Aug 09
|
ADVERTISEMENT |
|
|
International Herald Tribune
AP BEIJING: Yao Ming will get his first taste of the Beijing Olympics on Sunday in the toughest possible situation - against the US men’s basketball team. <More>
Aug 09
Bloomberg
By Danielle Rossingh Seventeen of the 20 best players in the world will compete at the Beijing Olympics in what the International Tennis Federation calls the strongest field ever for the Games. <More>
Aug 09
Inquirer.net
BEIJING - Saddled with fewer medal prospects from among its skeletal 15-athlete platoon, the Philippines is hard-pressed to end the curse of a shutout at the XXIX Olympiad here. <More>
Aug 09
The Associated Press
LONDON (AP) - A protester set himself on fire outside the Chinese Embassy in the Turkish capital and thousands of Tibetan exiles took to the streets in Nepal, as anti-China demonstrations occurred worldwide … <More>
Aug 09
Voice of America
By VOA News China is on high alert as it deals with new security threats on the opening day of the Olympics. An Air China plane that departed from Japan had to make an emergency return Friday after the airline received an e-mailed bomb threat. <More>
Aug 09
Environment News Service
BEIJING, China, August 8, 2008 (ENS) - Inside the Bird’s Nest, today’s opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympic Games was brilliant, but outside the air quality was not. <More>
Aug 09
Dallas Morning News
By KATE HAIROPOULOS / The Dallas Morning News BEIJING - The Games of the XXIX Olympiad opened spectacularly Friday night in China’s distinct, ever-expanding red glow. More
Jul 26
The Georgia National Fair is a 10-day fair that is held every October on the Georgia National Fairgrounds and Agricenter in Perry, Georgia. It was first held in 1990, and has grown to attract an annual average of 400,000 visitors. It offers a wide range of activities and shows, such as circuses, thrill rides, live music performances, and agricultural shows. The carnival has been provided for years by Reithoffer Shows, a very respectable operation in the business.
http://www.georgianationalfair.com/
http://www.gnfa.com/
Jul 26
BEIJING - Parents whose children died or were disabled in China’s devastating earthquake will be allowed to have more children after lawmakers in the hardest-hit province waived strict family-planning controls, state media reported Saturday.
The Sichuan provincial legislature passed exemptions Friday to relax family-planning laws that are commonly referred to as the one-child policy.
Under the exemptions, families whose only child died or was disabled or whose two children were both disabled may now have another child as may families in which one parent was disabled, the reports said.
The May 7.9-magnitude quake left nearly 70,000 people dead in China’s worst natural disaster in 30 years. Among the dead were children from 18,000 families, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
The loss of so many children stirred public anger across China over shoddily built schools in a chronically underfunded education system that is often susceptible to local corruption. Parents of dead children have staged protests demanding investigations but in recent weeks have been subjected to intimidation and financial inducements to silence them.
Sichuan has begun paying $15 per month in subsidies to 5,200 families whose children died or were disabled, the China Daily quoted the provincial family planning commission as saying.
[Source: Yahoo News]
Jul 26
By OLIVER TEVES, Associated Press Writer
MANILA, Philippines - Australian investigators on Saturday began examining a Qantas jumbo jet which had to make an emergency landing after a large hole opened on its fuselage, a Philippine aviation official said.
The Boeing 747-400 was cruising at 29,000 feet with 346 passengers Friday when it was shaken by an explosive bang. The plane descended rapidly before landing safely minutes later at the Manila airport.
There were no injuries among the passengers and crew, but some of the passengers suffered nausea.
Ruben Ciron, chief of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, said four specialists from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau were still inspecting the aircraft to determine what caused the damage.
Qantas Chief Executive Officer Geoff Dixon told reporters Saturday he was “horrified” after seeing pictures of the aircraft’s gaping hole. He said it was too early to speculate on what caused the damage.
“There are thousands of aircraft flying around the world today, things happen. Something has happened here and we cannot speculate any more about what did happen,” Dixon said.
Passengers on Flight QF 30, enroute to Melbourne from London, had just been served a meal after a stopover in Hong Kong when they heard a loud bang, then their ears popped as air rushed out the hole.
After disembarking, they saw a gaping 9-foot wide hole at the joint where the front of the right wing attaches to the plane. Luggage from the cargo hold strained against the webbing used to keep it from shifting during a flight.
The passengers boarded another Qantas plane to Melbourne before midnight Friday.
An official of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration said initial reports indicated no link to terrorism.
Peter Gibson, spokesman for Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority, said speculation that rust contributed to the accident could be discounted.
“It’s clearly an extremely rare and unusual event that a hole opens up in the fuselage,” he told reporters in Australia. “I know there’s a number of theories around, but they’re just that at this stage, they’re just theories. We don’t have the solid facts.”
Quoting pilot John Francis Bartels, the Manila International Airport Authority, said an initial investigation showed the aircraft suffered from “explosive decompression.”
Boeing spokeswoman Liz Verdier said it was too soon to determine what caused the hole, but the company was providing technical assistance as part of an investigation led by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Verdier said the company was sending an investigator and three engineers to help in the probe.