Asia-Cast

Asia Cast for Thursday 15th October

In this Bulletin…

- Vaccine safety fears in China’s Shanxi Province;
- Five arrested in Singapore for sticking up posters in park;and
- UN releases report on hunger ahead of World Food Day.

But first, here’s our SOH focus on China
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At least three people have been killed as heavy rains and strong winds from tropical storm Parma lashed the southern Chinese island of Hainan.

About 36,000 people have been forced to leave their homes.
Parma landed on Monday destroying hundreds of houses and affecting millions of people as extreme weather conditions pounded the country.

The storm is weakening as it moves deeper inland.

Parma hit the northern Philippines last week, killing hundreds of residents and flooding vast areas of agriculture.

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An industry insider has told NTDTV that unsafe procedures by a private company that bought the rights to manage Shanxi Province’s vaccines has put lives at risk.

In 2006, the Health Department sold the management rights of vaccines to Hua Wei.

But Chen Tao’an from the Shanxi Center for Disease Control told NTDTV that Hua Wei failed to store the vaccines properly, exposing them to high heat for hours on end.

Chen, who has tried to expose the practice since 2007, says up to 15 million spoiled vaccines have been used since 2006. There have been reports of deaths and severe illness among children given the vaccines.

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And now for the rest of today’s Asia Cast
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In a case that has been called unusual and suspicious, five members of a peaceful spiritual practice have been arrested in Singapore for putting up posters with Sticky Tack in a park, The Epoch Times reports.

The Falun Gong practitioners were charged with vandalizing public property after they put the posters on a wall, something they had been doing for months.

Four of the practitioners are Chinese nationals. They face possible deportation to China where they would be at risk of torture as Falun Gong is a target of persecution by the Chinese regime.

Singapore human rights lawyer Madasamy Ravi said he was unsure of any pressure from Beijing, but that this was an irrational application of the law.

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Taiwan’s opposition Democratic Progressive Party has called for an investigation into whether the acquisition of a life insurance provider by a Hong Kong-led consortium was financed with capital from China.

According to Taiwanese law, companies with Chinese funding are not allowed to invest in Taiwan’s financial institutions, including insurance companies.

Democratic Progressive Party spokesman Chao Tien-lin said the Financial Supervisory Commission should check if the ultimate beneficiary from the sale of Nan Shan Life Insurance Co. has any connection with China.

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UN food agencies have warned that the international community must try harder if targets to cut the number of hungry people in the world are to be met.

The UN’s annual report on global food security confirms that more than one billion people, 16 per cent of the world’s population, are undernourished.

The annual report of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme says no nation is immune and, as usual, the poorest countries and the poorest people are suffering the most.

The Food and Agriculture Organization, says Asia and the Pacific has the largest number of hungry people, 642 million.

The report comes ahead of World Food Day on Friday.

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Officials say Pyongyang has issued a statement expressing regret for the drowning of six campers in South Korea after water was released from a dam upstream in the North.

The reported statement came during talks between the two Koreas aimed at preventing flooding on the Imjin River which spans their militarised border.

A South Korean official said the statement was considered an apology.

The talks went ahead despite short-range missile tests by North Korea off its east coast on Monday.

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“Asia Cast… keeping you across the top headlines from Asia and the World.”