Hello and welcome to this edition of CRI Roundup on Saturday, April 28th. I'm Qi Zhi in Beijing. Let's take a look at some of the main events during the past week in China and around the globe.
China has issued a new regulation ordering government departments to be more open in reporting information.
Beijing Olympics organizers unveiled the design of the Olympic Torch and its Relay Route.
Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin died from heart failure.
And the Palestinian group Hamas declared an end to a five-month truce with Israel.
China has issued a regulation designed to boost official transparency by ordering government departments to report information more openly. It's expected to empower citizens to demand information about government finances and economic plans, statistics, land development and many other policies.
Zhang Qiong, deputy director of the Legislative Office of the State Council, says the new regulation will help to improve efficiency and prevent abuses of power.
"It will safeguard people's right to know, the right to participate and the right to supervise. Meanwhile, it will also help curb corruption at the root and largely reduce its occurrence."
The new regulation will become the country's most specific and progressive set of rules encouraging the release of government information, when it takes effect on May 1, 2008.
The torch design for the 2008 Olympic Games was unveiled at a ceremony in Beijing on Thursday. It's a red-and-silver tube shaped like a Chinese scroll and covered with a cloud design.
The torch relay is themed "Journey of Harmony". It will start from Beijing on March 31, 2008 and travel through 22 cities overseas, as well as 113 cities and regions in China, before it returns to Beijing for the opening ceremony of the Games on August 8.
International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said he appreciated the planned route of the torch relay.
"Beijing 2008 torch relay will-- as its theme says--be a journey of harmony, bringing friendship and respect to people of different nationalities, races and dreams."
The relay will last 130 days and travel 137,000 kilometers.