Indian based International Business Times studiedthe gunman's family background, and traced it back to South India subcontenent.
James Oliver Seevakumaran was hailed as the 'first would-be east Indian mass killer'. Prior to this incident, an Indian based mass killer had already been recognized in Canada, when a Sikh-Canadian man named Kimveer Gill killed one person and wounded another 19 at a shooting spree at Dawson College in Montreal in September 2006.
Yu (Alex) YIN, 1969-2013, was engineer of Qualcomm in California. Yu was survived by his wife, Lei (Lily) KANG, and three children. Yin's parents live in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. Yu was the second child among 5 siblings. Before coming to the US in 1996, Yu studied and worked at Fudan University.
The Yu family had been known for their kindness and generosity in supporting charity and community activities. Yu was diagnosed with stomach cancer in February and his condition deteriorated rapidly. Yu passed away 2 weeks later on March 6, 2013.
While some called for a fundraising campaign for Li's wife and kids, the topic soon triggered a heated debate of whether it's appropriate to make the call. Opponents argued the timing, and questioned the financial necessity.
On one hand, Li's wife Lei, also a Fudan University graduate, does not work. Lily needs to take care of his elder son, who has autism. On the other hand, social security checks and their savings and insurance should have provided a safenet for them to afford a lifestyle better than many who are struggling in low paying jobs.
Discussion over whether to donate or not occupied the top topics on MITBBS, a message board often frequented by oversea Chinese students and professionals. For days, half of the group labeled the other side as being cold blood, while the accusation was backfired as a moral lynching.
The emotional debate may become the start of ending of online fundraising for oversea Chinese community.
Li Yuanchao, then Provincial Party Boss of the CCP in Jiangsu, bragged about his handling of the Calabash Monk case as an example of his street smart.
Eight years later, Li Yuanchao became the Vice President of China. After the Calabash Monk case, the China had went on a different path, where not only people don't trust other people, but they all take defensive position against the judicial system. In the calabash monk case, the judge famously asked the Good Samaritan Mr. Peng Yu, "had you not hurt the old lady, why did you stop to help?" With any knowledge of the red China, readers should not be surprised on why does a Party boss mess up with the judicial system. However, anyone who cares anything about China would have noticed that as a direct outcome of the case, people would not even call the police when they witness someone in danger because they knew the next question from the authority would be, "why did you call for help if you did not cause it?"
As a member of the red-princelings, Li went to college in the middle of the Cultural Revolution in 1972, a rare opportunity reserved for privileged few. Like the rest of gang of red-princelings, he does not believe in any rules, including academic rules. In 1995, Li grabbed a J.D., conveniently from the Central Party School as a senior official.
Li's original given name was timely political 'Yuan-assisting' and 'Chao-Korea'. Li change the last Chinese character to a different word by adding 'water' to the left. This is against the traditional culture of keeping one's name.
Li shared many common traits with his partner, the President of China Xi Jinping. Both princelings, both recipients of bogus J.D., both being praised as bold and 'confident'.
Washington Post reported today on a saga of academic struggles unfolding at this time on campus at Johns Hopkins University.
A Chinese American scientist Dr. Daniel Yuan should have got the hint when he was demoted by Dr. Boeke after he questioned the data published by the Boeke Lab of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. While he refused to keep silence, Dr. Boeke fired him. In the past few years, Yuan had informed Nature where the Hopkins papers published as well as NIH where the Hopkins team received millions of grants on the fishy research project. However, both Nature and the NIH refused to respond.
The Boeke Lab at Johns Hopkins specializes in genetic, otherwise dubbed 'factory science' by Nobel Laureate Dr. Sydney Brenner. In this type of research, large amount of data were produced by computerized equipments. A statistician would then run different models on these data, and hopeful some hidden information would be digged out. In plain English, the success of an experiment is often determined by advanced tricks applied in statistical analysis. Dr. Yuan was a statistician worked in the lab, who came to this research field out of pure love to science. His previous career was a pediatrician and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University. When Dr. Yuan reran some data produced by others in the group, the numbers simply do not add up.
Johns Hopkins University obviously was not happy to hear anything negative about its star researcher, not named in the Washington Post article, Dr. Jef D. Boeke. Dr. Boeke is the PI of the project associated with the fraudulent data. Another Chinese scientist in the same lab Dr. Zhang Jie who challenged the data separately was also forced out by Dr. Boeke. While all the clues led to Dr. Boeke, it's doubtful how long could he keep the secret without some help from higher up.
In any typical year, Johns Hopkins University would receive $600 million from the NIH alone. The bulk of the NIH grants are on various -omics, which happened to be categorized by Dr. Brenner as 'high throughput, low input, and no output' biology. If the quota was proved to have somewhat truth in it, then the entire functioning structure of the NIH would collapse.
The coverup had been successful, until one group member Dr. Yu-yi Lin, who allegedly forged the data, found dead on the deadline he was supposed to answer questions to the data. Before the death made headline news, Yuan had asked the US federal government who paid for the fraudulent research to investigate, but Office of Research Integrity said, the incident "no longer pose a risk" to federal research after the researcher's suicide.
One thing for sure, as long as Johns Hopkins University has been happy with federal dollars, the government could care less. After all, it's not federal dollars. It is tax dollars that grows from the trees.
EVen with a relative small size, Johns Hopkins University has been the top recipient of federal research fundings for over 30 years. Year after year, Johns Hopkins University topped much much larger schools such as Harvard University or Stanford University in terms of gaining research grants. For example, in FY 2010, Johns Hopkins University scooped in $2 billion, with $1.73 of which come from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Health (NIH), The Department of Defense (DOD) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Dr. Boeke's Lab is exemplary of Johns Hopkin's success, although it may be only the tip of the iceberg.
Wait, hold on a second, have we used the word 'suicide'? Perhaps not. Hours after Dr. Lin's death, an email was sent from Dr. Lin's email account to Dr. Yuan bragging about it. Dr. Yuan was laying with empty vials of sedatives and muscle relaxants around him. As far as we know, Dr. Yuan kept a copy of this email, but nobody seems bother/allow a criminal investigation. Anyone say murder? With billions of dollars at stake, what would you expect?
When contacted by the Washington Post, Johns Hopkins University declined to have any JHU employee interviewed.
We may never know.
The Chekhov's Gun dictates that if one shows a loaded gun on stage in the first act of a play, it must be fired by the third act.
Professor Michael Smith was known for inventing methods to enable unauthorized secretive search electronic archive.
Harvard University hired Professor Michael Smith as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Professor and Dean Michael Smith ordered a secret search to email accounts of 16 resident deans, when Harvard was not happy to find a cheating scandal was leaked to the outside world.
As any educated reader would predict, the 'secretive' search was leaked. This morning, Harvard issued an announcement that it did not 'routinely' read emails.
With an endowment as large as Harvard, $30 billion last checked, Harvard University should not cheap itself on a qualified legal counsel. A federal appeal court had ruled that had an employer not conducted screening of work issued accounts, employees would have reasonable expectation of privacy.
Grand Valley State University (GVSU) was sued over its pet policy.
A 28 year old student Kendra Velzen brought the western Michigan university to a federal court after the school asked her to remove a pet guinea pig from an off campus university owned student housing unit Calder Residence Hall. The student received a $40,000 settlement. The irony is that this was not a story made up by the Onion.
For its credits, GVSU follows the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and allows 'service animals' on campus. The student was not classified as disabled under the ADA. Even were she was disabled, the ADA specifically stated animals "whose solely function is to provide comfort or emotional support do not qualify as service animals under the ADA." However, she is covered by the Fair Housing Act because she often finds herself "depressed". The student claimed she felt good when having the rodent in sight. The Fair Housing Act defines 'therapy animals' as any used as treatment for a diagnosed condition, say depression.
Under the heavy guns of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, GVSU caved in Nov 2011 to allow the student to keep the rodent in the university apartment.
In the next step, the student asked to bring the rodent to common areas, including food service areas. Sensed an avalanche of lawsuits from students who were allergic to rodents, GVSU refused. The said rodent had died in last fall, yet the student moved the lawsuit forward. It would be interesting to learn how the Fair Housing Act regulates non-dwelling areas such as the student union and cafeterias. In the end, Kendra pocketed $40,000 from GVSU.
On a related case, the same Fair Housing Center of West Michigan who joint Ms. Velzen's lawsuit as co-plaintiffs brought a 31 woman to court under the Fair Housing Act. The woman posted an advertisement at her own church's bulletin board with the words "I am looking for a female Christian roommate. Rent is $375/mo, which includes utilities." The Fair Housing Center of West Michigan saw the note expressed 'an illegal preference'. The Michigan Department of Civil Rights and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development concurred.
