Asia Cast

Asia Cast for Wednesday 7th November

- Suicide Bomber Kills 90 in Northern Afghanistan
- Bush Vows Help for Turkey Against Kurdish Rebels and
-Mudslide Buries Houses in Flooded Mexico

A suicide bomber killed some 90 people and wounded 50 on Tuesday in an attack on a group of visiting Afghan parliamentarians in northern Afghanistan.

The suicide attack, in the northern town of Baghlan, is the worst in Afghanistan’s history.

Baghlan hospital director Doctor Khalilullah told Reuters the bodies of 90 people have been brought to the hospital so far and 50 people have been wounded.

He said there might well still be dead and wounded on the streets that had yet to be brought to the hospital.

Details of the suicide bombing were still unclear.

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U.S President George W. Bush, facing Turkish threats of a military strike against Kurdish rebels in Iraq, told Turkey’s leader on Monday that he was committed to countering the militants and offered to share intelligence with Ankara.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who met Bush at the White House, has made clear he wants concrete action from Washington to combat the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has been launching attacks on Turkey from Iraqi soil.

The Turkish prime minister seemed satisfied with the talks but did not indicate whether Bush had persuaded him to delay a military operation.

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A huge wall of mud and water engulfed a remote village in flood-ravaged southern Mexico on Monday and the government said at least 16 people were missing.

Mexican media reported as many as 30 people could be missing in the landslide in the southern Chiapas state that buried 100 houses in the village of San Juan Grijalva.

TV images showed a swathe of jungle swamped by water and mud, and bare earth where houses once stood in the community of 500 people.

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Yung-Chia Chen is the type of dancer who can move the hearts of an audience. It is more than his skill in Chinese classical dance—Mr. Chen sees his life’s work as a way to preserve classical Chinese culture for generations to come.

Chen says that when he was a little boy, during the Cultural Revolution in China, there was nothing to watch but propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party.

At age 11, Chen joined Guizhou College’s Dance Department, and by age 16, in 1984, he became a member of the Guizhou Dancing Troupe.

In 1995 he married a Taiwanese woman and moved to Taiwan, where he continued his dance career. Now, at age 38, he is passing on the tradition to his family—both of his sons are learning Chinese dance.

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On the fifth of November in Yichuan County of Henan Province private teachers went to the Inquiry Bureau to petition to resolve their superannuation issue.

At about 11 am, there were about two thousand petitioners gathered at the Inquiry Bureau in Yichuan County.

The main leader of the County said that there is no policy for the private teachers and no solution. The leader also threatened the teachers and said that the scale of today’s action was so big, with so many people; it was certainly planned and the public security will be investigating it.

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Zhang Zongai was severely beaten early October by an unidentified person due to his political opinions and he had been imprisoned for this. Currently he is in convalescence.

His family appealed to the international community for assistance. According to free Asia radio reported on 5th November, Sichuan’s independent opinion, Deng Yongliang disclosed that Zhang had been campaigning as an independent candidate for the National People’s Congress in Yanda Xian province.

Through the International Community, he called for assistance, and this caused the hatred of the authorities.

He believes that Zhang was beaten because of his continuous complaints and condemnation through the international community.

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