Cuba and Cyprus signed eight agreements on economic, industrial and technological cooperation on Tuesday.

The deals were signed during Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias’s visit to Cuba.

Among the agreements was one on developing cooperation in scientific, technological and environmental research. The two countries also established cooperation projects on cultural exchange and tourism.

Cuba and Cyprus also agreed to strengthen the exchange between the Cuban National Institute of Sports and Recreation and its counterpart in Cyprus.

Christofias arrived here Monday on his first official visit to the Caribbean country as president.

Political leaders and government officials in southern U.S. Metropolis of Houston on Saturday warmly welcomed China’s dedication of the Great Confucius Statue, hailing the statue as a symbol of China-U.S. friendship.

A dedication ceremony was held Saturday at Hermann Park in downtown Houston to mark the erection of the statue in the park, jointly donated by the China’s Consulate General in Houston and the local Chinese community to commemorate the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius, the ancient Chinese thinker. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the China-U.S. diplomatic ties.

The statue “is a reminder to Houstonians and Texans of the teachings of Confucius, whose ideals, and particularly his thoughts about man’s role in society, remain as true today as they were 2,500 years ago,” former U.S. Secretary of State James Barker said in a written statement.

“I am a firm believer that projects like this can build bridges between people as well as nations. This statue is yet another way to erect stronger and better ties between the United States and China and other East Asian countries,” he said.

Noting the statue is being dedicated on the 30th anniversary of the founding of China-U.S. ties, Baker voiced his optimism that the relationship between the two countries “will improve as much during the next 30 years as it has during the past 30 years.”

“On behalf of the city of Houston, I thank you for the very generous gift of a bronze sculpture of Great Confucius to the citizens of Houston to be dedicated and placed today in the Hermann Park International Sculpture Garden,” said Houston mayor Bill White at the ceremony.

“This year marks the 30th anniversary of the renewal of Sino-American relations. I can think of no more fitting time to dedicate this statue and to celebrate and honour the ongoing and steadfast relationships our city has with China and its many citizens who reside in Houston,” he said.

Minnette Bosesel, the mayor’s assistant for cultural affairs, welcomed the addition of the Confucius statue to the city’s collection.

“Houston is fortunate to receive into the City Art Collection this beautiful sculpture created by acclaimed artist Willy Wang. The City is grateful to the Chinese Consulate and the Friends of Confucius Sculpture.”

“We thank the People’s Republic of China, the Friends of Confucius Sculpture committee and artist Willy Wang for the honor they have bestowed on our city through their donation of the Confucius statue,” said Joe Turner, director of Parks and Recreation Department of Houston.

“We hope that visitors to the International Sculpture Garden at Herman Park will see the sculpture and be reminded of the great philosopher’s words and teachings,” he said

“Confucius was a thinker, philosopher, political figure and educator who taught his students and followers how to live a wholesome life and interact with others among many other notable teachings,” said Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Till today, Confucius’ lessons on life “resound among populations throughout the world and serve as a guide to individuals in pursuit of an ethical life,” the governor said.

Over the years, the United States and China have worked to develop their relationship, fostering strong economic and trade ties and international cooperation for mutual prosperity, said Perry, noting that in the decades to come, the ties “will continue to be the world’s most significant” as the two nations continue to collaborate towards common goals.

Earlier, former U.S. President George Bush said in a written statement that “the statue is a truly wonderful gift to the city of Houston from the people of China, and we are grateful for this expression of friendship.”

“China-U.S. relations are vitally important, and the more we know about the history of China, the better it is for my country,” said Bush, who also agreed to serve as the honorary chairman of the dedication ceremony of the Confucius statue.

Confucius, who lived from 551 B.C. to 479 B.C., has been regarded as the most famous and prominent ancient Chinese educator, thinker and philosopher, and founder of the Ru School of Chinese thought.

The Confucius statue at Herman Park is the work of Willy Wang, an American Emmy Awards winner who immigrated from China and has created such works as the sculpture of George R. Brown in Discovery Green and Bill Hobby in the State Capitol.

The life-size cast bronze statue of Confucius at Herman Park is believed to be the largest among its many counterparts across the United States.

This proud US city has had its ups and downs. Once a pillar of the iron and steel industries, by 1970 the city was famous as part of the “Rust Belt,” a symbol of the collapse of manufacturing in the US. Today the run-down heart of the city and the once-polluted rivers have been replaced by a sparklingly waterfront district offering arts, recreation and fine architecture. Though lagging a bit in the current economic crisis, Pittsburgh’s incredible rebound is probably one reason President Barack Obama chose to host the G20 summit here.

What’s pittsburgh got?

LAND AND PEOPLE:The city measures 142 square kilometers and as of the 2000 census contains more than 334,000 people. The

population peaked in the ore-smeltering heyday of the 1950s and ’60s, when more than 600,000 people lived there.

RIVERS:The downtown area’s triangular shape is formed by the meeting of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which become the Ohio River. The “Three Rivers City” got a bad rap in the super-polluted era of the 1970s, when the local joke was “Which river is on fire today?” Thanks to a cleanup after the US Clean Water Act passed, the riverfront today is a scenic recreation spot – and you can eat any fish you catch there. Famous for its bridges, Pittsburgh has more than Venice – or anywhere else in the world, according to the chamber of commerce.

THE NAME:The city was named after the British statesman Sir William Pitt (above) by a Scot, Revolutionary War General John Forbes, who probably pronounced it “Pittsburro” in the prevailing speech of Scotsman of that day. The final “h” was clipped off from 1890 to 1911, but locals fussed so much that city officials put it back.

BEER:Iron City Beer is the homegrown brew. That nickname has stuck to the community even though no steel or iron is made within the city limits anymore. The brewery started a holiday joke promotion years ago with cans of Old Frothingslosh beer, advertised as “the pale stale ale with the foam on the bottom.” People loved it – especially beer-can collectors – and the brewery designed new cans of Old Frothingslosh every Christmas for many years.

FOOD:Pittsburghers love to eat at Primanti Brothers’ restaurant, where the sandwiches (above) are stacked high with French fries and coleslaw on top of meat, cheese and sliced tomato. The sandwiches are served on a sheet of waxed paper, not a plate. They were originally made for truck drivers delivering vegetables to the nearby produce warehouses.

JOBS:Historically known for its steel industry, the city’s economy today is based on healthcare, education, technology, robotics and financial services. The city has redeveloped abandoned industrial sites with new housing, shopping (above) and offices, most notably at SouthSide Works.

CHAMPIONS:The Pittsburgh Steelers won their sixth Super Bowl this year, the only National Football League team to win that many. The Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team (pictured) won the Stanley Cup this year. The Pittsburgh Pirates have won baseball’s World Series many times, but not since 1979.

WRESTLERS:The sport is BIG in the state of Pennsylvania, maybe bigger than football. Some heretics believe that states like Iowa and Oklahoma produce better wrestlers, but they don’t say that too loud in Pittsburgh.

ARCHITECTURE:Another Cinderella story, since the sagging, rust-bitten skyline of the 1970s has been swept away for modern skyscrapers, theaters and art centers such as the Children’s Museum (pictured).

HEROES:

Andrew Mellon was a legendary banker, US Treasury secretary and philanthropist. After World War I he restructured federal tax policy and the overstretched world banking system.

Andrew Carnegie founded United States Steel Corp. and made millions building battleships and bridges; later he used his fortune to construct free librariesin Pittsburgh and thousands more around the world.

Roberto Clemente, a star player for the Pittsburgh Pirates, died in a 1980 plane crash taking relief supplies to victims of the Nicaragua earthquake. Today a bridge named for him is almost as beautiful as his home-run swing.

Pop artist Andy Warhol (above, in self-portrait) was born in Pittsburgh and went to New York City (where he changed his name from Warhola). His hometown built the Andy Warhol Museum, which features many of his works.

If only every week could be so easy for Jay Leno.

Blessed with stars, a contrite Kanye West, the industry’s nearly undivided attention and a lack of competition from NBC’s rivals, his new prime-time show had a strong opening week. All five of its episodes finished among The Nielsen Co.’s 24 most-watched prime-time shows last week.

Reality sets in this week: Monday’s Leno episode had 5.7 million viewers, with demographic ratings on the cusp of what NBC considers profitable in the long term. The season premiere of CBS’ “CSI: Miami” had 13.7 million viewers.

The premiere of “The Jay Leno Show” had 18.4 million viewers last week Monday, and the audience had slipped to 7.6 million by Friday, Nielsen said.

NBC had mixed results for its critically acclaimed Thursday lineup, which debuted a week early. “The Office” reached a healthy 8.2 million viewers, and the new comedy “Community,” with 7.9 million people, ranked No. 20 for the week. Amy Poehler’s “Parks and Recreation” has problems, though, with an audience of fewer than 5 million people.

The CW’s “Gossip Girl” opened its season with 2.6 million viewers, fewer than last year for the buzzed-about show’s opening. The network said the audience was slightly up in the target audience of young women.

NBC’s Sunday night football matchup between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys in the Cowboys’ new stadium drew just under 25 million viewers, the biggest audience ever for the network’s Sunday night series.

It carried NBC to an easy win last week, as the network averaged 11.6 million viewers in prime time (7.3 rating, 12 share). CBS had 8.3 million viewers (5.3, 9), Fox had 5.3 million (3.3, 6), ABC had 4.4 million (2.9, 5), the CW had 1.9 million (1.3, 2), My Network TV had 1.5 million (1, 2) and ION Television had 790,000 (0.5, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with 3.5 million viewers (1.8 rating, 3 share), Telemundo had 900,000 and TeleFutura 880,000 (both 0.4, 1) and Azteca had 170,000 (0.1, 0).

After its first week in nearly a year out of the winner’s circle, NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average audience of 8.2 million viewers (5.5 rating, 12 share). ABC’s “World News” had 7.4 million (5, 10) and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.2 million (3.6, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,149,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.9 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Sept. 14-20, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NFL Football: Giants vs. Cowboys, NBC, 24.82 million; “Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick,” NBC, 18.91 million; “The Jay Leno Show” (Monday), NBC, 18.42 million; “America’s Got Talent” (Wednesday), NBC, 15.79 million; “NFL Post-Game,” CBS, 15.52 million; “America’s Got Talent” (Monday), NBC, 13.9 million; “Emmy Awards,” CBS, 13.47 million; “The Jay Leno Show” (Wednesday), NBC, 13.36 million; “Football Night in America,” NBC, 13.36 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 13.12 million.

The Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday to prohibit smoking in parks in the Los Angeles County, with some exceptions.

Citing secondhand smoke as the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States, the board voted 4-1 in favor of the ban proposed by the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR).

Smoking will be allowed in designated areas of recreational facilities run by outside contractors or lessees, such as golf courses and tennis courts.

Special exceptions will also be made for actors in productions under permit or for models in permitted photography sessions.

Several advocates, including representatives from the American Lung and American Heart associations, appeared before the board in favor of the proposal.

According to the DPR’s report to the board, 52,000 non-smokers die of exposure to secondhand smoke in the United States each year. The medical and other costs to U.S. non-smokers suffering from lung cancer or heart disease total nearly six billion dollars annually, according to the report.

Some contractors expressed concern that a complete smoking ban would hurt attendance and revenues. The department was unable to quantify the economic impact of a total ban, but suggested designated smoking areas in a compromise move.

The city of Los Angeles already has a similar smoking ban in place.

Supervisor Don Knabe cast the lone vote against the ban.

“The House Bunny” star Anna Faris has married her fiance, actor Chris Pratt.

A publicist for Faris confirms that the two were wed in Bali on July 9. People.com was the first to report the news.

The couple became engaged last year.

The 32-year-old Faris recently starred in “The House Bunny” and lends her voice to the forthcoming animated feature “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.”

Her 30-year-old husband stars in TV’s “Parks and Recreation” and will appear in the film “Jennifer’s Body,” set for release next month.

While the economic downturn has put some venture capitalists in the doghouse, figuratively speaking, one investment fund for a Chinese website catering to pet lovers has raised more than $10 million.

The fund, initiated by a cooperative including International Data Group, SoftBank and Alibaba Group, boosted Aigou.com (for “love dogs” in Chinese) to China’s largest pet website in terms of registered users.

People close to the deal said the investors plan to ramp up promotion of Aigou.com within a few years. The site was established in 2006.

Investors’ enthusiasm for Aigou.com is for its content, as the pet industry in China has not only escaped the economic slowdown largely unscathed, but also looks poised for a continued upswing.

Chinese consumers spent 5.73 billion yuan on pet food and pet-care products in 2008, a 6.9 percent increase over the previous year, according to Euromonitor International.

The global market research and consulting company predicted the market will rise 5.6 percent in 2009, to 6.05 billion yuan.

Although the growth rate this year is a slight decline over last year’s rate, China’s consumers remain loyal to their pets and the market.

Lifestyles fuel trend

Chinese people’s ever-increasing affection for their dogs, cats, fish, birds, rabbits, miniature pigs and other pets has been stimulated by an increase in household disposable income in recent decades.

Analysts also found that changing lifestyles, notably the strong growth in the number of small and single-person households, represents a significant counterweight to the current economic climate.

Pet ownership also counteracts the weakening of traditional social networks and helps owners combat loneliness, they added.

Fang Weiwei, 29, has lived in Beijing with her cat, Chouchou, for five years.

“I take care of her like a baby,” said Fang, a public relations manager. “She is my anchor in my busy work and in my loneliness without a boyfriend.”

Fang and Chouchou are hardly a rarity in China’s big cities. There are about 100 million pets across the country, and that number is expected to rise, according to Nestle SA, a major manufacturer of pet food.

The trend is helping the sellers of pet food and pet-care products, especially international corporations, to continue their development in China and buck economic trends; while many consumers are trading down to less-expensive goods for themselves to save money, they refuse to pinch pennies as they lavish their attentions on Buddy and Fifi. As a result, premium products are seeing sales increases.

Declining sales of lower-priced products might largely be a result of rising unemployment among lower-income households in China. Those people have usually chosen economical products for their pets.

Collapsing export demand has resulted in the closure of many factories in the country’s more economically developed coastal provinces, forcing millions of migrant workers to return home from cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen.

With more laid-off workers who have less money, the socioeconomic patterns of pet ownership are changing. Marginal consumers are abandoning packaged pet food products entirely, analysts said.

The annual household disposable income in China is forecast to grow just 4.1 percent in 2009, the worst performance in a decade, compared with 8.4 percent last year, according to the Blue Book on Chinese Society issued by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

On the other hand, the rise in smaller households, particularly the single-person households and dual-income, no-kids – or so-called DINK – families, has increased the demand for pets.

Attitudes have changed, with pets regarded more as family members than as working animals, especially among young urban residents.

They are able and willing to indulge their pets with premium food and other products.

According to the China Small Animal Protection Association, annual spending per pet in China was about 3,000 yuan on average in 2008. The expenditure was more than 6,000 yuan per pet in five key cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing and Wuhan, that are the hubs of single-person and DINK households.

In Beijing alone, spending on pets exceeded 2 billion yuan last year.

The figure includes food and care products, veterinary care, grooming and recreation.

Pet food and care producers are competing to cash in on a market with huge potential, and the international manufacturers have a competitive edge over domestic companies, thanks to their research and development and investment in brand building.

In keeping with the fixation on “luxury” pets, the owners of such animals generally prefer international brands, which are perceived to be healthier and more nutritious.

The Euromonitor survey showed that US-headquartered Mars Inc and Switzerland-based Nestle SA held 21 percent and 6.8 percent of China’s pet food and care products market last year, respectively. The third largest – the Sino-UK joint venture Chengdu Care Pet Food Co Ltd – commands 1.2 percent of the market.

Nestle established its first pet food manufacturing facility in China in Tianjin in February 2007, with an initial investment of 80 million yuan.

The company’s Purina subsidiary holds 24.5 percent of the global pet food market. The company started selling pet food in China in 2003 and the Tianjin plant, producing dog food under the Pro Plan and Dog Chow brands and Friskies cat food, enabled Nestle to meet market demand in China more efficiently and with lower costs.

The company estimated there are more than 100 million pets in China, and the number is expected to reach 150 million by 2010.

Ownership boom forecast

The potential in China is still huge, considering that Americans own 80 million dogs, and Japanese 20 million.

Only 5 percent of owners in key cities feed their pets packaged food, while the figure is 80 percent in the US.

In previous years, most Chinese pet owners fed their pets non-industrially prepared pet food. However, a marketing and consumer education push is paying off for manufacturers, as more pet owners appreciate the benefits of nutritionally balanced pet food.

More pet owners are also giving their animals dietary supplements such as calcium and multivitamins.

Differentiating their products has been a challenge for manufacturers, especially in midpriced and economy-brand pet foods, where differences in quality and in unit prices tend to be small.

Manufacturers are striving to distinguish their products in terms of ingredients and added-value features.

Milk formula, for example, is being introduced into dog and cat food. In early 2008, Effem, a snack and pet food subsidiary of Mars Inc, updated its dry dog and cat food formula under its core brands Pedigree and Whiskas. Both Pedigree Puppy Bites and Whiskas Dry Kitten Food include milk formula, which the company says provides the supplementary calcium necessary for the healthy growth of puppies and kittens.

The company has marketed the two products as balanced nutritional meals for dogs and cats, backed by in-store promotions in key cities such as Shanghai and Beijing.

French pet food and care expert Royal Canin reclassified its product portfolio, developing a line of cat food it says is beneficial for health and fur.

Its Royal Canin Hair & Skin 33 has added soybean oil and omega-3 fatty acid, ingredients the company says improve skin health for humans.

The trend of incorporating human-use ingredients is expected to continue in pet foods. Concepts such as enhancing a pet’s immune system or beautifying its skin have already been recognized by many Chinese consumers, and will increasingly be applied in pet food products over the forecast period, the Euromonitor report said.

Fang is a loyal consumer of Royal Canin. She has chosen various brands for Chouchou, since the cat came to her home five years ago.

“Chouchou prefers the French brand,” she said. “Though Royal Canin is a little more expensive than others, I don’t care, as long as Chouchou likes it.”

The rising cost of raw materials, labor, production and transportation drove up pet food prices in 2008. Foreign companies, in particular, have increased the price of their products.

According to trade sources, the average monthly spending on pet food will increase by 20 yuan as a result.

OK, maybe you don’t keep a formal budget. But we bet that the last 18 tough months have made you look harder at how you sprinkle your discretionary dollars (as opposed to those spent on necessities like food and housing).

Want some perspective on where your precious cash is going and why? Check out the latest, recently restated figures from Spending Pulse, the economic research arm of MasterCard Worldwide.

The data divide discretionary spending into eight categories: air travel, auto parts and service, electronics and appliances, furniture, lodging, apparel, luxury (excluding jewelry) and restaurants. Grand total for 2008: $981 billion, down just 0.8% from 2007, and roughly equal to the gross domestic product of South Korea, the 15th richest country in the world.

Only one category–restaurants–gobbled more dollars in 2008 than in 2007. Last year, eateries swallowed 40%, or $395 billion of America’s fun money–a 2.9% annual jump. Not that all reservation books were brimming: “If you look at 2008 restaurant spending, especially in the fourth quarter, it was dominated by fast food, not full-service restaurants,” says Michael McNamera, vice president of Spending Pulse.

Auto parts and services ($159 billion) accounted for the second largest slice of the spending pie, at 16.2%, followed by electronics and appliances ($155 billion), or 15.9%. While the relative dollar-split among all eight buckets hasn’t changed that much in the last few years, the prolonged housing crisis continued to hammer the furniture industry, down 10% to $99 billion–the biggest percentage drop of any of the eight categories.

Need more belt-tightening inspiration? Take a gander at global consumer-spending patterns, care of the World Bank’s most recent and hugely comprehensive International Comparison Program study.

Forbes took a snapshot of overall allocations for 18 countries, measured as percentages of total individual consumption (rounded to the nearest percent). A lot has happened since 2005, when the latest figures were captured, but the relative orders of magnitude are striking nonetheless.

Downright shocking are the disparities in the relative chunks of income that go toward food and drink. Impoverished denizens of Ethiopia and Egypt, for example, spent an estimated 55% and 43% of their incomes, respectively, on food and non-alcoholic beverages (excluding purchases made at restaurants, bars, hotels and the like). Americans and Canadians: just 6% and 8%.

The story is flipped on health care, which ate up a whopping 18% of Americans’ budgets (the highest percentage of all the nations on our list). Meanwhile, the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) spent just 8%.

When it comes to recreation and culture, the Australians, Japanese and Finns put their money where their laughs are. Each country set aside 10% of its budget for leisure activities, followed closely by the Americans, Croatians and French, which devoted 9% each. As for the Russians, they really like to party, allotting 6% of their budgets for booze, tobacco and narcotics, more than any country on the list.

Mobbed by a singing, dancing and horn-blowing crowd of supporters at Johannesburg’s airport, South African runner Caster Semenya looked overwhelmed and a little terrified.

The gold-medal-winning teenager at the center of an international controversy over her gender cried “Mama! Mama!” and reached out for her mother as police tried to clear a path through the throngs at the welcoming ceremony in the arrival area.

South Africans rallied around their 800-meter world champion as she returned home Tuesday from Berlin, and even President Jacob Zuma vowed that he would not permit her gold medal to be taken away, no matter what gender tests say.

The International Amateur Athletic Federation has initiated the tests on Semenya, who stunned the world championships last week by her decisive win but whose muscular build and deep voice sparked questions about whether she is a woman.

There was no doubt among the thousands of supporters who greeted the 18-year-old at the airport with posters reading: “Caster You Go Girl!” “Our First Lady of Sport,” and “Caster You Beaut.”

The crowd cheered wildly as she tentatively made her way onto a small stage in a parking lot, but slowly she relaxed, gave a thumbs-up and, breaking into a broad grin, said: “Hi, everybody!”

Clad in the team’s yellow and green team tracksuit with her gold medal dangling from her neck, Semenya even tried a few dance moves.

“She has lifted our hearts,” said Semenya’s mother, Dorcus, wearing a traditional headdress. “We feel powerful because of her.”

She then attended a parade through the capital Pretoria and met with Zuma, displaying the remarkable poise that helped her easily win the 800 hours after world track officials went public with her gender tests.

When asked what he would do if the IAAF revoked the medal, Zuma said: “They’re not going to remove the gold medal. She won it. So that question does not arise.”

The president advised Semenya: “Continue to walk tall.”

“We are proud of you. We love you. These events should not distract us from celebrating your outstanding achievement on the track.”

Semenya strode confidently to the podium and for the first time described the race that won her the gold and the world’s attention.

She said that before the 800-meter final, her coach told her that in the last 200 meters, “‘Kill them.’ I did what he said, but I took a lead in the last 400. I celebrated the last 200.

“It was great,” she said as her teammates stood to applaud.

Semenya, who grew up in deep poverty in South Africa’s rural hinterland, seemed shy and tomboyish but completely at ease with herself.

It was only during a news conference after her arrival — when politicians and sports officials went on a tirade against the IAAF, the media and the West in general — that Semenya seemed to wish she was elsewhere. Semenya never spoke at the news conference and showed little emotion as politicians and sports officials spoke of the humiliation she has suffered.

Leonard Chuene, president of Athletics South Africa, said Semenya was too traumatized to speak at the news conference. “She’s only 18. I’m traumatized myself,” he said.

At one point, her grandmother, in the traditional wide-skirted outfit of their Pedi tribe, pushed through the thicket of TV cameras to ululate praise. That drew a smile from Semenya.

A full-throated laugh from Semenya came at a question about whether she had received hormone injections from Ekkart Arbeit, head coach of the South African team. Arbeit was accused of steroid abuse when he coached in East Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. Chuene said Arbeit had had no direct contact with Semenya.

The Daily Telegraph in London reported that tests done before the world championships indicated that Semenya had three times the normal female level of testosterone in her body, although that does not necessarily mean she was doping. Chuene refused to comment on the report.

“I stand firm. Yes, indeed, she’s a girl,” Chuene said. “We are not going to allow Europeans to describe and define our children.”

Also at Semenya’s side was Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, ex-wife of former President Nelson Mandela, who hit out at the athlete’s detractors.

“To the world out there, who conducted those pseudo-tests to test our gender, they can stuff their insult,” she said. “This is our little girl, and nobody is going to perform any tests on her. We have defeated difficult situations in the history of this country. Don’t touch us.”

South Africans of all races have rallied behind Semenya and many say the allegations against her are motivated by envy and show racial discrimination against Africans.

“There are those that are just jealous. She must ignore them,” said Paisley Sebata, a former schoolmate of Semenya who made a three-hour journey to the airport. “She has showed that South Africa has talent.”

Zuma said South Africa’s minister of sport and recreation has written to the IAAF to express “our disappointment and the manner in which the body has dealt with the matter,” he said.

“It is one thing to seek to ascertain whether or not an athlete has an unfair advantage over others, but it is another to publicly humiliate an honest professional and competent athlete.”

The IAAF, track and field’s governing body, will decide Semenya’s case according to whether her “conditions … accord no advantage over other females” after consulting a gynecologist, an endocrinologist, a psychologist, an internal medicine specialist and a gender expert. The test takes weeks to complete.

“At last the Lake burst upon us,” Mark Twain wrote in his 1872 travel memoir Roughing It, describing the delight he felt at glimpsing Lake Tahoe after an arduous mountain hike. “A noble sheet of blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the level of the sea, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft full three thousand feet higher still! I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.”

The road to Tahoe is more heavily traveled these days—millions come each year to play on its waters, or in the nearby casinos and ski resorts. But the lake’s sublime beauty still inspires the same kind of awe that Twain described more than a century ago.

Like Tahoe, many of the bodies of water on our list of lovely lakes lie in a delicate space—their beauty draws admirers, but too many tourists can diminish the unspoiled quality that made the lakes so enchanting in the first place. At Canada’s Lake O’Hara, an emerald gem in the Rockies, the Canadian national park service has found a way to ensure the lake doesn’t become overrun: It’s accessible only by limited-seating bus trips, or by an 11-kilometer hike.

Amy Winkelman, a business and technology consultant who lives in Portland, Ore., describes similarly protective feelings about a spectacular lake in southern Oregon. “Crater Lake is one of those special places Oregonians treasure and feel very protective of,” she says. “We want to both sing its praises, but fear it becoming too popular and losing the peacefulness you can find there.”

A lake’s loveliness, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. And while our list is admittedly subjective, it represents a range of tastes, from secluded alpine waters like Lake O’Hara or Montana’s Holland Lake, to the moss and mist-shrouded backwaters of Caddo Lake on the Texas-Louisiana border.

Our list includes lakes that were formed by natural forces, like melting alpine glaciers, but it also features waterways that resulted from human intervention, like the sandstone-lined shores of Utah’s Lake Powell. Created by the Glen Canyon Dam in 1963, Lake Powell remains as controversial as it is beautiful.

Mike Walton, a painter from Salt Lake City, often uses the wealth of beautiful rivers and lakes in his state as subjects in his work. And while he loves the natural beauty of places like Bear Lake, on the Utah-Idaho border, he says the dramatic scenery of Powell is undeniable: “Lake Powell is the scourge of naturalists, as it damns the Colorado river and epitomizes development in the desert. It is, however, an amazingly beautiful place.”

It’s also a haven for house-boaters, who drift lazily along its 186 miles of cool, blue depths. In fact, this sort of recreational opportunity is, for many travelers, what makes a lake lovely. At Minnesota’s Rainy Lake, recreation comes in the form of world-class bass fishing, and at Lake Champlain, which straddles New York, Vermont and Canada, sporty lake-goers can encircle the water on the Lake Champlain Bikeways, a 1,300-mile network of routes that meander through spectacular lakeside scenery.

From world-class waterskiing, to rustic, waterside lodges to cool, crystalline waters, these 10 North American lakes present picturesque playgrounds for travelers of all stripes.