HONOLULU (June 24, 2011) -- HONOLULU (June 24, 2011) -- Dr. Nancy Lewis, Director of the East-West Center’s Research Program, has been named president of the Pacific Science Association. Lewis was elected at the organization’s 22nd Congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last week.

“I am deeply honored to have been elected president of the Pacific Science Association as the PSA begins charting the course towards its hundredth anniversary in 2020,” Lewis said.

Richard Magnus, Singaporean Representative to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, gives a keynote address.More than 65 human rights and international law professionals from 18 countries participated in the Asian International Justice Initiative’s 2011 Summer Institute in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, which focused on issues related to the rights of women and children in the Asia Pacific region.

HONOLULU (Aug. 15, 2011) – The Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, has awarded the East-West Center $1,087,762 over three years to continue and expand several training and exchange programs for journalists. The award will fund the continuation of the Center’s Pakistan-U.S. Journalists’ Exchange program, which was held for the first time in April this year, as well as funding participation by Pakistani journalists in the Center’s existing multinational Jefferson Fellowships and Senior Journalists Seminar programs.

Under the overall theme of “Deepening Democracy through Media in Pakistan,” the objectives of the East-West Center project are to promote free, fair and responsible media in Pakistan to help the country cope with its political and developmental challenges and to bridge the gaps in understanding between the United States and Pakistan.

HONOLULU (Sept. 8, 2011) -- Philippines President Benigno Aquino III has appointed East-West Center alumnus Juan Romeo Nereus Acosta to the newly created cabinet post of Presidential Adviser for Environmental Protection.

President Aquino told the press that Acosta, who is popularly known by the nickname “Neric,” will be tasked with coordinating environmental concerns for a “coherent implementation of policy.”

President Aquino administers the Oath of Office to Neric Acosta on Aug. 24. Photo: Jay Morales/Malacañang Photo Bureau.“(He) will help me have a better, sharper focus because he will be able to tackle it in a more in-depth manner,” Aquino said after Acosta was sworn in on Aug. 24.

The East-West Center is pleased to announce its 2012 International Media Conference, to be held June 22-24 in Seoul. The conference theme is “Networked News: How New Media is Shaping Stories in Asia and the Pacific.”

Online registration will open later this month. You will receive another announcement once registration is available. In the meantime, we encourage you to bookmark the conference site and subscribe to the conference RSS feed to keep up with event details as they develop.

“I am a Pacific Islander too,” President says

HONOLULU (Nov. 18, 2011) -- Heads of State and special envoys from eleven Pacific island nations met with President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and other top U.S. and international officials in a special series of meetings organized by the East-West Center in parallel with the recently completed APEC leaders’ week in Honolulu, Hawai‘i.

Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Tonga were represented. The Honorable Peter O’Neil, Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, was selected as the delegation’s Chairman, with Niue’s Premier, Hon. Toke Talagi, serving as Vice Chairman.

HONOLULU (Nov. 25, 2011) – The East-West Center is pleased to welcome the Henry Luce Foundation as a Gold Sponsor of the EWC’s 2012 International Media Conference, scheduled for June 22-24 in Seoul, South Korea. The conference theme is “Networked News: How New Media is Shaping Stories in Asia and the Pacific.”

The Foundation has awarded EWC a special grant of $40,000 to help alumni of the Center’s annual Korea-U.S. Journalists Exchange program attend the conference. The Henry Luce Foundation has been a primary sponsor of the exchange program since 2006.

Starting with the first event in Bangkok in 2008, East-West Center’s biennial media conference has grown into one of the premier journalism meetings in the Asia Pacific region, with the 2010 conference in Hong Kong drawing close to 350 participants from 26 nations and attracting worldwide press attention.

HONOLULU (Dec. 13, 2011) -- ‘Facing Justice,’ a series of weekly Cambodian TV reports (with English subtitles) about the proceedings in the second Khmer Rouge trial, is now available online.

The series is a followup to a similar program on the first Khmer Rouge Tribunal trial, which garnered up to 3 million viewers each week, or 20 percent of Cambodia’s population, and was credited with being one of the main ways Cambodians received information about the trial.

HONOLULU (Jan. 10, 2012) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has appointed five new members to three-year terms on the East-West Center’s Board of Governors.

The new members are: UN Foundation CEO Kathy Bushkin Calvin, Clinton advisor and former USAID official Margaret Carpenter, Three Oaks Investments CEO and former White House National Economic Council senior counselor Ginger Lew, Mapleton Investments Chairman Marc Nathanson, and former U.S. Ambassador to Fiji and other Pacific island nations M. Osman Siddique.

Outgoing board members are Lori Forman, Theodore Lee, Patricia Saiki, S. Linn Williams, and Michael Young.

HONOLULU (Aug. 28, 2012) – A group of scholars, officials, educators and business leaders from more than 20 areas all over Asia, the Pacific and the U.S. will gather at Peking University in Beijing Sept. 1-3 for an East-West Center international conference on the theme of "Community Building and Leadership in Asia Pacific."

The conference will feature more than 75 substantive presentations and panels on current regional topics, including international relations, economics, environment, education, arts and culture, health, and much more.

The Honorable Hao Ping, an East-West Center alumnus and Vice Minister of the Ministry of Education, People’s Republic of China, will offer a welcoming address at the conference’s opening ceremony, and the Honorable Gary Locke, United States Ambassador to the PRC, will give a keynote address.

HONOLULU (March 1, 2012) -- The East-West Center has received a $360,000 award from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a collaborative project to work with 15 community colleges in five states on developing Asian studies curricula.

Journalists from Pacific Plate countries invited to apply by March 12

HONOLULU (March 5, 2012) – The Japan Foundation’s Center for Global Partnership has awarded the East-West Center close to $100,000 to conduct a journalism seminar focusing on disaster management and resiliency. Journalists from Japan, the U.S., China and other countries bordering the seismically active Pacific tectonic plate are invited to apply by the March 12 deadline. Click here for more information.

HONOLULU, HI (April 16, 2012) — As part of a partnership project with EWC's Pacific Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments program (Pacific RISA), the Center for Island Climate Adaptation and Policy (ICAP), at the University of Hawai‘i Sea Grant College Program, recently published Water Resources and Climate Change Adaptation in Hawai‘i: Adaptive Tools in the Current Law and Policy Framework. The white paper aims to enhance climate change adaptation for water resources throughout the state.