CHINA - Guarding the Games

Without much public fuss, China has established a special task force, designed to guard the Olympic Games 2008. After a short period of plannings, that anti-terror brigade actually came into being between 2005 and 2007. It is now reported to be fully operational. On March 1, a first report on the new Chinese task force reached Europe and was finally confirmed, on March 24, by the Chinese news agency XINHUA. Now, some more weeks later, that subject seems to be broadly discussed by other Chinese media as well while reports in English and French are still missing.
A nice example for interesting news "speeding around the world". By the way, I found the March 1 article in a German supermarket, owned by some Vietnamese and where they use Chinese papers to wrap up dried fish and vegetables. That about getting informed.....

MAYDAY 2008

from the dictatorship of the proletariat
to the dictatorship of the young cannibals ...
Click to the pictures and read the whole story !

AFGHANISTAN - More Dangerous Than Ever

UPDATE April 27 :
President Karzai survived an attack of the Taliban that took place during a military ceremony where members of the government and influential tribal leaders of his coalition gathered. One tribal leader and a member of parliament were killed. (Report by AL-JAZEERA)


AP / Associated Press released the following news:

Friday, April 18 :
The son of General van Uhm, commander of the Armed Forces of the Netherlands in Afghanistan, has been killed in a bomb explosion, only some kilometers away from Camp Holland. Taliban said they always knew the whereabouts of the general's son.

Saturday, April 19 :
The Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, who has been reported missing since February 11, is beeing held by the Taliban. That has been proven by a video, published by the Arabic TV station Al-Arabiya. Azizuddin was captured in the boundary region between Pakistan and Afghanistan only some days before the general elections in Pakistan.
At the time of his disappearance, Arabic sources already hinted at a relationship between his possible abduction by the Taliban and the arrest of one of their military leaders (Al-Jazeera, February 2008).

CHINA - First High-Speed Train Launched

People's Daily online reported (April 11, 2008):
Tangshan Railway Vehicle Co. Ltd., a CNR company, launched three units of its high-speed train CRH3 that is supposed to reach a maximum speed of 350 km/h. Resembling the German ICE train (330 km/h) rather than the French TGV, each unit consists of 8 wagons (one first class, six second class and one second class restaurant wagon) and is intended to transport 557 passengers. In 2009, a total of 57 train units will be in operation.
Bad news for Germany that is trying to sell its brand-new magnetic hovertrain TRANSRAPID to China.

A series of photos, showing the new Chinese train, is available on the Chinese language site of People's Daily.


For further information, please refer to the English language site of the TRANSRAPID manufacturer.
Financial Times Germany reports on latest developments of the TRANSRAPID project (German language site).
Another German language site, showing the ICE system that seems to be more adequate for Chinese mass transportation requirements, can be found here: German Railways Authority.

CUBA - latest development

On February 25, 2008, Raul Castro officially replaced his brother Fidel in a well-prepared "change of the guards". Though, Raul is president now, Fidel Castro will remain an important figur in the background of Cuban politics.
(source: "Euro News" citing "Cubavision")


First thing we learnt from Castro's Cuba after that change:
Following an invitation from Jaime Cardinal Ortega y Alamino, Archbishop of Havana, German missionaries of the order of Saint Benedict are going to found a monastery on Communist Cuba, a mission imagined to be impossible up to now. As Archabbot Jeremias Schröder OSB of the Ottilien Missionary Benedictines put it:
"The role of the church in society is no longer rejected in Cuba. It is again valued. The cardinal succeeded in achieving a reasonable level of understanding with the government. Thus relations with the church in Cuba clearly improved, and one might say, 'liberalized.' This development is also a result of the visit of Pope John Paul II in January 1998. A further impulse was surely the February 20-26 visit of Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Pope's trip"
(source: "Radio Vatikan online" and "What's New OSB",
March 5/6 2008)