SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Cheng “Charlie” Saephan wore a broad smile and a bright blue sash emblazoned with the words “Iu-Mien USA” as he hoisted an oversized check for $1.3 billion above his head. The 46-year-old immigrant’s luck in winning an enormous Powerball jackpot in Oregon earlier this month — a lump sum payment of $422 million after taxes, which he and his wife will split with a friend — has changed his life. It also raised awareness about Iu Mien people, a southeast Asian ethnic group with origins in China, many of whose members fled from Laos to Thailand and then settled in the U.S. following the Vietnam War. “I am born in Laos, but I am not Laotian,” Saephan told a news conference Monday at Oregon Lottery headquarters, where his identity as one of the jackpot’s winners was revealed. “I am Iu Mien.” During the Vietnam War, the CIA and U.S. military recruited Iu Mien in neighboring Laos, many of them subsistence farmers, to engage in guerrilla warfare and to provide intelligence and surveillance to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail that the North Vietnamese used to send troops and weapons through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam. |
Manufacturing PMI expands in MarchNE China ports handle record high ChinaUN refugee agency calls for action to address climate change's effects on displaced populationHow to get rid of NYC rats without brutality? Birth control is one ideaWHO chief warns no functional hospital exists in north GazaTwo people die in south India amid heavy rains ahead of cyclone MichaungKowalczyk's first career goal sends Dynamo past Minnesota United 2Strike takes place in Jordan to support Palestinian people in GazaRecord Qingming holiday box office heats up for May Day moviegoing frenzyTyler Lussi powers Courage to win over Thorns in NWSL