Asia Cast for Tuesday 22nd April
In this Bulletin
- Heavy Security takes place as Torch arrives in Kaula Lumpur
- Over 80 Die in Mogadishu Fighting, Rights Group Reports
- Four hundred more monks arrested from Lhasa’s Sera Monastery
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Heavy security took place to protect the 80 runners carrying the Olympic torch as Hundreds of flag-waving Chinese students gathered at the starting and ending points of the Olympic torch relay in Kuala Lumpur Monday.
About 500 Chinese students attended the relay, carrying pro-China signs and heckling the few people taking a pro-Tibet stand.
The Chinese students wore identical shirts with the slogan “One Dream, One Nation,” and many of them had Chinese flags painted on their faces, according to witnesses.
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On Sunday, two bombs exploded in Yangon, the former capital of Myanmar, a Western diplomatic source said.
The blasts were reported to have happened in downtown Yangon. There were no reports of damage or injuries, the source said, nor was it immediately clear what caused the explosions.
The secretive military junta that rules Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has recently warned of possible explosions, and several bombs have gone off in recent months.
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Japan and South Korea leaders have agreed to restart talks on a possible Free Trade Agreement (fta) after a meeting in Tokyo.
South Korean president Lee Myung-bak has stopped in Tokyo on his way back from the United States.
In meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, the two have agreed to strengthen economic and cultural links.
More than 7,000 young people from both countries will be encouraged to take working holidays, while business and investment ties will be strengthened.
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Somali Islamist insurgents and government troops exchanged mortar fire on Sunday and a prominent human rights group said 81 people had been killed in the past 24 hours in some of the heaviest clashes in months.
The fighting was fiercest in the Islamist stronghold of northern Mogadishu where the government and its Ethiopian allies are trying to flush out the remnants of a sharia courts movement ousted from the capital at the end of 2006.
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News from Tibet reveals that the Chinese Communist Regime has stepped up its crackdown of Tibetans, worsening the situation in the region.
A member of the emergency coordination team which was established by the Tibetan government-in-exile says that during the morning of Friday April 14, police again entered Sera Monastery and arrested over 400 monks.
The monks are now detained in a cave in the Lhasa’s rural Doilungdêgên County.
According to incomplete source from last Monday to Friday, officials have detained at least 700 monks from Ganan, Qinghai, Sichuan regions. Many monks in the region are living in fear.
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According to sources from Shandong, there have been outbreaks of swine fever in Qingdao and surrounding regions in the past few months.
The cause of the outbreak is not known. Pigs infected with swine fever are said to die rapidly, catching pig farmers by surprise and severely out of pocket.
Up to now, those aware of the outbreak have kept away from eating pork and have alerted friends and relatives not to eat pork.
However, local officials have covered up the outbreak and have not released any information on the outbreak.
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