April 17, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1429

BEIJING, April 16: China’s new National Stadium, the centrepiece of the Beijing Olympics and better known as the Bird’s Nest, was opened to international media for the first time on Wednesday.

The iconic 3.5 billion yuan ($500.2 million) arena, which was started in December 2003 and completed 14 weeks behind schedule, will host the opening and closing ceremonies as well as the athletics and soccer finals at the Aug 8-24 Games.

With 114 days to go until the opening ceremony, the finishing touches were still being applied. Workers were painting lines on the running track and some of the 91,000 seats had yet to be fixed in place.

The stadium was supposed to have been finished along with the other venues by the end of 2007 but the completion date was first postponed to the end of March and then to the middle of April.

Organisers said that the complexity of preparing the stadium for what is expected to be a lavish opening ceremony on the evening of Aug 8 was responsible for the delays.

Officials confirmed in January that two workers had died during construction of the stadium.

—Reuters