Travellop - Travel Blog

China on Thursday issued a strong rebuke of President Bush for meeting with five Chinese dissidents in the White House this week, saying he had “rudely interfered” with China’s internal affairs and sent a “seriously wrong” message to others who criticize the country.

The comments by Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao were unusually pointed against Bush, who China considers a friend. Bush supported the Chinese by resisting activists’ calls to boycott the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony to protest China’s human rights record. He also sat for a one-on-one interview with China’s state-controlled television without requiring preconditions that would limit editing of his remarks.

“I respect the Chinese people,” Bush said in the interview. “I’m coming to China as the president and as a friend.”

Bush met Tuesday in the White House residence with five prominent Chinese dissidents: Harry Wu, a critic of Chinese prisons; Wei Jinsheng, a democracy activist; Sasha Gong, a writer; Bob Fu, of the China Aid Association, and Rebiya Kadeer, who advocates for more protection of rights for the Uighurs, an ethnic minority in western China’s Xinjiang region.
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Tags: air pollution in Beijing

Beijing’s Olympic Smog: How Bad Will It Be?
China’s blue-sky blues aren’t going away even with factories closings and restricted driving. The region’s climate is part of the problem.

A week before the start of the Olympics, Beijing’s smog still threatens the Games. The effects of the polluted air are worrying to many Olympic athletes, some of whom have attempted to limit time spent in Beijing. National teams from the U.S., Britain, France, and Germany, to name just a few, have been doing their pre-Olympics training in Japan (BusinessWeek.com, 2/12/08) rather than take their chances in China. Australia’s Olympic Committee is giving athletes concerned about the smog’s impact on their health the O.K. to withdraw from events. Record-holding Ethiopian distance runner Haile Gebrselassie, who has asthma, has pulled out of the marathon, citing bad air.

Chinese officials knew they had to address the pollution problem (BusinessWeek.com, 7/28/08) and promised Beijing would enjoy “blue sky days” for the duration of the Olympics. To do that, they have shut hundreds of factories and coal-burning plants in Beijing and its environs. They have implemented odd-even day driving restrictions for most Beijing residents, with those who do not obey the rules threatened with a $14 fine. And they have made businesses stagger their hours of operation in order to avoid rush-hour commutes that generate spikes in pollution.
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Tags: air pollution in Beijing, Beijing's smog

World number three Maria Sharapova on Thursday announced on her website that she has to pull out of the Beijing Olympics due to shoulder injury.

“After yesterday’s match I knew there was something seriously wrong with my shoulder,” said Sharapova, who walked over the ongoing Montreal Cup third round match against Japanese Ai Sugiyama.

“After taking a few different exams and MRIs this morning, the doctors found two small tears in the tendons of my shoulder. I’m currently packing up really quick to hop on the plane and head to New York for a second opinion but I wanted to let all of you know first that there’s no chance of me competing in Beijing.

“There are so many mixed feelings because last night they were almost positive there was something wrong with my nerve, which could have ultimately been much more serious.

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Tags: beijing olympics, Maria Sharapova, Marta Domachowska

BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) — The biggest-ever Brazilian delegation is expected to give the best-ever performance in Beijing with the world’s top ball players and sailors on board.

“I want you to win all the medals possible,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said when he greeted the athletes at a send-off for the national delegation.

Volleyball and sailing, providing two gold medals each when Brazil won a record five golds in the Athens Olympics, are still hot favorites for the South American country in the upcoming Beijing Games.

The indoor and beach volleyball teams were expected to make a clean sweep of four gold medals at stake, Brazil’s top sports magazine Globo Esporte predicted.

The men’s indoor team, led by top star Gilberto Godoy Filho (better known as Giba), has proved its ruling position by wrapping up champions of all major international competitions including the Olympics, World Championships and World Cup since 2001. The team, coming to Beijing with an average age of 28, is targeting nothing but the title.
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Tags: Beijing Games, Brazil, Brazilian

Washington (dpa) - US President George W Bush will leave Monday on his ninth trip to Asia in nearly eight years in office, a White House official said.

The opening of the Beijing Olympics will be the highlight of the seven-day tour that also includes stops in South Korea and Thailand.

The president and First Lady Laura Bush will arrive on Wednesday in Seoul, said Dennis Wilder, senior director for Asian affairs in Bush’s National Security Council.

The next day, August 6, President Bush is scheduled to meet with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, whom Bush hosted in March at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland.
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Tags: Olympics, Thailand

China’s food safety supervisors on Thursday reiterated their confidence in supplies for next month’s Beijing Olympic Games, saying athletes can rely on catering services at the Olympic village.

China is “capable and confident” of ensuring the absolute safety of food supplied to the Games, said Tang Yunhua, a Beijing Food Safety Administration official.

She said the capital’s food quality control department had sent inspectors to monitor the entire process of Olympic food supply, from production to the table, making sure nothing would go wrong.

“We shoulder this responsibility for the perfect safety of Olympic food. We are capable and confident of it,” she told a press conference.
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Tags: catering services at the Olympic village, Food for Beijing Olympics, olympic village

ATHENS (AFP) — A world of fans and an army of critics are counting the days before China’s long-awaited launch of the Beijing Olympics on August 8 but for previous hosts Athens, Games’ indifference is the rule.

A lingering hangover from the 2004 Olympics, low medal expectations in Beijing and a spate of demoralising doping scandals in recent months have combined to sap interest in the event, observers say.

“I doubt many Greeks would know when the Games start in Beijing if we asked them,” says Thomas Gerakis, a pollster at opinion company Marc SA.

“It makes sense that spirits are lower this time round,” says Serafeim Kotrotsos, the former spokesman of the Athens 2004 organising committee who now works for Greek daily Eleftheros Typos.

“These are not our Games…and the recent doping cases have cooled interest among the Greek public,” he told AFP.
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Tags: athens, Athens Olympics, greeks

ACCORDING to recent reports there’s not been the deluge of bookings that China had expected for the Beijing Olympics.

China had hoped for 500,000 visitors and now hotels in Beijing are slashing their room rates as the expected rush has failed to materialise.

Overseas visitors have complained about the delay in processing visas and many have expressed reservations about the security situation post-Tibet and the possibility of terrorist attacks.

The Chinese Government itself claims the threat of a terrorist attack is present.

But what is the real security situation?

Security concerns should not deter spectators. While there may be other reasons for not attending, such as publicity regarding the city’s smog, the Olympic Games are not normally targeted by politically motivated terrorists with the intention of killing spectators. The reason being that killing an international audience is counterproductive to achieving political objectives.

More at risk from terrorism are some of the national representatives, like the athletes and officials from Israel and the US, because of their nations’ foreign policies. These days US and Israeli athletes travel with their own security and socialise less with the other athletes.

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Tags: olympic bookings

With just over a week to go till the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a number of offbeat stories are grabbing as much attention as the plight of the athletes themselves. From masks to improve breathing, to some heavy financial rewards, RT takes a look at some eye-catching innovations - from the oddball to the extraordinary.

Money, money, money

For some countries the glory of gold is not enough - they are dangling a huge financial carrot to help inspire their athletes. Azeri athletes are to get a six-fold increase from 2004, with gold now netting them $720,000.

When it comes to Russia, the reward for getting gold has tripled, from $50,000 to $155,000.
But the country with the biggest pay-day is the hosts China, reportedly offering $1 million to gold-winners.

At the other end of the scale, the U.S. gold medalists will bring home $25,000. This sum has remained the same since 1984. And Sweden and Norway pay their Olympic athletes nothing at all. For Scandinavians, it seems being in the Olympic team is reward enough in itself.

Reverse order

Order of appearance at the opening ceremony is traditionally determined by the Roman alphabet. But this time the order will be rearranged to suit the Chinese alphabet. The position of a country depends on the number of strokes in the first character of its Chinese name. As a result, Australia will be one of the last countries to enter the Olympic stadium, while Guinea and Japan are likely to be among the first.

In, out, and in again

A new twist has emerged in the story of Iraqi involvement. Its participation had been in doubt since June, when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspended the Iraqi National Olympic Committee (NOC) after the Iraqi government replaced the NOC’s members. The Iraqi government said the suspension was unfair and accused the IOC of not fulfilling its duties.

Following a seven hour meeting between Iraqi officials and IOC members an agreement was finally reached on Tuesday, July 29th. But only two Iraqis will compete at the Games. Five others will not be allowed to compete because the entry deadlines for their events have already passed

Breathing concerns

Concerned about air pollution in Beijing, U.S. athletes are considering wearing masks. Meanwhile New Zealand’s athletes have been issued face masks with team equipment. The delegations of these countries allowed their athletes to wear respirators around the Olympic village. Obviously, come competition time, athletes will have to take them off.

Russiatoday

Tags: air pollution in Beijing, Beijing Countdown

BEIJING, July 30 (Xinhua) — Turkish head of the Olympic delegation Mehmet Atalay said Wednesday when arrived in Beijing that the country’s athletes would try to grab five golds and more than ten medals at the forthcoming Beijing Olympics.

“Beijing Olympic Games is a very important sports event and that’s why we attache so much importance to the Games and send our biggest ever delegation to participate in”, Atalay said in an interview with Xinhua at the airport, expressing his hope that the country could win more medals than it did four years ago in Athens.

Turkish athletes won 10 medals, including four gold, three silver and three bronze medals, in the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.

Atalay, who is also the head of the Youth and Sports Directorate, added that weightlifting and wrestling would be Turkey’s trump cards.
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Tags: Naim Suleymanoglu, Turkey, Turkish athletes