Asia-Cast

Asia Cast Monday 17th September

Investigators probing a plane crash at a Thai tourist resort say they have found the aircraft’s flight recorders.

At least eighty-eight people were killed when the plane, operated by Thai budget airline One-Two-Go, skidded off a runway in heavy rain on the island of Phuket.

Survivors described how the plane smashed through a wall and broke up, before bursting into flames.

About one hundred and thirty people, mostly foreigners, were on board. An estimated forty people escaped the burning wreckage.

Officials are still trying to determine the names and nationalities of those who died.

Both the plane’s pilots are believed to have perished in the accident, and officials said fifty-five foreigners were among the dead.

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Yasuo Fukuda is the runaway favourite to become Japan’s next prime minister, according to a newspaper poll of ruling party lawmakers who will vote for a new leader on Sunday.

The survey, released recently, showed that fifty five percent of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers would back Mr Fukuda and just twelve percent would support his rival for the job, hawkish former foreign minister Taro Aso.

Whoever is elected president of the LDP is assured of the premiership as the ruling coalition commands a firm majority in parliament’s lower house, which picks the prime minister.

The race was triggered by the abrupt resignation of Shinzo Abe as prime minister last week.

Fukuda has stressed the need to carry on economic reforms while paying more attention to weak regional areas.

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Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf plans to quit as army chief to become a civilian leader, removing a key objection to his proposed re-election in October, a senior ruling party official said

He¡¯s held the post of army chief since seizing power in a military coup in nineteen ninety nine despite calls from the opposition to quit the dual role.

His acquiescence could be seen as a victory for Benazir Bhutto, who has said that any power-sharing arrangement with Musharraf will depend, among other things, on him becoming a civilian president.

Before quitting the army, he plans to seek another five-year term as president from the sitting parliament.

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A recent international report on religious freedom by the US Department of the State has accused China of expelling a number of foreign priests before the Olympic games.

Claiming they had been conducting illegal religious activities.

Over a hundred Christian clergymen have been forced to leave China.

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A new round of forced evictions have taken place at Yudu County, Jiangxi Province in China, for the Du River engineering project.

Residents of nineteen households who refused to relocate were forced from their homes, which were subsequently demolished.

The local residents, left homeless, have no access to legal aids.

Those who refuse to comply with eviction face violent beatings and imprisonment.

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Air pollution reduces blood flow and interferes with the body’s natural ability to break up blood clots, researchers recently said in a finding that may help explain why pollution can cause heart attacks.

It also suggests that heart patients trying to shape up might do their exercising away from traffic.

The researchers tested twenty male volunteers, all of them heart attack survivors, who pedalled an exercise bike while breathing diluted fumes from the exhaust of an idling diesel engine.

The exposure was comparable to the pollution levels found while driving in traffic.