The Great Wall: Across China's great divide

Built to keep out the Mongols, it's now facing a new kind of invader: tourists. Visit a crowd-free stretch and behold the legendary barrier in its natural state.
At Badaling, the Great Wall rides the ridgelines like a dragon, its gray brick scales glinting and its crenelated spine writhing. Built at a strategic pass in the mountains north of Beijing, it crosses stout gates, plunges into narrow defiles, climbs back up to the heights and seems to go on forever.Long after this month's Olympic Games end in Beijing, people will flock to Badaling, where seeing is believing in the Ten Thousand Li Long Wall of ancient annals and legend. ut contrary to the impression it makes at Badaling, the Great Wall may never have crossed China in one mighty, continuous span, nor is its length precisely known. (Some say it's 4,500 miles, others a mere 3,100.) Experts now think of it as a series of disjointed segments built at different times in the last two millenniums and scattered in a maze all over northern China.

Fast-food kids' meals heavy on calories: U.S. group

WASHINGTON - Kids' meals at popular fast-food restaurants deliver more than a quick lunch or dinner -- 90 percent of them have far more than a meal's worth of calories and many are loaded with fat and salt too, according to a report released on Monday.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest -- the group that took the fun out of movie popcorn and Chinese takeout by revealing the fat and calorie content of such treats -- said it is difficult to find anything remotely healthful for a child to eat at several restaurant chains.
"Nearly every single possible combination of the children's meals at KFC, Taco Bell, Sonic, Jack in the Box and Chick-fil-A is too high in calories," the group said in a statement.CSPI examined the menus at 13 popular restaurants that promote children's meals."Ninety-three percent of 1,474 possible choices at the 13 chains exceed 430 calories -- an amount that is one-third of what the Institute of Medicine recommends that children aged four through eight should consume in a day," the group said.Children often get more than two meals' worth of energy in a single visit to Brinker International's Chili's restaurants."Chili's has 700 possible kids' meal combinations, but 658, or 94 percent, of those are too high in calories, including one comprised of country-fried chicken crispers, cinnamon apples and chocolate milk (1,020 calories) and another comprised of cheese pizza, home-style fries and lemonade (1,000 calories)," the group said. More than 90 percent of meals offered at hamburger chains would fill virtually all of a child's calorie needs for the day which is very harmful.