World's Biggest Airport - Beijing Airport! (part 3)

Michael Phelps the greatest olympics champion of all time

France, Georgia get first Olympic golds in Beijing

Both French and Georgian wrestlers won their respective nations first Olympic golds in Beijing Olympics Wednesday afternoon.

Both winners wore their national flags to agitate hails from their countrymen who arrived at the wrestling venue for cheeringup their national heroes.

Steeve Guenot defeated Kanatbek Begaliev of Kyrgyzstan in the men's 66kg Greco-Roman competition before Manuchar Kvirkelia beat the host wrestler Chang Yongxiang in the men's 74kg class.

Guenot, a subway employee who trained part time, said, "I'm really proud and this is my happiest time in my life to win France the first gold in the Olympics. All my family and friends are here and I think the gold medal is the best gift for them."

Guenot's family were also the happiest because the elder brother Christophe Guenot added a bronze for France in the men's 74kg competition. "There is no secret. Our father taught us the value of hard work," Christophe Guenot said.

France sends a strong Olympic team to Beijing but their medal board lacked the color of gold before the Guenot brothers' feats, with only seven silvers and two bronzes in most time into the fifth day at Beijing Olympics.

Similar to Guenot, Kvirkelia obtained a comfortable victory over his Chinese rival with his artful skills and great experience. The 23-year-old Chang, standing tearful on the victory podium, has continued making feats since his first round when he defeated world champion Yavor Yanakiev of Bulgaria, who finished the bronze in today's competition.

Chang said, "I was so upset not to win China a gold although this is the best result of the men wrestlers in the Olympics."

"He (Kvirkelia) was obviously better than I," Chang said. After Chang's securing a final berth this morning, his coach helped him prepare a lot in a bid to get the gold.

China eventually lost the title to a country that has not yet gotten a gold medal in the Beijing Olympics.

A veteran wrestler who won a world championships bronze medal in 2006, Kvirkelia said, "My country is now in a difficult situation and I'm dedicating this gold to the Georgian people who will feel better."

Both Armen Vardanyan of Ukrain and Mikhail Siamionau of Belarus won the bronze medals in the men's 66kg class. Together with Frenchman Guenot, Bulgarian Yanakiev got another bronze in the men's 74kg competition.

Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Theme Song

U.S. cyclists wear masks upon arrival in Beijing

Some American cyclists were wearing black masks when they arrived today at the airport in Beijing.

"I suspect it was their choice, you would have to talk to them as to what prompted them to do this," Darryl Seibel, a spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee tells Reuters. "I will say this: I am not a scientist, but in my view that was unnecessary."

The level of pollutants in the air was particularly bad yesterday. Right now, Beijing is "shrouded in a light gray haze," according to the Associated Press.

Q1x00249_9 The International Olympic Committee will receive hourly updates about air pollution when the games begin Aug. 8, but one official says he's "confident the air quality will not prove to pose major problems."

Arne Ljungqvist, head of the IOC medical commission, tells AP that public perceptions are part of the problem.

"The mist in the air that we see in those places, including here, is not a feature of pollution primarily but a feature of evaporation and humidity," Ljungqvist said. "We do have a communication problem here. Once the misconception has become sort of established in the minds of people, it's not that easy to get the right message through."

Bijak will compete for Germany in Olympics

Utah gymnast Daria Bijak is within months of having a lifelong dream realized after she was selected Tuesday to represent Germany in the 2008 Olympics.
Bijak was named to the team after she placed fourth in Germany's national championships Saturday.
Bijak was selected to the 2000 Olympic team but ruptured her Achilles' tendon and couldn't compete. Germany didn't qualify for the 2004 Olympics.
The sophomore from Cologne, Germany, recently completed her sophomore year for the Utes, helping them to a second-place finish at the NCAA Championships.
"She is so excited," said Utah coach Greg Marsden, who spoke to Bijak on Tuesday. "This has been her dream and only a handful of college gymnasts have gone on to compete in the Olympics after starting college."
If she avoids any injuries and competes, she will be the fourth Olympian in Utah's gymnastics program, joining Missy Marlowe (1988, USA), current Ute team member Gael Mackie (Canada, 2004) and Cheryl Weatherstone (Britain, 1984).
"The requirements are so different from college, it's hard to train for both," Marsden said of the international competitions. "She started right after our season was over to get ready for the qualifying meets."
Marsden acknowledged Bijak's busy offseason could possibly leave her burnt out as the college season begins, but said that is a trade-off he is willing to make.
The Olympics have been her dream since she was a little girl," he said. "If you really care about someone you have to support them and help them accomplish their dreams."

China's security preparations for the Beijing Olympics

The head of the world's largest police organization, Interpol, says he is satisfied with China's security preparations for the Beijing Olympics. He was speaking at Interpol's Asian Regional Conference in Hong Kong, where senior law enforcement officials from across Asia discuss ways to strengthen cooperation in combating crime - ranging from sex attacks on children to cyber crime. Claudia Blume reports from Hong Kong.

Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble praised China's security preparations for the Olympics, when he opened the police organization's Asian meeting in Hong Kong, Monday.

"We have been working very closely with China, in this regard, for years now and especially this year," he said. "I have made one personal trip to China for the purpose of seeing the progress being made and, as I said, the progress is significant and the preparations are of the highest possible standard."

But he urged China to remain prudent, saying any international event can be a potential terrorist target.

One of the main themes of this year's Interpol Asia conference is the tracing and apprehending of child-sex offenders in the region. He says many perpetrators are from outside Asia and often travel from one country to another, making their identification and arrest difficult.

"What do we do as an international police organization if we know someone is engaged in this kind of sexual activity against the child victims and we know he is moving from one country to another country, because we don't have an arrest warrant? How can we stop his travel? Is there a way for the country of his nationality to suspend his passport and only allow him to return home? It is very complicated. These are the kind of issues we want to discuss during the conference," said Noble.

Other topics of the meeting include combating transnational intellectual property crime as well as so-called cyber crime. This includes international Internet fraud schemes as well as what Noble calls "cyber-terrorism" - sabotaging computer systems of governments or businesses.

Noble says there are many examples of the successful cooperation between Interpol and police in Asia. Last year, for example, "Operation Soga" against illegal soccer betting, led to the arrest of more than 400 people in countries such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.

The largest airport terminal in the world - Beijing Capital International Airport’s Terminal

China inaugurated the largest airport terminal in the world on Friday, a soaring golden-roofed structure evoking a flying dragon.

Nearly 2 miles long, the $3.8 billion terminal, which covers 240 acres, is the world’s largest covered structure.

“Our Chinese people should be very proud when they pass in and out of this airport,” Aviation Minister Li Jiaxiang told journalists.

Employing 50,000 laborers at the peak of construction, the terminal at Beijing Capital International Airport was built in three years and nine months to cope with the expected deluge of visitors to the Beijing Summer Olympics.

“It was incredibly fast. Even by Chinese standards, it was fast,” said Rory McGowan, a director of the London-based engineering firm Arup, one of several partners on the project.

One of the 10 busiest airports in the world, Beijing’s airport handled 53.5 million passengers last year, far above its capacity of 35 million. With the new terminal, the airport can handle 96 million passengers a year and 1,590 flights a day. By 2012, the airport will become one of the five busiest in the world.

Terminal 3, as the new terminal is called, is double the size of two other terminals. Even with the addition, however, China’s aviation growth will make the airport suffer overcrowding again within seven years, experts say.

British architect Norman Foster, the terminal’s designer, noted the building’s scale in a statement to the Chinese news media this week: “It’s so big that under a certain amount of light you can’t see one end of the building from the other.”

The terminal has 64 restaurants, 175 escalators, 173 elevators and 437 moving sidewalks — but no bookstore that sells foreign-language periodicals. Censorship is still imposed in China, and average Chinese are not exposed to the kinds of critical views common in the media of democratic countries.

Without a critical press or political opposition, Chinese officials summarily moved nine

Beijing Subway Map
Simple Rube Golberg 3D animaton

Beijing Subway Map

Beijing Map 2008

Beijing Summer Olympics: Before Olympics begin, Net's already a winner

The first javelin has yet to be tossed at the Beijing Summer Olympics, but Bill Barney already knows the biggest winner: the Internet.

"This is going to be the Internet Olympics," said Barney, chief executive of Pacnet, a Hong Kong deep-sea fiber-optic cable network operator.

He should know. Barney, who announced this week that his company is the largest investor in a consortium that includes Google to build a new trans-Pacific cable, keeps a close eye on the increasing traffic jams caused by Internet users.

"It's the new killer app, which is video," he said. He expects Olympic history to be captured on video cameras - or even cell phones. And sports fans will be sending those images to friends and family across the globe.

Barney figures he'll be able to know which countries are scoring gold medals simply by monitoring traffic. If Team Romania does well in gymnastics, he expects to see a spike in activity between Beijing and Eastern Europe.

Chinese authorities, who are also grappling with a domestic Internet boom, are gearing up. China, with some 210 million Internet users, is expected to have the world's largest online community this year.

"They've been ramping up for the last four months," Barney said. "We can't install capacity fast enough for the Chinese. They are just chewing through bandwidth."

HIGH-TECH HOMES: "Smart Homes" are coming to downtown San Jose.

M3Pods will give future homeowners at Three Sixty Residences the ability to control their lights, cameras and all the other electronic action in their high-rise condos from anywhere in the world.

"It's everything in a box," said Blake Tablak, principal with the company. "It's the future."

Tablak said last fall he offered the device to Charles Young, director of Mesa Development's San Jose project, which is building Three Sixty. Young, he said, liked it and decided to offer the option in the company's 23-story high-rise that will be finished in spring 2009.

"Mesa is the first," Tablak said.

M3Pods are developed by the company of the same name, which is headquartered in Atlanta but set up an office in San Jose a year ago.

With the M3Pod you can flip the switches for your lights, security system or even program a TV show to watch when you get home. You can also play music from your home collection on a cell phone or a PC with speakers anywhere in the world.

The devices, which will add $8,000 to $13,000 to the cost of each condo, are wireless gadgets that work via radio frequency and provide access from a browser, which can be your cell phone. The units at Three Sixty range in size from 800 to 3,440 square feet, and in price from the high $500,000s to more than $2 million.

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The buzz: China says reporters are welcome at its Olympics

China says reporters welcome at its Olympics
China said it welcomes journalists covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, responding to complaints by a media-rights group that the Communist regime has decided to clamp down on reporting in the run-up to the games.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the Paris-based group has launched “consistent attacks on China” and reiterated that Beijing was “willing to provide services and facilitate” coverage.

Budget overruns possible for London Olympics
The London Olympics could go over its $19.1 billion budget. John Armitt, the chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority, told a British parliamentary committee that the $5.5 billion fund set aside for budget overruns may not be enough.

Armitt said the authority, which is responsible for building the venues and infrastructure for the 2012 Games, was sticking to tight budgets, but he couldn’t promise there would not be overruns.

Dynamo, Revolution to play season opener
The Houston Dynamo will open the 2008 Major League Soccer season at New England on March 29, a rematch of the MLS Cup championship game.

The Saturday game, a rematch of Houston’s 2-1 victory over the Revolution on Nov. 18 at RFK Stadium in Washington, will highlight a “First Kick” weekend that will include all 14 teams, although a match involving the expansion San Jose Earthquakes and New York Red Bulls was still being finalized.

The Wizards will play host to D.C. United on March 29. Other games that day include Toronto at Columbus, Chicago at Real Salt Lake, and David Beckham’s Los Angeles Galaxy at Colorado.

Masters field taking shape
Despite a change in criteria, it appears the field for next year’s Masters will not top 100 players, which is what the club wants.

With an overhaul of the PGA Tour schedule and format, the Masters revamped its qualifying this year to invite winners of PGA Tour events that get full FedEx Cup points, those who qualified for the Tour Championship at the end of the FedEx Cup season, and those who finished in the top 30 on the PGA Tour money list.