Today's Links: Deportation of Canadian activists, extinction of the white dolphin, and death of pro-Beijing HK politician

• Income disparity getting worse: Report [China Daily]
  China's Gini coefficient, a standard measure of a country's overall income inequality, rose to 0.473 in 2004 from 0.4 in 1993.


• Dream of high-speed rail may prove Shanghai politician's final nightmare [IHT]
  "I have a dream," Chen Liangyu, Shanghai's Communist Party secretary - since disgraced and removed from office - was fond of intoning before his aides, consciously echoing the words of Martin Luther King Jr. And as the leader of China's richest city, Chen had the power to make most of those dreams come true. But for many here, the symbolic end came this May, with the suspension of the maglev project, his greatest, and certainly his most expensive, dream.


• Former Shanghai chief to stand trial on graft charges - state media [Forbes]
  Former Shanghai leader Chen Liangyu is set to stand trial on charges of bribe-taking and abuse of power for his role in the city's billion-dollar pension fund scandal, state press reported.


• China counts down to the Olympics [CNN]
  As fireworks exploded over Tiananmen Square on Wednesday night, a troupe of 200 youthful singers on a glittering stage below belted out the theme song to mark the one-year countdown for the Beijing Olympics: "We Are Ready." Make that almost ready. The city's filthy air, which International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge warned could force the rescheduling of some events, is an embarrassment for the most expensive and anticipated Olympics in a generation.


• Indian Tibetans march to shame Olympics host China [The Guardian]
  Thousands of Tibetans marched through New Delhi and New York on Wednesday, shouting slogans and waving flags in protest against China's actions in Tibet at the start of the one-year countdown to the Beijing Olympics.


• Three Canadian protesters deported from China [CTV.ca]
  Three Canadians who were detained with other activists after demonstrating against China's occupation of Tibet have been deported from the country.


• Tibet asks to send its own team to Beijing [NZ Herald]
  In a move sure to anger Beijing, which annexed Tibet in 1950, Tibetans in exile have formed the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Tibet and have written to International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge asking him to invite Tibet to participate in the 2008 Games.


• China's white dolphin likely extinct [China Daily]
  The Yangtze River dolphin is now almost certainly extinct, making it the first dolphin that humans drove to extinction, scientists have now concluded after an intense search for the endangered species.


• Hong Kong pro-Beijing politician dies [Forbes]
  Ma Lik, the head of Hong Kong's leading pro-Beijing political party who questioned whether China's Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 should be called a massacre, died Wednesday, an official said. He was 55.

Photo from Shanghai Daily: How ready is Beijing for the Olympics next year?