Bolsavik.com

Taking a more aggressive stance than when she was running for OC Supervisor, at yesterday’s Westminster City Council meeting Dina Nguyen spoke out against the proposed bridge (artist’s rendering, above) across Bolsa Avenue, even though the Council already pulled the item from the agenda.

The council was supposed to discuss and vote up-or-down on a proposal by the County to pay for and build a pedestrian bridge across Bolsa Avenue. The bridge would be, in all fairness, exactly where the most pedestrians would cross, right in front of Asian Village Mall (”Phuoc Loc Tho” to Vietnamese).

However, the bridge being there would link two shopping malls, one owned by and the other managed by Bridgecreek, the same company that once banned Andy Quach’s political signs on its properties.

The bridge, dubbed “Freedom Bridge,” is a cornerstone of OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s agenda and electoral platform. As a result, in addition to all the reasons people may have to support or oppose the bridge, their feelings for Janet, one way or the other, play a role as well.

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The Riverside County Coroner’s office has ruled that the death of a 7-year-old girl who choked on a tooth that a Vietnamese dentist was extracting was an accident, thus freeing the dentist from any potential criminal prosecution, says the Riverside Press-Enterprise here. The dentist, however, is still being investigated by the state dental board, and the child’s family is still looking at the case.

The girl, Jacqueline Martinez, had gone in to have her molar extracted. According to coroner investigators, Jackie was “very nervous” and was given anesthesia by dentist Thien Luong.  When the girl suddenly jerked, the tooth fell, causing her to choke, according to the coroner’s report.

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Tuesday was Florida’s primary elections (yes they held an election on the day the Democratic Party’s still having its national convention), and Viet candidate Quoc Ba Van (pictured) finally found out how his first congressional campaign did.

Quoc Van is among five Democrats in District 8 vying to challenge incumbent Republican Ric Keller (who beat the challenger from his party 53%-47%).

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In a lengthy email sent by Ly Tong’s brother, Ly Tong wrote that he’s been freed after about 8 hours of questioning.

Apparently, he was planning to drop leaflets on Beijing and North Korea but couldn’t do it, so instead he scheduled with a flight school in South Korea to fly on August 25. It was the day China’s President Hu Jintao was having a summit in Seoul with South Korea’s Lee Myungbak.

While waiting, he went to Taiwan looking to drop leaflets into China, but couldn’t do it there either. So, as he told it, he tried to drop them from the top of Taipei’s famous 101 Tower, one of the world’s tallest buildings. He ended up dropping some leaflets from the … second floor. And then he dropped some more … by taxi.

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Chris Prevatt over at The Liberal OC has this entry about Misha Houser (pictured, left, with SantAna City Councilwoman Michelle Martinez) bringing a flag of the former Republic of Vietnam to the floor of the Democratic Convention.

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An email alert being circulated around the internet at a surprising speed claims that Ly Tong, the controversial figure revered by many as a hero, has been arrested in South Korea. The Bolsavik has not been able to verify this.

Ly Tong (pictured, at San Jose “Little Saigon” protests; click here for all Bolsavik entries about him) is the former South Vietnamese military pilot who flew into Cuba to drop anti-communist leaflets on Havana, and who either forced or bribed a Thai flight instructor to fly over Saigon to drop anti-communist leaflets there.

Apparently, according to this email alert, Read the rest of this entry »

An indie film starring Katie Luong is rolling out across the U.S., arriving in Southern California this week-end. Well, today, to be exact.

“Starring” Katie Luong is not technically correct, but it’s not too far from the truth either. The lead female role is played by another person, but Katie plays the second female lead.

The film is a love story, something of a chick flick. Katie plays Min, a woman who together with her boyfriend Jacob (played by Brian McGuire) got the deeply depressed male lead character Wilson (Scoot McNairy) to get on the dating scene and fall in love all over again.

The film has been showing in the U.K. and is doing a rolling release in the U.S. It opened in New York, Boston, Phillie, Northern California last week. It’s opening in Southern California, Chicago and Bethesda this week, and is continuing to open in other places later.

Below the fold is a clip from the film, found on YouTube. Katie’s character and the other friends of Wilson’s help him dress.

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A 31-year-old Viet woman from Oregon was sentenced to 20 months in prison for having sex with a 15-year-old boy and fleeing with him to Las Vegas to avoid prosecution, reports The Oregonian here.

Jasmine Nguyen (pictured), whose Vietnamese name is Hanh Nguyen, will also have to register as a sex offender and be subject to two years of probation after release.

A wife and mother of a daughter, Nguyen pleaded guilty to two counts of contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor and one count of first-degree custodial interference, for taking the boy out of state.

She is accused of having sexual relations with the 15-year-old boy on five occasions between August 1 and December 7, 2007. When she learned of the pending prosecution, she took the boy with her husband and daughter and drove to California.

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A Louisiana Viet man, apparently seized of an uncontrollable desire to become a police snitch, committed a series of robbery with a fake platic gun to attract the police’s attention, says the New Orleans Times-Picayune here.

William Nguyen, 24, is accused of pulling a gun on people and demanding money. And sometimes claiming to be an immigration agent taking bribes.

All that, he said in statements to investigators, so that he could gain the attention of one Sgt. Roy Phillips and become a paid confidential police informant.

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A Viet teenaged student is among four who raised more than $20,000 for the homeless in Minneapolis-St. Paul, says the Star Tribune here.

The four students at Johnson High School spent the summer working on a fundraiser they started for Catholic Charities. Described by the paper as students who “have experienced poverty themselves,” the four are: Pang Lor, 17; Jayvin Miller-Murphy, 15; Sompos Mhul, 15, and Arthur Nguyen, 15.

Over the summer, the students spent days knocking on doors and carrying groceries to earn donations for St. Paul Project Homeless. They held a benefit dinner in late July, with the help of guidance counselor Dan Kennedy. By the end of July, they had raised more than $10,000.