■UNITED STATES
Texan lawmaker apologizes
A Texan lawmaker who came under fire for saying that Asian-American voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans” has apologized for her remarks. State Representative Betty Brown, a Republican, issued an apology on Thursday for the comments made during a House Elections Committee hearing last Tuesday. Brown said the remark came during a conversation on the difficulty of translating names and that she was referring to transliteration issues when she asked a representative of the Organization of Chinese-Americans whether Asian-Americans could adopt names that “we could deal with more readily here.” Ramey Ko, the representative, had testified that people of Asian descent have problems voting because they sometimes list legal names that had been transliterated in addition to common English names on their driver’s licenses or other identification.
■UNITED STATES
Racy ad interrupts Mass
A Philadelphia cable television network’s early morning broadcast of a Good Friday service at the Vatican abruptly changed to something wildly different — a racy 30-second Girls Gone Wild ad. Comcast spokesman Jeff Alexander said the 2am Friday programming glitch was the result of a required test of the Emergency Alert System. Such tests are usually done late at night. The test tunes viewers to a preselected channel that would provide information in the event of an emergency.
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