China launched another attack on the Dalai Lama on Wednesday even as his envoys are expected to have a second day of secretive fence-mending talks.
Tropical storm Fengshen struck south China on Wednesday after tearing through the Philippines last week, bringing driving rain and uprooting trees.
Hungry hordes craving a fix of diced chicken fried with chili and peanuts during the Beijing Olympics will be able to shout ”kung pao chicken!”
Chinese police have detained a retired teacher on subversion charges after she decried the state of many schools buildings that toppled.
Floods triggered by torrential rains have killed dozens of people across China, as officials struggle to move thousands of victims last month’s quake.
Heavy rains in southern and eastern China have left at least 62 people dead or missing, while over one million residents have been evacuated.
Optimism is flooding back to Beijing two months before the Olympics, with organisers eyeing success despite fears over pollution, security and the potential for more PR blunders.
A New York-based human rights watchdog urged China on Tuesday to honour its commitment to improve its rights record before the Beijing Olympics by freeing some 130 Tiananmen-era prisoners. Human Rights Watch made the call on the eve of the 19th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army’s crushing of student-led demonstrations.
Beijing promised on Tuesday to fight ambush advertising during the Olympic Games that threaten official sponsors, saying organised groups of spectators wearing competing brand logos would not be allowed. McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and other sponsors paid tens of millions of dollars to link their names with the Beijing Olympics.
A senior Chinese tourist official admitted on Wednesday that the storm of bad publicity surrounding China in the run-up to this summer’s Olympics could affect the number of foreign visitors to the Beijing Games. Southern China has been hit by freezing weather, there has been violent unrest in Tibet and now the huge earthquake in Sichuan.
Soccer World Cup chief organiser Danny Jordaan condemned anti-immigrant violence in South Africa on Friday but said it would pass before the tournament takes place. ”Our standpoint is that this World Cup must be a celebration of Africa’s humanity,” he told the International Football Arena conference.
China on Wednesday denied that a Chinese ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe had managed to get its cargo to the landlocked African nation, saying the ship and the weapons were on their way back to China. Zimbabwe would not comment at the weekend on reports that his government had finally taken delivery of a consignment of arms.
A devastating earthquake is the latest in a series of disasters and controversies that have turned what China had hoped would be an Olympic year of celebration into one of turmoil and tragedy. With tens of thousands of people either dead or missing, Monday’s quake in the south-west of the country has plunged China into mourning less than 90 days before the Games.
A massive earthquake stunned south-west China on Monday, killing more than 8 000 people and flattening schools, factories and homes in a powerful tremor that was felt across a swathe of South-East Asia. The quake, with a magnitude of 7,8, struck close to densely populated areas of Sichuan province in what Premier Wen Jiabao called a ”major disaster”.
A powerful earthquake in south-west China killed at least 107 people on Monday and buried 900 teenagers in a collapsed school as the tremor caused buildings to fall and left whole areas cut off. The death toll was expected to rise sharply as authorities and rescue teams make contact with the worst-hit areas of Sichuan province.
An earthquake with a magnitude of 7,5 struck China’s Sichuan province on Monday, less than 100km from the provincial capital of Chengdu, the United States Geological Survey said on its website. The quake was felt across much of China and as far west as Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, about 3Â 300km away.
Five children were killed and more than 100 injured in a 7,8 magnitude earthquake that struck China’s Sichuan province on Monday, causing buildings to sway and residents rushing out into the streets. China’s official Xinhua news agency said the deaths occurred when two primary schools toppled in Liangping county of Chongqing, a municipality of 30-million that neighbours Sichuan.
Speeding drivers in south China are getting clear away thanks to machines which switch the numbers on their licence plates in seconds, state media said on Tuesday. ”More than 50% of cars caught on camera for speeding and other offences either cover up their plates or use a fake licence plate,” said a policeman.
China opened the world’s longest cross-sea bridge last week aiming to cut travel time between two major ports, but hundreds of drivers have been fined already for, unexpectedly, driving too slow to enjoy the view. The 36km structure spans Hangzhou Bay in Zhejiang and is designed to slash travel time between its port city of Ningbo and the financial hub Shanghai.
Speeding drivers in south China are getting clear away thanks to machines that switch the numbers on their licence plates in seconds, state media said on Tuesday. ”More than 50% of cars caught on camera for speeding and other offences either cover up their plates or use a fake licence plate,” a traffic policeman in the Guangdong city of Yangjiang said.
Fear of a virus that has infected thousands of children gripped parents in China’s capital and financial hub on Tuesday, as the number of cases of hand, foot and mouth disease mounted across the country. More than 11 900 cases of the virus have been reported in China this year, the official Xinhua news agency said.
China’s Olympic ticketing system appeared to suffer another meltdown as the final phase of sales for the Beijing Games got under way on Monday, fans and official media said. Long internet delays and system crashes were reported as the 1,38-million tickets went on sale, echoing last year’s fiasco in which the computer booking network completely crashed.
A virus that has killed 25 children and infected thousands across China will not threaten Beijing’s Olympic Games in August, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in comments published on Monday. Health authorities in China have been battling to contain outbreaks of EV71, a sometimes fatal intestinal virus.
China’s state press on Monday accused the Dalai Lama of ”monstrous crimes,” a day after Chinese officials reportedly agreed with envoys of the exiled Tibetan Buddhist to keep the door open on dialogue. The Chinese officials and the envoys met in southern China on Sunday for their first talks in over a year.
Two passenger trains collided in eastern China on Monday, killing at least 70 people and injuring hundreds as carriages derailed and toppled into a ditch, state media said. About 400 people were taken to hospital, with 70 in a critical condition, Xinhua news agency said.
China poured scorn on the Dalai Lama on Sunday and hailed protesters against Tibetan self-rule as patriotic heroes, suggesting the government is not prepared to give ground in talks proposed for coming days. China has blamed the exiled Buddhist leader’s ”clique” for unrest across Lhasa and other Tibetan areas.
China’s offer to hold talks with aides to the Dalai Lama is unlikely to bring a breakthrough on Tibet, experts cautioned on Saturday, saying it was a PR exercise ahead of the Beijing Olympics. Chinese state media said on Friday that government officials would meet soon with a representative of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
There is a ”real possibility” that the Beijing Olympics will be targeted by terrorists or that anti-China groups could attack athletes, Interpol’s secretary general said on Friday. ”An attempted act of terrorism is a real possibility and a real concern that all Olympic host countries have shared in recent years,” said Ronald Noble.
China has surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest internet-using population, reaching 221-million by the end of February, state media said on Thursday. The number of internet users in China was 210-million at the end of last year, only five million fewer than the US internet users then, Xinhua news agency said.
Nationalist protests against the French supermarket chain Carrefour spread across China on Sunday, with thousands demonstrating outside stores over the West’s stance on Tibet. The authorities appeared to be trying to damp down the protests, with the official media urging citizens to be ”calm” and ”rational”.
Dogged by anti-Chinese protests in Paris, London, San Francisco and New Delhi, the Olympic torch relay is acting as a catalyst for an outpouring of nationalism and indignation by the man on the street in China. In an increasingly wired society, many, especially the internet-savvy young, have taken to the web to express their feelings.
Chinese people in several cities took to the streets on Saturday to denounce Tibetan independence and call for a boycott of French goods following anti-China protests on the Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay. Pictures from the central city of Wuhan showed large crowds marching carrying banners reading: ”Oppose Tibet independence, support the Olympics”.