April 15, 2008
Top headline: Olympic air quality regulations
Beijing will introduce strict measures to regulate vehicles and construction sites during the Olympic Games and the Paralympics.
Other headlines on the front page
• The big photo shows a crew of People’s Armed Police soldiers searching the ground around the Bird Nest, the main Olympic stadium.
• A journalist was beaten in Yantai (烟台), Shandong Province
Cui Muyang (崔木杨), a journalist sent by The Beijing News to report a local election scandal was attacked yesterday when he was interviewing a source.
• The mayor of Dangyang (当阳), Hubei Province was judged by traffic police responsible for the death of a child hit by her car.
• According to an online poll run by Netease, 95.4% of the 43,880 people polled support boycotting French goods.
Stories on the other pages
- Zheng Zhihong (郑志宏), an airline pilot, was ordered by a court to pay his employer, China Eastern Airlines, 1.4 million yuan for breaking his work contract.
China Eastern Airlines asked for 12.57 million yuan from Zheng to compensate training costs.
Labor dispute between airlines and pilots have appeared in the media since 2006 when six pilots from China Eastern Airlines resorted to a hunger strike over their resignations. As China’s civil aviation industry grows at breakneck speed, the pilot shortage has become increasingly serious; private airline companies try to attract pilots from their state-run competitors with higher salaries.
- Embattled president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraff gave a speech yesterday at Tsingha University.
General Musharraff is hopefully going to be a torchbearer in the Olympic torch relay in Pakistan. If that comes true, he will be the second president torchbearer in the relay after Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
- Beijing is planning to build a second airport.
Yesterday, a coordination team was formed to choose alternative locations for the new airport. Earlier this year, Beijing Airport completed the construction of a new terminal, currently the biggest air terminal in the world, to accommodate increasing numbers of air travelers. But experts say the exploding number of passengers will make the current Beijing Airport inadequate by 2015 which makes a new airport necessary.
- Sir Run Run Shaw (邵逸夫), the 101 year-old Hong Kong media and movie tycoon, won a lifetime achievement award for his dedication to philanthropy. The China Charity Awards was sponsored by the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Shaw has donated 2.5 billion HK dollars to Mainland China since 1973. Most of the money has been used to improve education facilities.
In most major universities of mainland China, Shaw’s name can be seen on the buildings built by his money.
- Duan Chunxia (段春霞), a former vice district director in Linfen (临汾), Shanxi Province, was rehired by government a few months after she was dismissed from office for her role in last year’s “brick kiln slave” scandal. After she had been fired, she still kept her office room and used the government car assigned to her. Her reinstatement has caused controversy in the media.
- The Dalai Lama slandered the burnt and looted stores in Tibet, saying they were brothels.
- Du Shaozhong (杜少中), vice director of the Department of Environment Protection of Beijng, promised Bejing’s air quality would not decline after the Olympic Games.