AsiaCast

Asia Cast for Saturday 7th November

In this Bulletin…

- Crops fail in southern China as drought continues;
- Beijing’s long reaching censorship affects Bangladesh gallery; and
- Philippine wind farm brings unexpected benefit.

But first, here’s our SOH focus on China
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Beijing is starting to pay the price for staging its extravagant 2008 Olympic Games.

One year on, the company managing the iconic Bird’s nest stadium has handed it over to an unnamed state-owned financial institution.

It cost more than 400 million US dollars to build the Games’ centrepiece. But with annual maintenance costs of more than nine million US dollars, it was costing more to run than it could bring in.

The stadium has hosted only a handful of events since the Games. Most of its first year revenue came from visitors touring the venue itself. But now the number of visitors has fallen from 50,000 a day at its peak to just few thousand a day.

The Epoch Times has more on this.

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The continuing droughts afflicting southern China have stunted crops and brought water levels in reservoirs and rivers to historic lows, The Epoch Times reports.

The Jiangxi Province Hydraulics Bureau said some provinces have had little to no rain since August.

A farmer called Deng from Jing’an County in Jiangxi said they have no water and that worms were eating the rice crop. He said he has never seen a harvest lost on such a large scale before.

Many farmers have had to stop working. Ye, a farmer from Longmen County told The Epoch Times that in some places, even finding drinking water has become a problem.

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And now for the rest of today’s Asia Cast

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The Bangladesh government has bowed to pressure from the Chinese Embassy and closed down a photography exhibition on Tibetans in exile.

The photographs show Tibetans who had fled their homeland because they were persecuted under Chinese communist rule.

Days before the exhibition was due to open, Chinese officials visited the Drik gallery in the capital Dhaka. They said Bangladesh-China relations would be affected if the show was not cancelled.

The organisers refused, but an hour before it opened, Bangladesh Special Branch Police Officers barred the the public from entering the gallery.

Nonetheless, the organisers went ahead with the planned opening ceremony on the street. A guided tour of the exhibits was streamed online.

NTDTV has more on this.

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Taiwan has been experiencing considerable seismic activity over the past couple of days. On Friday, seismologists said more than 190 aftershocks had been recorded after a magnitude 6 earthquake hit central Taiwan on Thursday.

Kuo Kai-wen, director of the Central Weather Bureau’s Seismological Center said most of the aftershocks were undetectable to humans.

Kuo said further aftershocks were expected over the coming two weeks. Although some could reach magnitude 5, Kuo urged the public not to panic over the situation, which he described as a natural release of energy.

No major damage has so far been reported.

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You’re listening to Asia Cast on the SOH Radio Network

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The tit-for-tat diplomatic row between Thailand and Cambodia does not look like it will come to an end any time soon.

The dispute erupted over Phnom Penh’s naming of fugitive former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra as an economic adviser.

Thailand said Friday it would tear up an oil and gas exploration deal with Cambodia. Something the Cambodian Cabinet spokesman, Phay Siphan said was not in the best interests of the Thai people.

Thaksin remains a hugely influential figure in Thailand, which has been rocked by years of protests by his red-shirted supporters and yellow-shirted opponents.

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A wind farm project in the northern Philippines has had an unexpected effect on the local economy. The number of tourists coming to Bangui to look at the 20 huge wind turbines has created new business opportunities in the area.

The Northwind Bangui Bay Project currently provides 40 per cent of the power needs in Ilocos Norte province.

The downside is that wind farms are not 100 per cent reliable as the amount of electricity generated depends on how the wind blows.

Northwind does earn money from selling carbon credits through a mechanism provided by the Kyoto Protocol. So the project’s developers say it will be profitable in the long term.

Watch NTDTV for more.

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