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China’s central bank has set a lower target for loan growth rate of 12 percent for 2008 in efforts to curb lending growth and cool the economy, state media reported Thursday.

Lending growth would be strictly controlled and branches required to report new loans monthly, the Shanghai Securities News reported, citing a source with a major state-owned bank.

The lending growth target for this year was 15 percent.

But that has already been overshot with new yuan loans totalling 3.58 trillion yuan from January to November, up nearly 21 percent from the same period a year earlier.

China is attempting to curb lending growth and investment spending as part of broader efforts to cool an economy that is likely to expand by about 11.5 percent in 2007, marking the fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth.

The newspaper said 2008 new loan quotas for Bank of China would be cut to 260 billion yuan from the 280 billion it notched-up in 2007.

It said ICBC, China Construction Bank and the Agricultural Bank of China were told to keep new loans in 2008 within targets set for 2007, which were 365 billion yuan, 350 billion and 310 billion respectively.

To stay with his maternal grandmother or his biological father may involve a lot of soul-searching for 9-year-old Sean Goldman.

So the custody battle over the American-born Brazilian boy continues, and once again made headlines on Thursday when Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court delayed Sean’s return to his U.S. father the day David Goldman flew in from New Jersey in the hope of taking the boy home for Christmas.

The lawsuit, which has been already dragging on for five years, witnessed an overnight twist as the Supreme Court suspended the previous day’s appellate court decision ordering the child be handed over to David.

Marco Aurelio Mello, a justice on the Supreme Federal Court decision panel, cited habeas corpus as the consideration behind the court’s suspension.

“The habeas corpus review which seeks to ensure the child’s own right has not happened,” the judge argued. “He is, initially, old enough to decide if he returns to the United States, or if he stays in Brazil.”

The judge also cited the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child.

Sean’s grandmother, Silvana Bianchi, elated with the Supreme Court ruling, told the press: “His testimony has never been heard. As a Brazilian citizen, he deserves it. He is a child of nearly 10,and he knows quite well what he wants.”

The lawyer for the Brazilian family has shown the press a card allegedly drawn by Sean. It reads in large green letters: “I want to stay in Brazil forever.”

The lawyer of Sean’s father has confirmed that the Supreme Court ruling meant that Goldman would not be able to pick up his son at the American Consulate in Rio de Janeiro on Friday.

“The Court of Appeals, the three judges, recognized the urgency of my son to come home. This stay is ridiculous,” Goldman fumed.

Sean will most likely remain in Brazil until at least Feb. 1 of next year, when local judges end their year-end recess which starts on Monday next week.

Mello explained to the press that the Supreme Court would question the necessity of Sean’s being heard directly by a judge to make sure what his will is.

The legal battle started not long after Goldman’s Brazilian wife took Sean back to Brazil in 2004 for a vacation.

But the woman later changed her mind, stayed, and eventually obtained a Brazilian divorce and then remarried.

Goldman and his son were reunited for the first time in February this year, the only time since Sean was taken to Brazil.

Goldman started the lawsuit citing the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which has been adopted by the United States.

The convention seeks the return of children wrongfully removed or retained in any contracting state and ensures that the rights of custody in the contracting state be respected.

U.S. Congressman Rep. Chris Smith on Thursday traveled to Brazil to lobby the case and said: “We have a reciprocity agreement when it comes to abducted children. We all have an international obligation to work to get children back to their habitual residence.”

During the lawsuit, U.S. President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton both urged the return of Sean to the United States.

Sergio Tostes, attorney for Sean’s stepfather, said that the lawsuit should never have attained such high political levels.

“This is not a fight between two countries. This is just the pursuit of the truth and the pursuit of what is the best interest of the boy.”

BRASILIA, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) — The Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Thursday suspended the return of 9-year-old Sean Goldman to the United States, where his father lives.

Marco Aurelio de Mello, a judge of the supreme court, shelved the Wednesday decision of the Federal Regional Court of Rio de Janeiro to send Goldman, saying the will of the child himself must be heard and made known.

Over the past week, Facebook has been nudging its users — first gently, then firmly — to review and update their privacy settings.

You may have procrastinated by hitting “skip for now,” but Facebook eventually took away that button and forced you to update your settings before continuing to use the site.

After finally accepting Facebook’s recommendations or tweaking the privacy settings yourself, though, you might have made more information about you public than what you had intended.

At the same time, Facebook has given users many granular controls over their privacy, more than what’s available on other major social networks.

So if you want to stay out of people’s view, but still want to be on Facebook, here are some things to look out for as you take another look at your settings.

1. Some of your information is viewable by everyone.

Everyone can see your name, your profile photo and the names of work and school networks you’re part of. Ditto for pages you are a fan of. If you are worried about a potential employer finding out about a quirky fetish or unorthodox political leaning, avoid becoming a Facebook fan of such groups. You can’t tell Facebook you don’t want those publicly listed. Your gender and current city are also available, if you choose to specify them. You can uncheck “Show my sex in my profile” when you edit your profile if you don’t want it listed, and you can leave “Current City” blank.

2. Your list of friends may also be public.

Facebook also considers your friends list publicly available information. Privacy advocates worry that much can be gleaned from a person’s list of friends — even sexual orientation, according to one MIT study. But there is a way to hide the list. Go to your profile page and click on the little blue pencil icon on the top right of your box of friends. Uncheck “Show Friend List to everyone.” Either way, those you are already friends with can always see your full list.

3. You can hide yourself from Web searches.

There is a section for “Search” under Facebook’s privacy settings page, which is accessible from the top right corner of the Web site under “Settings.” If you click the “Allow” box next to “Public Search Results,” the information that Facebook deems publicly available (such as photo, fan pages and list of friends), along with anything else you have made available to everyone, will show up when someone looks up your name on a search engine such as Google. The stuff you’ve limited access to in your profile will not show up.

This is useful if you want people you’ve lost touch with, or potential work contacts, to be able to find your Facebook page. If you’d rather not be found, uncheck this box.

A second setting, controlling searches within Facebook, lets you refine who can find you once that person has logged on. Limit searches to friends only if you think you have all the friends you need and don’t want anyone to find you when they type in your name to Facebook.

4. Beware of third-party applications.

Quizzes and games are fun, but each time you take one, you first authorize it to access your profile information, even if you have made that available only to your friends. You’re also letting the app access some information on your friends.

Under “Application Settings,” Facebook lists all the apps you have opened your profile up to. If you no longer want to authorize access to “Which Golden Girl Are You?” you can always remove it by clicking on the “X” next to its name. Apps you use regularly, such as Facebook for Android if you update your status from your mobile phone, should stay.

Next, by clicking on “Applications and Websites” on the privacy settings page, you can edit whether your friends can share your birthday, photos and other specific information. Remember that applications can access your “publicly available information” no matter what.

The security firm Sophos recommends users set their privacy settings for two of Facebook’s own popular applications, notes and photos, to friends only.

5. Go over your list of friends.

The average Facebook user has 130 friends. But many people interact with a much smaller group when commenting on status updates, photos and links. So it doesn’t hurt to occasionally review your list of your friends to get an idea of just who can view your status posts, vacation photos and funny links you’ve shared over the years. Don’t feel obligated to add anyone as a friend, even if that person adds you first. For professional acquaintance you don’t want to snub, send them to a LinkedIn profile you can set up. Some workplaces and schools have rules about Facebook interactions between bosses and employees or students and teachers.

6. Create custom friends groups.

If you have friended a lot of people, sort them. Think of the groups you interact with in real life — co-workers, college buddies, girlfriends, grandma and grandpa — and organize your Facebook friends in these groups, too. Go to “All Friends” under the “Friends” button up top, click on “Create New List” and fire away. Then decide what aspects of your profile, and which status posts and photos, these people will have access to. Or, simply create a “limited” list for acquaintances or distant relatives and limit their access.

7. Customize your status posts.

Type “I’m hungry” into your status update box. Click on the little lock icon. You’ll see a range of privacy controls pop up, letting you either allow or limit access to the post. If you want, you can even hide it from everyone by clicking “Only Me” under the custom settings. Click on “Save Setting.” Repeat with each post, or create a default setting for most updates and increase or decrease privacy as you see fit.

8. Let your friends know you have boundaries — in person.

Many of us have woken up on a Sunday morning to find that an overzealous friend has posted dozens of photos from that wild party we barely remembered — the good, the bad and the hideous. Chances are, they didn’t do this to embarrass you, though if they did you have bigger problems. Rather, they probably don’t know that you don’t want these photos posted. Sure, tweak your photo privacy settings on Facebook. But if someone starts snapping pictures of you at a party, ask them to check with you before posting it anywhere.

9. Never assume complete privacy.

Even for the most tech-savvy person, unflattering photos, incriminating text messages or angry status posts about work have a way of worming their way out in the open. Just saying.

STOCKS in Shanghai tumbled today, with the key index headed for the longest losing streak in nearly eight weeks after the government imposed curbs on food prices and ordered banks to set aside larger reserves to curtail inflation.

The Shanghai Composite Index, which tracks yuan-denominated A shares and hard-currency B shares, shed 2.63 percent, or 138.98 points, to 5,151.63 at 3pm today.

Losers in the Shanghai market outnumbered winners 624 to 166 and 60 were unchanged.

The Shenzhen Composite Index, which covers the smaller mainland stock market, lost 2.42 percent, or 37.3 points, to 1,501.06.

Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co led food producers lower on speculation price limits will dent profits.

Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co, a flagship enterprise in China’s dairy industry, sank 6.54 percent, or 2.10 yuan (29 US cents), to finish at 30.01 yuan. Shanghai-based Bright Dairy & Food plunged 5.52 percent, or 0.76 yuan, to 13 yuan.

Major producers and sellers of instant noodles, cooking oils and dairy produce must seek permission from the nation’s top planning agency directly to raise prices. Others providing staples such as grains, pork, beef, mutton and eggs, as well as liquefied petroleum gas, will have to seek approval from provincial governments to raise prices, the National Development and Reform Commission said yesterday.

Since May, China’s consumer prices, the main gauge of inflation, have soared, largely due to increasing food costs.

Food prices climbed 18.2 percent in November, pushing overall inflation to 6.9 percent, its highest monthly rate in 11 years, despite a string of fiscal and monetary policies introduced to slow the pace of inflation.

The banking sector suffered a wide sell-off today after China yesterday ordered banks to increase their reserves for the 11th time in 13 months to curb inflation. Investors are worried that corporate earnings growth at banks may be affected.

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd, the nation’s biggest listed lender, dropped 2.53 percent, or 0.20 yuan, to 7.71 yuan. China Construction Bank Corp, the second-largest, fell 2.71 percent, or 0.26 yuan, to close at 9.35 yuan.

Lenders must put 15 percent of their deposits into the central bank beginning January 25, the People’s Bank of China said late yesterday on its Website, up from 14.5 percent. The ratio is the highest in at least 20 years.

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, Asia’s biggest oil refiner and a key heavyweight in the market, was among the falling chemical shares after minority shareholders of its two listed units rejected a plan to make its stock available for trade publicly.

China Petroleum, also known as Sinopec, slid 6.48 percent, or 1.49 yuan, to 21.49 yuan. Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co, China’s largest maker of ethylene, shed 4.97 percent, or 0.82 yuan, to 15.67 yuan. Sinopec Yizheng Chemical Fibre Co, China’s largest chemical fiber maker, lost 4.96 percent, or 0.56 yuan, to 10.72 yuan.

Shares of the two Sinopec’s units were suspended through yesterday after last trading on January 4.

It is the second time small investors of the two companies have rebuffed the proposal by Sinopec to convert its shares in the units into tradable stock that can be bought and sold on exchanges. The first veto happened in November 2006.

Sinopec offered holders of the units’ Shanghai-traded stock 3.2 shares for every 10 owned, the two companies said last month. Sinopec undertook not to sell the newly available shares for 72 months after the proposal is implemented.

But consumer stocks including Gree Electric Appliances Inc gained on expectations they will weather the government’s plan to cool economic growth.

Gree Electric Appliances, China’s largest maker of home air-conditioners, advanced 2.31 percent, or 1.29 yuan, to 57.10 yuan.

As one of the most important qualifier for the Beijing Olympic Games, most people thought the lineup of the “Good Luck Beijing” FINA Diving World Cup was exactly the lineup of the Olympic Games. However, it was not.

“The lineup of the World Cup does not equal to that in Beijing Olympic Games,” announced Zhou Jihong, the director of the Chinese national team.

The World Cup, which ran from Feb. 19 to 24, served as an Olympic qualifier and for that reason attracted many world class divers, like Russia’s “diving czar” Dmitry Sautin, Chinese “diving queen” Guo Jingjing and Canadian “golden boy” Alexandor Despatie.

According to FINA, the first eight divers in the final will get the qualification for the Beijing Olympic Games.

Each national federation will submit their final list of divers before the deadline of June 23.

“Until June, our team will still attend many FINA competitions,” said Zhou. “The lineup of the Beijing Olympic Games still need some months to decide.”

“There is a principle about who to attend the Olympic Games. We will choose the best divers in their best form,” Zhou added.

But in the women’s three-meter springboard, Zhou said world and Olympic champion Guo will be a sure shot. Her partner in the three-meter synchronized event Guo Jingjing, who beat her in the individual event to win the title on Saturday, is also sure to compete in the Water Cube again during the Olympics.

As for Athens Olympic champion Hu Jia and Peng Bo, who were absent from the World Cup, Zhou said: “They had injuries in the past two years and took a rest for some time. Now they are still recovering. Whether or not they can enter the Olympics will be decided by their performances in the coming months.”

China clinched seven out of eight golds offered at the World Cup, but Zhou said it is too early to be happy.

“There were still some world class divers who did not come,” Zhou said. “In the men’s three-meter springboard and 10-meter platform, Russia didn’t send any divers. We just take the World Cup as a training session.”

Zhou, China’s first Olympic diving champion, said that she was especially satisfied with the women’s 10-meter platform event at the World Cup.

“Chen Ruolin and Wang Xin showed their talent in the final,” said Zhou. “It was a high level competition, and our divers performed quite well.”

Teenagers Chen and Wang were the winner and runner-up respectively in the final, and they paired up to clinch the women’s 10-meter platform synchronized gold as well.

Zhou also warned that Chinese divers should keep a cool head because some foreign divers impressed her very much.

Yahel Castillo of Mexico, 21, only 0.30 points behind world champion Qin Kai in the men’s three-meter springboard final to take the bronze. The difficulty degree of the 21-year-old’s one dive was the highest during the final, and he also got the highest score in the dive.

“I saw Castillo in last September’s World Series in Nanjing, and by then he had not learned the dive,” Zhou said. “He learned it in recent months and performed it with high quality and consistency, which shows his talent and strength in diving.”

Zhou also complimented 14-year-old Thomas Daley of Britain, who took the bronze in the men’s 10m platform synchronized event.

“The difficulty degree of his dives has increased a lot since the last time I saw him in England,” said Zhou. “He really has some talent and made a lot progress in the past year.”

Zhou said that the German Sascha Klein will be a hard challenger for Chinese divers.

Chinese shares slumped 3 percent on Monday after securities regulators failed investors’ expectation that they might introduce stimulus measures.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index shed 107.43 points from the previous close to 3,472.71. The Shenzhen Component Index fell 390.71 points, or 2.85 percent to 13,302.14.

The major stock index rebounded by 4.94 percent last Friday on market talk that the securities watchdog might announce a stamp duty cut or unveil the timetable for the launch of stock index futures over the weekend to stem further declines.

Investors were disappointed to find no such moves taken at the weekend, which made worries on the market worse, said analysts.

Reports on Sunday said the China Securities Regulatory Commission had urged fund companies to stay cool amidst market changes and stick to long-term investment to help maintain stability of the capital market.

The Chinese government will make efforts to promote stable and sound development of its stock market, said Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao when visiting Laos on Sunday.

Losers outnumbered winners on Monday by 726 to 65 in Shanghai and by 570 to 49 in Shenzhen. Aggregate turnover shrank sharply to97.4 billion yuan from 130.88 billion yuan last Friday.

Large caps led the downward movement, with PetroChina, the biggest index component, falling 3.64 percent to 17.22 yuan. ChinaLife lost 3.71 percent and China Shenhua Energy reduced 5.99 percent.

Oil, coal, airline and banking sectors rose, with Sinopec gaining 1.34 percent and Air China climbing 0.18 percent. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the country’s largest lender, went up 1.32 percent to 6.13 yuan.

Four-year-old Alex Hua Tian took up horse riding in Beijing’s suburbs and 14 years later became a history maker in the equestrian world.

He was the first Chinese rider registered by the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) and the first Chinese rider to compete in three-day eventing at an international equestrian event, which includes dressage, jumping and cross-country competitions.

On Sunday, the 18-year-old Eton College student became the first Chinese eventer to qualify for the Beijing Olympic Games and the youngest rider to take part in this event at the Olympics.

At one of the Olympic qualifiers in Bialy Bor, Poland, last week, Hua passed the Olympic qualification standards after finishing second, fifth and seventh, respectively, on FBW Chico, Jeans and Castlebanny Prince. The confirmation of his Olympic berth by FEI will arrive soon, his father Hua Shan said.

“His mother called me from (Poland) and she was so excited she couldn’t speak a complete sentence and cried,” Hua Shan said.

“Alex was of course quite happy but kept cool as usual. He told me the horses had been wonderful.

“We all believed that Alex could qualify for the Olympics but we didn’t expect it to come so soon. The average age of Olympic event riders is around 35 and what he has achieved at such a young age is really amazing.”

As host country, China was automatically allocated six berths in equestrian events - four in jumping, one in dressage and another in eventing. Even so, Chinese riders and their four-legged partners need to satisfy the minimum standards at specified events that take place between Jan 1, 2007, and June 30, 2008.

“We were very happy to hear the news but not that surprised,” Chinese Equestrian Association director Cheng Qing said.

“Hua Tian is such a talented rider and has already shown that he is capable of qualifying for the Olympics. All he needs now is more match experience.”

Hua’s Chinese sponsor Jiang Fengcan, who is also the owner of the horses, said he was proud of his decision to back the youngster.

“I was a little bit nervous before he qualified for the Olympics but now I am relieved,” he said.

“I have known Hua Tian for years and always believed he would make history at the Olympics.”

According to the rules, an eventer can take just one horse to Olympic competition and Hua needs to choose from the three qualified horses.

“As horses can easily get hurt during the dangerous cross-country competition, we will protect them and they will only participate in dressage and jumping before the Olympics,” Hua said.

World-class team

Thanks to Guangdong province businessman Jiang’s 30 million yuan ($3.8 million) sponsorship Hua has backing from top professionals in the industry, including four seasoned grooms, one physiotherapist, one physical trainer and one veterinarian.

The world’s leading event riders have coached Hua since he was 10 years old, including Clayton and Lucinda Fredericks.

Clayton is currently the world’s No 1 event rider, the 2005 World Cup champion and president of the international Event Riders Association. His wife, Lucinda, has won the four-star eventing competition at the British town of Badminton.

Other veteran dressage and jumping riders, who have competed at previous Olympics, have also joined the team.

“We should thank the Fredericks for their great efforts in helping Alex achieve his Olympic dream,” Hua Shan said.

“They are working so hard at coaching Alex and sometimes they have to change their own Olympic preparations in order to meet Alex’s schedule, because they understand that he is making history,” Hua Shan said.

The reason scientists can’t find rocks more than 4 billion years old is they may not have been able to handle the weather — stinging acid rains — and an intensely warm surface.

The fate of all those rocks from the first 500 million years after Earth formed has been a longstanding question in geology. Scientists have advanced various explanations for the missing rocks, including destruction by barrages of meteorites and the possibility that the early Earth was a sea of red-hot magma in which no rocks could form.

Geologists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison examined zircon crystals, the oldest known materials on Earth, to shed light on the fate of rocks from the early Earth. Zircons, which are smaller than a speck of sand, can offer a window back in time to about 4.4 billion years ago, when the Earth was a mere 150 million years old because they are extremely resistant to chemical changes.

The research team analyzed the ratios of different isotopes of lithium (which have different atomic weights and number of neutrons per atom) in zircons from the Jack Hills in Western Australia. They compared the lithium fingerprints of those zircons to those from continental crust and rocks similar to those found in Earth’s mantle, the molten layer sandwiched between the crust and core.

The results of the analysis, detailed in a recent online issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, provide evidence that the young Earth already had the beginnings of continents, relatively cool temperatures and liquid water by the time the Australian zircons formed.

But the lithium signatures also hold signs of rock exposure on Earth’s surface and breakdown by weather and water, suggesting that early rocks were destroyed by intense weathering.

The early Earth is thought to have had extremely high levels of carbon dioxide ─ perhaps 10,000 times as much as today. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can combine with water to create acid rain.

“At [those levels of carbon dioxide], you would have had vicious acid rain and intense greenhouse [effects]. That is a condition that will dissolve rocks,” said study team member John Valley. “If granites were on the surface of the Earth, they would have been destroyed almost immediately ─ geologically speaking ─ and the only remnants that we could recognize as ancient would be these zircons.”

The Main Press Center (MPC) near the centerpiece Beijing Olympic venues is undoubtedly a refuge from the midsummer heat wave, with its cool air out flowing from the main entrance and felt from several paces away.

But coolness slowly escalates into bitter cold when one stays in the building for more than 30 minutes, and my colleagues and I who spend days on end in our newsroom have to put on jackets and even sweaters — most of the time the indoor temperature here is no more than 22 degrees Celsius.

“You might feel cold, but many others will complain when the mercury goes up,” a maintenance worker has told us.

Yet 26 is the minimum indoor temperature allowed for Chinese government offices in a nationwide campaign to cut energy consumption and improve efficiency. Government employees have also been told to take off their suits and ties in the office to stay cool.

The Games organizers may as well follow these practices and force extra doses of frugality.

In fact, extravagance was never part of the Beijing Games. Without any compromise of its architectural security and futuristic style, Beijing has “slimmed” the landmark Bird’s Nest and cut construction cost by 400 million yuan (57 million U.S. dollars). Steel consumption alone was slashed by 12,000 tonnes.

To ensure the venues will not be left unused after the Games, Beijing has built 20 percent of its Olympic facilities on campus –and four of all the 11 brand new stadiums are based in colleges and universities.

The MPC itself is exemplary in saving — its 80,000 square meters of interior and exterior decoration cost 3 million yuan in total. Sources from the industry said the amount was only enough to decorate a five-star hotel lobby about several hundred square meters.

Beijing has promised “Green Olympics”, a concept widely applauded internationally. But in many cases, to economize is essential if we wish to be “green”.

Against the backdrop of a global economic slowdown, surging oil prices and the growing pressure from inflation and global warming, the Beijing Games need to be “green” and frugal more than ever.

Not to mention the needy population at home, including those people in the southwestern Sichuan Province whose homes toppled in the devastating May 12 earthquake.

Sure enough, the stadiums need to be air-conditioned to an ideal temperature — probably around 20 degrees Celsius in some events. But at the press center, we will feel perfectly comfortable at 26 degrees.

“Finally, he got it, for which he has waited for 12 years,” said excited Sasithorn Jongjohor, wife of Thai Olympics gold winner Somjit Jongjohor, after her husband beat Cuba’s Andris Laffita Hernandez in Beijing late Saturday.

In the last match of Somjit, the 33-year-old boxing star showed a class of his own in the flyweight division.

On Saturday, he continued his overwhelming advantage on the boxing stage. He trounced the 30-year-old Pan American champion 8-2.

In earlier matches, he beat Eddie Valenzuela from Guatemala 6-1, Mammadov Samir from Azerbaijan 10-2, Anvar Yunusov from Tajikistan 8-1, Vincenzo Picardi from Italy 7-1.

“In his 12 years of boxing career, he has got many medals from various games. However, he was dreaming an Olympic medal all the time, although he lost the match four years ago in Athens, he never gave up. That’s the reason why he kept fighting until now,” said Sasithorn. “His dream now comes true.”

At Somjit’s hometown, Thai northeastern Korat Province’s Bakchong district, thousands of local officials, villages, fans and media crews bombarded his house to watch live coverage and lend supports. They burst into cheers after Somjit’s win.

His only son turns seven on Saturday. The boy got the best birthday gift from his father as Somjit earlier said that he will win an Olympic gold medal for his son. “My father is so cool. I want to be like him,” the boy said on a TV live coverage.

Somjit will retire from the national boxing team after he returns from Beijing on Monday. However, he earlier said he wanted to be a youth boxing coach to stay in the sport he loves.

The win produced the second gold medal for Thailand in Beijing after Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarakoon won the women’s 53kg weightlifting event last week.

He is scheduled to return to Thailand on Monday with more than 15 million baht (about 450,000 U.S. dollars) incentive money from the government and private sectors waiting.

In another match, the light welter (64kg) final bout, Thailand’s Manus Boonjumnong lost to Dominican’s Felix Diaz, won a silver medal for Thailand. However, the Athens gold winner is also praised by Thais since he is the first Thai athletes who won medals in two Olympic Games.

Thailand so far got two golds and two silvers at the Beijing Games.