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The three once-counter-superpowers during the Cold War are now busy respectively with state (or interstate) affairs at their own choice -

        Russia has suddenly become much richer, owing to creeping high oil prices, and with new dual leadership, pledging to bolster the country's economy and order;
        U.S. is fighting the Iraq War, at the cost of $5 trillion, which increases each day;
        China, with rapid economic growth, is engaged in the Olympic Games.

A simple question: who is smart, smarter in terms of managing state or interstate affairs as a nation, again, with their power and at their own choice? And who will be stronger, more powerful in the eyes of Tomorrow’s history?

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BEIJING (AP) — An Olympic flame reached, and was lit up on, the top of the world Thursday. The 19-member mountaineering team was comprised of both ethnic Han Chinese and Tibetan members and also included university students - the team captain, Nyima Cering, is a Tibetan, while deputy Luo Shen is Han Chinese. All dressed in red parkas emblazoned with Olympic logos, broke camp before dawn and reached the top of the 29,035-foot mountain a little more than six hours later.

The Everest torch is separate from the main Olympic flame, which was not taken up the mountain because of weather concerns. A delay due to bad weather would have thrown the schedule off for the whole torch relay. The Olympic flame had been carried in a special metal canister during the ascent. As the team neared the top, they used a wand to pass the flame from the canister to the torch, which had been designed to withstand the strong winds and low oxygen levels at the top of Everest.

A colorful Tibetan prayer flag lined the path and fluttered in the wind. The climbers could be heard struggling for breath (live television) as five torchbearers each inched a few feet before passing on the flame to the next person. The final torchbearer, a Tibetan woman named Cering Wangmo, stood on the peak with the torch while other team members unfurled flags Chinese and Olympic flags. They then clustered together, cheering "We made it," and "Beijing welcomes you." One person was heard breathing heavily, murmuring "not enough oxygen." The head of the Everest leg of the relay, Li Zhixin, was overcome with emotion as the flame reached the top. "It's so hard," he said at the CCTV studio set up at base camp, choking on tears.

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Photos courtesy of Xinhua News

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"MOSCOW (Reuters) - A diminutive, soft-spoken former corporate lawyer, Russia's new president Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is an unlikely figure to lead the biggest country on earth.

The first Russian leader in generations to have worked in the private sector, Medvedev, 42, was to be sworn in as president on Wednesday in a lavish televised ceremony in the Kremlin.

He secured the post after the popular outgoing leader Vladimir Putin endorsed him as his preferred successor, ensuring an overwhelming victory at the polls in March.

Medvedev has repeatedly cast himself as a continuity candidate who will follow the course set by Putin -- a popular line in Russia, where most of the population has benefited from rapid economic growth and rising incomes under Putin.

Further underlining continuity, Putin will stay on as Medvedev's prime minister and as leader of the United Russia party, which holds a big majority in the lower house of parliament.

But the two men differ radically in background, upbringing and style.

Putin was proud of his past as a KGB agent in former East Germany and loved posing for pictures flying fighter jets or standing aboard nuclear submarines. Medvedev has no known link to the secret services and has never served in the army.

A bookish child born to two university professors, Medvedev grew up in a modest, middle-class household. His speeches reflect his educated, lawyerly background and are laced with long, complex sub-clauses."

Photos courtesy of AP

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stephen Colbert, whose U.S. presidential campaign was cut short, came out a winner on Tuesday when he walked away with a Webby award as the Internet's "Person of the Year."

The Webby awards, which honor excellence on the Internet, are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-person judging academy. Winners will be honored at ceremonies on June 9th and 10th in New York, and, as always, will be limited to just a five-word acceptance speech.

Colbert won the highest honor for "the innovative way he has used the Internet to interact with fans of The Colbert Report."

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Photo courtesy of Reuters

Original Source

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BERLIN: Vodafone, the world's largest mobile phone operator, and Telecom Italia Mobile, the leader in the Italian cellphone market, said they had reached agreements with Apple to sell the multimedia telephone. Vodafone also said it would sell the iPhone in nine other countries: the Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, India, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey.

"It was going to be difficult for Apple to continue on an exclusivity basis," said Carolina Milanesi, the research director for mobile devices at Gartner in London. "Opening up to more operators will widen their addressable market and therefore their overall sales potential."

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Original Source

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SYDNEY: "Vodafone Australia is enormously pleased to be included in the agreement to sell the iPhone to our customers later this year," Vodafone chief executive Russell Hewitt said.

"The iPhone has already proved to be extremely popular with customers in other parts of the world and Vodafone is confident that today's announcement will be well received by all Australians who are keen to get their hands on their own iPhone."

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Original Source

Photos courtesy of AP and Reuters

“There is pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.”

Above excerpt from poem by Lord Byron (1788–1824) is the beginning of the movie based on a true story, of a young top student and athlete Christopher McCandless from Emory University, who donated his savings (all $24,000) to charity and abandoned his car, walked by himself, alone, “Into the Wild”, into Alaska. He burned his social security card, all personal IDs, and family photos, leaving no clue for his well-off family to find him. A very sad journey of a young man at 24 to disconnect himself entirely from society from the moment he burnt the remaining cash in his wallet, a “new birth”, in his words… The perceived hypocrisy in his parents’ and family relationships that he hates most has buried, in a little boy’s heart, a secret bomb of pain, not unlocked in time. He did not make one phone call even to his younger sister, nor did love from acquaintances on the road stop him from a journey obviously leading an innocent to apparent danger. Does the young man “love not man the less, but Nature more”?

Released by Paramount Vantage. Running time: 140 minutes. Starring Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, and William Hurt. (screenshots) -

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