Some are refugees from sad countries torn apart by war. Others are children of the stable middle class whose parents came to the U.S. in search of a better life. Some came with nothing, not even the rudiments of English. Others came with skills and affluence. Many were born in the U.S. to immigrant parents. No matter what their route, young Asian Americans, largely those with Chinese, Korean and Indochinese backgrounds, are setting the educational pace for the ...

It's never been easy to be part of the huddled masses. The Statue of Liberty may not be choosy about which wretched refuse she allows in the door, but Americans themselves haven't always been so hospitable. Immigrants from Ireland landed in the U.S. in the 1850s only to find shop windows festooned with signs reading "No Irish Need Apply." The Chinese toiled to build our transcontinental railroad in the 1860s, only to see the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act signed ...

The guitarist stands in front of a mirror messing with his mohawk. The drummer strikes a wild tempo. The singer rips off his T-shirt and begins to scream the lyrics. They're young. They're punk. And they're rocking both their Muslim and American worlds with their music, lyrics and style. "A lot of times people say, 'Oh wow, look, brown people playing music' [but] it's more than that," said 25-year-old Pakistani-American Shahjehan Khan, the lead singer for a Muslim punk band, ...

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the medical ethicist and oncologist who advises President Obama, does not own a television, and if you catch him in a typically energized moment, when his mind speeds even faster than his mouth, he is likely to blurt out something like, "I hate the Internet." So it took him several days in late July to discover he had been singled out by opponents of health-care reform as a "deadly doctor," who, according to an opinion column ...

The camcorder shakes as it films the thud of thick .50 caliber bullets ripping through a steel plate target in the heat of the Arizona desert. Panning across the jagged rocks and cacti, the camera then focuses on the shooter: a smiling Mexican sitting down on the dust as he uses both hands to fire the huge state-of-the-art weapon that can tear through tank armor. He was the happy customer, having bought the killing machine from an Arizona gun ...

Canada is preparing to launch its toughest offensive to date against the Buy-American provision in President Barrack Obama's $787-billion stimulus package. But protectionist sentiment in the U.S. will make it difficult for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to make much headway when the two leaders meet next week at a North-American summit in Guadalajara, Mexico, even with the help of a new bargaining chip. Harper and his trade Minister Stockwell Day scored an important victory Friday when provincial premiers ...

The dead always tell a story. And in Mexico that story is the fight for the right to meet U.S. demand for illegal drugs -- a war becoming more violent and ruthless, mostly because of one group. Its name is Los Zetas. Imagine a band of U.S. Green Berets going rogue and offering their services and firepower to drug cartels. That's what happened in Mexico in the 1990s. Commandos from the Mexican army deserted and set up a cartel, known ...

People as young as 40 with borderline or high cholesterol levels are at increased risk for developing Alzheimer's disease or vascular dementia, said a Kaiser Permanente study released Tuesday. Researchers tracked nearly 10,000 people for four decades, starting when the participants were between 40 and 45. After controlling for weight, hypertension and diabetes, researchers discovered a significant link between borderline-high cholesterol and dementia, according to the study. Although previous studies have linked heart and brain health, researchers said this study ...

The American Psychological Association concluded Wednesday that there is little evidence that efforts to change a person's sexual orientation from gay or lesbian to heterosexual are effective. In addition, the 138-page report -- covering 87 peer-reviewed studies -- said that such efforts may cause harm. "Contrary to claims of sexual orientation change advocates and practitioners, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation," said Judith M. Glassgold, chairwoman of the task force that ...

Sex on TV has come a long way in the past few years. Anyone who saw the first episode of 90210 — a pair of students engage in oral sex in the first episode of the new sequel to Beverly Hills 90210 — can attest to that. The question that has been debated by parents, psychologists and media critics for years is whether such racy content has an adverse effect on young viewers. Now researchers at the Rand ...