A Chinese bride burned her new husband to death after he got into bed after a drunken argument without washing his feet. ”Wang and his wife, Luo, were married on February 2. The couple, however, frequently fought over trivial things while still on their honeymoon,” the Xinhua news agency quoted a local newspaper as saying.
Beijing Olympic organisers on Monday sought to play down security concerns looming over the Games, a day after authorities said two "terrorist" plots from its Muslim-majority north-west had been foiled. "We are confident that we will be able to have a safe Olympics," said Sun Weide, a spokesperson from Beijing’s Olympic Organising Committee.
Suspected ”terrorists” killed in a raid in north-west China’s Muslim-dominated Xinjiang region earlier this year had been planning an attack on the Olympics, a top official said on Sunday. In separate comments, another high-level official from the same region said authorities had on Friday foiled a planned ”terrorist attack” on a passenger jet.
China has urged Sudan to do more to stop fighting in Darfur and speed up the arrival of more peacekeepers, Beijing’s envoy on the crisis said of Friday, defending his country as a diplomatic bridge to help end the bloodshed. China has faced widespread criticism that it has not used its stakes in Sudan to press for an end to deadly havoc in the Darfur region.
Wearing mesh tank tops, the cheerleaders waved their pom-poms non-stop and danced with gusto — if only to stay warm in the unheated basketball arena. The smiling young women have come to expect a crowd response as chilly as the winter wind outside.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warned on Wednesday that overheating remains the nation’s top economic foe even as global growth softens, vowing a tough fight against price rises and feverish investment. In his annual State of the Nation report to the Parliament, Wen targeted pollution, misgovernment and the gulf between urban rich and rural poor.
Beijing has opened a huge new ,6-billion airport terminal ahead of the expected influx of millions of visitors to this summer’s Olympics, part of a multibillion-dollar infrastructure boost for the capital. The impressive terminal’s nearly 3km-long concourse is divided into three sections and connected by a shuttle train.
China will raise its heavily scrutinised defence spending by nearly a fifth this year, a top official said on Tuesday, warning self-ruled Taiwan that Beijing would ”tolerate no division”. Jiang Enzhu, spokesperson for China’s National People’s Congress, or Parliament, stressed that China adhered to a path of peaceful development.
A marathon contest longer and more complex than any race at the Olympic Games is unfolding behind the windowless facade of Digital Beijing. This secretive, slate-black tower complex that looks like a row of computer chips stands close by the two most famous Olympic venues — the National Aquatics Centre, known as the Water Cube, and the National Stadium, or Bird’s Nest.
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/ 29 February 2008
Beijing opened a huge new ,6-billion airport terminal on Friday ahead of the expected influx of millions of visitors to this summer’s Olympics, part of a multibillion infrastructure boost for the capital. The impressive terminal’s nearly 3km long concourse will boost capacity at the airport to 76-million.
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/ 29 February 2008
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called Friday for Sudan to speed up the deployment of peacekeepers to Darfur and to end aerial bombing in the troubled region’s western districts. Miliband said the international community is united in the need for a hybrid United Nations-African Union force, but the effort is stalled by a lack of necessary support from Khartoum.
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/ 27 February 2008
Pollution turned part of a major river system in central China red and foamy, forcing authorities to cut water supplies to as many as 200 000 people, the provincial government and a state news agency said on Wednesday. Some communities along tributaries of the Han River were using emergency water supplies.
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/ 20 February 2008
More than two million people have registered as descendants of Confucius, tripling the size of the celebrated Chinese philosopher’s family tree, state media reported on Monday. The new list, which was last updated in 1930, has rocketed by more than 1,3-million, the Confucius genealogy compilation committee said.
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/ 20 February 2008
A group of Chinese alcohol producers is trying to overturn a ban on government officials enjoying a lunchtime tipple that has seen a fall in restaurant trade, state media reported on Wednesday. Officials in several cities in central Henan province were banned from drinking during their lunch break in an effort to improve government efficiency.
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/ 18 February 2008
Freezing weather has again swept through southern China, leaving 180 000 people stranded and causing power failures, just as the region was recovering from the last cold snap. The cold weather has taken a toll in mountainous Yunnan province, where heavy snowfalls since Thursday have caused huge problems.
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/ 14 February 2008
China was facing a major international crisis linked to the Olympics on Thursday amid mounting pressure over its role in Darfur after United States filmmaker Steven Spielberg severed his links to the Games. So far neither the Foreign Ministry nor the Olympic organising committee has responded to the decision by Spielberg.
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/ 13 February 2008
Freak cold and snow across the southern half of China over the past month killed 107 people and caused ,4-billion in direct economic losses, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. The freezing weather downed power lines, triggered a series of road accidents and left millions headed home for the Lunar New Year holiday stranded.
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/ 11 February 2008
Beijing Olympic organisers said on Monday they backed a ban on political protests by athletes attending this year’s Games, amid an uproar over an effort to silence British athletes. Following widespread anger, the British Olympic Association backed down on Sunday on its plan to prevent British competitors from commenting on ”politically sensitive issues”.
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/ 10 February 2008
China has lost about one tenth of its forest resources to recent snow storms regarded as the most severe in half a century, state media reported on Sunday. A total of 17,3-million hectares of forest have been damaged across China as the result of three weeks of savage winter weather, the China Daily said.
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/ 7 February 2008
The Spring Festival is traditionally the time for China to put up its feet and relax. That has rarely been more necessary. With food prices rising, Olympic expectations growing and much of the country snarled up in snow and ice, China enters the Year of the Rat under more pressure than at any time in more than a decade.
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/ 5 February 2008
China is debating whether to relax control of the internet during the Olympics, allowing access to banned websites such as the BBC, a spokesperson for the organising committee said on Tuesday. Plans to tear down the so-called Great Firewall of China were being debated and a decision was expected soon.
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/ 4 February 2008
Tyson Gay has heard stories that some athletes may wear face masks at the Beijing Olympics, hoping to fend off fumes in one of the world’s most polluted capitals. ”I hear a lot of people saying, ‘You’ll have to wear a mask, you’ll have to do this or that,”’ the 100m and 200m world champion said on Monday.
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/ 4 February 2008
Former Olympic and world champion sprinter Maurice Greene announced his retirement on Monday, citing nagging injuries. Greene (33) said he planned to pursue coaching and business interests in the United States and had no regrets about his athletic career.
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/ 2 February 2008
Chinese state security forces have arrested one of the country’s most prominent civil rights activists in an apparent crackdown on dissent ahead of the Olympics. Hu Jia — who used blogs, webcasts and video to expose human rights abuses — is expected to face charges of inciting subversion of state power, his lawyers said on Saturday.
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/ 30 January 2008
On the top floor of the Yansha Friendship Shopping Centre in Beijing, Huang Kuoshan and 49 of his colleagues are waiting to be sworn in to the Beijing Workers’ Civilisation Cheerleading Squad. With the Beijing Olympic venues all but ready and the -billion upgrade of the city’s infrastructure nearing completion, it is part of a drive by city authorities to ensure bad manners do not mar the August 8 to 24 Games.
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/ 29 January 2008
Millions of Chinese shivered through power cuts and water shortages on Wednesday and millions more were stranded by snow that has blanketed parts of central and southern China, raising concerns about their safety. About 50 people have died, including 25 on Tuesday in a bus crash on an icy mountain road.
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/ 29 January 2008
Premier Wen Jiabao rushed on Tuesday to oversee disaster relief efforts as China’s leadership scrambled to limit the impact of the most brutal winter weather to hit the nation for half a century. The snowfalls and freezing temperatures across China have left dozens dead and paralysed infrastructure and power supplies in some areas.
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/ 22 January 2008
Chinese police have shut down a website selling real-time porn and arrested 33 people, state media said on Wednesday, part of a campaign which led to the shut-down of 44 000 websites and arrest of 868 people last year. Rights groups have said the campaign has been used as a pretext to crack down on dissent.
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/ 16 January 2008
When Zhi Lijiang first signed up to be an Olympic volunteer for the 2008 Beijing Games, she could hardly have imagined she would be playing the role of a Canadian tourist in English and etiquette classes. The classes are all part of Beijing’s effort to get its population to speak English to welcome the millions of foreigners expected to flood to the city in this Olympic year.
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/ 11 January 2008
More than 100 000 Chinese died in workplace accidents last year, including on the roads and railways, but the figure was down one tenth from 2006, a senior official said on Friday. Li Yizhong, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, said 101 480 people died, but that government education and publicity campaigns were paying off.
Chinese opera, a massive fireworks display and a mystery ending will mark the highly anticipated opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics, media reported on Wednesday. The ceremony’s artistic director, Zhang Yimou, China’s most famous filmmaker, has dropped the first hints on the show’s content.
A pig genetically modified in China to make it glow has given birth to fluorescent piglets, proving such changes can be inherited, state media said on Wednesday. The sow was one of three pigs who had fluorescent green protein injected into their embryos when they were bred in December 2006 by scientists in north-east China.