Terror threats, smog but also hope for the greatest show on earth

CHINA yesterday insisted the Olympics would be the best ever – despite a rising terror threat, unprecedented security and thick smog.
Last-minute preparations gathered pace in Beijing as the countdown continued to what is being billed as the most spectacular opening ceremony in the Games' history.
And Chinese leaders stepped up their efforts to reassure the world they could provide a safe environment for visitors and athletes in the wake of this week's separatist attacks. Sun Weide, an official on the Games' organising committee, said security was the "foundation and a key part of the event".

He added: "We are confident and capable of holding a safe Olympic Games under the leadership of the Chinese government and with the help of the international community."

But Dr Kerry Brown, associate fellow on the Asia Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said Muslim extremists would see the Beijing Olympics as a "once in a lifetime opportunity" and that the massive Chinese security effort will make a successful attack "unlikely, but not impossible".

"It will be too much to let it go for them, it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to hit the people they regard as oppressors," he said. "There is a lot of anger and hatred and it would draw attention to their cause and hurt the people they regard as oppressors."

The warning follows the bloody attack on Monday which has proved a setback for a Chinese government trying to present an image of national stability. Two members of the largely Muslim Uighur minority have been accused of killing 16 border police and injuring 16 others in China's Western region.

Alim Seytoff, general secretary of the Washington-based Uighur American Association, yesterday said the attack pointed to discontent over Chinese controls on religion and the expanding ethnic Han Chinese presence in Xinjiang.

The beating by police yesterday of two Japanese journalists reporting on the attacks drew an official apology, but Beijing also set new obstacles for news outlets wanting to report from Tiananmen Square.

Meanwhile, the Olympic stadium in Beijing has been enveloped in smog in the run-up to the Games, despite drastic measures to improve air quality.

Controversy has dogged the event since China successfully bid for it, and the global Olympic torch relay was beset by protests against the country's human rights record and treatment of Tibet. And the International Olympics Committee yesterday warned the protests could stop the event happening ahead of London 2012, with Dick Pound, a Canadian senior IOC figure, calling for an end to the parade.

China has invested about £20 billion in the Games and analysts say the country may emerge with an even stronger economy for all its lavish spending.

Andy Rothman, an economist with brokerage CLSA in Shanghai, said: "The majority of the money accounts for permanent infrastructure, stuff that we think, long term, will be productive for the Chinese economy."

However, Dr Yiyi Lu, a research fellow at the China Policy Institute, part of the University of Nottingham, warned against overemphasising the impact the Olympics would have on the country's global standing.

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

Olympics centenary

Major celebrations are being planned to commemorate the centenary of the 1908 London Olympics. The Royal Family and could be involved in the celebrations. I am told the Queen has already been approached.

This would be entirely appropriate. The 1908 Olympics saw London stepping in to help the Olympic Movement when Rome, which had been given the Games, could not stage the event.

The Games itself saw the Royal Family play a big part. The House of Windsor, in effect, decided the distance of the modern marathon. Some 385 yards were added to the original distance. This followed the decision to start the marathon not from the centre of Windsor, as had been planned, but from the Royal nurseries at Windsor Castle so that the children of Edward VII could see the start.

The Queen came into the picture after the Marathon was run.

This was when Dorando Pietri, the Italian, was disqualified from the Marathon after he had been helped over the line. He was the first into the stadium and the first across the line having collapsed several times as he approached the finish. The Queen was much taken by his courage and presented him with a Gold Cup. He would become quite a celebrity in later years.

Copyright: Hulton Archive / Getty Images

I understand the family of Dorando has been contacted and his Gold Cup may return to London for the celebrations.

The celebrations could also see a tug of war match between City of London Police and Liverpool police, the contestants for the olympic tug of war back in 1908 which the City of London won.

Plans are also being discussed to have a rugby match to mark the 1908 olympic rugby contest (rugby then was part of the Olympics, as cricket was to be for a brief moment at a subsequent Olympics). In 1908 the match was between Australia and Cornwall, who were representing Great Britain and Ireland. The Australians won. Now the idea being discussed is for the Wallabies to play a British team, which would be the Lions team minus the Irish.

The rugby match idea is not yet cast in stone but I am told the Wallabies may be interested given 2008 will mark the centenary of their first overseas official tour.

The Olympic torch could also play a part in the celebrations. The torch for the Beijing Olympics is due in this country next spring and it might be taken down part of the 1908 Marathon route ending at White City, now, of course, the home of the BBC.

But however colourful the celebrations, and whatever part the Queen plays, one thing is certain, it will not last as long as the 1908 Olympic Games which started on 27 April and did not finish until 31 October.

From BBC sport

Chinese games - 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing

With less than a year before the start of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the world community has trained its gaze on China. The Games present an opportunity to pressure that nation's communist government to correct some of its worst abuses in the areas of human rights, press freedom and individual expression.

Along with reports on the pageantry of the Games, attention should be lavished on China's atrocious human rights record. This includes the despicable practice of forced abortions that result from the nation's one-child policy. Reliable reports abound of women being taken from their homes and made to undergo abortions, even in the ninth month of pregnancy.

This is a good time, too, to highlight China's abuse of dissident voices. In a case all too familiar in China, self-trained lawyer Chen Guangcheng was sentenced to more than four years in prison in 2006 for bringing attention to abuses by family planning officials in Shandong Province in eastern China. Chen, who is blind, is being held in isolation from other prisoners. Villagers at his trial allegedly were tortured into testifying against him.

The human rights group Amnesty International is working to bring attention in the run-up to the Games to such cases, as well as China's broad employment of the death penalty without a fair trial and its stranglehold on free expression and Internet access.

Meanwhile, pledges made to improve press freedoms remain unfulfilled. China said it would lift restrictions it places on foreign media until the Games end next August. But according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Chinese journalists continue to be harassed, threatened and jailed. Foreign reporters say China regularly disregards even the temporary rules it put in place to give international media a freer hand.

China's misdeeds don't just harm its own citizens, as a sobering New York Times report on the country's massive pollution problems pointed out last week. Just as industrialized nations are coming to realize the peril of unabated carbon emissions, China could overtake the United States as the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases as soon as the end of this year.

The government has been lax on pollution control to avoid exerting drag on the country's red hot economic engine. Companies have freely dumped chemical waste into surface water, releases of which recently sent toxins flowing into Russia. The sun is perpetually darkened by pollution over some Chinese cities, and large swaths of Chinese coastline are devoid of marine life. Children suffer high rates of lead poisoning, and disease caused by pollution is a leading cause of death.

What's more, China's rapid development is run mostly on dirty, obsolete coal technology.

Despite the far-reaching power of China's strict authoritarian government, experts say the pollution might be impossible to control because of a thorny Catch-22 . China's growth is fueled by exports made cheap in part by laissez-faire pollution regulation. Slowing that growth could foment social and industry unrest that would threaten Communist Party rule. The same could result from unmitigated environmental degradation.

The international pre-Olympics spotlight also has illuminated Beijing's investments in Africa, including in Sudan, where that government is funding a genocidal war in Darfur.

Recent recalls of lead-poisoned toys, adulterated pet foods, toxic toothpaste and dangerous tires have awakened Americans to the hazards that go with saving money on cheaply made Chinese goods. To that add flagrant copyright piracy to the issues China must confront head-on.

This is not the time to let China bask in the pride of its Olympics coup, but to use the global attention to make it clean up its act.

www.chron.com

It's not too early to plan for Beijing Olympics

Although the 2008 Summer Olympics, being held Aug. 8-24 in Beijing, are still a full year away, making plans to attend the games has already come down to a roulette-like gamble of hurry-up-and-wait, with choices narrowing as time goes by.

The most important task is securing tickets, which can be difficult. Only a certain number of tickets are allocated to each country, and direct ticket-buying in each is only available to local residents. Unfortunately, June 30 was the cutoff date for entering the lottery to reserve the exact tickets you want. But there are other options if you're willing to compromise on price or on which events you attend.

Read more here: http://www.mercurynews.com/travel/ci_6663244

And visit very nice blog about Beijing Olympics

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Ireland's show-jumpers fail to qualify for Olympics

Ireland's show-jumping team today lost its last chance of qualifying for the 2008 Olympics when it failed to stay in the top 10 after the first round of the team championship at Mannheim, Germany.

Dropping from overnight seventh to 13th overall at the end of today's competition means that the Irish squad will not go through to the second round of the team event tomorrow - only the best
10 teams take part.

This effectively finishes Ireland's chances of qualifying a team for the Beijing Olympics, as only a top three place at Mannheim amongst the teams not already qualified would have secured the slot.

Ireland's hopes sagged after the first two riders went out this morning - Cameron Hanley and Hippica Kerman accounted for 12 faults, while Marion Hughes and Heritage Transmission lowered three poles and added a time fault to finish on 13 faults.

Irish Independent Echo Beach and Cian O'Connor, drafted in on Tuesday from Fifth Man position, dropped their only fence of the championships to end on four faults, while Jessica Kurten and Castle Forbes Libertina also finished on four faults.

Today's faults were added to penalty points from Wednesday's speed competition to arrive at the final team score.

Jessica Kurten is now in 22nd position individually and Cian O'Connor 28th. The Individual European Championships finish on Sunday.

Equestrian Federation of Ireland (EFI) Chairman Charles Powell, commenting on today's failure to gain an Olympic team qualifying place, said: "I am disappointed for the team, but I am fully supportive of Team Manager Robert Splaine and the EFI Jumping Committee, who did their very best with the horsespower available to them."

Beijing Olympics 2008: India refuses permission to Tibetans protesting Beijing Olympics

Tibetan exiles on Thursday accused the Indian government of caving in to pressure from China by refusing to allow them to use an official stadium to stage a symbolic protest against the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

The activists have planned a series of protests against Chinese rule in Tibet and launched a campaign to have Tibetan representation at the Beijing Olympics despite China's insistence that Tibet is an integral part of China.

The Tibetans had planned a soccer match at New Delhi's biggest stadium that they said would have attracted thousands of refugees and protesters.

Indian officials refused them permission to play at the government-run Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium "directly or indirectly due to pressure from the Chinese government," said B. Tsering, president of the Tibetan Women's Association.

"If China can force India, the biggest democratic nation, to compromise on its democratic values, then China's misuse of power is a real cause of concern for the global community," said Tsering.

A spokesman for India's foreign ministry declined to comment.

Tsering said that the organizers had found an alternative venue in New Delhi but she was unsure whether the Indian team would be allowed to participate.

"Everything is uncertain now," she said, although activists were "determined to hold this match."

China says it has ruled Tibet for centuries, although many Tibetans say their homeland was essentially an independent state for most of that time. Chinese communist troops occupied Tibet in 1951 and Beijing continues to rule the region with a heavy hand.

India has been generally supportive of the Tibetan exiles after their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled there in 1959 after a failed uprising, settling in the northern town of Dharmsala.

However, India and China have attempted to strengthen their once-shaky ties in recent years as both Asian giants emerge as significant global powers.

Last year India banned several Tibetan protests during the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao, saying they did not want to embarrass their guest.

Most Tibetans say China has attempted to destroy Tibetan Buddhist culture by flooding Tibet with China's ethnic Han majority.

Beijing 2008 Olympics IT testing underway

Tests on the IT infrastructure behind the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games begins this month, a full year before the event opens on 8 August 2008.

The systems architecture for Beijing 2008 was finalised last month by the main IT supplier for the Games, Atos Origin, and all the facilities - a PC factory, data centre, integration lab and technology operation centre - are now operational.

An IT team of around 3,500 people, which includes 2,500 volunteers, will be responsible for 10,000 PCs, 1,000 servers, a Games information system and an information diffusion system across seven cities.

Guillaume Huard, sales and marketing director for Olympics and major events at Atos Origin, said: "You have one chance to get it right. There is no second chance. Testing is a big component. You don't want to affect the competition in any way. The testing is intense and takes more than a year."

The testing will include a run-through of 500 possible worst-case scenarios rehearsing every situation that could go wrong, including virus infections and cables being cut but Huard said the biggest threat is still an internal one.

He said: "We have had people trying to print their own accreditation badges, or trying to find their way around the network when they shouldn't."

To minimise this risk all the Olympic volunteers - IT and non-IT - go through rigorous police background checks. In Beijing there will be a total of 70,000 volunteers, filtered down from around five million applications.

But such is the reliability required for the Olympic Games there is little new or cutting-edge technology used.

Huard said: "You have to freeze your solution quite a long time before the event. We are not going for cutting-edge and bleeding-edge technology. It has to be mature, proven, tested technology. You can't take that risk at the Olympics."

There are currently 100 IT staff in Beijing, three-quarters of who are Chinese, and testing begins this month for the IT supporting 12 Olympics events in 11 different venues. Work on the IT infrastructure for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics is already underway and work on the London 2012 IT systems will begin after Beijing, in November 2008.

Despite the IT skills shortage in the UK, Huard said there will be no shortage of people for the thousands of volunteers needed in London.

He said: "The Olympics only happens through the help of volunteers. I don't think we will have a problem finding people for London. The attraction of the Olympics is such that people take leave from their jobs. It's a great thing on a CV."

China downplays medal chances in the 2008 Olympics

BEIJING: China is downplaying its chance of overtaking the United States as the top gold-medal winning team in the 2008 Olympics.

Cui Dalin, the deputy minister of Sport, told a news conference Wednesday that China still trailed the United States and Russia as an Olympic power.

Dalin, who is also vice chairman of the Chinese Olympic Committee, said China faced challenges in sports in which it has usually done well, and could suffer from the pressure of competing at home.

Evidence from recent Olympics shows that the host nation has an advantage — not a disadvantage.

He further downplayed China's chances, saying it was more likely to be competing with countries like Japan, Germany, Australia and France in the second tier of Olympic powers.