Asian Studies Blog

A lady by the name of Leila Janah, who was the daughter to immigrant parents, became a social entrepreneur and hired many people from India and Africa that were in financial need. She recently died in Manhattan at the age of 37. Her story is that she would visit these countries and she realized that there were villages where it was predominately low income people. She decided that they too had potential and hired them. She mainly hired women to the job. What these workers did was produce data that many companies of self-driving cars, etc could use. People that worked for her company Samasource in Kenya, went on to work under contracts for Google, Glassdoor, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/business/leila-janah-dead.html

In recent times, there has been a new deadly virus that started off in China and has made it's way into other countries. The new virus that is killing many is called "coronavirus". Many have been getting sick and some have even died from this virus. It has gotten so bad that transportation has been cancelled, events have been cancelled, etc. It seems to  have started in Wuhan. Many have been advised to not travel, but despite it all, the virus has spread to other countries like Japan and Thailand.  There have also been reports that people in Canada and even a student at Texas A&M University have become ill with the virus. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51230011?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world/asia&link_location=live-reporting-story

Parental leave in Japan is common amongst women, but rare for men. However according to the BBC Asia article, parents are allowed up to a year of parental leave. Women have been more likely to go on parental leave than man are. For the first time Japan's Environmental Minister (Shinjiro Koizumi) will be taking two weeks of parental leave. This will be the first time a Japanese cabinet minister will take parental leave. Even though it is ok for men to go on parental leave, many don't because they feel that they are obligated to keep working. Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51127022