With the Beijing Games fast approaching, Olympic Committees around the world have been getting busier.

Athletes from Portuguese-speaking or Lusophone countries Angola, Portugal, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, East Timor and Mozambique will be in Macau training for the Beijing Games, which starts on August 8.

On Saturday, the Portuguese-speaking countries Games Organising Committee (ACOLOP) met for its 12th general assembly, where the forthcoming Lisbon Games were one of the main topics of focus.

“It really empowers us to know that, through sports, we are contributing to bring together brothers and sisters from different continents and sharing a common language”, said Manuel Silvério, president of the Executive Committee, adding that this was “one of the prime objectives of our association: to promote cultures, our language and our friendship”.

The games which will be held next year, was one of the main issues discussed over the weekend, as it is an issue which is considered “important” and a priority for the Portuguese Olympic Committee (COP).

“We want the second Lusophone Games Lisbon 2009 to be the best multisport event Portugal has ever held”, said Vicente Moura, President of COP.

The Lisboa 2009 Games will be held between July 11 and 19 next year, and officials have announced the event will comprise 10 sports, mainly: Football, Futsal, Athletics, Basketball, Beach Volleyball, Table Tennis, Judo, Taekwondo, Volleyball, and one demonstration sport, Paralympic Athletics.

However, these are still yet to be confirmed, once members' opinions are gathered.

Also at the meeting, members chose the Games' mascot, “Xama”, which means “flame” in Portuguese, and is a “funny orange and yellowish character,” a statement by the committee released yesterday said.

With the second edition of the Lusophone Games about to roll in, the third edition is already being discussed and the General Assembly has already marked the official start for welcoming bids to organise the 2013 Games.

In addition, with Brazil wanting to host the 2016 Olympic Games, members of the general assembly showed their support and encouragement towards the Brazilian nation.

Sixteen years after the superpower's collapse, Web sites ending in the Soviet ".su" domain name have been rising — registrations increased 45 percent this year alone. Bloggers, entrepreneurs and die-hard communists are all part of a small but growing online community resisting repeated efforts to extinguish the online Soviet outpost.

Russian nostalgia for the Soviet empire is part of the story. Nashi, or "Ours," is a pro-Kremlin youth group that gained notoriety for raucous protests against Kremlin critics. The group loyally praises President Vladimir Putin at "nashi.su," though it denies its choice of the ".su" domain was meant to send a political message.

Many Web entrepreneurs also see potential profits in the domain, grabbing instantly recognizable names already claimed in other, better known domains.

A small Moscow car repair shop that specializes in Ford vehicles boasts a home page at "ford.su," while the owner of "apple.su" is a Muscovite who said he is ready to swap it for a new laptop computer — and not necessarily a Mac from Apple Inc.

Vladimir Khramov, a network administrator from Moscow, said he bought "microsoft.su" last year simply to acquire an easy-to-remember ending for his e-mail address.

While Khramov insists he "did not buy it for reselling," others are out to make a quick ruble. Yan Balayan registered a number of high-profile addresses, including "ussr.su," "stalin.su" and "kgb.su" — he's asking for $30,000 each, but stands ready to haggle.

With few exceptions — namely, the tech-savvy Baltic state of Estonia — Internet penetration is relatively low in the former Soviet republics. Russia's Public Opinion Foundation says that only 27 percent of Russian adults use the Internet — and only about 12 percent of the adults on any given day.

Yet many Internet entrepreneurs are passionate about the ".su" domain, even as others are scornful of it as a relic of the past, saying it doesn't deserve the same status as ".ru" for Russia, ".uk" for the United Kingdom or ".fr" for France.

"They are selling tickets to a drowning ship," said Anton Nosik, a veteran Web journalist and founder of several successful online projects. "Their message is to losers and latecomers."

Champions of the online Soviet domain say there is still plenty of room for growth.

Some envisage the ".su" domain as a virtual venue for those who fondly recall the old Soviet Union as a place where Russian, the lingua franca of the Soviet empire, knit together a host of Asian and European ethnic groups and cultures.

And by late April, the ".su" domain plans to start allowing names in Russian; currently such names are limited to English letters, numerals and the hyphen.