Hasta La Gadget!

The new “Power Rangers” movie subtly fights the “model minority” stereotype by shedding light on a rarely discussed Asian-American issue. 

While the minority group is often seen as financially well-off, the Asian character Zack, the black Power Ranger in the film, comes from a low-income family who lives in a trailer home. 

Though Zack’s story is not uncommon, the lives of disadvantaged Asians are often missing from the big screen, making his presence all the more important. 

“Even we [as Asians] get sucked into this belief sometimes that as long as [we] work hard, we can push through, but a lot of Asians are disadvantaged,” Ludi Lin, who plays Zack, explained to the Angry Asian Man blog regarding the character’s significance. 

In the movie, a bilingual Zack cares for his ailing mother, played by Fiona Fu, in their mobile home. The mother, who appears to be the sole parental figure in his life, is confined to her bed. There are no mentions of attending prestigious colleges, nor does school appear to be his priority as he skips class. 

Zack’s story is reflective of the lives of a growing population of Asian-Americans. The National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD) points out that Asian-American and Pacific Islanders living in poverty is one of the fastest growing populations. Between 2007 to 2011, the AAPI population living in poverty increased by 38 percent ― the second fastest growing poverty rate in the U.S., behind the Hispanic population. 

Disadvantaged Asian-Americans are concentrated in the Western region of the country, as well as in New York. In fact, the minority group has the highest poverty rate in New York City, according to the Mayor’s Office of Operations’ Social Indicators Report.

But stories about Asians and their success have “masked the reality of families struggling to make ends meet,” the Asian American Federation, a social services organization, noted. 

“The fact that few poverty studies have included the Asian American population also has contributed to the invisibility of Asian Americans in poverty,” the organization’s own report on poverty said. 

What’s more, when Asian-Americans are examined in data, the group is often treated as a monolith, though their needs are diverse. A report from the Center of American Progress notes that there’s enormous wealth inequality within the Asian-American community, with some sub-groups like those from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos more likely to fare far less well than those from China or India. And averages don’t illustrate this disparity.

“By only looking at averages, you’re papering over the substantial struggles of a huge chunk of lower-income, less wealthy Asian Americans,” Christian E. Weller, a senior fellow at the Center For American Progress who penned the report with economist Jeffrey Thompson, told The Washington Post. 

“Power Rangers” might have received mixed reviews, but the praise for its three-dimensional representation of minority characters is well-deserved, some viewers say. 

H/T Inverse

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Borussia Dortmund, one of Germany’s top soccer teams, was in the crosshairs of a series of explosions shortly before its scheduled Champions League match on Tuesday night.

Three explosions hit near the team’s tour bus a little after 7 p.m. local time while the team was on its way to play AS Monaco at the Dortmund stadium, according to a police report. Police noted that they are still trying to piece together what happened.

Borussia Dortmund said Marc Bartra, a 26-year-old defender, was hospitalized but in stable condition.

The match has been rescheduled for Wednesday at 6:45 p.m., the team tweeted.

This is a developing story and will be updated. 

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While briefing reporters on whether U.S. relations with Syrian ally Russia will change in the wake of the Syrian regime unleashing chemical weapons last week, Spicer tried to compare President Bashar al-Assad to Hitler.

“We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II. You know, you had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said. “So you have to, if you’re Russia, ask yourself: ‘Is this a country that you, and a regime, that you want to align yourself with?’”

When a reporter asked him to clarify his remarks, Spicer responded: “He was not using gas on his own people in the same way that Assad is doing,” adding that Hitler “brought them into the Holocaust centers,” apparently referring to the gas chambers.

MSNBC quickly fact-checked Spicer in a simple but effective chyron.

The U.S. Holocaust Museum also seemingly fact-checked Spicer in a tweet.

Spicer later tried to walked back his remarks again in a statement.

“In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust. I was trying to draw a distinction of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on population centers. Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable,” he said.

Democratic Party Chairman Tom Perez called on the White House to apologize, calling Spicer’s remarks “shameful.”

The Anne Frank Center released a scathing statement saying Spicer should be fired.

“On Passover no less, Sean Spicer has engaged in Holocaust denial, the most offensive form of fake news imaginable, by denying Hitler gassed millions of Jews to death. Spicer’s statement is most evil slur upon a group of people we have ever heard from a White House press secretary,” the center’s executive director, Steven Goldstein, said. “Sean Spicer now lacks the integrity to serve as White House press secretary, and President Trump must fire him at once.”

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Things were looking a lot brighter for embattled United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz a month ago.

Munoz took home a Communicator of the Year award from PRWeek U.S. on March 16, less than four weeks before the airline faced a deluge of criticism for forcibly removing a passenger and then mishandling its response to the public’s outrage.

“Munoz has shown himself to be a smart, dedicated, and excellent leader who understands the value of communications,” PRWeek declared in an article last month. United touted the award in a press release that said the CEO’s “strategy from day one has been to reconnect with employees and customers.” 

That reconnecting strategy wasn’t going very well this past Sunday. Passengers on a United Airlines flight leaving Chicago posted disturbing video of security officers pulling a passenger out of his seat, causing him to bang his head, and then dragging him down the aisle.

Airline staff had asked for volunteers to give up their seats, and when there were no takers, they picked passengers at random, following United’s “involuntary denial of boarding process,” Munoz wrote in a letter to employees on Monday. The man in question was one of those selected, but refused to comply with multiple requests to deboard the plane, according to Munoz.

In a separate public statement on Monday, the CEO apologized for having to “re-accommodate” customers.

The CEO defended his employees’ conduct in that internal letter, saying they “were left with no choice” but to call airport security after the passenger “became more and more disruptive and belligerent.”

Amidst the public uproar, Munoz hasn’t exactly been praised for his communication skills. His employee letter has been called “tone-deaf” and criticized for evading responsibility.

On Twitter, people pointed out the irony of Munoz’s award:

It’s been a rocky few days for United’s communications team. Twitter users appropriated #UnitedJourney, a promotional hashtag the airline launched last week, to share images of the passenger’s rough removal. They also blasted the company for its quick response to a person who claimed a flight ran out of forks on Tuesday morning.

This isn’t even United’s first public relations nightmare since Munoz took home his award. The airline faced backlash in late March after agents refused to let three girls wearing leggings on board because their attire apparently violated a stricter dress code for “pass” travelers.

PRWeek had praised Munoz for transforming the airline’s fortunes and setting the business “on a smoother course,” all while dealing with a personal health crisis. The industry news site particularly highlighted his relationship with employees.

A “key reason” that he won the award was “his ability to connect and share with employees his vision for the airline, and get them to rally behind it,” PRWeek wrote, adding that when he took over as head of the company, “employee distrust and discontent was at a high.”

Munoz did appear to prioritize his staff in the Monday letter. “While I deeply regret this situation arose, I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right,” he wrote.

PRWeek US Editor-in-chief Steve Barrett slammed Munoz’s response in a Tuesday column.

“It’s fair to say that if PRWeek was choosing its Communicator of the Year now, we would not be awarding it to Oscar Munoz,” Barrett said.

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NVIDIA is quickly making good on its promise to support its latest graphics cards on Macs. The GPU giant has quietly posted beta macOS drivers (direct download) that should support any GeForce 10-series card, whether it’s a simple GTX 1050 or an all…