FERGUS FALLS, Minn. - Meet Hailey Jo Hauer and Xander Jace Riniker, both born at 8:08 a.m. on 8/8/08, weighing 8 pounds, 8 ounces, in neighboring states.

Lindsey Hauer thought staff at Lake Region Hospital in Minnesota were joking when they told her the time of her daughter's birth. And then she got a call from the birthing suite noting Hailey's weight.

Nurse Jenny Harstad joked that she tried to shrink the baby to 18 inches from her actual 19.5 inches.

Several hospital staff members in Minnesota pledged to buy lottery tickets. And Chad Riniker, Xander's father, said that eight hadn't been his lucky number before, but that now he was thinking about buying a lottery ticket.

"I just might," he said. "If nothing else, with four children I should probably play the lottery."

BEIJING - The fatal stabbing of the father of a former Olympian at a Beijing landmark cast a sad shadow over the first full day of Olympic competition Saturday, just hours after China's jubilant opening of the Summer Games.

The U.S. Olympic Committee confirmed Bachman died from knife wounds and that Barbara Bachman suffered life-threatening injuries. She and their Chinese tour guide, who was also injured in the attack, were being treated in a Beijing hospital.

Elisabeth Bachman was with them at the time of the attack, but uninjured. Her father was chief executive officer for Bachman's, Inc., a home-and-garden center based in Minneapolis.

The assailant, Tang Yongming, 47, leapt to his death from a 130-foot (40-meter) -high balcony on the Drum Tower, just five miles (eight kilometers) from the main Olympics site, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The midday attack sent shock waves through the games precinct after the Olympics' spectacular opening ceremony had set an ebullient tone. President George W. Bush, in the Chinese capital for the games, expressed sadness while American athletes and Olympics officials reacted with disbelief.

There was no indication that the assailant knew that his victims had any connection to the games. "For all intents, it appears to be a random attack by a deranged man," an American member of the International Olympic Committee, Jim Easton, told The Associated Press. "The only thing we've heard is they were not identifiable except for a small volleyball pin which would probably be invisible to a guy."

Easton said the attack has stunned the Olympic community.

"It's certainly a down day, certainly for the U.S. people," he said. "Here it is supposed to be a great time of happiness and peace and all that. That's what we work hard for, then for one person to be able to put a dark cloud on that."

The U.S. women's indoor volleyball team heard about the killing of their former teammate's father before they took on Japan in a match Saturday. After their victory, player Logan Tom was obviously shaken.

"God, we all love Wiz," she said. "It's hard to put it in words. That's not something that's supposed to happen."

Tom then turned away, crying.

"It's just tragic," said U.S. woman's basketball coach Anne Donovan. "I don't know if there's another word for it. We said a prayer for them in the locker room. I get goosebumps talking about it. It's something obviously that just changes the events right now for the Olympic Games."

Violent crime against foreigners is rare in tightly controlled China, and the assault at the Drum Tower, five miles from the main Olympics site, occurred despite major security measures that have blanketed the capital city during the Olympics: A 100,000-strong security force plus countless volunteer guards have been deployed to protect against any trouble.

Beijing's Communist leaders are hypersensitive about anything that could take the shine off the games. China's Foreign Ministry said it had no immediate comment on the attack. It was not mentioned in the main evening news bulletin on state-controlled television, though it was reported by the official Xinhua News Agency and other Chinese-language media.

Interpol said initial investigations found nothing indicating the murder was linked to terrorism or organized crime.

"So far, our database check and preliminary analysis suggest that today's murder-suicide was an isolated, though brutal, murder of one person and assault on two others," said Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble.

Tang's name was run through computers containing more than 178,000 individuals, including 12,000 suspected terrorists, and came up blank. But Noble noted that the investigation was not complete.

Interpol said Tang had apparently recently divorced and had not been seen by relatives for two months.

U.S. Ambassador Clark T. Randt visited the victims in hospital, and the embassy issued a statement later that said the attack "appears to be a senseless act of violence."

"We don't believe this was targeted at American citizens, and we don't believe this has anything to do with the Olympics," embassy spokeswoman Susan Stevenson said.

Jennie Finch, a member of the U.S. softball team, said her heart skipped a beat when she heard about the attack, but was undaunted.

"I'm here with my husband and son, so it's not easy but we're living our dreams and we're not going to live in fear," she said. "We're going to go out there every day and enjoy every day and celebrate it."

Attacks on foreigners in China are extremely rare. A Canadian model was murdered last month in Shanghai — police said she stumbled onto a burglary. In March, a screaming, bomb-strapped hostage-taker who commandeered a bus with 10 Australians aboard in the popular tourist city of Xi'an was shot dead by a police sniper.

Shanghai and Beijing are still safer than most cities of their size. Punishments for crimes against foreigners are heavier than for crimes against Chinese, and police-linked neighborhood watch groups are highly vigilant. Chinese are not allowed to own guns. Still, the U.S. government has warned Americans against muggings, beatings and even carjackings, especially in the nightlife and shopping districts of large cities.

The Drum Tower is one of few ancient structures still in fast-developing Beijing. Long ago, drummers pounded their massive instruments on the hour to let people in the imperial city know the time. It is located on an important central axis of the city, to the north of the Forbidden City, which was home to the emperor.

BEIJING – The Great Wall of China, as it turns out, isn't all bricks and stone.

It's the language.

Invaded by the Mongols, occupied by the conquering British, and socialized by Chairman Mao, China didn't exactly unfurl the welcome mat for, oh, about six hundred years.

The result is a homogenized society that only now is trading in its bicycle for a Cadillac Escalade.

The most common foreign language taught in China schools is reported to be English. But you could have fooled me.

Venture beyond the modern Beijing airport's doors or try to engage with the common shopkeeper, and you'll find that to the everyday Beijinger, English is as hard as . . . well . . . Chinese arithmetic.

The books and language CDs were worthless. A native Chinese, speaking in Mandarin, with its winding "X" sounds, tends to sound like a man trying to tune a violin with a cat.

The so-called official languages of the Olympics are French and English. But forget the French. The Chinese aren't even trying.

Many, however, are intrepid enough to at least attempt to speak some English. And I salute them.

But some things remain lost in the translation.

My hotel shower, for example. A bilingual decal on the shower glass warns bathers with, "Caution! Wet floor." No problem there.

A simple Chinese and English warning, however, about not tripping when leaving the shower bears the translation, "Pays attention to the stair, before the use, invites the shop well turban, thanks!"

I think Genghis Khan would have just used the bathtub.

THE OLYMPICS IN GRAY

Add another couple of whoppers to the Hall of Olympic Misinformation.

The best/worst Olympic lie of all time has to be the one told by bidders for the 1996 Olympics that Atlanta's average summer high temperature was only "76 degrees.""

The 1936 Games, dubbed later the "Nazi Olympics,"" promised two weeks dedicated to "peace and harmony." And we all saw how that came out.

Here in Beijing, the big lie was the one that promised "clean air"" for the Games' two-plus-weeks.

A soup-thick gray haze has enveloped the Olympic city since last weekend. An unhealthy blend of auto emissions and surrounding mountains paint the street-level atmosphere as a seemingly perpetual cloud.

It's depressing. But it's been an expanding part of the Beijing landscape since cars began replacing bicycles 20 or so years ago.

From the street, for example, you can only see the foggy eastern facade of the National Stadium, the Bird's Nest. A tower next to the stadium bears the Olympic rings, shrouded in a gray soup.

"The environment is much better than seven years ago,"" Pal Schmitt, chairman of the IOC's environmental committee, said at a news conference this week. "They (the Chinese hosts) have kept their promises.""

Clearly, here is an Olympic commiteeman who hasn't ventured outside of his limo.

Not far from my hotel, a tall smokestack, rendered dormant during the Games, sits as a once-belching reminder of what might have been.

The four U.S. track cyclists who arrived at the Beijing airport this week wearing black masks over their mouths and noses had the right idea. But somebody should have looked in the mirror before landing and noticed that they looked like they had just flown in from the SciFi Channel.

The Chinese were outraged. Apologies were extracted from the cyclists. And we all got into our shuttle buses and moved along.

Promises, promises.

CHECKED BAGGAGE, OLD PROBLEM

Unlike in the cliches and old movies, you don't get to China by drilling straight through the bedrock earth.

Instead, you fly to Alaska and hang a left. Fourteen hours later, you're in Japan, changing planes for yet-another four-hour connecting flight to Beijing.

You're tired. You don't know what day it is.

But as my new friend, Adnaan Mohamed, informed me, it could be worse.

Mohamed is a senior sports correspondent for Die Burger, an Afrikaans language newspaper based in Capetown, South Africa.

Leaving the airport, he carried only a thin backpack. His real luggage, Adnaan explained, accidentally was sent to Maputo, Mozambique.

"He'll never see it again,"" a photographer from South Africa informed me Thursday. "They probably divvied up his belongings before his plane here ever hit the ground.""

To ease the misery, Mohamed was given $400 to buy some new clothes.

"At least now I have something to write in my newspaper dairy," he said