Despite her defeat to eight-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams on July 3, China's big hope for Olympic gold, ace tennis athlete, Zheng Jie, gave her supporters a big surprise at this year's Wimbledon tournament. After beating the 18th seed, Nicole Vaidisova, 6-2, 5-7, 6-1 on July 1, she became the first Chinese player to enter the semifinals for ladies' singles of a Grand Slam tournament.

Zheng is also the first female wild-card entrant to reach the semifinals at the All England Tennis Club in southwest London.

On her way to the quarterfinals, the 24-year-old Zheng ran in a string of victories over top seed Ana Ivanovic and Slovakia's Dominika Cibulkova in the first round, Britain's Elena Baltacha in the second and Hungary's nascent Agnes Szavay in the fourth.

Zheng, a women's doubles world champion, ranked only 133 in singles before the tournament due to a serious ankle surgery last year, which made her miss most of the championships. She had to apply to the Club management committee for a wild card.

Tiger Man Caged

The 54-year-old farmer/hunter, Zhou Zhenglong, who fabricated pictures of a wild south China tiger that he said he had personally photographed, has been arrested on suspicion of fraud, according to sources with the Shaanxi Provincial Government at a press conference on June 29. The photos were published extensively in the media confirming the rediscovery of this supposedly extinct beast.

Zhou, a local farmer in Zhenping County, is accused of forging photos from an old tiger poster, as well as faking a paw print by using a wooden model of tiger paw, found by police, said the authorities after a month-long investigation. Thirteen local officials involved in the picture scandal have also been penalized, and media officials involved in publishing the fake pictures were sacked.

In October 2007, the Shaanxi Provincial Forestry Bureau released a bunch of tiger photos, later confirmed fake, as proof that the endangered