BADALING, August 7, 2008 (AFP) - The Olympic torch relay passed along the Great Wall of China on Thursday greeted by thousands of cheering volunteers, although the spectacular monument was obscured by haze.

The torch relay continued its epic global journey along one of China's most famous attractions north of Beijing, just one day before the opening ceremony in the capital.

BEIJING, August 6, 2008 (AFP) - China's first man in space Yang Liwei carried the Olympic torch on the first leg of its relay in Beijing on Wednesday, and told Games organisers he was ready to jet into the stratosphere again.

Yang was the first to carry the flame as the torch began its final journey through the capital two days before the Games starts.

BEIJING, August 6, 2008 (AFP) - The Olympic torch began its final leg in the heart of Beijing on Wednesday, with genuine excitement among the city's millions replacing the controversy that often surrounded its global journey.

BEIJING, August 6, 2008 (AFP) - The Olympic torch relay began its final leg in Beijing Wednesday, two days before the start of the Games, with Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei the first to carry the flame from Tiananmen Square.

Basketball icon Yao Ming was one of the other early torch bearers in the Chinese capital, in an event that was broadcast on national television.

BEIJING, August 5, 2008 (AFP) - The international torch relay for the Beijing Olympic Games should not have happened and had gone close to being a disaster, former IOC vice-president Dick Pound said here on Tuesday.

BEIJING, August 5, 2008 (AFP) - The Olympic torch relay ended Tuesday in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's quake-battered Sichuan province, its last leg before reaching host city Beijing, state media said.

BEIJING, August 4, 2008 (AFP) - China's Olympic organisers said Monday they had taken 'detailed precautions' for the upcoming Beijing leg of the torch relay as state media reported a deadly attack in northwest Xinjiang killed 16 police.

ATHENS, June 6, 2008 (AFP) - The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will discuss whether global torch relays are still a good idea after the spate of anti-China protests that dogged the Beijing Games relay, the IOC said Friday.

'We are not blind, neither naive,' IOC President Jacques Rogge told a news conference at the end of a three-day IOC executive board meeting in Athens.

BEIJING, June 5, 2008 (AFP) - The Beijing Olympic torch relay on Thursday visited the hometown of communist China's founder Mao Zedong, one of the stops along a so-called 'red tourism' route that trumpets China's revolutionary past.

LONDON, June 4, 2008 (AFP) - One of the torches used to carry the flame on to British soil for the 1948 London Olympics sold at auction on Wednesday for 2,520 pounds (3,200 euros, 4,900 dollars).