Macao China

North Korea's continued unwillingness to come to the negotiating table remains the major stumbling block in efforts to curtail its nuclear weapons program, a top U.S. envoy said Thursday. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said he had discussed with Chinese officials the possibility of future negotiations with North Korea on a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War. He did not elaborate.

In its latest bid to woo the Taiwanese people, China said Friday it would lift a decades-old travel ban, paving the way for thousands of mainland tourists to visit the island. Taiwan dropped its ban on travel to China in 1987, resulting, by last year, in more than 3.7 million Taiwanese visiting the mainland annually. China has been slower to lift curbs, restricting travel approval in 2004 to 30,000 mainland businesspeople or students.

In 1967, when China's Cultural Revolution began to make trouble for the tiny Portuguese outpost of Macao, Portugal offered to vacate the colony on China's southeast coast within a month. Peking officials told Macao's Portuguese governor to relax and stay put. During the 1970s, after a Socialist government committed to decolonization came to power in Lisbon, it twice volunteered to hand back Macao to the Chinese. Each time, China's response was the same: Thanks, but no thanks.

Thousands of Hong Kong Chinese daily crowd onto jet foils and ferries for the 40-mile trip across the South China Sea to this tiny Portuguese enclave dangling from mainland China. They come to gamble. "Gambling is the glue that holds Macao together," said Stanley Ho during an interview in his 39th floor penthouse suite in Hong Kong. Ho knows. His firm, Sociedade de Turismo E Diversoes de Macao (Macao Tourism and Amusement Co.

Two down, one to go. The way Beijing sees it, regaining power over the coastal island of Macao takes China two-thirds of the way to returning the country to the "embrace of the motherland." But unlike the takeover of Macao and Hong Kong before it, China's potential reunification with Taiwan poses a much more complex problem than striking a deal with a European colonial power thousands of miles away.

With much fanfare and the biggest display of military hardware in its history, the People's Republic of China today is marking the 50th anniversary of Mao Tse-tung's Communist revolution. The country has traveled a huge distance since that epochal event, a half-century in which Marxism became the mold of a new China, one that sought to restore the glories and power of the old imperial China but stumbled time and again, unable for decades to find the politico- economic model that would deliver.

It's an old Hollywood story: a well-liked performer with a pretty face who just can't deliver the goods every time. In this case the performer is the Kodak Theatre, glamorous temple of the Academy Awards seen one night each year on television by millions of people. But on far too many other nights, the vast theater tucked into the Hollywood & Highland shopping center is dark and not generating revenues or taxes, its operators say.

Proclaiming that he is "not willing to surrender the motion-picture media to the devil," Trinity Broadcasting Network President Paul F. Crouch is breaking into the movie business with a $6-million feature film, aimed at mainstream theater audiences and financed entirely by donations. "China Cry" is based on the life of Chinese-American evangelist Nora Lam and carries the subtitle, "A True Story."

BEIJING -- With 100 days to go, Beijing is bustling to complete a host of projects even as it juggles a global public relations crisis over the Tibet issue, the torch relay and limits on media access. In marked contrast to Athens 100 days out, few at home or abroad have any doubt that China will have its stadiums finished, its doorknobs polished and its fireworks primed well in advance of the opening ceremony Aug. 8 at 8:08 p.m.

Representatives of the Dalai Lama are pressing for a landmark accommodation with Beijing, one that might enable the exiled Tibetan leader to visit China soon and eventually open the way for Tibet to govern itself, according to U.S. and Tibetan officials. The Dalai Lama, who is visiting the United States, is scheduled to meet President Clinton on Monday.