News (Noticias) for Pennsylvania

Federal courts are now split on the question of whether cities and towns may take steps to curb illegal immigration.

A federal judge in Missouri says local governments may do so. That contradicts a federal judge in Pennsylvania, who forbade the city of Hazleton from cracking down on illegal immigrants. “*

*From: http://www.whptv.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

THE FIRED Alycia Lane is firing back at CBS 3. On Tuesday she filed a praecipe to issue writ of summons, typically a precursor to a lawsuit, against the station.

Lane and attorneys Paul Rosen and Andrew DeFalco have asked to depose CBS 3 President Michael Colleran and News Director Susan Schiller.”*

*From: http://www.philly.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

The Hispanic population in Pittsburgh is growing steadily and has its first Spanish directory to prove it.

The Hispanic Center/El Centro Hispano launched its 302-page Directorio de Servicios Para la Comunidad Latina (Spanish Service Directory for the Latino Community) and it’s now available to Pittsburgh residents and businesses. “*

*From: http://www.popcitymedia.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

The Phillies finally signed a third baseman yesterday: former San Francisco Giant Pedro Feliz. When the news hit, the baseball web erupted with the usual best-case/worst-case scenarios. Those clamoring for their own alliterative upper-deck fanbase should act now. “Pedro Persuasion” has a nice, ’80s Latino-keyboard-rock feel to it. That would be my personal choice.”*

*From: http://www.phillymag.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

“All you hear are the bad stories,” she shakes her head. “Latinos are poor, uneducated, and worse. You never about the engineers – like Raul Valdes-Perez, a Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. who started Vivisimo, a sophisticated search engine. Or physicians — like my brother Juan Sanchez, a Connecticut cardio-thoracic surgeon. Or attorneys –” like Lourdes Sanchez Ridge herself.

In Pittsburgh since 1990, a senior counsel with Thorp Reed & Armstrong, Downtown, Sanchez Ridge was born in Havana, moved to Miami at age six. Having gone to school in Miami, and law school in Gainesville, she returned home to serve as an assistant state attorney, then a DC-based assistant US attorney, conducting some four dozen trials and more than 100 grand jury investigations. Now in Pittsburgh, where she moved with her husband, fellow attorney Bob Ridge.”*

*From: http://www.popcitymedia.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

Johnny Irizarry has been named director of La Casa Latina, the Center for Hispanic Excellence, effective January 7. He will lead co-curricular, cultural, and social programs for Penn students and student organizations with a focus on Latino diasporic cultures.”*

*From: http://www.upenn.edu

Sovereign Bancorp, the Philadelphia-based bank in which Grupo Santander of Spain has a 25 per cent stake, said it expected to take a $1.6bn writedown in the fourth quarter based on higher customer loan defaults and the decline in value of its investment in a New York savings and loan institution.

Banks both large and small across the US are suffering as mortgage defaults have spread to credit cards, car and other types of consumer loans. The troubles are now hitting European banks that expanded rapidly in the US in recent years.”*

*From: http://www.ft.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

After spending months talking about increasing their presence in Latin America, the Pirates are making a substantial step in doing so by beginning work on a new training facility that will centralize the team’s Latin American academy.

The organization announced on Thursday that it will be breaking ground on what will be the Pirates’ new Latin American headquarters on January 22. The complex, which will span 43 acres, will be located in El Toro, Dominican Republic. The facility is expected to open sometime in 2009.”*

*From: http://mlb.mlb.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

A TV station fired a local anchorwoman who has been off the air since she was charged with striking a New York City police officer, only the latest dust-up for the telegenic brunette.

Alycia Lane “has been released from her contract effective immediately,” KYW-TV said in a statement Monday, the day she had been due back on air.”*

*From: http://money.cnn.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

Hazleton will file its legal briefs with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in the Illegal Immigration Relief Act appeal by Jan. 22.

Initially, the briefs had been due Dec. 26; however, that filing was delayed to Jan. 9.

Attorney and law professor Kris Kobach, the immigration law expert for former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft who is representing the city, said he asked for a two-week extension for several reasons.”*

*From: http://www.zwire.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

In Hispanic cultures, El Día de Los Reyes is celebrated each Jan. 6 to commemorate the arrival of the three wise men who traveled to Bethlehem in Biblical times to bring gifts to Jesus, shortly after his birth.

In Wilkes-Barre on Sunday, hundreds of local Hispanics celebrated the event, which translates to The Day of the Kings, with mariachi music, traditional dances and culinary delights in the gymnasium at the Catholic Youth Center on South Washington Street.”*

*From: http://www.zwire.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

The public service that Luis A. Ramos offered to the Lehigh Valley was broad and varied. He was a leader and advocate for local businesses. Twenty years ago, he helped to create the Hispanic Business Council, a forerunner to other Latino organizations that thrive today. His leadership in education extended from Allentown to the state level and he was recognized by President Bush for his strong advocacy for the schools. He was a coach and referee for youth soccer. Professionally, Mr. Ramos worked for PPL, rising to key management positions over a career of 34 years.”*

*From: http://www.mcall.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

Luis A. Ramos, a longtime fixture among business and civic groups and a leader of the Lehigh Valley’s Latino community, died last night when his car hit a tree off Interstate 80 in Luzerne County, officials said.Ramos, 57, spent more than 30 years working for PPL Corp. and helped draft a plan to boost academic performance in the Allentown School District, among other accomplishments.”*

*From: http://www.mcall.comTraducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

State government jargon is sometimes tough enough to translate.

Then the Erie Times-News mistakenly received an e-mailed news release this week from Gov. Ed Rendell’s office in Spanish.

As it turns out, the state sends out news releases in both English and Spanish.”*

The second Pennsylvania Summit on Educational Excellence for Latino Students continues today at Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel in State College. The two-day event, an initiative of the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs (GACLA) and the Pennsylvania Department of Education, focuses on actions that schools and community leaders can take to increase the achievement of Latino students. The summit’s theme is, “Roots for Change: Pennsylvania Latino Education Agenda.”"*

Education Secretary Gerald L. Zahorchak will address the second Pennsylvania Summit on Educational Excellence for Latino Students at 7 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 10, at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel in State College. The evening will include recognition of Latino college and high school students who have achieved academically. Hosted by the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs, the two-day summit will focus on improving the educational status of Latino students in Pennsylvania’s schools and higher education institutions. “*

We finished the first round of video production training! On Monday December 3rd, 20 Spanish-speaking immigrants received diplomas for successfully completing the first in a series of workshops in which they were trained in video production and basic web skills. This project, developed by the Media Mobilizing Project with Mexican immigrant community based organization JUNTOS is called, Our City, Our Voices: Immigrant Newscasts in the Digital Age. To remind people, the goal of the project is to give Philadelphia’s newest inhabitants the capacity to tell their own stories and document their struggles through short digital videos. At the forefront of the growing wave of community journalism projects, Our City Our Voices is innovative in its goal of creating a community driven journalism project, which connects those most silenced, to new video technologies and Philadelphia’s wireless network.”*

Dawn Morgenstern, employment and training manager for the center, said nearly 10,000 directories have been downloaded from www.pghhispaniccenter.org.”*

One of our very own received important recognition Tuesday night. Edición en Español anchor Perla López Baray has made the list of “50 Most Influential Latinos” in the Delaware Valley. She was honored at the Sheraton Center City in Philadelphia. Every year, fifty leaders and professionals in the Latino community are named “most influential” for their professional accomplishments. Perla, we are very proud of you. Congratulations to Perla! Honor”*

More Hispanic students than ever are now choosing to further their education in Northeastern Pennsylvania, local universities report.

In the last decade, Hispanic enrollment has more than doubled at both Marywood University and the University of Scranton. That’s a result of targeted marketing, outreach programs and an overall increase in the Hispanic population, school officials say.

The University of Scranton’s efforts — which have helped to increase total Hispanic enrollment at the school from 99 to 222 students in the last decade — recently received national recognition.”*

Swarthmore hosted the seventh annual Black and Latino Male Conference this weekend, drawing a record 130 students and faculty from 14 different colleges and universities. The conference was sponsored by Swarthmore’s Achieving Black and Latino Leaders of Excellence and the Consortium of High Achievement and Success.

ABLLE, a year-old group on campus, promotes a collective presence of blacks and Latinos at Swarthmore, while CHAS functions as an external organization. Titled “The New Danger: Black and Latino Men Facing Evolving Challenges to their Scholarship and Community,” the three-day conference combined lectures by prominent speakers with closed discussions about proactively dealing with new issues facing black and Latino males in higher education. Students, faculty and administrators from small colleges and universities around the country, including Reed, Bates, Haverford and many more, attended the conference. Each student left the conference with an action plan to take back to their campuses.”*

The wave of Hispanic immigrants isn’t an abstract idea in the future, or something that can be stopped with a wall or a fence.

They are already here.

“It’s a reality we have to deal with, simply because we can’t go back,” Louis E.V. Nevaer said Tuesday during a speech, “Hispanic Ascendance in the United States’ Workforce and their Impact on the Market Economy.””*

Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, spoke Monday night in Luzerne County.

Anti-immigration protesters gathered outside the the event at the F.M. Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre. Some chanted “Fox, go home.”"*

Temple University educator Heidi A. Ramirez stands to become the Philadelphia School Reform Commission’s youngest member at 33, its first Latina and what Gov. Rendell calls “its most qualified” in terms of education background.

Rendell at a press conference in Philadelphia this morning said he would recommend that Ramirez, a center city resident who specializes in urban education, become the commission’s fifth member.

Her appointment is subject to confirmation by the state Senate, which could take until the end of January to act, although Rendell said he hopes it will happen sooner. She will replace James Nevels, who resigned in September, and will become Rendell’s second appointment to the commission.”*

For leaders in the Latino community such as Will Gonzales, these are challenging times. Not only is the public demanding immigration reform, but economic problems such as the meltdown in the subprime-mortgage market threaten to eat away at the economic gains Latinos have made in recent years.

Gonzales runs Ceiba, a coalition of five Latino community groups founded in 1991. Gonzales, 45, has been the leader since 2001. The group is named after a tree native to the Caribbean noted for its resilience.

In an interview with PhillyInc, Gonzales, who also is a lawyer, spoke about his background, gains made by Latinos, and the work still ahead.”*