Party Congress

BEIJING - By expelling renegade Politburo member Bo Xilai from the Communist Party and referring him for prosecution on offenses including bribery and sexual misconduct, China's leadership took decisive action to conclude a six-month scandal that shook the top echelons of power. Even though the struggle over Bo's fate took place largely behind closed doors, the damage is apparent. And it is far from clear that a new generation of leaders to be anointed at a party congress now set to begin Nov. 8 will find it easy to put it behind.

BEIJING - Zhu Ruifeng fancies himself a Chinese version of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a citizen journalist who is plying his trade online. In 2006, he started the People's Supervision website, which breaks stories about official corruption in China. He has had a couple of scoops - one about the widespread use of expired vaccines and others about crooked party apparatchiks - but nothing that's gotten the reaction of a sexually explicit 36-second video released last week. The video shows a paunchy Communist Party official in flagrante delicto with an 18-year-old woman in Chongqing.

Conservative die-hards and reformers went to war Tuesday for the hearts and minds of the Soviet Communist Party, with Yegor K. Ligachev denouncing the Gorbachev era's "reckless radicalism" and other leaders defending policies that stripped the "evil empire" label from their nation. One day after President Mikhail S.

WASHINGTON - A potential casualty of the "fiscal cliff" standoff is the ability of Congress to adjust an outdated tax code provision that could significantly boost what millions of middle-income households owe to the government. The provision, called the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, was enacted in 1969 to make sure that the very wealthy paid some income tax. But the threshold for the usually higher tax was not indexed for inflation, and it threatens each year to ensnare millions of people it was never intended to catch - prompting the annual congressional fix. Quiz: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

BEIJING - A popular joke making the rounds in Beijing touts the superiority of China's political system to that of the United States. After all, while the race between President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney went down to the wire, the Chinese have known for years the outcome of the 18th Communist Party congress that opens Thursday in Beijing. Vice President Xi Jinping has been groomed since the last congress in 2007 to replace President Hu Jintao (first as secretary-general of the Communist Party)

The Polish Communist Party will hold its 10th party congress starting June 29, the official PAP news agency said Friday.

BEIJING -- Many observers of China's 18th Communist Party Congress regard the weeklong gathering in Beijing as a turgid affair at which cadres spend most of their time agreeing with one another about the party's accomplishments of the past decade and looking to the future. In fact, though, there's a fierce, almost Olympics-like competition among the more 2,200 delegates in at least one respect: Who can praise the party most effusively? Party Secretary Hu Jintao kicked off the contest on Thursday when he delivered a 100-minute, 64-page keynote speech titled, "Firmly March on the Path of Socialism With Chinese Characteristics and Strive to Complete the Building of a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects.

BEIJING - A mid-level public security official earning $19,000 a year acquires 21 houses, valued at more than $6 million. The former railroad minister is alleged to have accumulated $250 million in bribes, which he reportedly hoped to use to buy his way into the Politburo. Families of Politburo members are revealed to have fortunes in the hundreds of millions. Corruption is very much the hot topic at the 18th Communist Party congress underway in Beijing. Once too sensitive to be discussed in public, graft is now the subject of grandiloquent editorials in state-owned media.

BEIJING - As China launched its 18th Communist Party congress on Thursday, a record number of Tibetans immolated themselves in a stark illustration of the internal tensions facing the country's new leadership. Over a 48-hour period, at least five Tibetans were reported to have set themselves on fire in western China. Most of them were teenagers. As many as 6,000 people demonstrated against the government Thursday afternoon in Tongren, a monastery town in Qinghai province, after two self-immolations - a 23-year-old woman on Wednesday and a young former monk on Thursday, exile groups reported.

BEIJING - In honor of the upcoming 18th congress of the Chinese Communist Party, here are just a few of the things you cannot do in Beijing. Watch foreign television while you exercise in a health club. Attend an outdoor concert. Do your homework online. Buy a knife in the supermarket. Buy lunch from a food cart. Run a marathon. Complain. Mao Tse-tung once said revolution is not a dinner party, but the party congress scheduled to begin Nov. 8 - during which a new Chinese leadership will be anointed - isn't looking like much fun, either.

BEIJING -- For Chinese yearning for reform, the 18 th congress of the Communist Party that wrapped up Wednesday was a crushing disappointment, more about pageantry than real politics. With no deviation from the script, President Hu Jintao stepped down as party secretary-general, a position he has held the last decade, to make way for Xi Jinping, his long-ago anointed heir. In keeping with protocol, the 59-year-old Xi and others in the top echelon of the new leadership are to march out on the dais Thursday morning -- technically the first session of the new party government.

BEIJING - China's leaders are often thought of as men with near-identical suits and hairdos. But among the 2,268 delegates to the 18th Communist Party Congress in Beijing, there are 521 women. So how are they contributing to this much-touted national gathering, which will culminate Thursday with the unveiling of a new generation of senior officials? Judging from the Chinese press, one primary contribution is their looks. On Friday, the People's Daily website published a 14-photo slide show labeled “Beautiful Scenery from the 18th Party Congress.” The slides featured female delegates, many of them ethnic minorities in exotic garb and towering hair ornaments.

BEIJING -- Many observers of China's 18th Communist Party Congress regard the weeklong gathering in Beijing as a turgid affair at which cadres spend most of their time agreeing with one another about the party's accomplishments of the past decade and looking to the future. In fact, though, there's a fierce, almost Olympics-like competition among the more 2,200 delegates in at least one respect: Who can praise the party most effusively? Party Secretary Hu Jintao kicked off the contest on Thursday when he delivered a 100-minute, 64-page keynote speech titled, "Firmly March on the Path of Socialism With Chinese Characteristics and Strive to Complete the Building of a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects.

BEIJING - A mid-level public security official earning $19,000 a year acquires 21 houses, valued at more than $6 million. The former railroad minister is alleged to have accumulated $250 million in bribes, which he reportedly hoped to use to buy his way into the Politburo. Families of Politburo members are revealed to have fortunes in the hundreds of millions. Corruption is very much the hot topic at the 18th Communist Party congress underway in Beijing. Once too sensitive to be discussed in public, graft is now the subject of grandiloquent editorials in state-owned media.

BEIJING - As China launched its 18th Communist Party congress on Thursday, a record number of Tibetans immolated themselves in a stark illustration of the internal tensions facing the country's new leadership. Over a 48-hour period, at least five Tibetans were reported to have set themselves on fire in western China. Most of them were teenagers. As many as 6,000 people demonstrated against the government Thursday afternoon in Tongren, a monastery town in Qinghai province, after two self-immolations - a 23-year-old woman on Wednesday and a young former monk on Thursday, exile groups reported.

BEIJING - On the heels of the U.S. election, the Chinese Communist Party began its own leadership transition Thursday with promises to double income over the next decade, stamp out corruption and allow more democracy - at least within the ranks of the party that has ruled unchallenged since 1949. In one of his last major speeches before leaving office, President Hu Jintao said that economic growth would trump other concerns. "We must adhere to the strategic thinking that only economic development counts," said Hu, speaking in the imposing Great Hall of the People on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

The Communist Party Central Committee today cleared the way for an important party congress Monday, Tass news agency indicated, despite appeals for a delay from Boris N. Yeltsin and some other reformers. The policy-making Central Committee also gave its tentative approval to a report President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will deliver at the 28th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party.

Hu Qili, one of the most liberal reformers among China's top leaders, was named Saturday to serve as the chief administrative officer for a landmark Communist Party congress that opens today. Hu, 58, was elected to the prestigious position of secretary general of the congress at a preparatory meeting attended by 1,927 delegates.

BEIJING - A popular joke making the rounds in Beijing touts the superiority of China's political system to that of the United States. After all, while the race between President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney went down to the wire, the Chinese have known for years the outcome of the 18th Communist Party congress that opens Thursday in Beijing. Vice President Xi Jinping has been groomed since the last congress in 2007 to replace President Hu Jintao (first as secretary-general of the Communist Party)

BEIJING - In honor of the upcoming 18th congress of the Chinese Communist Party, here are just a few of the things you cannot do in Beijing. Watch foreign television while you exercise in a health club. Attend an outdoor concert. Do your homework online. Buy a knife in the supermarket. Buy lunch from a food cart. Run a marathon. Complain. Mao Tse-tung once said revolution is not a dinner party, but the party congress scheduled to begin Nov. 8 - during which a new Chinese leadership will be anointed - isn't looking like much fun, either.