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It is not every day that a nation worships a pixie who bounces off a springy mat more than a dozen feet into the air, flipping and floating and twisting like Batman above the skyscrapers of Gotham. But He Wenna, the gold medalist in women's trampoline, has emerged as one of the unlikely heroes of the Beijing Games. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An ecstatic China finally got its Olympic moment on Friday night. And if the astonishing opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games lavished grand tribute on Chinese civilization and sought to stir an ancient nation's pride, there was also a message for an uncertain outside world: Do not worry. We mean no harm. Usually, that message is delivered by the dour-faced leaders of the ruling Communist Party, who dutifully, if sometimes unconvincingly, regurgitate the phrase ''harmonious society'' coined by President Hu Jintao. But in the nimble cinematic hands of Zhang Yimou, the filmmaker who directed the opening ceremonies, the politics of harmony were conveyed in a visual extravaganza. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Old men on donkey carts drove through this ancient city's warren of sand-colored alleys, foreign backpackers haggled with salesmen over wool carpets, and shops and markets were open for business. A few policemen wandered around, and the faithful flocked to mosques. This frontier town 2,500 miles west of Beijing did not appear on Tuesday to be under any sort of terrorism alert or to be a place that, just 24 hours earlier, was the site of what officials described as the worst terrorist attack in China's recent history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chinese officials have thrown an almost smothering blanket of security across this capital of 17 million in preparation for the start of the Olympic Games on Friday. Above all else, Chinese leaders say, these Olympics will be ''safe.'' They warn that terrorism is a constant threat, particularly from Muslim separatist groups in the Xinjiang region of western China. On Monday morning, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported what appeared to be the deadliest attack against Chinese security forces in recent memory: 16 policemen were killed and 16 others injured when attackers threw two grenades into a police station in the desert oasis town of Kashgar, in the far west, after driving a truck into the station at 8 a.m. Two men were arrested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]