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NZ wins Wellington SevensSevens in style - unearths new star...

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Three tries to speedster Declan O'Donnell ensured New Zealand landed the Wellington sevens rugby tournament crown with an emphatic 29-14 win over England tonight.

The Waikato teenager had earlier scored twice against Australia to send the hosts into the final and it was his blistering speed and the team's defiance after the loss of captain DJ Forbes early in the match that saw them claim their fifth Wellington title and a share of the world series lead.

Forbes, playing in his 38th sevens tournament, left the field with a knee injury following Isoa Damu's try that handed England, winners here in 2009, a 7-0 lead.

But New Zealand drew inspiration from old hands Tomasi Cama, Lote Raikabula and Forbes' replacement Solomon King to score 29 unanswered points to deny England.

Cama provided the first try for the busy Toby Arnold, before 19-year-old O'Donnell sparked into life in wet conditions.

He fended off Dan Norton twice to score under the posts and give New Zealand a 12-7 lead at the break.
From the restart, New Zealand pounced on an England error and Arnold repaid the favour for Cama who sold an outrageous dummy to scoot over next to the posts.

O'Donnell, who overcame an ankle injury to play in the tournament, then showed why he is being tipped for big things with a 80-metre dash to the line after New Zealand had soaked up concerted England pressure.

He had his third try and his 10th for the tournament with 90 seconds left and despite a minor melee near the close the final say went to England with substitute Simon Hunt scoring their second try.

New Zealand had earlier beaten Australia 17-0 to make the final, while England, who held the outright world series lead heading into the final, beat Samoa 7-5.

In addition to O'Donnell's two tries in the semi-final, Tim Mikkelson scored from 50 metres out and New Zealand withstood the sinbinning of playmaker Cama midway through the second half.

A conversion was all that separated England from Samoa in the other semi-final. The leading points scorer in international sevens, Ben Gollings, dinked over the extra points to give England a two-point lead but they then had to dig deep to deny a late surge from Samoa.

England, down a man after repeated infringing, were almost undone with time up on the clock.

Reupena Levasa opted for the kick and chase and it looked to have paid dividends only for his third kick to slide dead in goal with the try line begging.

Samoa, who struggled on the first day and had been thumped 29-5 by Australia in their final pool match, had made the semi-final after a surprise defeat of the in-form Fiji.

They led at the break after an unconverted try to Ofisa Treviranus, but England's John Brake capped a 95-metre move by England to give Gollings the chance to put them into the lead.

Elsewhere, defending champions Fiji won the plate final after beating South Africa 26-12, Kenya won the bowl after downing Tonga 19-0 and United States beat France 19-12 to claim the shield.

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China suppresses dissident groups such as the Falun Gong...

BEIJING (AP) - Dissidents organizing a democratic party, Protestants flocking to private homes to worship and millions belonging to a mystical meditation group - all have become targets in China's summer clampdown.

The communist government, rarely tolerant of groups operating beyond its control, has ratcheted up the intensity of its campaign this time to sweep away potential challenges ahead of the 50th anniversary of the communist victory on Oct. 1.

Most visible - and seemingly bizarre - has been an intense, nearly six-week campaign to pull millions of people away from their belief in Falun Gong, a blend of meditation, slow-motion exercises and ideas from Buddhism and Taoism said by devotees to improve health and morality.

While diatribes against the group saturated state airwaves and Communist Party officials pressured practitioners to renounce the group, police and courts quietly put away second-tier leaders of the China Democracy Party. In one week, four of them received prison sentences as long as 13 years.

Emboldened by their success, security forces have turned to Christian groups not sanctioned by the government. Police arrested at least 30 leaders of underground Protestant church groups this week, the second raid this month in central Henan province, rights groups reported.

Local authorities have used the same tactics against the church groups applied to Falun Gong - ransacking homes for evidence and detentions, a report by New York-based Human Rights in China quoted David Zhang, an underground church movement advocate, as saying.

"The leadership's greatest fear is organized opposition," said one government scholar called upon by the party's Propaganda Department in recent weeks to research and publicly criticize Falun Gong. He added that the group represented the most organized threat "because so many high-level officials practiced Falun Gong."

Before the crackdown began, one government estimate placed the number of Falun Gong practitioners at 70 million, more than the Communist Party. Human Rights in China said four of the Protestant leaders arrested this week represent church groups with more than 20 million members.

The government forbids Christian worship outside churches under state control.

Since there has been scant international or domestic criticism of the campaign against Falun Gong, officials felt free to act against the church leaders, Human Rights in China quoted Zhang as saying. Zhang, who lives in the United States, has had his normally broad contacts with leaders of the house churches almost entirely cut off since the arrests.

When asked about the arrests of the Protestant leaders, a spokesman for the local Tanghe county police, who identified himself as Mr. Niu, said, "Let me tell you, don't get involved in this matter."

China's news media denounce Falun Gong as a cult opposing science and the government. Falun Gong provoked the leadership's ire by staging a silent protest by 10,000 supporters outside communist headquarters in Beijing. Its spokesmen in the United States say it is neither religious nor political.

Despite the tense atmosphere, the government was now rushing to bring the campaign against Falun Gong to a close, said the government scholar, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said charges would soon be brought against ringleaders and, in absentia, Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong's founder who now lives in the United States.

By ending the biggest witch hunt of opponents since the suppression of the democracy movement in 1989, the government wants to make sure nothing detracts from touting national achievements during 50th anniversary celebrations.

Chinese leaders also want to clear the decks to focus on a forceful response to Taiwan, an island claimed by China, the scholar said. Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui took what Beijing regards as a dangerous move toward outright statehood last month by declaring the island has "state-to-state" relations with China.

A sample of the displays of devotion to party likely to be a big part of the anniversary can already be seen in reports on the massive deprogramming of Falun Gong members.

A professor of Chinese medicine, Wang Dequn, praised the "concern" of the party and government for people like him who had practiced Falun Gong.

"Now my thinking is being transformed step by step, and I have determined to make the party and government satisfied," the state-run Xinhua News Agency quoted him as saying.

Acknowledgements: Associated Press

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