Go Go Torch

The First
April 10, 2008

Top headline: International Olympic Committee supports continuation of Olympic torch relay

Also on the front page
• The big photo is a patchwork of different photos taken around Beijing of people posing with banners bearing a slogan"Go Go Torch". The man in the suit of armor on the bottom right corner of the photo is a product promoter who clinks and clanks everyday in the shopping street Wangfujing to promote a store.

China Eastern Airlines sticks to its cover story about pilot strike
The fallout from the pilot's strike on March 31 continues. In the latest development, the airline has denied media speculation that the pilots had "deliberately destroyed evidence".

According to a report released by the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the onboard flight data records of the six planes involved in the incident were incomplete, which made it hard to tell the exact weather conditions. This is the important because the airline claimed that bad weather was responsible for the flights return to their base airports despite the fact that no other airlines flying those routes were affected that day. Striking being illegal in China, nobody admitted that the flights were aborted as an act of protest.

China Eastern said the data loss was caused by equipment error, not by people.

• In a interview, Jin Jing (金晶), China's wheelchair-using fencer and Olympic torch bearer talks about how she protected the torch when "Tibetan Separatists" tried to grab it away from her in Paris.

Stories on other pages
• Chinese audiences were impressed by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's excellent command of Chinese language. Mr Rudd was on an official visit to China and gave a speech in Beijing University yesterday. The report does not mention his remarks about Tibet.
• Xu Ting (许霆), the migrant worker found guilty of robbery after an ATM gave him 175,000 yuan, is going to appeal to overturn the guilty verdict. He was sentenced for life at his first trial, while his second trial reduced the penalty to five years. See earlier Danwei post.
• The Chairman of Tibet Autonomous Region, Xiangba Pingcuo (向巴平措) said anyone who dares to disrupt the torch relay in Tibet will be "punished without mercy".