected officials and voters in May got less attention from candidates who appeared and spoke before Hispanic and black civic organizations.

Hillary Rodham Clinton made a video appearance, Obama took questions over the phone. There was no response from Republican John McCain's campaign.

But some analysts argue that because Asian-Americans are just emerging as a political community engaging them now will pay off.

Census numbers show their growing importance. The Asian-American population grew 3 percent between 2004 and 2005 -- more than another other group. And the Census projects the population will grow 213 percent by 2050, to 33.4 million.

In some key states, their weight is already considerable. Besides Hawaii, where Asian-Americans are 57.5 percent of the population, and California, where they're 13.5 percent, Asians are 7.7 percent of New Jersey and Washington, and 7.2 percent of New York.

In some races, even a comparatively small group can cast the key votes. In Virginia's 2006 Senate contest, Republican George Allen referred to an Indian-American as a ''macaca'' and the resulting outrage among Asians helped propel Democrat Jim Webb's come-from-behind victory. Webb won by 7,231 votes.

''Parties are hesitant to invest in communities where party loyalty is not fixed,'' said David Lee, who teaches political science at San Francisco State University, and heads the Chinese-American Voters Education Committee. ''But if you don't spend the money, if you don't invest in Asian voters, why should they be loyal?''

Soetoro-Ng, and her husband, Konrad Ng, a professor at the University of Hawaii, are already doing some of that work.

Ng blogs on the Obama campaign's Web site, and Soetoro-Ng plans to continue to take time from her teaching throughout the fall to make phone calls to house parties, appear on radio broadcasts and perform other outreach for her brother.

''My brother is very interested in reaching out to communities,'' including Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, she said. ''You're going to see a lot of new reaching out. It will be more deliberate.''

Obama has links to Malaysia

Monday, July 21, 2008, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia--Dr Konrad Ng is amused that his Malaysian roots got noticed halfway round the world, thanks to his link to Democrat candidate Barack Obama.

An assistant professor at the University of Hawaii in Manoa (UHM), Ng, whose family originally comes from Sabah, is married to Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro.

Not too long ago: Watching an Independence Day parade in the US four years ago were (from left) Michelle Obama, her daughter Sasha, Obama, Malia, Maya, Ng, and their daughter Suhalia. - AP

Maya and Obama have the same mother.

In an e-mail interview with The Star, Ng, 34, said that his father, Howard, was born in Sandakan and his mother, Joan, in Kudat.

“I have many relatives who live throughout Malaysia, especially in Kuala Lumpur, Kota Kinabalu and the two towns where my parents came from,” he said.

His parents subsequently settled in Canada and Ng was born there.

Maya was born to Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian businessman, and Ann Dunham, a white American cultural anthropologist, who is also Obama’s mother.

The family tree: Dr Konrad Ng, Maya, Howard and Joan posing for a picture. Maya, who is Obama’s half sister, is married to Ng whose parents originally came from Sabah.

Ng said his parents return to Malaysia once every one to two years.

“It remains an important place of origin to them. In addition to a large, extended family, they have many good friends in Malaysia. I try to visit Malaysia every few years; it is a special country and feels familiar to me,” said Ng.

Maya, who was born in Jakarta, also cherishes her Indonesian roots.

According to Ng, she is active in the local Indonesian community and continues to speak Indonesian when she can. She visits Indonesia every few years.

Ng described Obama as exceptionally brilliant.

“He has a thorough understanding of the challenges we face and sound judgment on how we should address these challenges.

“Barack is a dedicated family man and cares deeply about transforming the world into a better place so that all families will have the same opportunities to do better.

“South-East Asia is a place of connection for him and a region that he understands well. It gave him numerous examples of alternative modes of communication and perspective.

“Maya, Barack and I have talked about the beauty of South-East Asia and our mutual desire to visit again,” he said.

Next US president will have deep Asia ties

WASHINGTON (AP): For all their political differences, Barack Obama and John McCain share a life-changing, though sharply different, personal experience: They both spent long stretches of their early lives in Asia, Obama as a boy in Indonesia, McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Asian relations have not topped the presidential candidates' list of concerns, with Americans worried about wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a weakening economy. But the next U.S. president, whichever man wins, will have a perspective on a critical region unlike any of his predecessors.

"Most Americans don't know Asia,'' Jonathan Adelman, a professor of international studies at the University of Denver, said. "These people had intensive, multiyear experiences at important times in their younger life, when it would matter.''

It is difficult to predict how their Asia experiences might influence U.S. policies when either Obama, a Democrat who has a solid lead in most polls, or the Republican McCain takes office in January. "But there is clearly some empathy there,'' Adelman said. "They're not going to stereotype the other side after their very intense personal experiences.''

Other presidents have had ties to Asia. George H.W. Bush was the top U.S. envoy in Beijing in the 1970s for about a year, and he and John F. Kennedy both fought in the Pacific in World War II.

But either Obama or McCain would bring a unique, deeply personal Asia connection to a White House that will face a nuclear-armed, confrontational North Korea; a struggling Pakistan that terrorists are using as a haven to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan; and an increasingly powerful China that can help or hinder American interests around the world.

For both, their experience in Asia began the same year: 1967.

McCain was 31 in October of that year and on his 23rd bombing mission when he was shot down. A mob dragged him from a Hanoi lake, his arms and a knee broken. They stabbed him with bayonets and took him to prison, where, he says, he was "dumped in a dark cell and left to die.''

McCain tried suicide twice, endured repeated beatings and refused offers of early release. Of his 5 1/2 years of confinement in North Vietnam, three were in solitary.

McCain, who spent years moving from place to place with his father, an eventual admiral, and during his own time in the Navy, once quipped early in his political career that "the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.''

At the Republican National Convention in September, he spoke of how a prisoner in the next cell, after McCain had suffered a particularly bad beating, told him "to get back up and fight again for our country.''

He has made the experience a central part of his presidential campaign and is often praised for putting aside past anger to push for normalized U.S. relations with communist Vietnam, despite strong opposition.

Barbara True-Weber, a political science professor at Meredith College, said that McCain's "perspective has been shaped much more by his military background and his perceptions of threat to American goals.''

But, she said, his prison experience deepened his "characteristic defiance, insistence on duty and resistance to threatening pressure.''

During the campaign, Obama has played down his time in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, apparently for political reasons; some opponents have spread false rumors that Obama, a Christian, was educated in a radical Muslim school.

In his memoir, "Dreams from My Father,'' however, he writes vividly about leaving his birthplace in the U.S. state of Hawaii, a multicultural, Asia-oriented group of Pacific islands, as a 6-year-old to spend four years in Indonesia with his mother and Indonesian stepfather.

Obama recalls how it took him "less than six months to learn Indonesia's language, its customs and its legends,'' how he became friends with "the children of farmers, servants and low-level bureaucrats,'' and how he survived chicken pox, measles "and the sting of my teachers' bamboo switches.''

He also describes the desperation of farmers beset with drought and floods and how his stepfather taught him, after Obama got in a fight with an older boy, to box: "The world was violent, I was learning, unpredictable and often cruel.''

In 1971, when he was 10, Obama's mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.

Ralph A. Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS think tank, says that people in Southeast Asia see Obama as "one of us.'' But, he said, "expectations may be too high. When Obama, if elected, does the normal things U.S. presidents do to protect and promote U.S. interests, Asians may be more disappointed that he did not put them first.''

During the campaign, the candidates' rhetoric has provided glimpses at policies that could emerge during the next presidency. McCain has been skeptical of what critics call the George W. Bush administration's overeager pursuit of a nuclear deal with North Korea. It is Obama, not Bush's fellow Republican, McCain, who is likely to follow Bush's recent multilateral approach more closely.

McCain also has criticized Obama for saying that, as president, he would authorize unilateral military action if al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden were found in Pakistan and the Pakistani government refused to go after him.

Cossa said events and national interests drive policy decisions more than personal experiences. Both candidates, he said, "have more experience and association with Southeast Asia than any former U.S. president, but that will not make Southeast Asia a higher priority in Asia, much less in the world.''

World's heaviest man marries in Mexico (Monavie, New Zealand)

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP): The world's heaviest man is tying the knot.

Wearing a white satin shirt with a sheet wrapped around his legs, Manual Uribe left home Sunday to marry his longtime girlfriend in a civil ceremony.

A flatbed truck towed his custom-made bed to an event hall in northern Mexico. The bed -- which Uribe hasn't left in six years -- was decorated with a canopy, flowers and gold-trimmed bows.

Two police patrol cars escorted him ahead of a long line of traffic.

The 43-year-old tipped the scales in 2006 at 1,230 pounds (560 kilograms), earning him the Guinness Book of World Records' title for the world's heaviest man.

He has since shed about 550 pounds (250 kilograms) with the help of his fiancee, whom he met four years ago.

Manuel Uribe Garza, 41, of Monterrey, thought to be the world's fattest man, could soon undergo weight-loss surgery in Italy , according to a report from the Italian news service Ansa.
A mechanic from northern Mexico (state of Nuevo León), Garza has weighed as much as 561 Kilograms (1,235 pounds) but recently lost weight with the help of doctors.

Italian surgeon Giancarlo DeBernardinis told Agence France-Presse, "We will hold a meeting in the coming days to work out the details of the hospitalization and to prepare the operating theater and the appropriate surgical tools."

Uribe drew worldwide attention when he appeared on the Televisa television network in January and drew the attention of doctor Giancarlo De Bernardinis, who visited Mexico with a medical team to examine Uribe in March.

The operation would last four to five hours and would likely require Uribe to spend one month in Italy. "He will always be heavier than normal but certainly not like he is now ... We would be satisfied even if he weighed 330 lbs. after two years," Bernardinis said.

For the past five years, Uribe has been bedridden. He keeps a television and a computer he uses to update his Web site near his iron bed.

His one connection to the outside world is his computer, and he regularly surfs the Internet.
Since his wife left him, unable to cope with the burden, Manuel has lived at home with his mother and sent out endless pleas for help in his home country. His plight has even touched sympathisers in this country.

"People think that I can eat a whole cow, but it's not just overeating, it's also a hormonal problem, I can't walk. I can't leave my bed and I'm trying to reduce my weight a bit right now so I can be in the right condition for the operation." Uribe said