Thai floods begin to recede

The centre of Thailand's capital, Bangkok, looks like it will escape the flooding that has hit some suburbs and provinces to its north, but evacuation orders are still issued each day in outer districts and many residents face weeks of hardship.

The department of disaster prevention and mitigation said today 562 people had died in the flooding since late July and that 22 of Thailand's 77 provinces were still affected.

Flooding is receding in parts of Bangkok but remains high on the west bank of the Chao Phraya river, swollen by high tides in the Gulf of Thailand, and to the east of the capital, where authorities have diverted run-off floodwater from the north to try to protect the heart of densely populated Bangkok.

Kawin Prachanukul, a 21-year-old student at Bangkok's Thammasat University, decided to stay with his dog in his home in Nong Kham district in the west of Bangkok, when it flooded in early November.

"My food supplies are starting to run out. Now I've just got some packs of instant noodles left. But it's not too bad for me - at least I'm able to walk through the knee-deep water in my street to the main road, where there are a few food vendors," he said, adding that only a few men remained in his neighbourhood.

Krissana Laongkaew (54) had to leave her house in western Bangkok on November 2nd with her husband and two sons after the floodwater rose to waist level.

She has also lost the traditional Thai massage shop nearby that she put all her life savings into.

"The shop had only been open for three months. We only finished decorating it in late October. Everything is gone," Ms Krissana said, close to tears.

"It's very stressful for me...My husband and I started everything from scratch and now we're back to zero," she said. "I don't know how much I can salvage from the shop. The water came in so quickly and I had no real time to prepare. They told me the water would be knee-high. Initially, I planned to stay at my house, but the water just kept rising."

Many main roads remain closed in the western Thonburi area. A limited bus service operates on some routes but most people have to rely on army trucks or small boats, always packed.

In the parts of the capital that have remained dry, drinking water is back on shelves of supermarkets but still rationed in places. The overhead Skytrain and underground railway have stayed open throughout, even in flooded areas.

In one such area in the north of the city, Chatuchak, a big market popular with tourists was closed at the weekend but the floodwater had started to recede in some streets after almost two weeks.

Food vendors were back on the street and noodle shops and hair salons were opening for office workers. Businesses had started a big clean-up, sweeping water out of shops and clearing up rubbish that had floated for days in smelly brown water.

Authorities estimate that about 16,000 residents have taken shelter in 163 evacuation centres in Bangkok. Other people have had to rent accommodation or find refuge with relatives and friends in the north where the water has receded or in the south and southeast, untouched by floods.

For those who left, life is safer but not much fun.

Housewife Kim Sirindhorn fled her house in Nakhon Pathom province adjoining western Bangkok in late October for a seaside resort in the eastern province of Rayong, an area full of car plants and heavy industry teeming with evacuees from Bangkok.

The water in her area is still 64cm high and she's been told it could take several weeks to go down. "It's depressing and frustrating. We have nothing much to do and staying in one room is boring," she said.

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When Hillary Clinton doesn't make sense

Article by WN.com Guest Writer, Kourosh Ziabari

U.S. President Barack Obama will be a lame duck next year and the officials in his administration, especially his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are hilariously doing their best to make sure that they haven't spared any effort to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries and sabotage the stability and security of those whom they call "enemies", like Iran.

On October 27, Hillary Clinton gave an exclusive interview to the UK's state-funded, state-run BBC Persian TV and in an attempt aimed at reaching out to the Iranian nation, made bombastic remarks which have certainly infuriated Iran and demonstrated that the hostile behavior and antagonistic stance of the U.S. government toward the Iranian nation is a manifestation of the idiom "the leopard can't change its spots."

At the beginning of the interview, Clinton referred to the sanctions imposed against Iran by the U.S. and its European allies and said that these sanctions are targeted at forcing the Iranian government into abandoning its nuclear program which she called an effort to construct nuclear weapons and not for civilian purposes. Forgetting the detrimental impacts of economic sanctions against the ordinary people, Clinton talked of the United States as a friend of the Iranian people, and said that she wanted to reaffirm her country's "very strong support for and friendship toward the people of Iran." She further added that the behavior of the United States towards the Iranian government is different from its behavior toward the Iranian people, and by saying that, she clearly paraded her diplomatic naivete and artlessness. How do you justify enmity with a government which is democratically elected by a group of people which you claim to be supportive of?

Secondly, maybe Mrs. Clinton has forgotten that the U.S. itself is the largest possessor of nuclear weapons in the world. How can such a police state which has so far killed millions of people around the world, from Nagasaki and Hiroshima to Baghdad and Kabul, boast of its concerns about the development of nuclear bombs by a country which is the most pacifist country in a boiling and tumultuous region such as the Middle East and hasn't ever invaded nor attacked any country in the past century?

A Reuters report quoting U.S. officials revealed in May 2010 that the U.S. has an arsenal of 5,113 nuclear warheads. It is the only country which has used nuclear weapons in warfare and the only nation that has conducted around 1,054 nuclear tests and developed many long-range weapon delivery systems. So, who is really entitled to be concerned? Shouldn't the international community be anxious about the nuclear arsenal of the self-proclaimed superpower, the U.S.? Who may guarantee that the U.S. won't use its nuclear weapons in the prospective wars which it will be waging in the future? If the criterion of imposing financial sanctions is the possession of nuclear weapons and pursuing the development of them, why shouldn't the U.S. or its Middle East client state, Israel, which is the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, be the target of sanctions? A report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis showed that between 1940 and 1996, the U.S. spent at least $8.15 trillion in present day terms on nuclear weapons development. Which country can be pinpointed on the world map which has invested in a nuclear program, even for peaceful purposes, so enormously?

But it was not only Clinton's deceptive bluffs on Iran's nuclear program that seemed perplexing and ridiculous. She lived beyond her means by claiming that the international community is angry at what Iran is today and wants a better future for its people!

"But I would ask you to put yourself in the position of the international community and those who seek a better future inside Iran. If you do not want to have a conflict, if you do not want to just give way to behavior that is very reckless, as we saw in this recent plot against the Saudi ambassador, potentially dangerous, sanctions is the tool that we have at our disposal to use," she said.

Clinton went on to raise the issue of the alleged terror plot against the Saudi ambassador in Washington and attributed this plot to Iran. She, however, certainly remembers that they were the agents of CIA, MI6 and Mossad in Iran that assassinated four Iranian nuclear scientists immediately after their name was put on the UNSC sanctions list. Wasn't the assassination of Dariush Rezaei, Massoud Alimohammadi or the foiled assassination plot against Fereydoon Abbasi a conspicuous sponsorship of terrorism by a government which calls itself the number one defender of democracy and peace? Wasn't awarding the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to the President of such a country which murders and kills people with impunity some kind of degrading and humiliating episode for this prestigious award?

But an interesting juncture in Clinton's interview with BBC was where a recorded video containing a question by one of the viewers of BBC was aired. The viewer asked Hillary Clinton about America's perpetual adherence to double standards, its support for repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, its backing of the dreadful coup d'etat against the democratic government of Iran's then Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and its heinous shooting down of the Iran Air Flight 655 on July 3, 1988 which claimed the lives of 290 innocent passengers including 254 Iranians. Clinton was apparently taken aback by the question as her awkward response showed that the U.S. government has never found any way to account for its hypocritical policies and actions: "We have consistently spoken out about Bahrain and we have pushed the government to do more, and we support the independent investigation... We know that everything we have done in the course of our 235-plus year history is going to appeal to or be supported by everyone, and we take our history seriously. So, for example, we've expressed regret about what was done in 1953... And then we also have tried to point out that the tragedy of the shooting down of the airline is something that we deeply are sorry for, and we have said that repeatedly."

Isn't it ludicrous? Shooting down a civilian aircraft, killing all the 290 people aboard and then simply saying that we are sorry? Overthrowing a democratic government which reflected the communal will of a nation and then simply saying that we are sorry? Waging wars and imposing sanctions which hurt the daily life of the ordinary people and saying that we are sorry?

Of course Hilary Clinton's interview with BBC Persian was a fiasco and a political debacle. She just showed her lack of political finesse and once again brought to mind that the wolf may lose his teeth, but never his nature. Clinton is the representative of a country which throughout history has repeatedly betrayed the Iranian nation. Perhaps expressing their deepest apologies to the Iranian nation and changing their hostile attitude can be the first step which American politicians should take in order to have the bitter memories of their mischievousness wiped from the minds of the Iranian people.

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Cashing on 11/11/11

Today, November 11, 2011 or 11/11/11, marks the second to last repetitive date of its kind this century—12/12/2012 will be the last—and around the world weddings, births, the Egyptian pyramids and even corduroy are being influenced by the supposed cosmic significance attached to this date.
The date, which happens to be Veterans Day in the U.S. and Remembrance Day in Commonwealth countries, is a perfect palindrome and occurs only once a century.
Couples all over the world are scrambling to get married on this supposedly auspicious date. In Las Vegas, the Clark County clerk’s office has already received 3,500 applications for marriages on November 11; usually there are only 1,000 applications per month, the International Business Times reported.
Chapel of the Flowers is holding 80 weddings, around triple their daily average of around 20 to 30 couples, Aimee Stephens, marketing director, told CNN.
“We have been prepared for this,” Stephens said. “People seem to love these numeric occurrences.”
Similarly in Singapore, 574 couples are set to tie the knot, but wedding planners, hotels and official marriage figures suggest that there will be more marriages, 607, on November 20, or 20/11/2011, according to the Strait Times.
In China, November 11 has been celebrated each year as an unofficial “Singles’ Day” since it was first created by a group of college students in Nanjing in the 1990s. The ones in the date represent “unattached sticks,” a Chinese term for single people.
One mall in northeastern China’s Shenyang, Liaoning province has asked employees to dress up in bear costumes and beat couples showing signs of affection with inflatable hammers, according to China Daily.
Despite the date representing bachelorhood in popular culture, many couples are still looking at the date as an auspicious date to get married, interpreting the ones as signifying “the one,” China Daily reports.
Shanghai’s civil affairs authority had received more than 3,500 applications for registering marriages today, and in Nanjing there over 3,000 couples registering their marriages, more than 10 times the normal amount, according to Xinhua.
In India, in addition to a surge of weddings, many couples are inducing or delaying labor in hopes of having their child born on 11/11/11.
“It is an attractive date, and if it is not unsafe to advance or postpone by a day or two, most couples would rather have their baby on this day. We are doing three such cases," Dr. Preety Agarwal, senior gynecologist at Apollo Hospital in New Delhi, told the Times of India.
Advertisers are also taking advantage of the “ones” in a century palindrome date for promotional purposes. Verizon Wireless will release the highly anticipated Motorola Droid Razr today at exactly 11:11am. Chinese Internet retail giant Taobao is offering huge discounts on its website in celebration of Singles’ Day. A horror movie aptly called 11.11.11 is being released today in the United States.
The Corduroy Appreciation Club is not only holding celebrations all over the United States, but has also been celebrating the 10 days leading up to 11/11/11, for a total of 11 days of celebration. According to their website, “the number 11, being a figure which closely resembles Corduroy, is extremely important to the CAC’s iconography.”
But some are wary of how extremists will interpret the date. In response to pressure from Internet users claiming strange rituals would take place at the Egyptian pyramids, the site will be closed to visitors, according to Agence France Presse.
Some see a mystical connection between the number 11 and disasters, such as the 9/11 attacks. Websites dedicated to numerical examinations of 9/11 point out various connections between the attacks and the number 11: The flight was American Airlines Flight 11, the twin towers, standing side by side, looked like the number 11, and after September 11 there are 111 days left until the end of the year. The last 11/11/11 one hundred years ago in 1911 saw the Great Blue Norther cold front sweep through parts of the United States. In some areas temperatures plunged over 30 degrees Celsius in one day.
But Wake Forest University Physicist Eric Carlson, who studies numbers as a hobby, told CNN that the date has no significance beyond its numerical perfection.
“These patterns stick in our minds,” Carlson said. “But I don’t think there is any mystical significance to it.”
But some just think it’s cool. One Facebook group, “If I miss 11/11/11 11:11 I will be pissed,” currently has 903,133 members, and is hoping to achieve 111,111,111 members by today.

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Turkish police fire tear gas in quake city

VAN, Turkey (Reuters) - Riot police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse protesters angry at the state's relief efforts after the second earthquake in eastern Turkey in three weeks killed at least 12 people in the city of Van.

Rescue teams searched for survivors after the 5.7 magnitude tremor on Wednesday night heaped misery on the predominantly Kurdish region where more than 600 people died following a major quake on October 23.

"How can you fire pepper spray on people who have already suffered so much?" said Abdulrahim Kaplan, 32. He had gone to the crisis center for a tent when police began firing tear gas, he said.

"Our people are freezing. We are sleeping outside -- all seven of my family ... Some people take five tents, some 10 and others get nothing. This is wrong."

Thousands of families are living in makeshift camps with temperatures falling to freezing with the onset of winter. The government says there are enough tents for anyone who needs them.

About 200 demonstrators called for the resignation of the provincial governor in a rally close to two city center hotels that collapsed during the latest quake.

"We are urging the earthquake survivors to lodge in the tent cities. We think it is safer and we have enough place for everybody who wants to stay at the tent city," Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay, told Reuters later.

"Preparations are underway for more tents," said the minister, who is overseeing relief operations and had visited the site of the collapsed hotels earlier.

Working through the night, searchers had rescued 28 people from the ruins of the hotels, Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Administration (AFAD) said in a statement.
Two of those brought out, including a 16-month-old toddler, were flown by air ambulance to a hospital in the capital Ankara.

Rescue workers pulled a Japanese woman from the rubble of the Bayram Hotel almost six hours after the quake but a Japanese doctor succumbed to his injuries, state-run Anatolian news agency reported.

The woman, Miyuki Konnai, was part of a rescue and relief team sent to Van from Japan after the first quake. She was found injured but conscious and could be seen talking to her rescuers as she was carried to an ambulance.

The slightly built 32-year-old woman told Reuters she had been too afraid to open her eyes when she lay trapped beneath the rubble.

"When I finally managed to open my left eye slowly, there was a ray of light I could see in what I thought was complete darkness. That light gave me a relief and gave me a hope to live. That was the light from the computer I had been using," said Konnai, speaking in hospital with slight scratches on her pale face.

ALL-CLEAR AFTER QUAKE
Atalay, who visited the devastated Bayram Hotel with Turkey's foreign minister, all but two of the 25 buildings that collapsed in Van had been empty.

The owner of the flattened five-storey hotel, Aslan Bayram, told broadcasters building experts had given his 47-year-old property the all-clear after last month's quake. At the time of the quake, about 15 guests were believed to be in the hotel.

Many people were too frightened to return to homes with cracked walls and ceilings as multiple aftershocks continued to rattle the region.

"What am I going to do? I don't have a tent, I don't even know who to get a tent from. Nobody tells me. I cannot go back into my flat ... Where will I go tonight? It can happen again," Halit Yazgan, 44, said as an aftershock shook a nearby building and sent men running for the middle of the road.

The latest quake struck 16 km (9 miles) south of Van at 1923 GMT on Wednesday, while the epicenter of the October 23 quake was just northeast of Van.
A tremor of 5.7 magnitude would not normally cause significant damage but thousands of buildings sustained damage in last month's quake, and some were in a dangerous condition.

Atalay, responding to journalists' questions over why one of the hotels had been given the all-clear, said only preliminary, rather than definitive assessments on structural damage had been carried out on the building.

Turkey is criss-crossed with seismic fault lines and experiences small tremors nearly every day. About 20,000 people were killed by two large earthquakes in western Turkey in 1999.

(Writing by Daren Butler and Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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11-11-11 bring luck for hopes

From China to New York, place your bets! Tie the knot! Make a wish!

Friday marked the 11th day of the 11th month of 2011. Around the world, people celebrated the triple convergence of 11s with a splash.

Some 1,000 ethnic Chinese couples exchanged vows across Malaysia on a date viewed as auspicious and romantic. In China, a special "1111" train started at 11:11 a.m. on the No. 11 line in Shanghai.

"The numbers rhyme with one husband, one wife and one soul in Chinese and signifies a marriage that would last a lifetime," said nurse Pua Kim Giok, 25, who tied the knot with engineer Lee Chin Siong, 27. They were among 460 couples who got married at the popular Thean Hou Temple in Kuala Lumpur.

Not everyone was smiling, however.

Egypt's antiquities authority closed the largest of the Great Pyramid of Giza following rumors that groups would try to hold spiritual ceremonies on the site at 11:11.

The authority's head Mustafa Amin said in a statement Friday that the pyramid of Khufu, also known as Cheops, would be closed until Saturday morning for "necessary maintenance."

The closure followed a string of unconfirmed reports in local media that unknown groups would try to hold "Jewish" or "Masonic" rites on the site.

Amin said all reports of planned ceremonies at the site were "completely lacking in truth." The statement did not say whether the rest of the pyramid complex, one of Egypt's biggest tourist attractions, would be closed to visitors.

In the U.S., the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, N.J., was planning drawings every 11 minutes for up to $1,111.

In Las Vegas, Clark County Clerk Diana Alba got ready for an onslaught of weddings. She was expecting the number of couples to surpass the crowd on 08/08/08 and equal the throng on 10/10/10. It may not, however, reach the turnout seen on July 7, 2007 — a date that consists of three lucky sevens.

"That was like the granddaddy of all dates," Alba said.

Bryan Savage of Oklahoma City was among those tying the knot on 11-11. He said the number 11 is meaningful to him and his fiancée, Tara Melton, because his birthday is in November and they met in November.

"It's just kind of cool and we didn't really want Valentine's Day or a holiday, but we just wanted something memorable," he said.

Plus, he added, it will be easier to remember his anniversary.

In Des Moines, Iowa, Dr. Ross Valone, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will refund any fees he collects from delivering babies Friday. In Bellevue, Wash., Jason Brown will open his new grocery store at 11:11 a.m.

Vikki MacKinnon, a numerologist in Calgary, Ontario, said she expected the day to be a "cosmic wake-up call."

"Eleven is a number of illumination and enlightenment, a number of insight, blinding flashes of the obvious, and a number of transformation," she said.

The Chinese have always had a fascination with number sequences.

And in a country where ages of first marriages are creeping upward, the 11/11/11 date represents six "bare sticks," a term for bachelors in Chinese.

And there are now more of them, with housing prices, focus on jobs and growing independence of young women meaning people are getting married later.

"It's just difficult for men to afford the housing prices nowadays, and traditionally in China that is the responsibility of the man his family. I feel a lot of pressure from this," said Zheng An, a 26-year-old employee at a solar company in Shanghai.

___

Associated Press writers Michael Crumb in Des Moines, Iowa, Tim Talley in Oklahoma City, Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, N.J., Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Fu Ting in Shanghai contributed to this report.

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ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — An earthquake struck eastern Turkey on Wednesday night, killing at least three people and leaving dozens trapped in the rubble of toppled buildings damaged in a previous temblor, which had killed 600 people.

About two-dozen buildings collapsed in the provincial capital of Van following a 5.7-magnitude quake, though most of them were empty or had been declared unfit because they were weakened by the earlier quake, according to media reports.

In a grim replay of scenes from last month's quake in the same region, men climbed onto piles of debris and frantically clawed at twisted steel and crumbled concrete in an attempt to find survivors.

Voices could be heard calling for help from under the debris, according to Turkish media.

Rescue workers used the glare of high-powered lights to work through the night. There were several aftershocks.

A small fire broke out at a hospital but all patients were safely evacuated.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was in Van to visit survivors of the previous quake on the last day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice. He said 15 people were rescued alive and transported to hospitals by air ambulance.

Davutoglu said rescue teams were searching for survivors under the wreckage of three buildings, and that 22 of the 25 buildings that collapsed in Van were empty.

One of the buildings that collapsed was the Bayram Hotel, Van's best-known hotel. It was at least 40 years old, and had been renovated last year. Some of the guests were journalists who were covering the aftermath of the 7.2-magnitude quake on Oct. 23, which left thousands homeless and led a number of countries to send tents, blankets and other supplies to assist Turkey in the aid effort.

Turkey's Dogan news agency said two of its reporters were missing.

Ozgur Gunes, a cameraman for Turkey's Cihan news agency, told Haber Turk television that some trapped journalists had sent text messages to colleagues asking to be rescued.

He had left the hotel before the quake, but rushed back to collect his camera after it struck, only to find that the building toppled.

"There was dust everywhere and the hotel was flattened," he said. He told Sky Turk television that the building had some small cracks before the quake, but that he and other guests were told that there was no structural damage.

State-run TRT television said at least three bodies were recovered and, citing a hotel worker, reported that 35-40 people were believed to be trapped in the rubble of the Bayram Hotel. Another report said fewer than half that number were trapped.

Hotel owner Aslan Bayram told NTV television that the hotel had 27 guests, about half of whom were inside when the quake hit. But he said he did not know how many customers may have been in a shop selling desserts at the entrance of the building.

Mustafa Bilici, a ruling party lawmaker, said one person died after throwing himself out of a building in panic.

Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said the quake toppled a hotel, a school and a number of mudbrick homes. He said rescue teams are being sent to the region from the capital, Ankara, and other areas. Workers have been clearing debris from the previous disaster for more than a week.

Schools in the region are closed until Dec. 5.

The Turkish Red Crescent immediately dispatched 15,000 tents and some 300 rescue workers, TRT said. There was no damage in the town of Edremit, the quake's epicenter.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake measured 5.7 and that its epicenter was 16 kilometers (9 miles) south of Van. It struck at 9:23 p.m. (1923 GMT, 2:23 p.m. EST).

About 1,400 aftershocks have rocked the region since the massive earthquake on Oct. 23, which killed 600 and left thousands homeless. Many residents had been living in tents, despite the cold, too afraid to return to their homes. At least 2,000 buildings were destroyed in the stronger temblor and authorities declared another 3,700 buildings unfit for living.

Source : http://news.yahoo.com/turkey-quake-kills-least-3-dozens-trapped-223654904.html;_ylt=ArISUl1194sUN7V4D5AujfGs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNsN29zZDYzBG1pdANUb3BTdG9yeSBGUARwa2cDM2ZlN2Q4NDgtMGQ3OC0zYjFiLTllYTAtMTkxYmQyODRlYTYwBHBvcwM0BHNlYwN0b3Bfc3RvcnkEdmVyA2Y5MDkxODMwLTBiNDQtMTFlMS05ZjdlLTcwMzc5ODA3MmIwZg--;_ylg=X3oDMTFpNzk0NjhtBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z;_ylv=3

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China opens first 'space post office'

A new task for Chinese astronauts -- collecting and chopping mail?

Illustration

In this era of Facebook, email, Twitter and other social media, getting a postcard from someone's travels has a certain appeal.
China's mail service looks to be taking that tourist postcard to a whole new level.

To celebrate Thursday's docking of the Shenzhou-8 unmanned spacecraft with space lab module Tiangong-1, China's post authority has opened a new branch office outside the country and out of this world -- 343 kilometers above the Earth, to be exact.
Opening for business on the same day, the China Post Space Office has two venues -- one on-the-ground base inside the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center (BACCC) and one "virtual office" aboard the Shenzhou-8 spacecraft.
There is also a new designated post code -- 901001.
China Post Group’s general manager Li Guohua told China Daily the post office will be able to deliver mail from the public to astronauts in future.

The office will also issue postal souvenirs, such as stamps and envelopes that depict China's major space program events.

We weren't exactly sure what a virtual space post office was or how it all worked, so we made some calls. We left the 'why send mail to space when you can email or Skype chat' question for another day.
According to staff at the BACCC post office (which houses the worldly version of the space post office) the new branch handles normal postal as well as courier services.

All mail going through the BACCC office will be chopped with a special postmark showing the date in numerals, and “Beijing” and “Space” in simplified Chinese.
Philatelic fans can also send a letter to themselves to obtain the postmark by providing an extra envelope with sufficient return stamps (RMB 0.8 from Beijing, RMB 1.2 from other Chinese cities) and an address.
Beijing News reported Shenzhou-8 had in its payload three postcards to space this trip.
According to the report, it is possible the Shenzhou-9 manned spacecraft, expected to launch in 2012, will take stamps and letters from the public into the final frontier.
And what sort of mail might be carried?
“For example, [people] can send us their wedding photos or vows to travel to space with the spacecraft. After [the spacecraft] brings them back, the space post office will mail them back to the owners on the agreed date,” an anonymous manager at Beijing Haidian post office told Beijing News.
The authority is yet to announce the price for mailing to space.
China Post Space Office is affiliated to China Post Group, and is headed by Yang Liwei (杨利伟), the country's first space-traveling astronaut.

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