China paper blasts Middle East protest movements

Such movements have brought nothing but chaos and misery to their countries' citizens and are engineered by a small number of people using the Internet to organize illegal meetings, the Beijing Daily, published by the city's party committee, said in a front-page editorial.

"The vast majority of the people are strongly dissatisfied (with the protests), so the performance by the minority becomes a self-delusional ruckus," the newspaper said.

The editorial appeared amid anonymous calls posted on the Internet for Middle East-inspired protests in dozens of Chinese cities the past two Sunday afternoons.

While drawing few outright demonstrators, the appeals have deeply unnerved authorities constantly on guard for any sign of challenges to Communist rule. Police and security agents shooed away onlookers and assaulted and detained journalists who turned up at the designated protest sites in Beijing and Shanghai.

Foreign reporters have been repeatedly warned to stay away from the sites this weekend and threatened with unspecified consequences if they disobey.

China's censors have carefully shaped local coverage of the protests in the Middle East to discourage Chinese citizens from drawing inspiration from them. State media emphasize the protests' negative effects on the societies and economies of the countries involved and give prominent coverage to the woes of Chinese workers evacuated from Libya and elsewhere.

In its editorial, the Beijing Daily attempted to draw a sharp distinction between China and the Middle Eastern countries roiled by unrest, where disdain for long-serving autocratic rulers has frequently been fueled by high unemployment and economic woes.

Chinese people, it said, support their nation's political stability, economic development, and favorable government policies. Those looking to create or discover news of Middle East-style protests in China will come up empty, it said.

"However, we must clearly recognize that there are always people inside and outside the country with ulterior motives who want to seize on the problems we have encountered over the course of development in order to incite unrest," the newspaper said.

Get automobile news and garbage compactor

Boston SP Beckett throws simulated game

Beckett missed his scheduled start on Thursday. He experienced mild concussion symptoms after being hit in the left temple on Monday by an errant ball while shagging flies in the outfield during batting practice.

Beckett is expected to make his next start on Tuesday. The Red Sox have split-squad games that day against the Astros at home and in Jupiter, Fla., against the Cardinals.

Beckett faced six Red Sox minor leaguers, throwing a mix of all his pitches.

"I felt good," he said. "It's a (simulated) game. There's just not a lot of adrenaline and stuff that goes into that. But I like it when the guys go up there and swing. (It) gives you a little bit of feedback one way or the other. It's hard to get a lot of feedback if the guys don't swing, just not a lot of things that correlate to a game unless you have a little bit of something going on."

Beckett said although he has not lifted weights since the incident, he feels that his overall condition and arm strength are where they need to be. The work he's been able to get in has allowed him to continue his regular progression.

"Yeah, I think I'm right there," he said. "I wouldn't have thrown that many pitches. I probably would have thrown less than that, in fact, unless I would have ran into a long inning and even then, they wouldn't have let me go over so many pitches in one inning.

"As far as workload, yes. As far as the other things that go into actually pitching in a spring training game, (those) are a little bit different, whether it be routine or stuff like that."

Beckett said he is still feeling the effects of being hit.

"I'm actually good," he said. "(But) I'm really sore on the left side of my head. My jaw and stuff like that are pretty sore. But I think I'm pretty much back to normal."

He didn't notice the concussion symptoms until the day after the incident.

"I don't think initially I was that scared," he said. "It actually took when I went to lunch (the next day) and I couldn't do it. I couldn't be away from my house without laying down. And that's when I finally said, 'Hey, there's something wrong here.' Because I was kind of resistant to even thinking I had a concussion.

"I tried to come in the next day. I was like 'Oh, I'm ready to go back to work. Let's get this over with.' And I found out that day when I went to lunch. It was a little bit of a setback."

Beckett is coming off a disappointing 6-6 season in which he had a 5.78 ERA with 45 walks.

Get automobile news and garbage compactor