Olympic Torch

Thousands cheered the Olympic torch in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, the last stop on the international leg of the flame's relay. The torch now will be taken to the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macao and then the mainland, including restive Tibet and the summit of Mt. Everest, and finally to the Games themselves in Beijing in August. Vietnam had assured its communist ally and giant northern neighbor that it would not allow demonstrators to disrupt the event, but several demonstrators were detained earlier in Hanoi, the capital.

James E. Burke Johnson & Johnson CEO during Tylenol poisoning James E. Burke, the former Johnson & Johnson chief executive whose leadership during the Tylenol poisoning scare of the 1980s became a model for corporate crisis management, died Friday in New Jersey after a long, unspecified illness, the company announced. He was 87. Burke, who ran the New Brunswick, N.J., company for 13 of his 37 years there, also had a big impact in his second career, as chairman of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America for 16 years.

The lingering symbol of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games--the statues of two nude, headless athletes at the peristyle entrance of the Coliseum--will remain undraped during the start of the Olympic torch relay Saturday morning.

Heading into the Summer Olympics the smart money had NBC bleeding lots of red ink and struggling to land a big audience in an era of jaded viewers watching cynical and expletive reality shows. The smart money was wrong. Instead, NBC executives will leave London smiling. At worst, NBC and its parent, Comcast Corp., will break even on the games and may even make a tiny profit. NBC averaged 31.1 million viewers for the 17 nights of coverage it aired and overall almost 220 million people watched some of the games.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and Olympic gold medalist Janet Evans on Wednesday unveiled the route for the Olympic torch relay, which will start at the Los Angeles Coliseum, site of the 1932 and 1984 Olympics. The torch will arrive in Los Angeles from Greece on April 27 and be lighted at the Coliseum, "where it last touched American soil," said David Emanuel of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games.

The Olympic torch began its seven-day trek around London on Saturday under sunny skies, an unusual twist after weeks of unseasonably cold temperatures and wet weather. The torch arrived at the Tower of London along the River Thames on Friday night aboard a Royal Marine helicopter. The flame spent the night inside the Jewel House at the tower, an 11th century landmark, before a tour that took it from the recently restored 140-year-old Cutty Sark ship to London's newest mall. Among the luminaries on hand to help begin the tour of the Summer Olympics host city were Nadia Comaneci, the legendary Romanian gymnast who won nine medals in the 1976 and 1980 Summer Games, and basketball player John Amaechi.

Forget the Gloria Estefan theme and the rest of the music recorded for the Atlanta games. The song that could be the Olympic gold medal winner is Iggy & the Stooges' 1973 proto-punk scorcher "Search and Destroy." That's the one featured in the Nike commercials that began airing recently--60 seconds of quick-cut athletic intensity, powered by Iggy Pop's snarl and the Stooges' rock fury.

On May 29 the Olympic torch began an epic 70-day journey that will take it all over England and into Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The 8,000-mile trip will end on July 27 at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford. Catching a glimpse of the torch in real life will be easy for residents of Britain -- the organizers of the Olympic relay say that 95% of Britain's population will be within a one-hour drive of the torch's route. The BBC has created an exhaustive webpage that tracks the torch's journey, even giving the times the torch is expected to enter each town as well as a weather report for that day. As for non-residents of Britain, we can get in on the fun too. We may not be able to see the torch ourselves, but we can follow its journey thanks to an interactive " story map " created by the geographic information services mapping company ESRI.  ESRI's map shows all the places that the torch will be stopping, and lets you know where it currently is on its route.

We're carrying our own Olympic torch here at the Ministry: our burning flame for the royal-and-celebrity watch we're kicking off on the eve of the London Games.  Energized by Friday's opening ceremonies, world athletes will compete for gold medals while their famous admirers hole up in the glamorous bones of London Town, but make no mistake: This is royals country.   So what better way to drum up excitement than trotting out Great Britain's star couple: William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

LONDON - On its 69th and penultimate day of touring, the Olympic torch has been carried nearly 8,000 miles by sports heroes, pop stars, actors and thousands of everyday people.  On Thursday, it was the turn of Esa-Pekka Salonen, principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic . A white-clad Salonen carried the torch for the 330 yards along Cheapside from Gresham Street to Wood Street...

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and her husband Prince William are running down their Olympic Games duties with gold medal precision. Having the British capital of London as host city and all, it's no surprise that Will and Kate are popping up everywhere representing the crown and Team Great Britain, with a few family obligations along the way. Monday's equestrian event, for instance, saw William's royal cousin Zara Phillips competing for...

LONDON -- If an aging Muhammad Ali could handle the job, why not the queen? British odds-makers have made her majesty Queen Elizabeth II a late favorite to light the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Games on Friday night. This week, most of the speculation has centered on Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to break the 4:00 barrier in the mile, and Sir Steve Redgrave, who won gold medals in rowing at an astonishing five consecutive Olympics. Those two men remain at the top of the favorites' list.

LONDON -- Was that an opening ceremony or a night at the pub? Were the 2012 Olympics being honored or noogied? Was that really James Bond tumbling out of a helicopter into the stadium with Queen Elizabeth II? Were those really a passel of flying Mary Poppins conquering one giant Voldemort? And that compelling British national anthem sung by an inspirational choir of deaf and hearing children.… Were those kids really wearing their pajamas? Whatever it was Friday night, it was bloody well wonderful.

LONDON - On its 69th and penultimate day of touring, the Olympic torch has been carried nearly 8,000 miles by sports heroes, pop stars, actors and thousands of everyday people.  On Thursday, it was the turn of Esa-Pekka Salonen, principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic . A white-clad Salonen carried the torch for the 330 yards along Cheapside from Gresham Street to Wood Street...

The Financial Times called it a “shaky start.” The New York Times described it as a “verbal slip.” The liberal Talking Points memo upped the ante, going with “spectacularly bad start.” All those barbs came Mitt Romney's way because he said the same things that Londoners have been saying about their Olympics for weeks. The sad irony of the U.K. Kerfuffle is that Romney usually takes guff for dancing around his opinions. But as a visiting guest this week, and as the man credited with rescuing the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games from scandal, Romney decided to wax more like the decisive businessman. And he got, as the Brits might say, a “good going over” for it. PHOTOS: Romney's trip abroad It was in an interview with NBC that Romney's fiercely modulated presentation succumbed to the reality of the facts on the ground.

LONDON - The last time this city hosted the Olympics, in 1948, the French team was so skeptical of what war-weary, cuisine-challenged Britain had to offer that it brought its own wine. Now more than a quarter-million French people call London home, making it the largest French city outside France, and bottles of Bordeaux line supermarket shelves. Muslim competitors who wanted to pray together in '48 had few places to do so. Today, the British capital probably has more mosques than any other city in the West.

The symbolic flame of the 1996 Summer Olympics sparked to life Saturday and began a 111-day journey to Atlanta, as First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton urged nations "to find peace and camaraderie through sport." Granted a rare privilege, the first lady was allowed amid the ruins of the temple of Zeus for the ceremony. An actress dressed as a high priestess touched the torch to a flame captured by a burnished-steel mirror.

  LONDON -- Hockey weather, it was not. Of course, it ended up the hottest day of the year in the area -- thus far -- when Anaheim Ducks center Saku Koivu had his turn with the Olympic torch, running through Hillingdon. This was Day 67 of the torch's journey, leading up to the start of the Summer Games. Koivu probably would have been thrilled to run in rain. The  Finn, who is an IOC member, called Tuesday's adventure "an unbelievable experience. " Koivu has competed in four Winter Olympics with the best result coming in 2006 when Finland won the silver.

We're carrying our own Olympic torch here at the Ministry: our burning flame for the royal-and-celebrity watch we're kicking off on the eve of the London Games.  Energized by Friday's opening ceremonies, world athletes will compete for gold medals while their famous admirers hole up in the glamorous bones of London Town, but make no mistake: This is royals country.   So what better way to drum up excitement than trotting out Great Britain's star couple: William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

  LONDON -- Hockey weather, it was not. Of course, it ended up the hottest day of the year in the area -- thus far -- when Anaheim Ducks center Saku Koivu had his turn with the Olympic torch, running through Hillingdon. This was Day 67 of the torch's journey, leading up to the start of the Summer Games. Koivu probably would have been thrilled to run in rain. The  Finn, who is an IOC member, called Tuesday's adventure "an unbelievable experience. " Koivu has competed in four Winter Olympics with the best result coming in 2006 when Finland won the silver.