AsiaCast

Asia Cast for Tuesday 25th September

Vilified as a Holocaust denier, a supporter of terrorism and a backer of Iraqi insurgents, the president of Iran was actually able to make New Yorkers burst into laughter¡ªbut not at a joke.

Loud laughs and boos broke from the audience of about seven-hundred people, mostly students at the Ivy League school whose garb included “Stop Ahmadinejad’s Evil” T-shirts.

Everyone from presidential candidates to September eleventh families had expressed outrage that Ahmadinejad would speak there.

After his assertions that Israel persecutes Palestinians and that Iran’s nuclear program is for energy not weapons, the Iranian leader’s comment on gays broke the tension. But it spurred strong reaction too.

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In the wake of anti-junta protests by monks, US President George W Bush is to announce additional sanctions against the military dictatorship in Burma.

The White House said Mr. Bush would reveal the sanctions during a speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

It said their aim was to support the push for democracy in the country, amid a growing series of anti-government demonstrations there.

In the largest rally of recent weeks, up to one-hundred thousand protesters led by a phalanx of barefoot, robed monks marched through the capital, Rangoon, on Monday.

Burma’s military leaders have threatened to take action against the religious community, whose actions have been welcomed by leaders around the world.

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AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty says with the threat of water and food shortages along with climate change; these are the greatest risks we face this century.

The Australian Federal Police head says the fast-changing situation in China could be the epicentre of such problems.

Mr. Keelty said in a speech in Adelaide last night that we could see a catastrophic decline in the availability of fresh water, crops could fail, disease could be rampant and flooding might be so frequent that people en masse would be on the move.

Mr. Keelty says that even if only some, if not all, of this occurs; climate change is going to be the security issue of the 21st century. He says that it won¡¯t be difficult to see the policing implications that might arise in the not-too-distant future.

Mr. Keelty also said that if such problems took hold in China, millions of people would move looking for new lands. For China to feed its predicted 2030 population, it needs to increase its food production by about fifty per cent above today’s levels.

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According to CNA reports from Kaifeng City, Henan Province in China, a drugs manufacturer factory discharged wastewater thirty times over the acceptable limit.

The city environmental officials were there to investigate and he was shocked over the discharge of the wastewater odour.

According to Henan, “Eastern Today Paper”, the east Kaifeng City moat across the eastern outskirts of the Guo village has been damaged by the drug manufacturer factory in the eastern moat of Guo village.

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According to ¡°The Epoch Times¡± reports, several Beijing petitioners recently disclosed to ¡°The Epoch Times¡± that with the seventeenth CPC National Congress drawing nearer, Beijing and the provincial authorities have made greater efforts to suppress the petitioners.

Not only are they intercepting, kidnapping, and forcibly repatriating them back to their homes to re-educate them through labour, sentencing, or locking them in mental hospitals, but they are also secretly setting up prisons, arbitrary detention centres, and are intimidating and torturing the petitioners.

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Egyptian archaeologists have discovered eight baskets filled with fruits preserved for more than 3,000 years in Tutankhamun’s tomb.

A team of Egyptian archaeologists made the discovery in the Valley of the Kings in the ancient city of Thebes, the modern-day Luxor, in southern Egypt.

Antiquities expert Zahi Hawass said in a statement that the eight baskets contained large quantities of doum fruits, which have been well preserved.

The fruit baskets are each fifty centremetres high, the antiquities department said.

The sweet orange-red fruit they contain is also known as the gingerbread fruit, and comes from the Doum Palm, a native of southern Egypt.