And never the twain should meet

There's a joke doing the SMS rounds in my country, India: Let's boycott the Beijing Games because we won't win a single medal anyway.

For those who keep track of India's athletic prowess, it is no joke - the country has scant hope of picking up a medal in the Chinese capital. The boycott bit, though, is just a joke.

But it is not funny for the host city, just when it thought it had the party perfectly planned, along comes a pooper. In this case, it has taken the tragic form of the Lhasa riots.