The Asian reporter., January 01, 2024, Page 10, Image 10

Page 10 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
U.S.A.
January 1, 2024
Popular talk show host declares “You are the
father!” to 30-year-old Denver Zoo orangutan
PRIMATE PATERNITY TEST. This undated
photo provided by the Denver Zoo shows Sumatran
orangutan Eirina with her baby, named Siska. The zoo
performed a DNA test to determine which of two male
orangutans was Siska’s father and recruited talk show
host Maury Povich to record a video announcing that
30-year-old Berani was the father. (Denver Zoo via
AP)
By Amy Beth Hanson
The Associated Press
nitially unsure of which orangutan
was the father of a new baby primate,
the Denver Zoo decided to have a little
fun with the results and turned to the
paternity announcement guru himself:
former daytime talk show host Maury
Povich.
Just as he would do on his long-running
show, Povich pulled the purported DNA
results for 4-month-old Siska out of an
envelope and declared: “Berani. You are
the father!”
The zoo posted the video on social media.
Siska, a female who was born on August
27, is the first baby for Eirina, a
15-year-old Sumatran orangutan, who
came to the Denver Zoo from Germany’s
Dortmund Zoo in 2016.
Sumatran orangutans are listed as
critically endangered by the International
Union for Conservation of Nature, with a
rapidly declining wild population due to
habitat loss, illegal hunting, and the
black-market pet trade, the zoo said in
announcing Siska’s birth.
Siska’s father remained a mystery
because the zoo’s animal care team had to
wait a few months before Eirina was
I
comfortable allowing them to get close
enough to get a hair sample from Siska to
compare her DNA against 30-year-old
Berani and 16-year-old Jaya.
“When I heard we received the results,
the first thing that popped into my mind
was, ‘Berani, you ARE the father!’” Jake
Kubié, the zoo’s director of communica-
tions, said in an e-mail.
“That led me to do a little light online
stalking to track down (Povich’s) former
executive producer, who was kind enough
to connect me with his executive
assistant,” Kubié said.
Kubié e-mailed the assistant, asking if it
might be possible to have “Maury reveal
the paternity results as only he can.”
“Everyone was incredibly friendly and
enthusiastic about the idea, and I can’t
express enough gratitude to Maury for
dedicating a bit of his time and energy to
supporting the Denver Zoo — especially on
such a big day for him personally,” Kubié
said.
Povich, 84, taped his announcement
before attending the Daytime Emmy
Awards in Los Angeles where he received a
Lifetime Achievement Honor presented by
his wife, journalist Connie Chung.
“As much as I’d like to think he dressed
in a tux for our announcement, it was
actually for his big moment at the
Emmys,” Kubié said.
Embezzlement of Oregon weekly newspaper’s funds forces it to layoff entire staff and halt print
By Claire Rush
The Associated Press
Todd Cooper via AP
P
ORTLAND, Ore. — An Oregon
weekly newspaper has had to lay
off its entire staff and halt print
after 40 years because its funds were
embezzled by a former employee, its editor
said, in a devastating blow to a publication
that serves as an important source of
information in a community that, like
many others nationwide, is struggling
with growing gaps in local news coverage.
About a week before Christmas, the
Eugene Weekly found inaccuracies in its
bookkeeping, editor Camilla Mortensen
said. It discovered that a former employee
who was “heavily involved” with the
paper’s finances had used its bank account
to pay themselves $90,000 since at least
2022, she said.
The paper also became aware of at least
$100,000 in unpaid bills — including to the
paper’s printer — stretching back several
months, she said.
Additionally,
multiple
employees,
including Mortensen, realized that money
from their paychecks that was supposed to
be going into retirement accounts was
never deposited.
When the paper realized it couldn’t
make the next payroll, it was forced to lay
off all of its 10 staff members and stop its
print edition, Mortensen said. The
alternative weekly, founded in 1982,
printed 30,000 copies each week to
distribute for free in Eugene, the
third-largest city in the state and home to
the University of Oregon.
“To lay off a whole family’s income three
days before Christmas is the absolute
worst,” Mortensen said, expressing her
sense of devastation. “It was not on my
radar that anything like this could have
happened or was happening.”
The suspected employee had worked for
the paper for about four years and has
since been fired, Mortensen said.
The Eugene police department’s
financial crimes unit is investigating, and
the paper’s owners have hired forensic
accountants to piece together what
happened, she said.
Brent Walth, a journalism professor at
the University of Oregon, said he was con-
cerned about the loss of a paper that has
had “an outsized impact in filling the
widening gaps in news coverage” in Eu-
gene. He described the paper as an inde-
pendent watchdog and a compassionate
voice for the community, citing its obitu-
aries of homeless people as an example of
how the paper has helped put a human
face on some of the city’s biggest issues.
He also noted how the paper has made
“an enormous difference” for journalism
students seeking internships or launching
their career. He said there were feature
and investigative stories that “the
community would not have had if not for
the weekly’s commitment to make sure
that journalism students have a place to
publish in a professional outlet.”
A tidal wave of closures of local news
outlets across the country in recent
decades has left many Americans without
access to vital information about their
local governments and communities and
has contributed to increasing polarization,
said Tim Gleason, the former dean of the
University of Oregon’s journalism school.
“The loss of local news across the
country is profound,” he said. “Instead of
having the healthy kind of community
connections that local journalism helps
create, we’re losing that and becoming
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