The Silver State Chronicles

Beware!

The apes & chimps are finally making their move.

Metro.co.uk reports…

Tourist pushed off cliff by monkey

A holidaymaker is suing her travel agents after she was pushed off a cliff by a monkey in China.

Zhou Juchang, 60, plunged 20 ft when she was mugged by a monkey for bags of food her tour guide recommended she should buy to feed them.

Zhou broke three ribs and fractured her hip in the fall in Chengdu.

He must have been very annoying

Read the whole story at MSNBC.com…

Passer-by pushes suicide jumper in China
Says he was fed up with ‘selfish activity’ of man who suffered injuries in fall

Chen Fuchao, a man heavily in debt, had been contemplating suicide on a bridge in southern China for hours when a passer-by came up, shook his hand — and pushed him off the ledge.

Chen fell 26 feet (8 meters) onto a partially inflated emergency air cushion laid out by authorities and survived, suffering spine and elbow injuries, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.

The passer-by, 66-year-old Lai Jiansheng, had been fed up with what he called Chen’s “selfish activity,” Xinhua said. Traffic around the Haizhu bridge in the city of Guangzhou had been backed up for five hours and police had cordoned off the area.

“I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest,” Lai was quoted as saying by Xinhua. “They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities’ attention to their appeals.”

Xinhua said Lai was “taken away by police” but did not elaborate.

Read more…

King of Men Devises Contest for Mistresses

I admit that I like this guy’s style!  Read the whole story at CNN…

Chinese mistress contest takes tragic turn

A married Chinese businessman who could no longer afford five mistresses held a competition to decide which one to keep.

But the contest took a fatal turn when one of the women, eliminated for her looks, drove the man and the four other competitors off a cliff, Chinese media reported.

The spurned mistress died and the other passengers were injured, the reports said.

Police initially thought the car had plummeted off a mountain road in eastern China on December 6 by accident. Then they learned of the contest through a letter the dead woman had left behind, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said.

The 29-year-old woman, identified only as Yu, was a waitress when she met the businessman at a restaurant in the coastal city of Qingdao in 2000.

At the time, the businessman, identified only by his last name — Fan — was married and had four other mistresses, according to the Peninsula Metropolis Daily newspaper in Qingdao.

The women knew of one another, but none elected to break up with the man and give up their rent-free apartment and a 5,000 yuan ($730) monthly allowance, the reports said.

When the economy soured, the businessman apparently decided to let go of all but one mistress.

He staged a private talent show in May, without telling the women his intentions. An instructor from a local modeling agency judged the women on the way they looked, how they sang and how much alcohol they could hold, the Shanghai Daily said.

The judge knocked out Yu in the first round of the competition based on her looks. Angry, she decided to exact revenge by telling her lover and the four other women to accompany her on a sightseeing trip before she returned to her home province, the media reports said.

It was during the trip that Yu reportedly drove the car off the cliff.

Fan shut down his company after the crash and paid Yu’s parents 580,000 yuan ($84,744) as compensation for her death.

The four other women left him, as did his wife when she learned of the affairs.

Bikini Clad Olympians Thank Dubya and Infuriate NBC

America’s sweethearts, Misty May-Treanor & Kerri Walsh, fulfilled their destiny by repeating their Gold Medal win at the Olympics.  Fit and photogenic, the duo was celebrated as the rock stars of the American delegation.  Their dominance wasn’t in doubt, and they managed to bring the Gold home to the USA.

Congratulations, ladies, and kudos to you and to all of the Olympians for their outstanding accomplishments and efforts.

May-Treanor & Walsh did tick off their network overlords at NBC, though.  In their post-victory interview, they managed to sneak in a shout out to President Bush, noting him as personally inspirational to them.  NBC, of course, cut them off…

Special thanks to MsUnderestimated.com for getting the video and making it available, because the gang at NBC worked overtime to yank this file off of YouTube!

Maybe if we’re lucky some of the judges might be legit

Our friends at The Irish Times report…

Minority ethnic groups used in Games’ opening were fake
CLIFFORD COONAN in Beijing

FAKE FIREWORKS, fake singers and now fake ethnic minorities. Beijing Olympics organisers have admitted that children from China’s dominant Han population were used in the opening ceremony last week, not youngsters from all 56 ethnic groups as previously claimed.

The news brings the issue of China’s treatment of the minority ethnic groups within its borders back into sharp relief, following accusations that Beijing has sought to drown out dissenting voices from different ethnic groups during the Games.

The Han ethnic group accounts for more than 90 per cent of China’s 1.3 billion people and is the dominant cultural group.

The 56 children who carried out the Chinese flag in a moment intended to showcase national harmony were all Han Chinese, but organisers played down the significance of using Han children to represent China’s ethnic diversity.

“It is typical for Chinese performers to wear different apparel from different ethnic groups,” said Wang Wei, spokesman for the organisers.

“There is nothing special about it. They will wear different apparel to signify people are friendly and happy together.”

Organisers often use Han Chinese instead of the genuine ethnic groups in national displays to avoid any spontaneous outbursts of independence.

Removes all doubt that he is a jackass – now it’s certain!

Thanks goodness he didn’t pose for a picture with slanted eyes!

If this incident gets more mainstream publicity, I wouldn’t be shocked if he shows up on WWE tv soon!

SI reports…

Wrestler tosses aside bronze medal

Swedish wrestler Ara Abrahamian threw away the bronze medal he won in the Greco-Roman category in disgust in a protest over judging in his semifinal bout.

Abrahamian was beaten in the 84 kg class by eventual gold medal winner Andrea Minguzzi of Italy but was disgusted by the verdict, shouting at the referee before confronting the judges. The Athens silver medal winner had to be restrained by teammates and later went on to win a bronze medal match.

But the row continued at the medal ceremony as he only grudgingly mounted the podium and after receiving his medal made a point of taking it off and leaving it in the center of the competition mat.

Swedish fans in the arena disagreed strongly with the original decision, jeering the judges, while coach Leo Myllari also weighed in.

“It’s all politics,” he said.

The medal was later returned to the sport’s governing body.

Boy do I feel dumb!

So I hear that those rascals, the Spaniard Basketball Federation, are in some hot water for a photo they took where it certainly looks like they are mocking their kind Chinese hosts in Beijing.  Poor form, friends, poor form!

Well call me Curly, but when I first saw the pic, I thought it was the Chinese team making fun of the Spaniard team!  Boy, do I feel dumb!  And I evidently am a seething, hateful bigot to boot!  You learn something new every day!

Special thanks to my friend Jenny for sending me this Fox News story!

Spanish Hoopsters in Hot Water Over Olympics Ad

Spain might have high hopes of bringing the Olympic flame back to the Iberian peninsula in 2016, but the country that played host to the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 is sporting a public relations black eye today.

The Spanish Basketball Federation took out a full-page ad in the country’s largest sports newspaper, Marca, wishing the men’s and women’s teams good luck in the Beijing games. The photo accompanying the ad, however ”showing all team members making a slant-eyed gesture” raised eyebrows and sparked international outrage.

The heavily favored Spanish team, the reigning world champions, took the court Tuesday against China, and was greeted with typical Chinese polite applause and mixed with a rare sprinkle of boos. Spain went on to win in overtime, 85-75.

The Guardian newspaper reported that no one from the federation felt the ad was inappropriate, and that no offense was intended.

Olympics 2008 Opening Ceremony: The Italians enter in style!

The 2008 Olympics has already had its memorable moments.  Most notable was the truly spectacular opening ceremony (the lip-synching imp notwithstanding).  Those guys sure know how to put on a show!  And the locals seem to be genuinely proud that their nation is showcasing this great event.

I don’t watch much of the Olympics.  I actually find the event pretty boring, by and large, and the whole enterprise tends to be a bloated mess.  But I do like the opening march of the national delegations and usually try to watch it.

Well, most of the delegations come into the stadium upbeat and happy, but pretty much march onto the grounds and wave at the fans, family, and friends in the stands and watching at home.  These days many of them hold camcorders to record their great moment, and I don’t blame them.  It’s not a stoic entrance in most cases, but the delegations tend to take it seriously.

“Here come the Italians”

The Italian delegation took the field in style – carrying their paisans piggy back, mugging for the camera, slapping each other in the back of the heads, and otherwise horsing around.  Several of the women in particular were enjoying the pomp and the the attention.  Broad smiles and laughter abounded.  Even the US announcers noted just how silly they were and how much fun they were having.

Kudos to Italia – reminding everyone that you should make every experience as fun and funny as possible!

Evidence that our friends in China are as superficial as us westerners!

AFP reports…

Olympic child singing star was a fake: ceremony director
The little girl who starred at the Olympic opening ceremony was miming and only put on stage because the real singer was not considered attractive enough, the show’s musical director has revealed.

Pigtailed Lin Miaoke was selected to appear because of her cute appearance and did not sing a note, Chen Qigang, the general music designer of the ceremony, said in an interview with a state broadcaster aired Tuesday.

Photographs of Lin in a bright red party dress were published in newspapers and websites all over the world and the official China Daily hailed her as a rising star on Tuesday.

But Chen said the girl whose voice was actually heard by the 91,000 capacity crowd at the Olympic stadium during the spectacular ceremony was in fact seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, who has a chubby face and uneven teeth.

“The reason why little Yang was not chosen to appear was because we wanted to project the right image, we were thinking about what was best for the nation,” Chen said in an interview that appeared briefly on the news website Sina.com before it was apparently wiped from the Internet in China.

Lin was seen to perform the patriotic song “Ode to the Motherland” as China’s national flag was carried into the stadium, a key moment in the three hour ceremony.

“The reason was for the national interest. The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings, and expression,” said Chen, a renowned contemporary composer and French citizen.

“Lin Miaoke is excellent in those aspects. But in terms of voice, Yang Peiyi is perfect, each member of our team agreed,” he said.

He said the final decision to stage the event with Lin lip-synching to another girl’s voice was taken after a senior member of China’s ruling Communist Party politburo attended a rehearsal.

“He told us there was a problem that we needed to fix it, so we did,” he said, without disclosing further details of the order.

The ceremony directed by China’s Oscar-nominated filmmaker Zhang Yimou and featuring more than 15,000 performers won high praise in China and overseas for its breadth, scope and flawless execution.

However criticism began to build after it emerged that another part of the opening ceremony had been faked.

Supposedly live pictures of fireworks depicting footprints moving from central Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to the Olympic stadium in the north of the capital were actually partly computer-generated or pre-recorded for TV, organisers have admitted.

“This illustrates an important aspect of these Olympic Games,” said Xiao Qiang, the director of the China Internet project at the University of California at Berkeley and former dissident.

“It is all about projecting the right image of China with no respect for honesty or for the audience.

“I do not think the Chinese state realises how unethical this is, they don’t understand what kind of values they are reflecting.”

Earlier this year Olympic organisers preoccupied with the right image for the country were criticised for insisting that only tall, slim, young and attractive women could serve as medal award ceremony hostesses.

Reports in the Chinese press concerning the faking of the song were sparse but Internet chat rooms have attracted debate with most people critical of the decision to fake the performance.

“This is an insult to the real singer and to all the people who listened,” said one commentator on popular portal Netease, reflecting the general tone.

They should subject the ‘male’ figure skaters to tests in 2010, too!

Mr Santhi Soundarajan? Ms Santhi Soundarajan?

Now, that’s an unusual headline! You don’t read stories like that every day! Yahoo reports..

China ‘sets up Olympic sex determination lab’

Olympic host Beijing has set up a sex determination lab to test female Olympic athletes suspected to be males, state media reported Sunday.

Experts at the lab, located at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, will evaluate dubious cases based on their external appearance and take blood samples testing sex hormones, genes and chromosomes, Xinhua news agency said.

Sex testing has been routine at the Olympics and other sports events for decades, triggered by fears that male athletes sought to cheat by posing as women.

Indian athlete Santhi Soundarajan was stripped of an Asian Games silver medal in 2006 after failing a gender verification test.