OLYMPIC ROUNDUP \ News notes

Phelps almost unnoticed: Michael Phelps sneaked into Beijing almost unnoticed. He’s unlikely to go out that way. The probable star of the Beijing Olympics avoided hundreds of fans, photographers and reporters Monday by taking a side door out to a waiting bus while his teammates pushed luggage trolleys through the arrival gate at Beijing’s new Terminal 3, a sprawling addition to the city’s airport. Phelps, who’s grown a mustache while training in Singapore, eventually was spotted — in a window seat on the team bus — by dozens of reporters and photographers. He ignored most of the cameras, glancing in their direction a few times as he adjusted the fit of his baseball cap. Phelps, who won six gold medals four years ago in Athens, is aiming to surpass Mark Spitz’s seven-gold effort at the 1972 Munich Games. Phelps will compete in eight events in Beijing, three of which are relays.

Attack kills 16 police: In an audacious and deadly attack just days ahead of the Beijing Olympics, two men from a mainly Muslim ethnic group rammed a truck and hurled explosives at jogging policemen in China’s restive far west Monday, killing 16. The attack in a city near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border brought an immediate response from China’s Olympic organizers, who pronounced security precautions ready to ensure safety in Beijing and other Olympic venues when the games open Friday. Yet the timing so close to opening day heightened the attack’s shock value and bore the hallmarks of local Muslim militants, said Li Wei, a counterterrorism expert affiliated with the government. It also came as athletes, Olympic dignitaries and journalists poured into Beijing for an Olympics that some Chinese want to leverage to get the government to address festering grievances. Migrant workers cheated on pay for construction, homeowners angry about pollution and other disgruntled residents believe the government would help them rather than see the Olympics disrupted. .

Judge may shutter Web site: A federal judge in San Francisco is considering whether to shut down a Web site that U.S. Olympic officials say is fraudulently selling tickets to the Beijing Games. Lawyers for the U.S. Olympic Committee asked the judge Monday to permanently disable www.beijingticketing.com, which they contend has scammed numerous U.S. residents out of thousands of dollars by falsely promising to deliver tickets to the games.

Associated Press