BEIJING - A news story describing a successful launch of China’s long-awaited space mission and including detailed dialogue between astronauts launched on the Internet Thursday, hours before the rocket had even left the ground.
The country’s official news agency Xinhua posted the article on its Web site Thursday, and remained there for much of the day before it was taken down.
A staffer from the Xinhuanet.com Web site who answered the phone Thursday said the posting of the article was a “technical error” by a technician. The staffer refused to give his name as is common among Chinese officials.
Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) — Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest independent U.S. securities firm, may sell a larger stake to China Investment Corp. and is in talks about a possible merger with Wachovia Corp., a person familiar with the matter said.
China’s state-controlled fund may buy as much as 49 percent of the New York-based investment bank, said the person, who declined to be identified because the talks aren’t public and may end in no agreement. Morgan Stanley resumed its decline on the New York Stock Exchange, falling as much as 22 percent.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is more impaired from the stroke he apparently suffered last month than reports from the region suggest, and the United States and China are holding talks about what to do if the government in Pyongyang collapses, FOX News has learned.
A senior Bush administration official says that although Kim may not be close to death, the U.S. does not accept reports from South Korea that he’s on his way to a rapid recovery.
The Chinese infrastructure that so enthralls Obama remains decades behind that of the US. What infrastructure China manages to build, however, gets its energy from oil and coal, not from wind and solar. China has become the highest emissions nation in the world and shows no sign of slowing itself down over concerns about anthropogenic climate change. In fact, the air in Beijing is so bad that outdoor Olympics events almost had to be moved.
Meanwhile, the regime where Obama thinks the world would love to do business maintains itself through brutal oppression. China blocked access to the Internet for international journalists despite promising to allow full access to reporters for the Games. They arrested reporters covering peaceful protests. And these are the actions they took while trying to make themselves look good.
China will censor the Internet used by foreign media during the Olympics, an organising committee official confirmed Wednesday, reversing a pledge to offer complete media freedom at the games.
“During the Olympic Games we will provide sufficient access to the Internet for reporters,” said Sun Weide, spokesman for the organising committee.
He confirmed, however, that journalists would not be able to access information or websites connected to the Falungong spiritual movement which is banned in China.
Other sites were also unavailable to journalists, he said, without specifying which ones.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police have arrested a prominent Internet dissident for violating his probation terms, a rights group said, as the country steps up a pre-Olympic crackdown on dissent to ensure the Games go smoothly.
Du Daobin, from the central province of Hebei, was given a suspended sentence for subversion in 2004 having been detained by police in Wuhan for posting online essays in support of fellow dissident, Liu Di.
BEIJING — Beijing’s Olympic shutdown begins Sunday, a drastic plan to lift the Chinese capital’s gray shroud of pollution just three weeks ahead of the games.
Half of Beijing’s 3.3 million vehicles will be pulled off the roads and many polluting factories will be shuttered. Chemical plants, power stations and foundries left open have to cut emissions by 30 percent — and dust-spewing construction in the capital will be halted.
BEIJING — China said Thursday it had uncovered a criminal ring planning to kidnap athletes and others at the Beijing Olympic Games.
The “violent terrorist gang” was based in the restive western Xinjiang region and headed by a man identified as Abdulrahman Tuersun, Public Security Ministry spokesman Wu Heping said at a news conference. He also gave more details on a second alleged ring that had been uncovered in January.
Wu said 35 people, including Tuersun and another man, Kuerban Mutalifu, were arrested between March 26 and April 6 for plotting to kidnap athletes, foreign journalists and other visitors to the August Olympics.
BEIJING — President Hu Jintao of China waved the Olympic torch at a ceremony in Tiananmen Square on Monday, smiling broadly as balloons, streamers and confetti rose into a mostly blue sky.
Then came the uncertain part. Mr. Hu sent the torch on a 130-day journey around the globe where protests and controversy likely await. First stop on what Beijing is calling a “Journey of Harmony” will be Lhasa, the Tibetan capital still simmering from violent anti-government protests.
BEIJING - Internet users in China were blocked from seeing YouTube.com on Sunday after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appeared on the popular U.S. video Web site.The blocking added to the communist government’s efforts to control what the public saw and heard about protests that erupted Friday in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, against Chinese rule.
Access to YouTube.com, usually readily available in China, was blocked after videos appeared on the site Saturday showing foreign news reports about the Lhasa demonstrations, montages of photos and scenes from Tibet-related protests abroad.
The transfer of secrets
By claire on November 6, 2008, 4:10 pm
wonder when how long before you (you=president elect) get to find out about the sekrit to turning thin air into...
AP, “China space mission article hits Web before launch”
Bloomberg, “
BEIJING - Internet users in China were blocked from seeing YouTube.com on Sunday after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appeared on the popular U.S. video Web site.The blocking added to the communist government’s efforts to control what the public saw and heard about protests that erupted Friday in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, against Chinese rule.
