...When Shenzhou-7 enters its orbit, one of the three taikonauts will conduct a space walk, said Zhao Changxi, a senior scientist with the project, earlier.

A rainbow army of figures in full head-and-body rubber suits swept in, waving and smiling, to launch a lower key, but more human, show than the spectacle - overseen by renowned Chinese film director Zhang Yimou - which opened the Olympics last month. The crowd roared its approval at the lavish performance, also staged by Zhang, which featured the incorporation of sign language into dance.

China clinched a deal to develop an oil field in southeastern Iraq, marking the first major foreign oil contract struck with the Iraqi government since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The agreement, which revives a deal struck between Beijing and the Saddam Hussein regime, calls for an investment of about $3 billion. But the development agreement is a limited, technical-services contract, far less lucrative that the accord originally envisioned in a 1997 deal between Baghdad and China National Petroleum Co.

When the Caijing reporter asked Boxun whether they contacted Wu Jinglian or other relevant persons before publishing the story, this person said that they didn't have Wu Jinglian's phone number and "since we had no way to verify the story, we decided to publish it first."

As for the reader who sent in the tip, the Boxun person said that they have no clue because the website uses an anonymous IP system. They do not know the identity of the tipster nor even the location of that person. Nevertheless, the Boxun report on August 28 cited "an informed mainland person" as the source.

North Korean tourism agencies will also be allowed to open offices in the north-eastern Chinese city of Shenyang.

The move could help North Korea recover from a recent loss of South Korean tourist revenues.

"Coca-Cola is looking to tap the pure juice market where Huiyuan is the market leader," said Emma Liu, an analyst with Nomura Securities.

Liu throws cold water on the idea that the "foreigner problem" (i.e. the fact that foreign media often publish things about China that sound like they did not come from Xinhua) is caused by foreigners having not been to China and not knowing Chinese. Liu doubts that a trip to China will make foreigners see the danger of "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people" the way 'China' does.

I suspect as a scholar she found it rather difficult to fit her ideas into the interview, but I did find it odd that when she was asked how China could respond to accounts in Western media she suggesting taking a page from the Jews.

In a sign that the Olympics feelgood factor has already begun to evaporate, protesters took to the streets of Beijing yesterday in an escalating campaign against the city's biggest dump site, which they claimed was polluting the air with a foul stench and dangerous dioxins.

Wearing surgical masks and carrying umbrellas, the mostly young, middle-class campaigners blocked roads, chanted anti-pollution slogans and refused to allow rubbish trucks to pass as dozens of police filmed them and appealed for calm.

Thirty-two people have died, more than 400 injured and over 100,000 homes destroyed or damaged after an earthquake hit Sichuan and Yunnan provinces around 4:30 pm on Saturday.

The epicenter of the 6.1-magnitude quake, which has affected 500,000 people, was about 30 km southeast of Panzhihua city, near the Sichuan-Yunnan border, the China Earthquake Administration (CEA) said.

Almost six decades later, Shapiro is still here - a robust 92-year-old Chinese citizen with white hair, a strong handshake, and an exceptionally well-preserved Brooklyn accent. Part of a wave of westerners who settled in Beijing in the early Mao years to sign up for the "socialist experiment," Shapiro is one of a tiny few who lasted long enough to experience the entire, ongoing era of Communist rule - and to see China stage an Olympic opening ceremony last Friday night that gave almost no acknowledgement to Mao's legacy.