Asia-Cast

Asia Cast Wednesday 11th July

A U.S. aircraft carrier is heading to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet area of operations, which includes the Persian Gulf, but the Pentagon said on Tuesday there had been no decision to increase naval power in the region.U.S. defence officials said the deployment of the USS Enterprise was a routine measure to replace one of two U.S. Navy carriers now in the Fifth Fleet area.

Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet said the Enterprise was expected to arrive within weeks in its area of operations, where the U.S. has been flexing its muscles in a standoff with Iran over Tehran’s nuclear programme that has stoked regional tensions.

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Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, on Tuesday threatened more attacks on Britain, two weeks after failed bombings in London and Glasgow.

The Egyptian cleric said in an audio tape posted on the Internet that he says to Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s successor that the policy of his predecessor drew catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq and even in the centre of London.

It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the twenty-minute tape, which appeared on a Web site used by al Qaeda-linked groups with a still photograph of Zawahri.

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In the Southern Philippines, Islamic militants have killed 14 Marines, beheading 10 of them, a military spokesman has said.

Nine other marines were wounded and at least four rebels were killed during the incident on Basilan Island.

The Clash took place as the marines were searching for an Italian priest, the marines ran into a group of some 300 armed men during their search for him.

The Priest was seized in June by kidnappers believed to be from either Abu Sayyaf or the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

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In Zimbabwe a humanitarian crisis is growing . President Robert Mugabe’s latest economic policy of ordering shops to halve prices has backfired, and the little food that was available has now gone.

After nearly three decades under Mr Mugabe’s rule, inflation is running at eleven-thousand per cent and business investment has virtually stopped.

Opposition Leader says he does not know how people are feeding themselves and it seems the population is facing widespread starvation.

The Opposition leader, who leads the Movement for Democratic Change , says forcing shops to halve prices caused a rush which emptied the shelves, and now there is nothing left.

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Four men convicted of plotting to bomb London’s public transport system in July 2005 have been jailed for life, with the judge setting minimum terms of fourty years.

The four – Muktar Said Ibrahim, Yassin Omar, Ramzi Mohammed and Hussain Osman – were found guilty on Monday over a failed bid to set off four bombs in London on July twenty-first, 2005, two weeks after suicide bombings killed fifty-six people.

Justice Adrian Fulford told the Woolwich Crown Court, in south-east London, both the July seventh and the July twenty-first bombings failed attacks were carried out by terrorist cells under the control of the Al Qaeda network.

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According to Hong Kong Mingpao News, experts warn of ecological problems for the source of the Yangtze river. Like an infectious disease, the problems will extend to the middle and lower reaches of the river bringing disaster to hundreds of millions of residents living around the river area.

Under the affect of global warming, the ecological environment of the souce for the Yangtze river, China, faces several serious threats: the glacier¡¯s are thawing, rivers and lakes are fast drying up, more land is turning desert and pollution is becoming far worse.

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Two underground Christians from Henan Province, China, have been arrested and sentenced to one years imprisonment.

BBC News reported that ¡°China Aid association¡± a Christian group in America, indicated that Shangdong Province authorities sentenced Zhang Geming and Sun Qinwen for the crime of destroying national law by evil religious organization.

The Chinese Communist Regime states, the authorities allow Christians in China by they must join official authorized churches.

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