Portlanders received a very special gift for whichever of the winter holidays they may observe. On November 30 at 2:17am, Rose-Tu, an 18-year-old Asian elephant in the Oregon Zoo’s illustrious herd, gave birth to her second calf, a 300-pound baby girl. "

Six years after initial discussions surfaced about an Old Town Chinatown location for the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine (OCOM), the new campus is open for business.

OCOM’s campus at N.W. Naito Parkway and Couch Street — the site of the former Globe Hotel and Import Plaza — is the latest chapter of the area’s redevelopment. Additions and changes in the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood include Bud Clark Commons, Mercy Corps Headquarters, the University of Oregon’s White Stag Building, Saturday Market, Portland Fire & Rescue Station #1, and Tom McCall Waterfront Park, among others.

The new, state-of-the-art facility brings OCOM’s specialty in traditional Chinese healing arts to the heart of Portland. One of the oldest Chinese medicine colleges in the United States,

The first clue that the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization’s Asian Family Center (AFC) open house was well-attended was the difficulty finding parking in the vicinity of 8040 N.E. Sandy Blvd. on a Friday afternoon in mid-May. I was running late, worried about missing opening remarks, when I suddenly realized that the presence of all those cars was a good thing.

With the help of AFC staff who were directing people to parking places — these folks think of everything — I made it to the center’s jam-packed community room right on time.

AFC board chair Chanpone Sinlapasai-Okamura and director Lee Po Cha welcomed guests to the new home of the Asian Family Center, which spent its first 18 years in a

The Asian Reporter Foundation’s 14th Annual Scholarship & Awards Banquet at Legin Restaurant was just getting under way with a social hour at 5:30pm when Encarnacion Arroyo arrived and stood inside the door, spotted dozens of people already mingling among a sea of tables, and declared the event, which would not conclude for well over three more hours, "Very successful."

I’m so excited to be a princess," Amirose "Rosie" Mallet, 17, Rose Festival princess representing St. Mary’s Academy, exclaimed on a lunch break from her job at a mattress store. Princess Rosie had just returned to Portland after a visit to Illinois Wesleyan University, where she will begin work on her Bachelor of Nursing degree in the fall. "I’m excited about life," she continued. "There’s so much ahead of me."

Princess Rosie has done more living already than some of us ever get to do. Born in Changzhou, China, she was adopted at nine months old. "I didn’t know how to swallow,"

Spring in Portland was welcomed by pink and white cherry blossoms along Portland’s Tom McCall Waterfront Park last month. Members of the local Japanese-American community celebrated culture and commemorated history during Sakura Sunday, an afternoon exposition of Japanese-American heritage amid the blooming cherry trees along

January 19, 2005 doesn’t seem like long ago to Rebecca Liu. It was on that day, while Liu stood watching, that an archaeological dig on Multnomah County property adjacent to and formerly a part of Lone Fir Cemetery in southeast Portland uncovered the bones that she was sure were buried there. Liu was sure because she had discovered, in the basement

Perhaps you were among the nearly 400,000 people who visited Body Worlds 3 at the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry in 2007, which Nancy Stueber, president and CEO of the science institution, describes as "the most well-attended exhibit we ever had." Or you may have heard about Body Worlds but weren’t able to make it. You might have read in awe about the process of plastination, or maybe you aren’t entirely comfortable with the idea of human bodies on display.

Whatever your relationship with and feelings about Body Worlds, you have until the

One of the Oregon Zoo’s Asian elephants, Rose-Tu, is pregnant, according to zoo officials. The 17-year-old pachyderm, which gave birth to Samudra in 2008, is expected to deliver another member of the zoo’s celebrated elephant family in late 2012.

Keepers believe conception occurred the last week of February, when they observed