AsiaCast

Asia Cast Tuesday 17 July

-Bush to offer $190 million in Palestinian aid

-Iran TV shows detained Iranian-Americans

-human rights film festival debuts in Washington.

President George W. Bush on Monday will offer new support for the Fatah-led government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, marking a higher profile effort to resolve the Middle East conflict.

U.S. officials have said that Bush will announce one-hundred and ninety million in new aid to the Abbas government.

He will reaffirm his vision of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel and call for a meeting this autumn to discuss ways to get the peace talks back on track.

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Iran’s state television on Monday broadcast images of two detained Iranian-American academics apparently confessing to accusations of acting against the Islamic state’s national security and spying.

Haleh Esfandiari, an academic at the U.S.-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Kian Tajbakhsh, a consultant with the Open Society Institute founded by billionaire investor George Soros, appeared in a brief clip promoting a programme to be shown this week.

The pair were detained separately in May while visiting Iran from the United States. Officials accuse them of involvement in efforts to carry out a U.S.-backed “velvet revolution” in Iran.

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The first Shenzhou International Film Festival took place in Washington D. C. on Sunday, July the fifteenth, with several of the filmmakers in attendance. Instead of the typical hierarchy of prizes, just two awards were given: One for Courage, and the other for Justice.

Film Festival Organizer Jingwei Wang explained that the festival has three main themes: exposing the crimes of the Chinese Communist Party, examining human rights issues, and helping to stop the persecution of innocent people.

The winner in the Justice category was the documentary Plum Blossom, following the lives of Australian Zhizhen Dai and her young daughter Fadu Chen. Zhizhen dedicated her life to fighting for human rights following the wrongful death of her practitioner husband Chengyong Chen at the hands of Chinese authorities.

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There are talks among the Europe Information Centre about spying bodies set up by the Chinese Communist regime. Following the exposure over espionage by the local communities groups and students associations and clubs that are used by the Chinese Communist regime¡¯s missionary in North America, a series of cases have successively come to light around the world.

The Information Centre of the Communist regime has infiltrated overseas countries, which draws growing concern by many governments around the world.

An executive official at the European Strategic Information Centre, who once engaged in an investigation on an advanced espionage case related to the Chinese Communist regime, Claude Moniquet, told the New Tang Dynasty Television at an interview that the surveillance body in Mainland China spread wide in China with clenched operation that is similar to the spying network which existed twenty years ago in the Soviet Union.

The organization involves the state security and the Special Information Centre Bureau of military forces that control its overseas branches, especially, the media staff and students.

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Torrential rains and floods are continuing in Mainland China. Huai-He Flood Peak entered Hong Ze Lake in Jiangsu Province, on July the fifteenth.

Currently, amidst the five thousand-eight hundred and thirty eight reservoirs in Hubei Province, there are nine-hundred and seventy reservoirs with water above the flooding level.

As per the official statistics, over sixty-six million people are affected in the flood-traumatised mid and southern China.

According to the weather forecast, more torrential rains are expected in the months to come. The official statistics indicated that the flood and typhoon claimed two-thousand seven hundred and four lives last year in China.

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Following the closing-down of “China Development Briefs” by the Communist regime just days ago, another publication “Popular” run by the Citizen and Social Development Research Centre at Guangdong Zhongshan University was given the notice to stop publication.

“Popular” Publication published articles covering AIDS, rural workers, community development, citizen education and other social issues.

China’s renowned human right activists, such as Zeng Jin-Yan, Chen Guang-Chen and others, had once published their articles on the platform.