Dark Victory at the Oscars
By Hank
Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 25, 2008; Page A01
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 24 -- 'No Country for Old Men,' a stark West
Texas meditation on criminality and the nature of evil, won Best
Picture at the Academy Awards on Sunday, capping an Oscar season
that featured glum movies but happy critics. It was also a night
for Europeans, who took every acting prize. It was the second time
in Academy history, and the first time since 1965, that
non-Americans swept the four acting categories.
'No Country for Old Men' won four awards: Brothers Joel and
Ethan Coen also took the Best Director prize, the first time a
duo has won the award since 1962 (when Robert Wise and
Pioneering Olympian's son runs his father's
dream
By Lei Lei (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-26 08:57
OLYMPIA, Greece: China's first and only Olympian at the 1932 Los
Angeles Olympic Games, 100 and 200-m runner Liu Changchun, was
eliminated in the preliminary heats.
He might not have thought that participation in the
Olympics runs in the family - but on Monday, his son Liu Hongliang
ran a 200-m leg of the torch relay in ancient Olympia.
Liu junior also fulfilled his father's dream - after the 1932
Games, he recalled, his father always wanted to visit the
birthplace of the Olympics.
'Now I'm very excited.'
Liu Hongliang was selected by Coca Cola, a major sponsor of the
Beijing Olympic torch relay, as one of nine Chinese torchbearers on
the Greece leg after the flame was lit at the ancient site of
Olympia.
'The flame carries the dreams of generations of Chinese people,'
said Liu, 76. 'If my fa
BEIJING, Aug. 25 — No country in history has emerged as a major
industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage
that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.
But just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic
power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem
has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so
severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions,
that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the
Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling
Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own
economic juggernaut.
Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s
leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air
pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each
year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking
water.
Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a t
Food crisis will take hold before climate change, warns chief
scientist
James
Randerson, science correspondent
The
Guardian Friday March 7 2008
Food security and the rapid rise in food prices make up the
'elephant in the room' that politicians must face up to quickly,
according to the government's new chief scientific adviser.
In his first major speech since taking over, Professor John
Beddington said the global rush to grow biofuels was compounding
the problem, and cutting down rainforest to produce biofuel crops
was 'profoundly stupid'.
He told the Govnet Sustainable Development UK Conference in
Westminster: 'There is progress on climate change. But out there is
another major problem.
Therapeutic cloning offers hope of treatment for
Parkinson's
This article appeared in the Guardian on
Monday March 24
2008 on p4 of the UK
news section. It was last updated at 00:03 on March 24
2008.
China works to limit snow-related chaos before
Festival
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-01-29 09:29
BEIJING - Chinese authorities have spared no effort
in combating snow-inflicted woes and reducing the negative impact
to the least extent as volatile weather continued to rage in a
dozen Chinese regions on Monday.
The Chinese Ministry of Railways mobilized 35 extra
trains on Sunday night to help disperse about 500,000
passengers who were stranded in Guangzhou, capital of the southern
Guangdong Province, because of snow, the Guangzhou Railways Company
Group said.
Millions of travelers are currently struggling to
make their annual trip home as the Spring Festival, the most
important Chinese holiday, is only nine days away.
Passenger build-up in Guangzhou has been especially
heavy because the southern end of the Beijing-Guangzhou rail
line,
(a) Diana dies in Paris car wreck
PARIS(Agencies via Xinhua)—Britain’s Princess Diana, 36, died
yesterday after a car crash in Paris as she was being chased by
photographers, sparking a worldwide wave of mourning for “people’s
princess” whose life veered from fairytale to tragedy.
The most-photographed woman in the world and divorced wife of
the heir to the British throne, Diana died with her millionaire
companion Dodi AlFayed when their driver apparently lost control
and hit a concrete post by the River Seine.
Parisians laid red roses at the spot where the car crashed just
after midnight as tributes to the glamorous princess poured in from
monarchs, presidents and politicians around the world.
Prince Charles, whose 15-year marriage to Diana ended in divorce
last year, was flying to Paris to pick up the body of his former
wife and fly it back to Britain. French surgeons battle for hours
to save the 36-year-old princess, cutting o
Op-Ed Contributor
Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite?
By JEFF STEIN
Published: October 17, 2006
Washington
FOR the past several months, I’ve been wrapping up lengthy
interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a
fundamental question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni
and a Shiite?”
A “gotcha” question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the
most basic rule of war, I don’t think it’s out of bounds. And as I
quickly explain to my subjects, I’m not looking for theological
explanations, just the basics: Who’s on what side today, and what
does each want?
After all, wouldn’t British counterterrorism officials
responsible for Northern Ireland know the difference between
Catholics and Protestants? In a remotely similar but far more
lethal vein, the 1,400-year Sunni-Shiite rivalry is playing out in
the streets of Baghdad, raising the specter of a breakup of Iraq
into antagonistic states, one backed b
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