PRSRT STD U.S. Postage Paid Permit No. 746 Seattle, WA
VOL 40 NO 49 DECEMBER 4 – DECEMBER 10, 2021
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Small business owners awarded $1 million
Community members demand that Sawant gets recalled
Photos from Kamonegi and Viet-Wah
Chinese community members hold a rally in support of recalling Kshama Sawant on Nov. 28 at the intersection of S. Jackson St. and Rainier Ave. S. (Photo by Tony Au)
Kamonegi (left) and Viet-Wah (above) are among local businesses that were awarded grants through the Comcast RISE program
Comcast announced on Nov. 22 that it awarded $1 million in total grants to more than 100 small businesses owned by people of color in King and Pierce Counties.
The recipients are among nearly 6,700 entrepreneurs nationwide who have been selected through the Comcast RISE program, which provides marketing, technology, and capital support
to small business owners. Comcast RISE, which stands for Representation, Investment, Strength, and Empowerment, is part of Project UP, a comprehensive initiative
to advance digital equity and help provide underrepresented small business owners with
New Twitter CEO steps from behind the scenes to high profile By Barbara Ortutay THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
(see COMCAST on 12)
PNB School student Zeheng Huang is the Prince
Pacific Northwest Ballet School student Zeheng Huang as the Prince in a scene from George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker®, choreographed by George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust. Photo © Angela Sterling.
Zeheng Huang has been picked to play the Prince for the Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB)’s Nutcracker, now showing through Dec. 28 at McCaw Hall. “He may be one of the very few Asian males for the character,” his mother Lilian Chen told the Northwest Asian Weekly. There had been several Asian female dancers in the past for the Nutcracker. A student at Denny International Middle School, Huang, 12, has been dancing with the PNB since he was 8-years old. Chen said her son would dance
and jump in the house as if he was on stage. PNB came to the Seattle Public Schools to recruit students a few years ago. After an audition,Huang was picked to enroll in the PNB with a scholarship. Recently, Huang was invited to try out for the Nutcracker role. Huang didn’t expect to be picked. But his mother knew he would be because he is passionate about ballet and practices often at home. Huang is one of the two alternates for the prince role. Huang has also performed in other shows prior to Nutcracker.
One year later, millions use WA Notify to stop the spread of COVID-19 The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) is celebrating a successful year of WA Notify, the state’s exposure notification app. More than 2.62 million people have enabled it—accounting for more than 43% of all smartphone users in the
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state. “WA Notify has been a very successful innovation for our state, and we’re proud of the team at the Department of Health who helped create a tech-based solution that contributed to the greater good as we fought—and continue to
fight—this pandemic,” said Washington state Secretary of Health Umair A. Shah. The WA Notify app does not collect data about who the users are, where they go, or who they are near. (see COVID on 12)
To do outreach, WA Notify translated its materials into different languages.
New Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal
Newly named Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has emerged from behind the scenes to take over one of Silicon Valley’s highest-profile and politically volatile jobs. But his prior lack of name recognition coupled with a solid technical background appears to be what some big company backers were looking for to lead Twitter out of its current morass. A 37-year-old immigrant from India, Agrawal comes from outside the ranks of celebrity CEOs, which include the man he’s replacing, Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla. Those brand-name company founders and leaders have often been in the news—and on Twitter—for exploits beyond the day-to-day running of their companies. Having served as Twitter’s chief technology officer for the last four years, Agrawal’s appointment was seen by Wall Street as a choice (see TWITTER on 12)
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