AsiaCast

Asia Cast Tuesday 28th August

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation on Monday after months of questions about his competence and accusations from Congress that he politicized the office to benefit President George W. Bush.Bush, who doggedly supported Gonzales during repeated confrontations with the Democratic-controlled Congress, said Gonzales had endured “months of unfair treatment that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department.”

Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress had demanded the 52-year-old Gonzales’ resignation over the sacking of federal prosecutors last year, which critics said were politically motivated. He faced a possible perjury investigation for testimony before Congress, where lawmakers complained that his leadership had rendered the Justice Department dysfunctional.

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Police killed three people on Monday in clashes with pilgrims in Iraq’s holy city of Kerbala, where tens of thousands of Shi’ites have gathered for one of the holiest days on the Shi’ite Muslim calendar.

A Reuter¡¯s photographer said he saw one pilgrim shot dead outside his hotel. Several wounded were carried away by fellow pilgrims.

A water tanker was ablaze and the sounds of gunfire echoed in the streets around the hotel, situated between the Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas mosques, for about two hours.

Police said they opened fire on a large crowd of pilgrims infuriated by the strict security measures in force in the city for the celebrations, killing three and wounding 13. The shots were fired after the pilgrims began brawling with the policemen.

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The rapid expansion of the population, being one million, seven-hundred and fourteen thousand, in Beijing has drawn close to the upper threshold of eighteen million set by the authorities for the city, which advanced by thirteen years sooner than expected.

It is estimated that two million people would arrive in Beijing next year due to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The growth of population will bring so much impact on the resources and environment that Beijing would find it hard to cope with.

Beijing can only provide food and edible drinking water for fourteen million people. Some officials say that Beijing has already fallen to a capital with the least resources available in the world with desertification reaching the far north point of Beijing and could be in a water shortage at any time.

To alleviate the aggravated situation of resources, Beijing authorities are trying to relocate its population to its satellite cities.

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The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) has recently acquired information that reveals the classified information of the Communist Regime¡¯s practice of live organ harvestings.

A report by Minghui Website from the twenty-fifth of August disclosed that up to now, one-hundred and sixty four hospitals, approved by the Heath Ministry, handle organ transplants in Mainland China. By the end of June, accumulatively, fourteen-thousand six-hundred and thirteen operations of liver transplants are recorded.

A report issued by China News Services on eighteenth August claims that the figure was announced by the Director of Medical Administration Department of the State Health Ministry, Wang Yu.

Moreover, currently, two human organ transplant systems are registered in Mainland China ; one has been in operation since 2001, involving thirty hospitals with a database of twenty-thousand patients in total, who received kidney transplants whilst another system registered for liver transplants, with over three-thousand liver transplant operations recorded annually.

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According to a newspaper report two Chinese brothers who tunnelled their way out of a coal mine collapse after being trapped for nearly six days survived by eating coal and drinking urine.

Brothers Meng Xianchen and Meng Xianyou were trapped while working at an illegal mine in Beijing’s Fangshan District late on August the eighteenth.

It was the latest in a series of disasters to strike the world’s deadliest coal mining industry.

Two days later, rescue efforts were called off and relatives began burning “ghost money” at the entrance of the mine for the dearly departed.

Chinese mine owners regularly flout safety regulations to meet insatiable demand for a fuel powering the country’s booming economy.