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BEIJING (AFP) - At least two people died early Sunday in a series of explosions in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang, state media said, in an attack that eyewitnesses said was followed by gunfire. The report did not say who was responsible for the blasts which came little more than a day after the start of the Olympics in Beijing. Uighur separatists in Xinjiang have in video statements threatened to attack the sporting event and Chinese authorities have also warned that "terrorists" from home and abroad pose a massive threat to the Games. The blasts on Sunday occurred between...

Had the National Population and Family Planning Commission not rescinded its invitation, I would be in China right now as the Olympics opened. But the Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the one-child policy, belatedly realized that I was a well-known critic of that policy--and of that country's human rights record in general-- and barred the door. I confess to not having been overly disappointed by their decision. Despite the fact that I read, write and speak Chinese, it would have been nearly impossible for me to do anything else in Beijing but the one thing that I will not...

A knife-wielding Chinese man attacked two relatives of a coach for the U.S. Olympic men's volleyball team at a tourist site in Beijing, killing one and injuring the other on the first day of the Olympics on Saturday, team officials and state media said. The man then committed suicide by throwing himself from the second story of the site, the 13th century Drum Tower just five miles from the main Olympics site. The brutal attack shortly after midday was all the more shocking because of the rarity of violent crime against foreigners in tightly controlled China, which has ramped up...

WASHINGTON — Though it was hoped that the Olympic Games would bring about an opening on religious freedom and human rights in China, the opposite seems to have occurred.That’s according to observers and religious freedom activists. “Instead of improvements in conditions for religious freedom and other human rights, we’ve seen broad efforts to crack down on and control religious activity,” Nina Shea, senior fellow with the Center for Religious Freedom, told the Congressional Task Force for International Religious Freedom June 20. Steve Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, believes that the Chinese government will do anything to avoid...

Woman falls from consulate in Olympics protest Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, August 7, 2008 (08-06) 13:03 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A rappelling protester fell two stories from the roof of the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco Wednesday, two days before the Olympic Games begin in Beijing and amid worldwide protest against China's human rights record in Tibet. San Francisco police and the State Department are conducting a joint investigation into the incident, including claims that the protester's ropes may have been intentionally cut. The protester was identified as Nyendak Wangden, 22, of Suisun City and a member of...

Beijing smog makes for a painful jog Will Pavia in Beijing All day yesterday Beijing was obscured by thick grey air, a phenomenon known in the Chinese state media as “overcast and hazy skies”, and described by the rest of the world as smog. Beijingers claim that the smog has thinned slightly in recent weeks, thanks to the factory closures and the one million cars removed from the roads, but still, for the newly arrived visitor, the vast windows of Beijing’s new airport terminal present an astonishing vista of nothingness. “We were gobsmacked when we landed,” an American athlete said....

PARIS (AFP) - Police banned demonstrations outside the Chinese embassy in Paris on Thursday but critics of China's human rights record stepped up protests elsewhere in the world to mark the start of the Beijing Olympics. Police in the French capital said they did not want a repeat of the "violent disturbances" that broke out in April when the Olympic torch passed through Paris, when activists angry at China's crackdown in Tibet disrupted the route. They banned any protests outside the embassy on Thursday and Friday, when the Games officially open, including a demonstration planned Friday by a coalition including...

Why Every American Should Care About China The Emerging Superpower Is Forging Relationships Where the U.S. Isn't   By BOB WOODRUFF, GABRIELLE TENENBAUM, SUSAN SCHAEFER and MEENA HARTENSTEINAug. 6, 2008   When the Olympics begin Friday in Beijing it will be a "coming out" party of sorts for China. Beijing hopes this will be a bright spot in what has otherwise been a tough year -- the country was hit by a devastating earthquake and rocked by scandals over tainted food and medicine and toxic toys. There have been protests, both within China and in other countries, about its...

Two Americans and two British nationals have been ordered to leave China “within a prescribed time limit” after displaying “Free Tibet” banners near an Olympic venue in Beijing on Wednesday, local police said. Two are expected to leave on Wednesday night and the other two on Thursday. “They disrupted public order and violated Chinese laws. Their period of stay in the country will hereby be cut short according to the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Control of the Entry and Exit of Aliens,” the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said in a statement issued late on Wednesday....

Bush to rebuke China on human rights, dissidents Wed Aug 6, 2008 9:42am EDT BANGKOK (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush plans to voice deep concerns about human rights in China in a speech on Thursday, hours before he arrives in Beijing for the opening of the Olympic Games. "The United States believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings," Bush will say in a speech in Bangkok, copies of which were released in advance. "So America stands in firm opposition to China's detention of political dissidents, human rights...

‘Chinese Military Shifts Focus to Ethnic Minorities’ AUGUST 06, 2008 06:44 The priority of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has changed from deterring Taiwan’s independence to preventing separatist movements by ethnic minorities and fighting terrorism. The Hong Kong daily Ming Pao said yesterday that the change was prompted by growing terrorist activities in the autonomous region of Xinjiang and improving ties between Beijing and Taipei. The Liberation Army Daily said Monday that the Nanjing army, which had deterred Taiwan from declaring independence, conducted large-scale anti-terrorism drills July 30. The exercises included fighter planes and bombers in Xinjiang and the Gobi...

Two Britons arrested over Tibet flag protest in Beijing Jane Macartney and Will Pavia in Beijing Four protesters have been arrested after a Briton and an American scaled two flood-lighting poles near the centre of Beijing's tightly patrolled Olympic park this morning and unfurled banners calling for Tibetan independence. Despite intense security that had been ratcheted up further in preparation for the arrival of the Olympic torch relay in the Chinese capital today, the protesters were able to display Tibetan flags and two 140 square-foot banners beside the iconic Bird's Nest Stadium that will host the Olympics opening ceremony on...

Chinese police Tuesday apologised for roughing up two Japanese journalists as Beijing's Olympic commitment to allow foreign media freedom came under scrutiny three days before the Games opened. The apology came after border police "clashed" with the Japanese journalists who had arrived in the Muslim-majority Xinjiang region after an alleged terrorist attack Monday left 16 police dead, Xinhua news agency said. "The local foreign affairs department made an apology Tuesday to two Japanese reporters," Xinhua said. A photographer for the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper was forcibly detained late Monday and kicked by police in the city of Kashgar, his employer said....

Has China got a terrorist problem? The Uighur attack in the northwest was shocking but not a precursor to a bigger outrage Rosemary Righter The Olympics will open on Friday inside a triple ring of steel. Anti-terrorism precautions have been an unavoidable feature of the Games since the PLO massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, but China has taken things to extremes. It has mobilised 110,000 police and other security forces in Beijing itself, plus 1.4 million security “volunteers” with Red Guard-style armbands and no fewer than 300,000 spy cameras. The security bill for Beijing alone exceeds £3...

The clock is winding down on the start of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China. On Aug 8, the historic Games will begin. Over 500,000 visitors will flock to Beijing and 10,000 competitors will participate in 203 events in 28 sports. It will be the most expensive Olympics in history – China has spent $40 billion upgrading infrastructures in and around Beijing. For China, it was suppose to be a “coming out” party. When China was awarded the Games in 2001, the state news agency reported: “The Games will be a milestone in China’s rising international status and...

NBC’s Matt Lauer, broadcasting live from the Great Wall of China on Monday’s "Today" show, referred to the "double-edged sword" of the world’s attention being on China for the Summer Olympic Games and asked a Chinese professor about how that "spotlight" might be "co-opted by party crashers who have a bone to pick with this country. He then asked the professor, "How worried are the people here about that?" Lauer, who will be in China during the next weeks for the Olympics, interviewed Professor Teng Dimeng of the Beijing Foreign Studies University 20 minutes into 7 am Eastern hour of...

By Chuck BaldwinAccording to numerous press reports, President George W. Bush plans to attend the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, China later this month. Bush said that it "would be an affront to the Chinese people" if he stayed away. Other world leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, are choosing to not attend the opening ceremonies in the communist country. It is hard for this writer to laud President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but in this case, even the socialist Roosevelt showed more integrity than our so-called "conservative" President, George...

via translation- ALERT - China: 16 customs officers killed and 16 wounded in an attack in Xinjiang BEIJING - Sixteen customs officers were killed and sixteen others injured Monday morning when the attack on their post in Xinjiang, Muslim region of northwestern China, according to the China New Agency.

BEIJING -- Normally smog plagued Beijing bathed in blue skies and sunshine on Saturday in just the sort of weather the Chinese pray will grace their Olympics and banish athletes' health fears six days before the big start. Experts attributed a rare day of fine weather in the Chinese capital to overnight rain and -- finally -- the impact of strict anti pollution measures such as ordering half the cars off the road and closing smoke-belching factories. "You see, we have done it! You can even see the mountains," enthused one Chinese student volunteer near the magnificent, newly built "Bird's...

Olympic Games show China through a glass, darkly As the opening approaches, preparations reflect a disturbing side of the communist regime Jonathan Fenby Olympic Games news The opening of the Beijing Olympics in eight days' time will, as always planned, attest to China's spectacular material progress since Deng Xiaoping launched market-led economic reform exactly 30 years ago. The array of venues, the gleaming new buildings, the urban infrastructure installed for the Games, will also reflect the genuine pride of a nation that, while still far from rich by Western standards, has made more people better off in a shorter time...