My tableau

The US PGA Tour plans to bring The Presidents Cup to China within a decade, while assisting the booming nation to grow its game.
The prestigious tournament pits a 12-strong team of Americans against a dozen of the best from the rest of the world, apart from Europe, every two years.
It is hosted alternately in the US and countries represented by the international team.
Until now, no Chinese player has featured, but with the growth of the game in the country, USPGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem said the possibility China might host the tournament in 2019 was being examined.
“We agreed to look at and do a feasibility on the pros of The Presidents Cup being staged in China in perhaps 10 years’ time,”he said.
“This would become a goal of China to create players – one year before the second playing of golf in the Olympics – who can play at that level.”
The development of golf in China has been nothing short of amazing.
The country only opened its first course – the Chung Shan Hot Springs Golf Club, some 80 kilometers across the Pearl River Estuary from Hong Kong – in 1984.
Twenty-five years later and China now has around 500 courses, with the USPGA Tour keen to cash in.
“I think I speak for all of the members of the Federation, and certainly the PGA Tour, when I say that we will do whatever is necessary and everything we can to help underpin that growth and increase the trajectory of growth in the years to come,”added Finchem.
Zhang Xiaoning, executive vice president and secretary general of the China Golf Association (CGA), said 2019 was a realistic time frame and CGA would work to realize their goal.
“I’m very pleased to see Mr Finchem taking the initiative to bring more and more quality events over to China,”he said, after Shanghai hosted the HSBC Champions last weekend, which was upgraded to a World Golf Championship event.
“And also, I would like to say thank you to Mr Finchem for trusting the CGA on having a proposal for The Presidents Cup in 2019 in China. We will welcome this tournament in China.”
Last week, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, the world’s top two players, both forecast that China would become a golfing powerhouse within the next 10 to 15 years.

A Mafia ring leader, who is also son of a former high-ranking city official, was executed Thursday by lethal injection in Changchun, capital of northeast China’s Jilin Province, according to a court statement.
Convicted of murder, kidnapping, intentional injury, extortion and other crimes, Xu Wei, 42, was sentenced to death by the Changchun Intermediate People’s Court on Sept. 20, 2007.
The Higher People’s Court of Jilin Province ruled against Xu’s appeal and upheld the first-instance verdict on July 10, 2008. The Supreme People’s Court approved the death sentence after reviewing the case.
Xu, deputy manager of Yushu City Thermal Power Co. and son of Xu Fengshan, former deputy mayor of Yushu city, was found to have provided guns to two gangsters who shot dead Xu’s business rival in 1997.
Xu even pulled strings through his police complice and bailed out one of the killers, the court was told.
Believing a township head didn’t pay him enough respect, Xu ordered his men to beat him to death in 1998. In the end, the man was struck into coma and died in hospital in 2000 at the age of 49,court verdict said.
In a separate case, the father Xu Fengshan was sentenced to death with a reprieve of two years for taking more than 20 million yuan (2.93 million U.S. dollars) in bribery and harboring criminal organizations.

The observatories in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and neighboring Guangdong province on Tuesday issued a warning in response to Kammuri, the ninth tropical storm to China so far this year.
Chen Jian is the chief forecaster at the Guangxi observatory.
“The storm will affect the southwest part of Guangxi. Most of the region will be covered by torrential rains, and severe rainstorms are expected in some places. Coastal areas will have strong winds up to force 6, 7 or even 8.”
Local authorities called vessels into harbor and reinforced patrols along embankments to watch for possible flooding.(Www.hxen.com)
Fujian, another province in South China, was inundated by torrential rains on Tuesday night.　
Rail services on ferries crossing the Qiongzhou Strait to the southern province of Hainan were suspended on Wednesday morning due to strong winds.
In Hong Kong and Macao, authorities have issued cyclone warning number 8, and most of land, air and sea traffic was suspended.
The stock market in Hong Kong also closed.

Ma Zengyu’s rebound and layup in the last seconds help China came from back, beating Canada 73-68 on Saturday and sweeping a three-game Sino-Canada Women’s Basketball Challenge.

    Ma, who scored 17 points for China, rebounded and tied the score 65-65 with three seconds remaining in the fourth quarter after teammate Chen Xiaojia hit wide intentionly on her second free-throw to force the game into overtime.

    The Chinese team then made a 6-0 spur while Canada, who led 62-54 with 3:10 minutes left in the fourth quarter, looked helpless in the last five minutes.

    Canada played much more aggressively than the two previous games, where they only built a lead in the first quarter shortly. They led and tied several times before the overtime.

    ”They are much better on defense as well as offense,” Chinese coach Sun Fengwu said.

    ”They held us to bad shooting, especially to our enters, who hardly played themselves,” Sun added.

    China led the half 32-23 but were held to only 17 points in the third quarter. Canada got 27 points and entered the fourth quarter with a 50-49 advantage.

    China trailed 63-65 with three seconds to go in the last quarter when Chen Xiaojia drew a foul. She scored in the first free-throw but wided the second before Ma Zengyu evened the game in regulation.

    Huang Hongpin came off the bench to contribute 14 points and eight rebounds and Chen Xiaojia added 10 points. 2.06-meter Wei Wei, who played 19 minutes as a starter, got nine points and six rebounds and two bloked-shots.