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News Research

Beijing celebrates one-year countdown to Olympics 

[ 2007-08-09 08:38 ]

BEIJING, August 8 (Xinhua) -- Tiananmen Square turned into a festival of jubilation Wednesday night as over 10,000 people from around the world gathered in the heart of China to celebrate the one-year countdown to the 2008 Olympic Games.

As the countdown clock in front of the Chinese National Museum struck the exact moment of the one-year countdown, fireworks lit the sky before International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge presented Beijing Olympics invitation letters to various National Olympic Committees (NOCs).A number of senior Chinese officials joined in the celebration at Tiananmen Square, including Wu Bangguo, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the NPC and member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, and Liu Qi, President of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Games.

"We welcome athletes, coaches, officials, spectators and journalists to participate in, observe and report the Beijing 2008Olympic Games," Wu Bangguo told the crowds."We will provide quality services for them in accordance with Olympic standards, and create favorable conditions to facilitate their work, visit and participation in competitions," he said.Rogge paid tributes to the work done by Beijing, saying the local organizers have worked extremely hard to give Beijing an Olympic shape.’’The world is watching China and Beijing with great expectation. The athletes also have great expectations and they are all looking forward to competing in the state-of-the-art Beijing venues," he said.
Rogge also said that China would greet the world with an entirely new image when the Olympics open next August.

"Beijing and China will not only host a successful Games for the world's premier athletes, but will also provide an excellent opportunity to discover China, its history, its culture, and its people, with China opening itself to the world in new ways," he said.

International News

42 killed in Indian bombings

HYDERABAD - Foreign-based Islamic extremists may have been behind a pair of bombings that tore through a popular restaurant and a park in this southern Indian city, killing at least 42 people, an Indian official said Sunday.

Saturday's attacks were the latest in a series of bombings to hit India in the last year, and nearly all have been blamed on Islamic extremists with foreign connections even when Muslims were targeted.

Medics move a person injured in a bomb blast on a stretcher, at a hospital in Lumbini Park in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad August 25, 2007. [Reuters]

"Available information points to the involvement of terrorist organizations based in Bangladesh and Pakistan," Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state, where Hyderabad is located, told reporters after an emergency state Cabinet meeting.

Reddy did not name any groups, but Indian media reports, quoting unnamed security officials, identified the Bangladesh-based Harkatul Jihad Al-Islami organization.

Reddy declined to provide more details. "It is not possible to divulge all this information," he said.

Harkatul, which is banned in Bangladesh, wants to establish strict Islamic rule in the Muslim-majority nation governed by secular laws.

Bangladesh's Foreign Ministry said Dhaka had not been informed of the allegations.

A spate of other bombings in India have been blamed on Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, or Army of the Pure, one of more than a dozen Islamic insurgent groups fighting to oust India from Muslim-majority Kashmir. Pakistan has denied charges of training and supporting the militants.

Kashmir is divided between predominantly Hindu India and mostly Muslim Pakistan, with both claiming it in its entirety. The rebels want Kashmir's independence or merger with Pakistan.

Indian authorities say Harkatul was also behind the bombing of a historic Hyderabad mosque in May that killed 11 people, although little evidence linking the group to the blasts has been made public. But many Muslims say Hindu extremists were to blame.

Following that attack, five people were killed in clashes between security forces and Muslim protesters, angered by what they said was a lack of police protection.

Hyderabad has a history of Hindu-Muslim violence, and Reddy praised residents for their restraint in the wake of Saturday's attacks.

Both the restaurant and the park were popular with Hindus and Muslims.

The restaurant was destroyed by the bomb placed at the entrance, and most of the deaths reportedly occurred in the blast. Blood-covered tin plates and broken glasses littered the road outside.

The other blast struck a laser show at an auditorium in Lumbini park, leaving pools of blood and dead bodies between rows of seats punctured by shrapnel. Some seats were hurled 30 meters (100 feet) away.

By Sunday morning, the death toll had risen to 42 as victims succumbed to injuries sustained in the attacks, said K. Jana Reddy, the state home minister. Some 50 people were wounded in the two blasts.

Two other bombs were defused in the city Saturday, one under a footbridge in the busy Bilsukh Nagar commercial area, and another in a movie theater in the Narayanguba neighborhood, a police official said. Late-night movie showings were canceled across the city.

Much of India's Hindu-Muslim animosity is rooted in disputes over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir, divided between India and mostly Muslim Pakistan but claimed in its entirety by both countries. More than a dozen Islamic insurgent groups are fighting for Kashmir's independence or its merger with Pakistan.

More than 80 percent of India's 1.1 billion people are Hindu and 13 percent are Muslim. But in Hyderabad, Muslims make up 40 percent of the population of 7 million.

Little progress has been made in the investigation into the May mosque bombing. Underlying the divide, Muslim leaders have said they do not trust local police to handle the investigation into the attack.

A series of terrorist bombings have ripped across India in the past two years. In July 2006, bombs in seven Mumbai commuter trains killed more than 200 people, attacks blamed on Pakistan-based Muslim militants.

Industry News

Europeans and Americans trust their doctors most

[ 2007-08-15 09:56 ]

Doctors are the most trusted professionals in Europe and the United States while politicians command universal distrust, a survey published on Friday showed.

Teachers, police and the military are also widely admired for their integrity while top managers, journalists and lawyers were all rated "quite untrustworthy" in the poll by Germany's GfK market research firm.

Italians, Bulgarians and Czechs were found to be particularly unhappy with their politicians, according to the survey of more than 16,000 people in 18 countries, and lawyers were also less trusted in Italy than anywhere else.

The Swiss are most trusting of their political leaders, with 35 percent of respondents saying they were "quite trustworthy" or "very trustworthy".

Managers are mainly distrusted except in Denmark, Sweden and Romania, and journalists also command little trust outside Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Spain.

The clergy received mixed reviews. In Romania, Sweden and Germany -- where most people are either Protestant or Roman Catholic -- they scored well.

In France and Spain as well as Greece, where most people are Orthodox, the clergy was viewed with the most suspicion.

The army commands trust everywhere but the Netherlands, and the police do so everywhere but Bulgaria.

Domestic News

Chinese students talk with ISS astronaunt

NANJING - Twenty Chinese students talked directly with an astronaut in the International Space Station (ISS) via amateur radio in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province on Sunday.

Chinese students talked directly with an astronaut in the ISS via amateur radio in Nanjing on Sunday. [Xinhua]

The 20 students, aged 10 to 19 from Shanghai, Guangzhou and Nanjing, began talking with Clayton C. Anderson, a 48-year-old American astronaut at 18:50 pm at Nanjing No 3 Middle School when the ISS was passing over Nanjing.

Tang Jiewen, a student from Nanjing No 3 Middle School, asked the first question: "Can you see the Great Wall from the ISS? "

"I'm sorry that I haven't seen it yet, but we hope to see it, "Anderson's voice was clearly heard from the radio.

He also answered other questions poped out by students during the 10-minute conversation, telling students that ISS is very quiet with only sounds of astronauts' drinking water and air flowing, and robots are used to do simple work like fetching things.

"This is the first time for Chinese students to participate in the program of Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) to speak directly with astronauts in the ISS," said Wang Long, a teacher in charge of the Amateur Radio activities from Nanjing No 3 Middle School.

"Through this activity, we hope to kindle the enthusiasm among students in astronautical technology and radio communication," he said, "the activity should be promoted in more schools."

Questions were selected from the more than 200 proposed by students via email and hotline since August 4.

To ensure the talk, the school bought an ultrashort communication equipment worth over 100,000 yuan as well as the GPS software, Wang noted.

The school applied to ARISS for the membership in April 2005 and has become the 311th organization to have dialogue with ISS astronaunts.