Chinese officials unveiled the nearly completed Olympic Village for the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games Wednesday, which organizers said is energy saving and environmentally friendly.
Liu Rong from the Beijing Guoao Investment Development Co. Ltd., the company building the Olympic Village and the National Indoor Stadium, said the 66-hektare village in north Beijing materialized the three Beijing Olympic concepts of Green Olympics, People’s Olympics and Hi-tech Olympics.
The village will be home to 16,000 athletes and officials during the Olympics, and 7,000 people during the Paralympics, and will be operated partly through solar energy to reduce the use of electricity. Liu said through this system five million kilowatts of energy will be saved each year.
Construction of the village began in June 2005 and it will formally open July 27, less than two weeks before the Games begin. It will be modified to become residential housing in 2009.
The Canadian Government announced Thursday it is providing $25 million for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games torch relay. The relay is to pass through 350 communities between November 2009 and February 2010 and cover an estimated 35,000 kilometres, with about 10,000 torchbearers and escorts expected to take part.
The U.K.’s largest phone company, BT Group Plc, was named Wednesday as the fifth commercial sponsor for the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
The company will provide all communications services for the Games and will receive marketing and usage rights to the London 2012 logo. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
BT is joining corporate sponsors British Airways Plc, Lloyds TSB Group Plc, EDF Energy and Adidas AG.
Sebastian Coe, chairman of London 2012 said in a statement, “we have a wonderful opportunity to stage a ‘digital Games’ in 2012, and BT will be integral in helping us do that. Technology and communication is going to be a vast operation, starting now and taking us all the way through to Games time”.
