Asia-Cast

Asia Cast Thursday 26th July

In Beijing, the Chinese Communist regime¡¯s security services are expanding their operations in an effort to prevent any form of protesting during the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.

According to the Central News Agency, intelligent service experts and consultants who are familiar with this project expressed that the Chinese communist regime¡¯s security services are currently in the process of collecting information on foreigners that Beijing thinks is dangerous to the Party.

The watch list already includes long time critics of the Chinese Communist Regime.

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In Indonesia, a tsunami warning has been issued for the Indonesian province of North Maluku after an earthquake hit the area.

The 6.6-magnitude quake struck north of Ternate city, Indonesian meteorology officials said. US officials measured the quake at 7.4 on the Richter scale.

Earthquakes and tsunamis are frequent in Indonesia, part of the seismically active Pacific “Ring of Fire”.

A massive undersea earthquake sparked a tsunami that killed more than 130,000 people in Indonesia in December 2004.

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Gunfire erupted across Baghdad as Iraqis danced in the streets on Wednesday after their soccer team’s historic Asian Cup win, but two suicide car bombs marred the war-ravaged nation’s rare moment of unity.

Police said a suicide car bomb exploded near a crowd of jubilant Iraqis, killing 30 and wounding 75 in Baghdad’s Mansour area.

Soon after, another suicide attack at an army checkpoint in east Baghdad killed another 20 people and wounded 60, many of them soccer fans celebrating nearby, police said.

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South Korea is speeding up efforts to secure the release of 22 of its people taken hostage in Afghanistan.

The government condemned the Taliban for the death of one of the hostages on Wednesday, while sending an envoy to negotiate for the others’ release.

A Taliban deadline for a prisoner swap passed without incident. The remaining hostages are thought to be alive.

Meanwhile a Taliban leader said he was encouraging the kidnap of foreigners to trade for Taliban prisoners.

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In China, water levels have risen to critical levels along vast Chinese rivers and floods have spread to the north while a tornado hammered 33 villages in the east and two central provinces suffered drought.

More than 500 people have been killed since the summer floods started, but the disaster has failed to gain world attention in the same way as floods in England in which three related deaths have been reported.

Four people died in the normally arid northwestern province of Gansu and the neighboring frontier region of Xinjiang this week, Xinhua news agency said.

Two farmers in Xinjiang’s Huocheng County were swept away by floodwater triggered by heavy rain that started on Tuesday.

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A UK parliamentary committee has urged Britain to quadruple the amount of aid it gives to refugees in Burma over the next six years.

In a report, a House of Commons committee said other countries with poor human rights records got much more aid from Britain compared with Burma.

The head of the committee, Malcolm Bruce, said the extra money was needed to help displaced people.

Hundreds of thousands have fled or are in hiding from Burma’s military regime.

The report of the House of Commons International Development Committee said Britain should work with the United Nations to ensure that the aid reaches the refugees and doesn¡¯t benefit the military government.

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