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WASHINGTON – More than 2.1 million drop-side cribs by Stork Craft Manufacturing are being recalled, the biggest crib recall in U.S history, following reports of four infant suffocations. The Consumer Product Safety Commission said late Monday the recall involves 1.2 million cribs in the United States and almost 1 million in Canada, where Stork Craft is based. Sales of the cribs being recalled go back to 1993. Nearly 150,000 of the cribs carry the Fisher-Price logo. The CPSC said it is aware of four infants who suffocated in the drop-side cribs, which have a side that moves up and down...

Knees high, ladies! China marks 60 years of Communist rule with a mighty show of its goose-stepping female militia By Mail Foreign Service Last updated at 10:30 AM on 02nd October 2009 Comments (8) Add to My Stories China celebrated its wealth and rising might with a show of goose-stepping troops, gaudy floats and nuclear-capable missiles in Beijing today, 60 years after Mao Zedong proclaimed its embrace of communism. Tiananmen Square became a high-tech stage to celebrate the birth of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, with the Communist Party leadership and guests watching the meticulously disciplined...

At 60th birthday, Chinese in nostalgia of "red" arts www.chinaview.cn 2009-09-26 20:40:19 Print by Zuo Yuanfeng BEIJING, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- On a rainy Saturday night, Kong Mingzhe rushed home from a private theater. His red Chairman Mao T-shirt was all wet. Tired from hours of rehearsal for "Godot finally came", a modern sequel inspired by Irish dramatist Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot", he turned on the DVD player. It was one episode of a period TV series about a Chinese double agent who collected information in the Kuomintang for the Communist Party of China (CPC). "I'm very curious about...

Chinese citizens and government workers have been preparing for months for their upcoming celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st. Parts of Beijing have been shut down several times, allowing for rehearsals of a once-in-a-decade military parade, multiple artistic performances and shows, fireworks and more. Security concerns are high as well, bringing out large details of security personnel and equipment. Collected here are images from the past several weeks of people around China preparing to celebrate their National Day. (37 photos total)

For years it's been a closely held secret: The People's Republic of China is an empire desperately trying to make the world think it's a state. The riots by Uighurs in China's far northwest are not something new; the place really erupted back about the time of the American Civil War. Clashes between Han Chinese moving into the basin, range and uplands inhabited by the much different ethnic people of the Central Asian heartland began at least 2,000 years ago in the Han Dynasty. Some of the most powerful pieces in Chinese literature, like the Tang Dynasty Ballad of the...

It is highly likely the recent collision of a Chinese submarine and an underwater sonar array towed by a US warship in the South China Sea was due to misjudgment of distance, Chinese military experts said. The conjecture is in line with the United States view of "inadvertent encounter". The collision occurred last Thursday as the destroyer USS John S. McCain was sailing in the sea, CNN television reported on Friday. Its sonar array, used to listen and locate underwater sounds, was damaged in the incident, but fortunately the sub and ship did not collide, an unnamed military official told...

There's something rotten in Homestead. It's the odor in Jason and Melissa Harrell's house, which was built with defective, Chinese-made drywall redolent of strong paint or rotten eggs. The smell got so bad that the Harrells felt forced to move. They now pay rent on top of their mortgage. ''What it boiled down to is, I had to choose between my financial health and my children's physical health,'' Melissa Harrell said. When the sulfurous stink in Gary and Andrea Suhajcik's Boynton Beach home wouldn't go away, the builder offered to rip out the walls, wiring, plumbing and molding in hopes...

China's show of its naval force last week at the 60th anniversary celebrations of the People's Liberation Army Navy has revived apprehension about its emergence as a formidable military power. Much of it is unwarranted. The logic behind China's naval build-up - which includes ballistic-missile submarines and reportedly an aircraft carrier - is compelling and understandable in a big-power context. With its far- flung trade and supply networks, Beijing needs to harness the naval capabilities necessary to defend its expanding sea lanes of communications. Chinese historians like to cite Mao Zedong, who once said that China does not 'desire one...

According to the below email, sent only hours ago by Cisco Systems to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Cisco is against the "Buy America" provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program....

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said Monday that Chinese ships shadowed and maneuvered dangerously close to a U.S. Navy vessel in what appeared to be an effort to harass the American crew. The Obama administration is protesting to the Chinese government. The protest will be delivered to Beijing's military attache on Monday.

WASHINGTON -- A Maryland woman was charged Friday with exporting miniature controls for small unmanned aircraft to China. The government says the controls are the world's smallest and involve a technology that cannot be shared with China because of national security concerns. The devices can be used to fly small military reconnaissance planes. Yaming Nina Qi Hanson of Silver Spring, Md., is accused of taking the controls to China last August without a required export license. If convicted, she faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

China’s richest man has disappeared. Chinese media say Huang Guangyu is under police investigation for alleged share trading violations. His company says they have not heard from the tycoon in days. Trading in shares Mr Huang’s Gome Electrical Appliances Holdings was halted today on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company issued a statement saying it was making “necessary enquiries” to try to find out what had happened to its founder and controlling shareholder. It said business was continuing as normal and the company had received no legal notice from the Chinese authorities about the whereabouts of Mr Huang. One...

A federal grand jury has indicted a former Intel employee whom the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has accused of stealing trade secrets from the company. Biswamohan Pani, 33, allegedly was found with more than 100 pages of Intel documents, with 13 "top secret" file also discovered inside his residence. Intel put more than $1 billion of research and development money into the documents Pani stole, which includes future CPU designs. "The indictment was not a surprise," said Bradford Bailey, Pani's attorney. "We knew it was coming. We will enter a plea of not guilty when an arraignment date is...

Campaign Finance: Sources of more than $190 million in Obama election contributions are unidentified. Will a federal investigation find foreigners illegally rigging the most important presidential election in history?

Over the past year, US citizens have become increasingly aware of the substandard consumer-level goods flowing out of China, but new reports indicate that the counterfeit products and dubious quality controls are not confined to the consumer sector. An increasingly large number of supposedly military-grade electronic components are turning out to be counterfeit commercial-grade hardware that, in some cases, is decades older than the manufacturing label indicates. The problem, to be sure, is not entirely China's fault. Back in 1994 and 1996, the Clinton Administration passed two bills, the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (1994), and the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996...

The U.S. and NATO were the one that first violated UN Charter by recognizing Kosovo independence. Russia was against it and warned that the U.S. would open the Pandora's Box by recognizing Kosovo. Of course, the US was arrogant and full of itself, and the US didn't give a damn. It was the U.S. that opened the Pandora's Box in the first place. So now Russia is returning the favor by recognizing the breakaway Georgian regions. The U.S. didn't give a damn about Russia before, so why should Russia give a damn about the U.S. right now? The U.S. can...

It turns out that the Greco-Roman wrestler who was stripped of his bronze medal for dropping it in disgust on the mat had reason for being angry, according to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

With taekwondo already rumored to be on the brink of Olympic elimination, the sport was doing everything it could to avoid even the slightest shock of controversy. On Friday, it was struck by lightning. In a chaotic episode that might ultimately prove to be the tipping point to Olympic doom, American two-time defending gold medalist Steven Lopez was eliminated from gold-medal contention on a controversial referee’s decision. Lopez would go on to win bronze in the 80-kilogram weight class, but not until after his team leader, Herb Perez, had filed a protest and then ripped the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF)...

With the parents growing indignant and the Beijing Games winding down, the International Olympic Committee wants to “put to rest” persistent questions about the age of China’s gold medal women’s gymnastics team. The IOC said Friday there is still no proof anyone cheated, though it asked the International Gymnastics Federation to investigate “what have been a number of questions and apparent discrepancies,” spokeswoman Giselle Davies said. However, all the information the Chinese gymnastics federation presented supports its insistence that its athletes were old enough to compete.

BEIJING — Two elderly Chinese women have been sentenced to a year of “re-education through labor” after they repeatedly sought a permit to demonstrate in one of the official Olympic protest areas, according to family members and human rights advocates. The women, Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, had made five visits to the police this month in an effort to obtain permission to protest what they contended was inadequate compensation for the demolition of their homes in Beijing. During their final visit on Monday, Public Security officials informed them that they had been given administrative sentences for “disturbing...

The mystery of the half-filled stands at many events at the 2008 Olympic Games has been solved, according to Chinese internet users, who say it is the result of a policy to prevent the gathering of large and possibly uncontrollable crowds. They claim ticket sales to the public were secretly restricted. Blocks of tickets went to government departments, Communist party officials or state-owned companies, which have quietly obeyed orders not to hand them out. “People are so angry because they slept all night outside ticket booths and got nothing and now they see this,” said one blogger, Jian Yu. Official...

The Kung Fu pupils in the opening ceremony of the Olympics have spent the last year cooped up in a military camp outside Beijing. Conditions have been bad. "They weren't even given enough food," says their trainer. This news adds to the criticism of the Beijing Organizing Committee. Viewers from around the globe marvelled at the Opening Ceremony last Friday. One of the most spectacular features was the martial arts display by 2008 pupils from the famous Shaolin Centre in Henan province. With coordinated movements, they showed the Tai Chi variant of Kung Fu; a popular way to relax for...

Holden Caulfield, call your office. I have discovered the promised land of phoniness. During Friday's opening ceremonies in Beijing, a 9-year-old girl named Lin Miaoke sang a ballad to a packed stadium and a billion TV viewers. But the voice coming out of our TV sets wasn't hers. It belonged to a 7-year-old girl named Yang Peiyi. The Communist Party decided Peiyi had the better voice, but Miaoke was better looking -- so they created a phony hybrid of the two. "The reason was for the national interest," said Chen Qigang, general music designer of the opening ceremonies. "The child...

There is absolutely no doubt - none, zero, zilch - that the Chinese "women's" gymnastics team featured several little girls no older than 14 years of age - two years younger than the international federation allows for competition. Online registrations of these girls list one age, their passports list another. This is blatant cheating - no other word for it. Guess which one the federation is taking as correct? Half of the team - He Kexin, Yang Yilin, Jiang Yuyuan - would be under age, according to online sports registration lists in China. The international gymnastics federation, however, said those...

Chinese Olympic organizers acknowledged Tuesday they were struggling to handle an unforeseen and baffling problem inside Summer Games venues and at the showpiece Olympic Park. Two weeks after announcing they had sold every one of the record 6.8 million tickets offered for the Games, Olympics officials expressed dismay at the large numbers of empty seats at nearly every event and the lack of pedestrian traffic throughout the park, the 2,800-acre centerpiece of the competition. (snip) To remedy the problem, officials are busing in teams of state-trained "cheer squads" identifiable by their bright yellow T-shirts to help fill the empty seats...

If you watched the Opening Ceremony on Friday night, chances are you said something like, "no way that's possible" at least once. It turns out you were right. London's Telegraph newspaper reports that some of the fireworks which appeared over Beijing during the television broadcast of the Olympic Opening Ceremony were actually computer generated. But -- hold on -- it's not necessarily as bad as you think. The faked fireworks were actually set-off at the stadium, but because of potential dangers in filming the display live from a helicopter, viewers at home were shown a pre-recorded, computer-generated shot.

Beijing's struggle to deal with foreign journalists covering the Olympics reached a new low Friday. As 30,000 people queued for the last Olympics ticket sales, fist-fights broke out. Police and soldiers tried to keep journalists from recording the mayhem. A photojournalist for Hong Kong's South China Morning Post was detained for six hours. Two from Hong Kong's Now TV channel were detained, and the station reports that police asked them to delete their footage. All the journalists were from Hong Kong, suggesting police may have been particularly forceful with ethnically Chinese reporters. Meanwhile, the government continues to block news Web...

Chinese security forces are putting pressure on angry parents to abandon demands for a full investigation into why so many schools collapsed in the May earthquake in Sichuan province and have rounded up human rights workers in the earthquake-ravaged region. In tent cities that have sprung up throughout the region, soldiers carrying batons patrol the streets and security agents and police have stepped up efforts to muzzle any sign of “social instability”. An atmosphere of anxiety reigns among the parents of children killed in school collapses in the towns of Mianzhu and Dujiangyan as government and security officials apply increasing...

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a set of thinly veiled warnings to China on Saturday, cautioning that it could risk its share of further gains in Asia’s economic prosperity if it bullied its neighbors over natural resources in contested areas like the South China Sea. Three years ago at the same lectern here, Mr. Gates’s predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, bluntly criticized China’s swift military buildup. Last year Mr. Gates struck a more conciliatory tone, saying Beijing and Washington had a chance to “build trust over time.� Mr. Gates seemed to take a third approach in his remarks to a...

Christian Dior, the French fashion brand, has become the latest global company to learn a hard lesson about the danger of offending Chinese sensitivities. Facing the possibility of a boycott of its products, the luxury company said Thursday that it had dropped the American actress Sharon Stone from its advertising in China after she suggested last week that the recent earthquakes in Sichuan Province were karmic retribution for Beijing’s treatment of Tibet.

A Chinese magazine has been shut down for printing pictures of scantily-clad women posing in rubble for a special report on the country's devastating earthquake. The New Travel Weekly, a small lifestyle magazine, ran photos of sultry models in their underwear amid the debris in an issue that hit the stands on Monday - the first of three days of national mourning. The press and publication department of the southwestern city of Chongqing, where the magazine was based, said it decided to close the magazine down for "rectification." The department said the magazine "seriously violated propaganda discipline and went against...

I do not know if this article suit to be posted here, but I just want to speak something. Today when I went to NYT and an review attracted my attention, title "fed up with peace" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/opinion/18kristof.html). This article frightens me. There it covered a monk who claimed that he( Dalai Lama) has been too peaceful over the China, and they should take some actions more violent, especially when he is gone. It depicts that this impatience seems widespread among young Tibetans , and remarks that the Dalai Lama should return Tibet as a spiritual leader and own more rights....

The commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific has called on China to give up any plans to develop what he calls "high-end military options," and says the United States has no intention of abandoning its position as the leading military power in Asia.Admiral Keating says Chinese leaders should not expect to be able to become Asia's dominant military power."It is absolutely essential for us to continue efforts to engage our Chinese colleagues in dialogue, to exchange personnel, to share tactics, techniques and procedures primarily to ensure they understand our preeminent role as the dominating military in the Pacific, our...

The United States has warned Beijing over reported use of Chinese weapons by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Asian giant's continued sale of arms to Iran, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said Thursday. He said he conveyed the concerns personally to Chinese officials during his visit to Beijing this week. "Just the other day, Monday, when I was in Beijing, this was one of the issues I raised -- concern about Chinese weapons or Chinese-designed weapons showing up in some of these battle areas, be it Iraq or Afghanistan," he told a congressional hearing on...

My name is Jessie from the United States; I am 30-years-old,i`m a career woman. I work in an insurance company, learning Chinese almost a year. China's Tibet after the incident, I have read many Chinese sites, though not all understand, but a year of learning is not wasted. I found that our own media reports in China and Tibet there are many things inconsistent, in some cases are completely reversed the facts, when I heard C-N-N's Jack Cafferty with the insulting remarks at a shame, I do not know Whether they live in a stress on democracy and freedom, speaking...

A Chinese primary school teacher and a beautician have filed a suit against CNN in New York over remarks they say insulted the Chinese people and are seeking $1.3 billion in compensation -- $1 per person in China, a Hong Kong newspaper reported. The case against the Atlanta-based cable channel, its parent company Turner Broadcasting and Jack Cafferty, the offending commentator, comes after 14 lawyers launched a similar suit in Beijing alleging that Cafferty's remarks earlier this month violated the dignity and reputation of the Chinese people. Cafferty said the United States imported Chinese-made "junk with the lead paint on...

China's stock market has lost half its value since October in one of the most spectacular bear markets of the last half century, eliminating $2.5 trillion (£1.25 trillion) of paper wealth. Chinese investors suffer in price crash A report by UBS said Chinese exporters had so far proved immune to the US slowdown The Shanghai Composite briefly fell below the key psychological level of 3,000 yesterday, down 50pc from its peak. The near panic sales over recent weeks have caused heavy losses for millions of Chinese savers who jumped into the market at the top of the boom, but this...

American Chinese and Chinese students across the United States have been voluntarily and spontaneously staging a series of peaceful protests against the Dalai Lama's separatist activities as he tours the country. "Wherever Dalai goes, he will always meet protests from Chinese people and all peace-loving folks," Ge Yan, a Chinese student studying in Minnesota, told Xinhua on Friday. During the Dalai Lama's stop in Rochester, Minnesota, on Wednesday, some 200 Chinese Americans and Chinese students lined up on the streets, condemning the Dalai clique's attempts to sabotage the Beijing Olympics and expressing firm support for the Games and the torch...

Tibetan Government-in-exile denounced China's dumping of nuclear waste in Tibet way back in 1980s. In 1987 His Holiness the Dalai Lama released the Five Point Peace Plan for Tibet, the fourth point in this plan called for: Restoration and protection of Tibet's natural environment and the abandonment of China's use of Tibet for the production of nuclear weapons and dumping of nuclear waste. Tibetan government-in-exile's consistent condemnation of China's storing of nuclear waste in Tibet was reckoned with skepticism by the international media. The existence of nuclear waste was denounced by His Holiness the Dalai Lama at a press conference...

Tibetans have a strong case against Beijing. But mixing it in with the Olympics and Darfur is a red rag to a wounded young bull. Nationalism is more often aroused by setbacks than success, so the Tibet problems and the possible threats to a triumphal Olympics are stirring it in China. On the horizon is the possibility that these will combine with high inflation, stagnating exports and trade tensions with the United States to create a perfect nationalistic storm. The Chinese leadership faces a difficult balancing act. As its legitimacy is now based on national achievement, not communist ideology, it...

Officials put out Olympic torch 3 times By JEROME PUGMIRE and ELAINE GANLEY, Associated Press Writers 1 hour, 12 minutes ago Security officials extinguished the Olympic torch three times Monday as protests against China's human rights record turned a relay through Paris into a chaotic series of stops and starts. Despite massive security, at least two activists got within almost an arm's length of the flame before they were grabbed by police. Officers tackled many protesters and carried off some of them. A protester threw water at the torch but failed to extinguish it and was also taken away. At...

500 protest Olympic torch relay in Paris By JEROME PUGMIRE and ELAINE GANLEY, Associated Press Writers 49 minutes ago Paris became the stage Monday for the latest round of global protests against China, with thousands of police deployed to protect the Olympic torch relay after chaos in London the day before. About 500 protesters congregated at the Trocadero Square, which faces the Eiffel Tower, the relay's start-point. They carried signs reading "Save Tibet," and "Act fast, Tibet is dying." Across town, City Hall was draped with a banner reading, "Paris defends human rights around the world." In London on Sunday,...

BEIJING (AP) — Police fired on hundreds of protesters in a Tibetan area of western China, killing eight people, overseas activist groups said. State media reported one government official was seriously injured in what it called a riot. Two monks also committed suicide late last month because of government oppression, another Tibetan activist group said Saturday. The reports indicate that unrest is continuing in China's Tibetan areas despite a massive security presence in place since anti-government demonstrations in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, and neighboring provinces broke out in mid-March. The protests are the longest and most sustained challenge to China's 57-year...

Prosecutors called Chi Mak the "perfect sleeper agent," though he hardly looked the part. For two decades, the bespectacled Chinese-born engineer lived quietly with his wife in a Los Angeles suburb, buying a house and holding a steady job with a U.S. defense contractor, which rewarded him with promotions and a security clearance. Colleagues remembered him as a hard worker who often took paperwork home at night. Eventually, Mak's job gave him access to sensitive plans for Navy ships, submarines and weapons. These he secretly copied and sent via courier to China -- fulfilling a mission that U.S. officials say...

Tibetan monks shouting pro-independence slogans caught Chinese officials by surprise Thursday during a highly scripted tour for Western journalists in Lhasa’s central Buddhist temple, disrupting China’s effort to portray the recent Tibetan rioting as the work of violent criminal thugs and separatists. “Tibet is not free! Tibet is not free!� yelled one young Buddhist monk, who then started crying, according to an Associated Press correspondent in the tour. Government handlers shouted for the journalists to leave and tried to pull them away during the 15-minute protest by about 30 monks at the Jokhang Monastery in central Lhasa. It was unclear...

Countries urged to see 'true face' of Dalai Lama By Qin Jize (China Daily) Updated: 2008-03-26 07:10 Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang yesterday again urged the international community to see the Dalai Lama's "true face" and offer no support for his secessionist activities. Qin made the remarks in response to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent call for China to consider a new policy to address the Tibet issue and to start talks with the Dalai Lama. US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi also visited the Dalai Lama last week. Qin said the position of just a few...

China on Wednesday expressed its "grave concern and strong displeasure" over what the United States said was an accidental shipment of ballistic missile components to Taiwan. China has asked the United States "to thoroughly investigate this incident, and report their findings to the Chinese side in a timely, truthful and detailed manner," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement on the ministry's Web site. "We once again remind the United States to abide by the Sino-U.S. joint communique of August 17, and cease arm sales to Taiwan and contact with the Taiwanese military, in order to avoid damaging...

The long-suffering Tibetans have been in the news. This happens perhaps once or twice a decade. In a more moral world, however, public opinion would be far more preoccupied with Tibetans than with Palestinians, would be as harsh on China as it is on Israel, and would be as fawning on Israel as it now is on China. But, alas, the world is, as it has always been, a largely mean-spirited and morally insensitive place, where might is far more highly regarded than right. Consider the facts: Tibet, at least 1,400 years old, is one of the world's oldest nations,...

A Chinese-born engineer convicted of conspiracy to export U.S. defense technology to China was sentenced Monday to 24 1/2 years in federal prison by a judge who said the defendant betrayed his adopted country. Chi Mak, 67, who worked on naval propulsion systems, was also convicted of acting as an unregistered foreign agent, attempting to violate export control laws and making false statements to the FBI. Federal prosecutors asked for 30 years, while Mak's defense team proposed 10 years. There is no parole in the federal prison system. Mak asked U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney for leniency before sentencing....

WE HAVE recently witnessed violent protests in Tibet. I support the struggle of the people of Tibet. The question that arises now is what is the case all about and how is India affected by this conflict? Recently, Indian Prime Minister visited Arunachal Pradesh. While addressing a rally in Itanagar, he said that Arunachal Pradesh is India’s land of rising sun. China lodged its protest on Manmohan Singh’s assertion over this claim of India. China has always said that Arunachal Pradesh is part of China. Officials on Indian side are numb since then over an issue, which has potential to...