In the States "Asian" inveriably refers to Far East Asian people (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.) In GB, they generaly use it for Indo-Pakistani/Desi Asians. I guess they are all Asian, so it's all correct, but it did confuse me at first.
In France, it's the same as in the US. I guess it's a Brit thing, because they got many Desi immigrants. Even though technically, even Persians are Asians, I've never seen an Iranian being refereed to as Asian.
I think the point is that the UK media have taken to using "Asian" as a euphenism for "Muslim". Somehow, classifying people who do bad things as Muslim is not politically acceptable in the UK, but classifying them as Asian is. It doesn't make a bloody bit of sense, but there you go.
Mad PC is mad.