A Chinese Christian activist claims he was beaten, threatened and detained by police on Sunday as he tried to get to a church service President Bush attended while in Beijing for the Olympics, according to a watchdog group, Human Rights in China.

Hua Huiqi, 46, wrote a letter to the group claiming that “religious affairs police” sought him out him prior to the service. “They asked me why I was going to Kuanjie Protestant Church to worship and threatened me, saying, ‘You are not allowed to go to Kuanjie Protestant Church because President Bush is going there today. If you… go again, we will break your legs. We brought you here to wait for orders from our superiors. We shall see how they want to deal with you,'” Mr. Hua wrote.

Mr. Hua said he escaped when some guards fell asleep and is now in hiding.

114 MILLION TUNE INTO NBC OLYMPIC COVERAGE

How is your Olympics-watching experience going?

You may have caught some of the Olympic Games over the weekend, most likely in front of your television set and not online. NBC Universal, which owns the American broadcast rights, said it attracted 114 million TV viewers, which was itself an Olympic record. The Web viewing audience was a fraction of that, although a lot better than during the last Olympics.

Sure, there’s griping about the TV experience. Chief among them is the fact that you couldn’t watch some events live, such as the opening ceremony. But from what I caught, this beautiful, intense four-hour celebration may have been best enjoyed tape-delayed, broken into 12-minute bite-sized videos and aided by the informed commentary. I went to bed somewhere between the contingents from Iraq and Iran walking into the stadium and woke up to see the runner taking the torch on its last loop on the rim of the stadium.

Still, a lot of people would have wanted the choice, and more exposure may have helped, not hurt, NBC’s bottom line. Not sure if I hallucinated the lighting of the torch, I attempted to find video clips of it online so I could e-mail friends and family, and thereby aid NBC by building up buzz. But I failed to find a working link of an event that was 24 hours old.

BOMBINGS OPEN OLD WOUNDS

Donkeys pulled melon-laden carts through the streets and women sold bowls of yogurt Monday in the market of this mostly Muslim city in a remote corner of China, the day after militant bombings left a dozen people dead.

But underneath the apparent return to normal life hides a seething anger among the region’s ethnic Uighurs toward Chinese immigrants, whom many here see as symbols of the government’s oppression, residents and experts say.

With two audacious attacks in a week and the appearance online of videos threatening the Beijing Olympics, Uighur extremists in Xinjiang may be trying to use the games as a way to force themselves out of obscurity into the world’s view.

BUSH ENDS ASIAN TRIP AFTER TAKING IN GAMES

The Olympics hadn’t even started when Prime Minister Putin of Russia quietly confirmed to President Bush the sketchy reports of Russian troops involved in an outbreak of fighting in Georgia’s breakaway republic of South Ossetia.

Suddenly, the president found the celebratory message of what is likely to be his last trip to Asia overshadowed by a growing crisis that could easily spread in a volatile region rife with ethnic tensions. His Beijing itinerary went on as planned, but the behind-the-scenes machinations over what to do about the conflict took center stage for the traveling White House.

Mr. Bush was positioned right in the middle, between a small American ally and powerful Russia.

“It was just interesting to me that here we are, trying to promote peace and harmony, and we’re witnessing a conflict take place,” Mr. Bush recalled yesterday before wrapping up his weeklong, three-country swing and heading home.

Mr. Bush’s goals while visiting South Korea, Thailand, and China were to cheer on American athletes and outline his vision for the future of American policy in Asia. On the doorsteps of repressive regimes in North Korea and Myanmar, he pressed for human rights improvements.

Despite being told by China not to interfere in its internal affairs, he used his time in Beijing to push the communist government to give its people greater freedom of religion and speech, offering praise for its economic reforms as balance while touting his presence at the Olympics as evidence of the respect he held for the Chinese people.