Life changes can happen in an instant. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Beijing Olympics, where the amazing record-breaking achievements of world-class athletes like American swimmer Michael Phelps, with seven gold medals and counting, are attained with only fractions of a second to spare. For instance, Phelps roared back from seventh place at the 50-meter mark to out-touch Serb Milorad Cavic by one-one hundredths of a second to win his seventh gold medal, tying Mark Spitz’s record haul from the 1972 Munich Games.

But misfortune also takes mere seconds to unfold. Behind the glitter and hoopla of the “greatest show on earth”, are tragedies which occur without warning, changing people’s lives forever. American tourist Todd Bachman, father of former UCLA All-American and 2004 volleyball Olympian Elisabeth “Wiz” Bachman McCutcheon, was killed while sightseeing in Beijing by a 47-year-old, knife-wielding Chinese assailant, who later committed suicide by leaping 130 feet from a balcony on the 13th-century Drum Tower, located 5 miles from the Olympic Games site. His wife was gravely injured, although Elisabeth was unharmed.

Surely one of the more poignant tales behind the Olympics is that of Chinese dancer Liu Yan, who was seriously injured during a rehearsal for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic games just days before the show, and faces the prospect of being paralyzed for the rest of her life. Considered one of the country’s top classical Chinese dancers, Liu Yan, a graduate of the prestigious Beijing Dance Academy, was preparing for the performance of a lifetime: the only solo dance in a four-hour spectacular that was expected to be seen by a global audience of more than one billion people. During a rehearsal, she leaped toward a moving platform that malfunctioned and plunged about 10 feet into a shaft, landing on her back and breaking her spine. Read the rest of this entry »

President Arroyo has been quoted as saying, in a state luncheon she hosted yesterday for visiting Swiss President Pascal Couchepin:

We advocate federalism as a way to ensure long-lasting peace in Mindanao.

We thank the Swiss government not only for the values of freedom and civil rights that are enshrined in its culture but also for its willingness to share in its experience of federalism through the institute of federalism located in Fribourg in Switzerland which has been helping us do our studies on this form of government.

Odd. I’ve never heard GMA champion federalism before the current brouhaha over the memorandum of agreement which would have created a Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE). Neither was I aware that formal studies are being made by the government on federalism as an alternative to the republic. Now she’s suddenly thanking the Swiss for something other than Toblerone and looking after her bank accounts. Read the rest of this entry »

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is being raked over coals for his admission that he had an affair with a former campaign hanger-on. Rielle Hunter, a self-described former “New York party girl” and aspiring filmmaker, has been rumored to have borne a child by Edwards. In an interview on ABC News’ “Nightline” , the former U.S. Senator from North Carolina and 2004 Vice-Presidential candidate for the Democratic party, admitted the affair but denied fathering a child with Ms. Hunter.

Edwards told ABC News that he met secretly with former lover Hunter as recently as last month in a California hotel room at her request because “she was having some trouble, she just wanted to talk.” This eventually exposed their affair to the public.

This could end the career of one of the fastest-rising stars in the American political firmament.

Why’d he do it ? Probably for the same reasons ex-New York governor Eliot Spitzer did it, because of hubris and a sense that the rules don’t apply to him. Edwards said as much during his televised mea culpa. Read the rest of this entry »