By Grant Clark
Bloomberg.com
July 4, 2008
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July 4 (Bloomberg) — Beijing Olympic organizers, struggling to clear their algae-choked sailing venue and facing a possible locust invasion, say these latest challenges to next month’s games are no “major problem.”
About 10,000 people are scooping algae out of the sea at the eastern city of Qingdao, while officials in Inner Mongolia are preparing to fight off a plague of locusts that may arrive in the capital city during the Olympics.
“There’s an old saying in China that good things only come after enduring a lot of hardship,” Jiang Xiaoyu, vice president of the Beijing organizing committee, said yesterday in Beijing. “We expected to face many challenges so it’s not a surprise. These issues aren’t major problems.”
So far this year, the world’s most populous nation has faced the worst winter snowstorms in 50 years, riots in Lhasa, violent protests about government policies toward Tibet along the Olympic torch relay route in Europe and North America, an earthquake and flooding…
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