A Bad Day for Don Lemon, Bill Cosby

NPR Looks at Asian Motivations for Eyelid Surgery

NPR's "Code Switch" Monday began the first in a two-part series "looking at the history and motivations behind the Asian blepharoplasty, popularly known as 'double- eyelid surgery.'

"Stepping past the controversy — Is it appropriate to get this surgery? What beauty standards are you abiding by or reinforcing? — I wanted to get at the why,"Kat Chow wrote. "Why some of us get the surgery, why some of us don't, or why everyone seems to have an opinion about those who seek it. I spoke with many people who had the surgery, considered it or chose not to get it. But to understand how the surgery became so common, I found it helpful to dig into its history, which goes back more than a century.

"In February 1895, an unnamed special correspondent for the Los Angeles Times wrote about this surgery in Japan.

"'In their efforts to acquire recognition in the civilized world, the Japanese have found their greatest barrier in the unmistakable mark of their Mongolian origin,' writes the unnamed author. 'The prejudice against Mongolians is undeniable, and among the Japs, the slanted eye being its only evidence, the curse is being removed.' . . ."

In 2013, talk and reality show host Julie Chen revealed that comments from a news director led to her developing a complex about her Asian heritage that ended in plastic surgery.

• Vesko Cholakov blog: Rules of Attraction: Why White Men Marry Asian Women and Asian Men Don't Marry White Women (July 29)
  
  
• Kat Chow, NPR "Code Switch": The Many Stories Behind Double-Eyelid Surgery

14 Nigerian Journalists Abducted by Youth Gang

"Fourteen Nigerian journalists were abducted in a speedboat ambush by a gang of youths and beaten in what appears to be part of the rivalry between two communities — the Ijaw and Itsekiri peoples — on the Niger Delta,"Roy Greenslade reported Wednesday for Britain's Guardian newspaper.

"The journalists were returning by boat from an Itsekiri press conference about a $16bn gas project in the Warri area of the delta when the gang came alongside and boarded them.

"Several journalists were beaten when they refused to hand over cameras and recording equipment. The Ijaw gang then demobilised the boat and ransacked the belongings of the journalists and six other people aboard, who included Kiki, an Itsekiri youth leader.

"All were forced into other boats and taken hostage to what appeared to be the gang's hideaway. The journalists were held for six hours, during which the boat driver and one of the journalists, Emma Arubi, senior correspondent of the Daily Independent, were badly beaten. . . ."

• Temidayo Akinsuyi, Daily Independent, Nigeria: Daily Independent Reporter, Arubi, 13 Journalists Kidnapped in Warri
  
  
• Emma Amaize, Vanguard, Nigeria: Untold story of how 14 journalists were abducted
  
  
• Leadership, Nigeria: Leadership Regional Editor, Others Abducted in Warri