Asia Cast

Asia Cast For Thursday 23rd August

Myanmar’s military junta arrested 13 prominent dissidents and put gangs of spade-wielding supporters on the streets of Yangon on Wednesday to halt protests against soaring fuel prices and falling living standards.Armed police also took up positions across the country’s biggest city alongside truckloads of men from the army’s feared Union Solidarity and Development Association.

Many were carrying brooms and shovels, pretending to be road sweepers.

Despite the clampdown and the overnight arrest of the activists, 100 people staged an hour-long march before being dispersed.

Five women and a man were arrested, although there was no violence, witnesses told Reuters.

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The World Health Organization annual report says infectious diseases are spreading faster than ever before.

With about two point one billion airline passengers flying each year, there is a high risk of another major epidemic such as Aids, Sars or Ebola fever.

The World Health Organization urges increased efforts to combat disease outbreaks, and sharing of virus data to help develop vaccines.

Without this, it says, there could be devastating impacts on the global economy and international security.

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In Japan a Taiwanese China Airlines plane has been forced to make an emergency landing at an airport, airport officials say.

The jet was on its way from Taipei to Nagoya when its pilots requested a landing at Kansai, in western Japan.

There were no reports of injuries to passengers or crew.

The incident comes two days after a China Airlines plane exploded in a fireball shortly after landing on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa.

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In Japan three prisoners on death row have been hanged, the country’s justice ministry has said.

The executions bring to 10 the number of prisoners hanged since December 2006.

Officials did not reveal the identities of the executed prisoners, but a human rights watchdog said that they were men in their 60s convicted of murder.

Japan, like the United States, is one of the world’s few developed countries to exercise capital punishment.

Before December 2006, there had been a 15-month halt in executions because then Justice Minister Seiken Sugiura opposed the death penalty.

But since his replacement by Jinen Nagase, seven men have been executed, four in December and three in April.

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Sir Paul McCartney has vowed never to perform in China after seeing footage of dogs and cats being killed for their fur, BBC reported.

The former Beatle also said he would boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics after viewing the footage taken in a fur market in Guangzhou, southern China.

The film shows animals being thrown from a bus, and into boiling water.

A Chinese official said boycotts were not justified, and blamed US and European consumers for buying the fur.

Campaigners estimate that over two million dogs and cats are killed for their fur in China every year. China also farms animals such as mink for their fur and makes over half of the world’s fur products.

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In the Us two more firms have recalled Chinese-made toys, saying they include paint with dangerous levels of lead.

The items include SpongeBob SquarePants spiral address books and diaries, Thomas the Tank Engine spinning tops and some toy buckets sold in the US.

The recall of about 300,000 toys comes a week after US firm Mattel recalled 18.5 million toys.

That prompted a US senator to called for all toys imported into the country from China to be inspected.

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A court in Indonesia has heard claims the country’s Attorney-General and Supreme Court chief justice are part of a conspiracy to avoid revealing the truth about the 2004 murder of a prominent human rights campaigner.

Munir Thalib suffered an agonising death when his orange juice was laced with arsenic during a Garuda flight to Amsterdam three years ago.

Last year a former Garuda pilot, Pollycarpus Priyanto, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for the murder but his conviction was later quashed by the Supreme Court.

Now, mounting new evidence points to the direct involvement of Indonesia’s powerful intelligence agency in the activist’s death.