Sorry, Olympic ticket buyers

Beijing Youth Daily
October 31, 2007

The lead headline in today's Beijing Youth Daily announces that starting from November 1, Beijing's license plate system will be overhauled. Of special note is the addition of letters: two roman letters (not including O, D, or I, which could be confused with numerals) may be included among the last five places of the plate number. Additionally, yellow plates will be used on special-use vehicles, and the current black plates that foreign car owners use will be swapped for blue ones.

The front page photo shows people crowding in front of a Bank of China counter to buy tickets for the Olympics. The second phase of Olympic tickets sales, which began yesterday, met with unprecedented demand. The online tickets sale site crashed when it received 8 million page views from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM, and calls to sale hotline also exceeded 3.8 million. The organizers have halted sales temporarily; new sales methods will be implemented on November 5.

Other headlines:

• Physical check-up institutions will face a fine of up to 5,000 yuan if they fake a certification, according to a proposed health check regulation;
• The executive group of the Beijing-Shanghai express railway was established yesterday. It will coordinate the major issued involved in the the construction;
• Quanjude, a famous chain of Peking Duck restaurants, will list on the Shenzhen Securities Market next month;
• Action movie star Jacky Chan opened his own coffee shop, Chenglong Coffee, in Zhongguancun.