Asia-Cast

Asia Cast for Wednesday 24th October

An epic wave of fast-moving wildfires engulfed a massive swath of southern California on Monday, destroying hundreds of homes as more than two hundred and fifty thousand people were told to evacuate from neighborhoods, schools and hospitals.

At least thirteen fires have spread up to twenty thousand acres, killing one person and injuring more than thirty others.

With fire crews and state emergency services overwhelmed, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said one thousand five hundred National Guard troops had been summoned, including two hundred from the Mexican border, to help with firefighting, evacuations and crowd control.

Officials readied a professional football stadium and a huge fairground as shelters for thousands of evacuees by supplying them with food and water.

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A massive explosion in a shopping centre in the Philippine capital, Manila, was more likely to be an accident than a bomb attack, police say.

They had earlier suggested the blast, which killed eleven people and injured more than 100 on Friday lunchtime, could have been a terrorist attack.

Detectives now say a more likely cause was a gas build-up in the basement of the Glorietta shopping complex.
The blast sent debris flying and caused panic in the city’s business district.

President Gloria Arroyo put the city’s emergency services on high alert on Friday afternoon, and two thousand extra personnel were drafted in.

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After the end of the Chinese Communist Party 17th National Congress, outside world analysis pointed out that within the new team, although the Jiang faction has been greatly weakened, there are still certain forces at play, and so the internal fight factor still continues.

It has been reported, Zhou Yongkang has replaced Luo Gan to control Politics and the Law Committee, to help Jiang Zemin to maintain the communist party’s repressive policies.

Editor-in-chief of China Affairs Wu Fan pointed out that Zhou Yongkang was forced into the Politburo Standing Committee by Jiang Zemin, to have Zhou Yongkang take up a position in Politics and the Law Committee in order to take all the blame and to stop being criticized for china’s human right violations mainly that of Falun Gong.

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Hundreds of monks in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa celebrated the Dalai Lama who received a gold medal from the United States Congress.

Three thousands armed police surrounded the Drepung Monastery in Lhasa, They locked up more than one thousand one hundred monks and several more visitors in there.

The BBC reported that since 1950 when Chinese communist troops entered Tibet, Tibet has been under the Chinese Communist control and any requests for religious freedom has been harshly suppressed by the Chinese Communist government.

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Demonstrations are planned worldwide against Burma’s continuing detention of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.

Wednesday marks twelve years in detention for the Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the protests are being staged outside Chinese embassies.

Campaigners say China holds the key to Aung San Suu Kyi’s release.

A UN envoy is in China seeking to raise pressure on Burma’s junta after last month’s bloody crackdown on dissent.
Burma says ten people died during its suppression of the protests, but diplomats believe the true figures are much higher.

Hundreds of people are thought to be in detention.

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After last week’s deadly bombing, former premier Bhutto has condemned a ban on large rallies in the run-up to general elections proposed by the government.

The government is drawing up a code of conduct for campaigning for the polls set for January, which are seen as a key step to restoring democracy after eight years of military rule by President Pervez Musharraf.

The ban was flagged after two blasts ripped through Bhutto’s homecoming parade late Thursday, killing one hundred and thirty nine people and shattering her planned triumphant return to Pakistan after eight years of self-imposed exile.

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