The International Olympic Committee has confirmed a ban on Iraq from competing in the Beijing Games in a major blow to seven Iraqi athletes.
Yu Pingju has little Olympic cheer. If the government demolishes her house, she may have to watch the Beijing Games on the street.
Last month’s earthquake diverted world attention from China’s troubles in Tibet, but protests and arrests have continued in the region and the leadership has been girding for more trouble. Since the May 12 quake that killed about 70 000 people, more than 80 Buddhist nuns and a dozen monks have been detained.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter will forge ahead with plans to curb the number of foreign players at soccer clubs, saying on Tuesday that the organisation should coral the world of sport into helping make it happen. The Swiss head of world soccer’s governing body insisted that Fifa would not be ”going into confrontation” with any employment laws.
From its dangerously empty coffers in the late 1970s to the multibillion-dollar revenues from the Beijing 2008 Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has managed a remarkable commercial transformation of its prime product, the Olympic Games.
The linked rings on every Chinese Coke bottle and the leaping athletes on each McDonald’s paper bag testify to the power the world’s biggest corporations believe this summer’s Olympics wields. But having spent huge sums, the companies sponsoring the Games are about to find themselves the targets of a new war on China’s human rights record.
The Olympic torch set off through the Malaysian capital on Monday to rapturous cheers from Chinese supporters and tight security by police keen to avoid the disruption seen on earlier legs. More than 1 000 police and other security forces were deployed on the route from the city centre to the iconic Petronas Twin Towers.
China said it was outraged by a resolution by United States lawmakers urging an end to a crackdown in Tibet as a Beijing-run newspaper linked al-Qaeda to claimed plots to attack the Beijing Olympics. The condemnation came in response to a US House of Representatives resolution urging China to open dialogue with the Dalai Lama.
Grim-faced Chinese guards protecting the Olympic torch have attracted further criticism ahead of the global relay’s arrival in India, where bitter memories of war with its neighbour remain fresh. Phalanxes of Chinese security personnel are accompanying the flame’s around-the-world journey to shield it from pro-Tibetan demonstrators.
Thousands of protesters were expected to line the route of the latest leg of the Olympic torch’s ”Journey of Harmony” on Wednesday as officials in San Francisco braced themselves for a repetition of the tumultuous scenes in Paris and London. A broad coalition of protest groups has converged on the city.
China on Tuesday denounced protesters who upstaged Olympic Games torch relays in London and Paris, with state media saying that saboteurs are bent on wrecking Games goodwill. An international Olympic official also criticised the protests, but said the relay would stay on its round-the-world course.
The Paris leg of the Beijing Olympic flame relay was cut short on Monday after citywide protests against China’s crackdown in Tibet forced the torchbearers to take refuge on a bus. The torch’s journey by foot ended outside the French Parliament, where protesting deputies hung a Tibetan flag on a railing.
Anti-China protesters draped in Tibetan flags disrupted the Olympic torch relay through London on Sunday, billed as a journey of harmony and peace. Scores of Chinese officials in blue suits and British police on foot and bicycles guarded the celebrities and athletes carrying the torch, but demonstrators repeatedly broke through their security cordon.
The internet must be open during the Beijing Olympics. That was the message a top-ranking International Olympic Committee (IOC) official delivered on Tuesday to Beijing organisers during the last official sessions between IOC inspectors and the host Chinese before the Games begin in just more than four months.
China said on Tuesday that protesters were out to hijack the Olympic Games as the torch relay embarked on a world tour that is certain to ignite demonstrations. Pro-Tibet activists, human rights campaigners and groups seeking to end the crisis in Darfur say they plan protests during the relay, which is scheduled to last 130 days and cover 137 000km.
As a small group of pro-Tibet demonstrators briefly disrupted the ceremonial lighting of the Olympic torch in Athens this week, they were underlining a central truth concerning the world’s greatest sporting festival: it tends to hold up a mirror to the face of its hosts and the result is not always flattering.
Pro-Tibet demonstrators tried to hijack the Beijing Olympic torch-lighting ceremony in ancient Olympia on Monday. In a globally televised ceremony to mark the start of a five-month torch relay, the actress Maria Nafpliotou, playing the high priestess, used a break in the clouds to light the torch in front of the Temple of Hera.
One way or another, Beijing will get its Olympic flame. At Sunday’s final rehearsal, clouds over the ancient Games’ ruined birthplace prevented organisers from kindling the torch for the 2008 Olympics in the traditional way — using the sun’s rays harnessed in a convex mirror.
Beijing’s air quality is ”better than we have feared” but the International Olympic Committee is prepared to postpone some long-duration events if pollution levels rise, IOC President Jacques Rogge said on Monday. Rogge said there had been similar delays in other Olympic games when there was too much wind or too much snow.
China’s premier accused Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of orchestrating riots in which dozens may have died and said his followers were trying to ”incite sabotage” of Beijing’s August Olympic Games. The Dalai Lama called at the weekend for an investigation into what he called cultural genocide in Tibet.
The British government has no plans for a blanket ban on sportsmen from Zimbabwe, Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s spokesperson said on Tuesday, rebuffing a report from the BBC. The spokesperson said Downing Street had been ”surprised” by the report suggesting that Britain was considering such a ban.
The British government is considering stepping up the pressure on Zimbabwe by banning its athletes from competing in Britain, the BBC has reported. The Inside Sport programme reported that the ban could notably prevent the Zimbabwe cricket team from touring England next year.
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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/ 22 February 2008
POINT: The Olympic Games have their anthem, their rings, their heroes and their sponsors. And now, with the Beijing 2008 Games, they have their prisoners. The Chinese government is not just building fine stadiums, it is also arresting those who dare to condemn the countless human rights violations taking place in China.
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/ 15 February 2008
Sport Minister Makhenkesi Stofile’s attack against former Springbok rugby players is an attempt to distract attention from the government’s ”transgression of international sports regulations”, AfriForum said on Friday. Stofile on Thursday sharply criticised AfriForum after a group of former Springbok rugby players called for an end to ”racial discrimination in rugby”.
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/ 14 February 2008
Sport and Recreation Minister Makhenkesi Stofile on Thursday slammed the ”re-emergence of the erstwhile ambassadors of apartheid” in South African rugby. Stofile was responding to a public campaign calling for an end to political interference in the sport.
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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
Film director Steven Spielberg and actress Mia Farrow joined activists worldwide on Tuesday in using the Olympics as a backdrop to address human rights concerns, urging Beijing to exert political leverage on Sudan’s government to help end the crisis in Darfur.
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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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/ 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.
Phuket’s postcard-perfect beaches once welcomed masses of backpackers, but the island is rapidly turning into an upmarket holiday spot by becoming Asia’s premier sailing destination. Phuket is already the crown jewel of Thai tourism, attracting about five million visitors this year — or one-third of all tourists to Thailand.
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/ 23 December 2007
Ledgers gathered in the Balco steroid investigation outline the detailed doping programme of disgraced sprinter Marion Jones, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Saturday. The newspaper cited court documents filed by prosecutors in New York in support of their case against Jones, who has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators.