AsiaCast

Asia Cast Saturday 25th August

Yuan Weijing, wife of imprisoned Chinese human rights activist Mr. Chen Guangcheng, was seized by police at Beijing Airport on her way to the Philippines to accept a human rights award on behalf of her jailed husband.Yuan Weijing (Mrs. Chen Guangchen) disappeared from Beijing Airport on the morning of August twenty-fourth.

It was verified that evening that Mrs. Chen had been arrested by Public Security Bureau (PSB) officers at the airport and sent back to her parents’ home in Shandong Province.

The officers beat her up on the way home, according to another human rights activist, Hu Jia, who talked to Mrs. Chen over the phone after her release.

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To co-ordinate a response to the outbreak of equine influenza (EI), Federal Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran says veterinary officials will meet.

Racing officials are in crisis talks with the N.S.W government to try to identify the source of equine influenza found in eleven horses stabled at Centennial Park which has halted all horse movement and shut down racing in the state.

The horses in question are not racehorses, but some are believed to have travelled to country shows in the past few days.

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At least sixteen people died and thousands of acres (hectares) of forest were consumed in fires racing through Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula on Friday as southeast Europe experienced a resurgence of summer blazes.

Six bodies were found near the town of Areopolis, one-hundred and ninety kilometres (120 miles) southwest of Athens, including two French tourists and two firefighters. Authorities were evacuating the town and nearby villages.

Ten more people were found dead near Zakharo, on the west coast of the peninsula, at least six of them in cars.
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Three British soldiers were killed by a bomb dropped by U.S. aircraft supporting them in a battle against Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan.

The incident on Thursday takes the number of British deaths in Afghanistan since the Taliban was toppled in 2001 to seventy-three.

Two other soldiers were wounded in the incident which took place after the troops were attacked during a patrol northwest of Kajaki where U.S. contractors are reconstructing a large dam meant to bring electricity to southern Afghanistan.

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A strike by Hong Kong metal workers has been intensifying for the past two weeks when around six hundred workers assembled at the central government offices to demand reasonable wages, but the Pro-Communist Trade Union does not negotiate in good faith for the workers wages and other concerns.

Si Tuhua, the president of Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, condemned that the government said no consensus was reached and relayed the negotiation result with the employers.

Si Tuhua also commented that the strike was actually a human rights movement and appealed more people to support the metal workers.

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Tibetan Falun Dafa practitioners Mr. Zhao Longzhi and his wife Ms. Luo Na were arrested by local police officers and members of the 610 Office in 2006 and no information was available on the couple.

Recently some news released that they have been sentenced to fourteen years¡¯ imprisonment. Their home was also ransacked. According to Clearwisdom.net, Mr. Zhao Longzhi and Ms. Luo Na went to Beijing to appeal for justice for Falun Gong in 2002.

They were arrested and sentenced to the forced labor camp without any legal procedure. In 2006, they were illegally arrested again when they were handing out flyers to expose the persecution of Falun Gong.

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According to a news report, the so-called Pacific solution for asylum seekers is a taxpayer rip-off that exacerbates mental illness among refugees and should be scrapped.

The findings are from an analysis by aid organisation Oxfam Australia and refugee advocacy group A Just Australia released on the sixth anniversary of the arrival of the Tampa and its cargo of asylum seekers rescued from the Indian Ocean.

The report analyses the financial, legal, human and regional cost of the so-called Pacific solution which sent asylum seekers to offshore detention centres.

The solution was developed by the government in 2001 in a crackdown on unauthorised immigration and to try to stem the numbers of asylum seekers accessing Australian courts in an increasingly costly litigation process.