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/ 12 November 2007
Top-ranked Roger Federer lost consecutive matches for the first time in four-and-a-half years, falling to number seven Fernando Gonzalez of Chile 4-6, 7-6 (1), 7-5 on Monday at the Masters Cup. It was the defending champion’s first loss in 11 meetings against Gonzalez.
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/ 12 November 2007
China’s muzzled press and burgeoning internet have given citizen reporters an audience and an opportunity to spread news quicker than censors can control it. But the ability of bloggers to dodge censors and provide a voice for China’s poor and disadvantaged by covering news events Beijing would rather be left unreported.
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/ 10 November 2007
World number one Roger Federer will aim to put an unusually patchy tennis season behind him with victory number four at the elite Masters Cup starting on Sunday. The defending champion, smarting from two rare defeats in the past month, signalled his determination by arriving nearly a week early for the year-ending showpiece.
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/ 9 November 2007
Rafael Nadal hit the practice court with 48 hours to go before his start at the year-end Masters Cup in Shanghai, determined to fulfil the goal of ending this season on a high note. Nadal, losing finalist last weekend in the Paris final to David Nalbandian, said he wants to put a winning stamp on this season.
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/ 5 November 2007
China’s maiden lunar probe successfully entered the moon’s orbit on Monday, officials said, a critical step in its year-long mission to photograph and map the surface of the celestial body. Chang’e I blasted off on October 24, signalling China’s rising space ambitions and Beijing’s participation in a renewed race to explore the moon.
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/ 5 November 2007
He has locked horns with Gotham City’s darkest criminals, including the Joker, the Riddler, Catwoman and Penguin. But now Batman has crumbled in the face of an even deadlier foe: the polluted water of Hong Kong. <i>The Dark Knight</i>, is filming in Hong Kong in and around Victoria Harbour.
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/ 31 October 2007
Beijing Olympics organisers apologised on Wednesday after suspending ticket sales following a booking system meltdown, their first major blunder in preparations for next year’s Games. About 1,8-million event tickets were supposed to go on sale on Tuesday on a first-come-first-served basis for people living in China.
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/ 31 October 2007
A Chinese mountaineering official will have the unenviable task of trying to prevent robberies on the roof of the world after a spate of equipment thefts, officials said on Wednesday. The official will be deployed at a breathtaking altitude of 6 600m after a record season this year saw 520 people reaching Mount Everest’s 8 848m summit but also complaints of stealing.
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/ 24 October 2007
Asia’s space race heated up on Wednesday as China launched its first lunar orbiter, an event hailed in the world’s most populous nation as a milestone event in its global rise. China’s year-long expedition kicks off a programme that aims to land an unmanned rover on the moon’s surface by 2012 and put a man on the moon by about 2020.
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/ 23 October 2007
It is remote, virtually surrounded by desert, and its only claim to fame is as a fleeting player in the founding of Communist China — but Ulanhot wants its slice of the multibillion-dollar ”red tourism” pie. Trouble is, for all the lovingly restored old buildings and spic new exhibitions, the masses just aren’t yet coming to this far-flung Inner Mongolian settlement, whose name literally means ”red city” in Mongolian due to its Communist connections.
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/ 22 October 2007
A fire erupted at a shoe factory in south-east China, killing 37 people in the latest industrial accident to hit the world’s fourth-largest economy, officials and state media said on Monday. The blaze at the Feida workshop, located near the city of Putian in coastal Fujian province, broke out at 9.50pm local time on Sunday and was extinguished an hour later.
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/ 16 October 2007
Lupeol, a compound in fruits like mangoes, grapes and strawberries, appears to be effective in killing and curbing the spread of cancer cells in the head and neck, a study in Hong Kong has found. An experiment with mice showed lupeol worked most effectively with chemotherapy drugs and had almost no side effects.
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/ 16 October 2007
Two men widely tipped as future leaders of China gave glimpses of their agenda on Tuesday, promising gentler, more environmentally sound growth. But Shanghai Communist Party boss Xi Jinping and his counterpart in Liaoning province, Li Keqiang, fended off or avoided questions about their own political futures.
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/ 12 October 2007
A South China tiger has been caught on camera by a hunter-turned-farmer, the first confirmed sighting for 30 years of a subspecies experts had feared was extinct in the wild, the Xinhua news agency said on Friday. Zhou Zhenglong took more than 70 snaps of the young tiger lying in the grass near a cliff.
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/ 11 October 2007
China is to relocate at least four million more people from the Three Gorges Dam reservoir area in the next 10 to 15 years to protect its ”ecological safety”. Senior officials who have defended the project as an engineering wonder now warn that areas around the dam are paying a heavy environmental cost.
Typhoon Krosa crashed into the Chinese coast on Sunday, forcing the evacuation of 1,4-million people, after killing five in Taiwan as it lashed the island with heavy rain and high winds. The typhoon made landfall near the borders of densely populated Zhejiang and Fujian provinces in south-east China at about 7.30am GMT, packing winds of up to 126kph, before weakening.
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen turned the Formula One title battle into a three-way fight to the last race in Brazil on Sunday with victory in China after championship leader Lewis Hamilton skidded out. Hamilton’s double world champion teammate and closest title rival Fernando Alonso finished second with Ferrari’s Brazilian Felipe Massa third.
McLaren’s championship leader Lewis Hamilton took pole position on Saturday for a Chinese Grand Prix that could make him Formula One’s first rookie champion. The 22-year-old Briton will line up alongside Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen on the front row for Sunday’s race.
Teenager Zhu Xiaotong’s home a few hours’ drive outside Beijing is a world away from the acrid air and snarling traffic jams that have come to dominate China’s energy-hungry capital. Cherry tomatoes, capsicum and spring onions rise up from a little garden patch that forms the centrepiece of her family’s brick courtyard home.
Lewis Hamilton’s bid to become Formula One’s first rookie world champion remained on track on Friday after stewards cleared him of blame for a collision in Japan last weekend. ”No penalty is imposed upon him,” they said in a statement. The 22-year-old McLaren driver met stewards at the Chinese Grand Prix to review video footage of a collision during the rain-soaked Fuji race.
Formula One stewards are investigating Lewis Hamilton’s Japanese Grand Prix victory after complaints about the championship leader’s erratic driving behind the safety car last weekend. ”New evidence has emerged and the stewards are looking into it,” a spokesperson for the International Automobile Federation said.
A suspended bus company manager may have sparked a fierce bus blaze that killed 27 and put another 11 passengers in hospital, the official Xinhua agency said late on Tuesday. The bus, with 38 people on board, was heading downtown when the fire erupted just after 5pm local time.
North Korea has agreed to disable its Yongbyon reactor and other nuclear facilities by the end of the year, throwing the ball into the hermit country’s court to turn its promises into action. In an agreement which won praise from United States President George Bush, the isolated state will in return get aid equivalent to one million tonnes of heavy fuel oil
A solid defence and clinical efficiency in front of goal allowed Germany to triumph 2-0 over a desperate Brazil to become the first back-to-back winners of the women’s World Cup on Sunday. German midfielder Simone Laudehr’s headed goal in the dying minutes sealed the win, after evergreen captain Birgit Prinz had coolly slotted home a crossed ball.
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/ 30 September 2007
The United States put their goalkeeping row behind them with a 4-1 win over Norway to claim the World Cup’s third spot on Sunday. With controversial ‘keeper Hope Solo axed for her outburst over the semifinal loss to Brazil, the two-time champions turned on the style with three goals in 14 second-half minutes.
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/ 30 September 2007
Talks aimed at reining in North Korea’s nuclear programmes ended on Sunday to allow delegates to return to their home countries to discuss a ”nuts and bolts” joint statement with their governments. Under an accord reached in February, North Korea must disable its atomic facilities and make a complete declaration of all its nuclear programmes.
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/ 26 September 2007
China’s huge Three Gorges Dam hydropower project could spark environmental catastrophe unless accumulating threats are quickly defused, senior officials and experts have warned. Dam officials warn that areas around the dam are paying a heavy, potentially calamitous environmental cost.
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/ 23 September 2007
Ruthless defending champions Germany and the top-ranked United States stormed into the Women’s Soccer World Cup semifinals on Saturday, leaving North Korea and England to rue missed chances. The Germans beat the Koreans 3-0 in Wuhan with Kerstin Garefrekes pouncing in the 44th minute.
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/ 21 September 2007
The world’s largest toy maker, Mattel, apologised on Friday for damaging China’s reputation after recent massive recalls of its Chinese-made toys, admitting it targeted some goods that were actually up to scratch. Mattel has come under scrutiny following the recall of about 21-million of the toys in a span of five weeks.
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/ 20 September 2007
Under President Hu Jintao, China has emerged as an increasingly polished diplomatic actor, but its foreign performances are often marred by the failure of a rickety bureaucracy to meet international expectations. Accompanied by a throbbing media soundtrack about a ”rising China”, Beijing’s go-between role in crises from Darfur to North Korea has drawn criticism from Western powers wanting tougher steps.
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/ 19 September 2007
Tropical storm Wipha lost much of its punch as it roared ashore over densely populated eastern China on Wednesday but continued to rake the region with heavy rains and high winds. The former typhoon had sparked the evacuation of more than two million people.
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/ 19 September 2007
Typhoon Wipha made landfall in eastern China on Wednesday, knocking out power and water supplies to tens of thousands of residents, but promptly lost strength as it travelled inland. Officials said it was too early to assess damage on the coast, but there were not immediate reports of casualties.