The head of the Willi Sitte Foundation, Hans-Hubert Werner, told German news agency dpa that Sitte died on Saturday morning after a long illness.

Sitte's paintings depicted factory workers or farmers as glamorized ideals of Communist heroes. Among his famous works are voluptuous, often nude women.

He was the president of East Germany's association of visual artists from 1974 to 1988 and also a member of the ruling party's central committee. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and Germany's unification, Sitte was seen in a more controversial light because of his closeness to the Communist regime.

The leaks have reopened the post-Sept. 11 debate about privacy concerns versus heightened measure to protect against terrorist attacks, and led the NSA to ask the Justice Department to conduct a criminal investigation into the leaks.

The Guardian, the first paper to disclose the documents, said it was publishing the identity of Edward Snowden, a former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, at his own request.

"My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them," Snowden told the newspaper.

Stories in The Guardian and The Washington Post published over the last week revealed two surveillance programs, and both published interviews with Snowden on Sunday.

One of them is a phone records monitoring program in which the NSA gathers hundreds of millions of U.S. phone records each day, creating a database through which it can learn whether terror suspects have been in contact with people in the U.S. The Obama administration says the NSA program does not listen to actual conversations.

Separately, an Internet scouring program, code-named PRISM, allows the NSA and FBI to tap directly into nine U.S. Internet companies to gather all Internet usage audio, video, photographs, emails and searches. The effort is designed to detect suspicious behavior that begins overseas.

Snowden said claims the programs are secure are not true.

"Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector. Anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of those sensor networks and the authority that that analyst is empowered with," Snowden said, in accompanying video on the Guardian's website. "Not all analysts have the power to target anything. But I, sitting at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal email."

He told the Post that he would "ask for asylum from any countries that believe in free speech and oppose the victimization of global privacy" in an interview from Hong Kong, where he is staying.

"I'm not going to hide," Snowden told the Post. "Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest."

The Post declined to elaborate on its reporting about Snowden.

The spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence said intelligence officials are "currently reviewing the damage that has been done by these recent disclosures," adding that "Any person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified information and abide by the law."

He referred further comment to the Justice Department.

In a statement, Booz Allen confirmed that Snowden "has been an employee of our firm for less than 3 months, assigned to a team in Hawaii." The statement said if the news reports of what he has leaked prove accurate, "this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct," and the company promised to work closely with authorities on the investigation.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has decried the revelation of the intelligence-gathering programs as reckless and said it has done "huge, grave damage." In recent days, he took the rare step of declassifying some details about them to respond to media reports about counterterrorism techniques employed by the government.

Snowden told The Guardian that he lacked a high school diploma and enlisted in the U.S. Army until he was discharged because of an injury, and later worked as a security guard with the NSA.

He later went to work for the CIA as an information technology employee and by 2007 was stationed in Geneva, Switzerland, where he had access to classified documents.

During that time, he considered going public about the nation's secretive programs but told the newspaper he decided against it, because he did not want to put anyone in danger and he hoped Obama's election would curtail some of the clandestine programs.

He said he was disappointed that Obama did not rein in the surveillance programs.

"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he told The Guardian. "I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."

Snowden left the CIA in 2009 to join a private contractor, and spent last four years at the NSA, as a contractor with consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton and, before that, Dell.

The Guardian reported that Snowden was working in an NSA office in Hawaii when he copied the last of the documents he planned to disclose and told supervisors that he needed to be away for a few weeks to receive treatment for epilepsy.

He left for Hong Kong on May 20 and has remained there since, according to the newspaper. Snowden is quoted as saying he chose that city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed it was among the spots on the globe that could and would resist the dictates of the U.S. government.

"I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets," Snowden told The Guardian, which said he asked to be identified after several days of interviews.

Snowden could face decades in a U.S. jail for revealing classified information if he is successfully extradited from Hong Kong, said Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer who represents whistleblowers. Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the United States that took force in 1998, according to the U.S. State Department website.

"If it's a straight leak of classified information, the government could subject him to a 10 or 20 year penalty for each count," with each document leaked considered a separate charge, Zaid said.

Snowden told the newspaper he believes the government could try to charge him with treason under the Espionage Act, but Zaid said that would require the government to prove he had intent to betray the United States, whereas he publicly made it clear he did this to spur debate.

The government could also make an argument that the NSA leaks have aided the enemy as military prosecutors have claimed against Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, who faces life in prison under military law if convicted for releasing a trove of classified documents through Wikileaks.

"They could say the revelation of the (NSA) programs could instruct people to change tactics," Zaid said. But even under the lesser charges of simply revealing classified information, "you are talking potentially decades in jail, loss of his employment and his security clearance."

Officials said the revelations were dangerous and irresponsible. House intelligence committee member Peter King, R-NY, called for Snowden to be "extradited from Hong Kong immediately...and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," in an interview with The Associated Press Sunday.

"I believe the leaker has done extreme damage to the U.S. and to our intelligence operations," King said, by alerting al-Qaida to U.S. surveillance, and by spooking U.S. service providers who now might fight sharing data in future with the U.S. government, now that the system has been made public.

King added that intelligence and law enforcement professionals he'd spoken to since the news broke were also concerned that Snowden might be taken into custody by Chinese intelligence agents and questioned about CIA and NSA spies and policies.

"To be a whistleblower, there would have to be a pattern of him filing complaints through appropriate channels to his supervisors," said Ambassador John Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence, in an interview with the AP Sunday. "For me, it's just an outright case of betrayal of confidences and a violation of his nondisclosure agreement."

President Barack Obama, Clapper and others have said the programs are authorized by Congress and subject to strict supervision of a secret court.

"It's important to recognize that you can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," Obama said. "We're going to have to make some choices as a society."

The release of Timothy Tracy, 35, was secured with the help of former U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, who has long worked to improve often strained U.S.-Venezuelan ties and was hired by Tracy's family as an attorney in the case.

"He's been informally advising us since pretty much the onset and we retained him last week," Tracy's sister, Tiffany Klaasen, said of Delahunt, a member of the U.S. delegation at the March funeral of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Both she and Delahunt also credited the U.S. State Department.

The expulsion came just as Secretary of State John Kerry was to meet with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Guatemala to discuss relations between the two countries, which have been without ambassadors since 2010.

Delahunt acknowledged the coincidence of Tracy's release but said "no conditions" were set by Kerry for the meeting with Jaua.

He said he had intervened on Tracy's behalf with officials in Venezuela who he said did not include President Nicolas Maduro but "I want to keep those discussions private."

"On both sides there is a desire to have an improvement in the relationship based upon respect, and that's what's important," Delahunt said, suggesting it might help that Kerry, then a Massachusetts senator, met Maduro a decade ago when Delahunt took a delegation of Venezuelans including Maduro on a trip to his district in Cape Cod.

The trip was part of efforts by the so-called "Grupo de Boston" in 2002-2003 to salve internal tensions in the socialist-run South American country after a failed coup against Chavez.

Tracy's expulsion was initially tweeted by Venezuela's interior minister, Miguel Rodriguez, who described Tracy as having been "captured doing espionage in our country." He had previously accused Tracy of funding opposition student groups.

Attorney General Luisa Ortega said in a statement Wednesday that she had asked that the case against Tracy on charges including conspiracy and criminal association be shelved, even though "there were elements that could incriminate him."

Family and friends say the Hollywood producer and small-time actor had been in the country since October making a documentary about Venezuelan politics when he was arrested on April 24 at Caracas' airport as he tried to leave the country to attend his father's 80th birthday in suburban Detroit.

U.S. President Barack Obama had deemed "ridiculous" allegations by Venezuela that he was a spy. Friends said Tracy hardly spoke Spanish and had been very open about his work as he met with Venezuelans on both sides of the country's deep political divide.

Tracy's previous production work had included script consulting on "American Harmony," a documentary about barbershop quartets, and a History channel reality TV show about stock car racing called "Madhouse."

Friends said the Venezuela documentary was Tracy's first big foray into international affairs although he did produce last year a show about smuggling on the northern U.S. border.

"He literally has no political agenda. He is very sympathetic to all sides," his friend Aengus James, director of "American Harmony," said after Tracy's arrest.

Tracy's co-producer on the Venezuelan documentary, Ricardo Korda, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the two met in 2001 while students at Georgetown University and that the film's working title is "Connecting the Dots."

U.S.-Venezuelan relations have been especially tense in recent months. Maduro expelled two U.S. military attaches in March the same day Chavez died, accusing them of trying to foment instability, and Tracy's arrest came amid domestic political turmoil over the opposition candidate's claim that Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor, stole April 14 elections.

The Obama administration has backed opposition candidate Henrique Capriles' call for a full recount.

Klaasen said the family spoke frequently to Tracy while he was held.

"He was treated very well," she said. "I was never concerned for his safety."

Klaasen said that even after Tracy was transferred last week to a notoriously unruly prison, El Rodeo, the family was assured he was in no danger.

She said she understood from Tracy's lawyer in Caracas that he was isolated in El Rodeo in a cellblock for foreigners.

James said Tracy would be arriving in California, where he has lived for a decade, on Wednesday afternoon. He later said Tracy had stopped in Florida.

___

Associated Press writers Jorge Rueda in Caracas and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

___

Frank Bajak on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fbajak

NEW YORK/ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - These are unsettling times for digital currency businesses and the venture capitalists backing them.

On Tuesday, authorities in Spain, Costa Rica and New York arrested five people at the digital currency firm Liberty Reserve, including its founder Arthur Budovsky, and seized related bank accounts and Internet domains.

It was a further wake-up call for those involved in digital currencies, such as the most prominent, Bitcoin, that they need to comply with anti-money laundering rules or risk facing a crackdown.

They had already been put on notice - first by an April 2012 report from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation that explained how Bitcoin was being used by criminals to secretly transfer money around the world, and then this March by the U.S. Treasury Department. Its anti-money laundering arm, the Financial Crimes and Enforcement Network (FinCEN) stated that digital currency firms needed to comply with the same anti-money laundering rules as other financial institutions, including monitoring customers and reporting suspicious activity to the government.

As regulators tighten the screws, businesses built around digital currencies are trying to satisfy new monitoring requirements without letting public enthusiasm for the technology-based concept slip away.

"I think the whole ecosystem is maturing very quickly and we have young companies that are just beginning to understand how to navigate the regulatory issues," said David A. Johnston, co-founder and executive director of BitAngels, a new venture which only this week announced it had raised $6.7 million to fund startups tied to Bitcoin.

Digital currency is electronic money that can be passed between individuals without the use of the traditional banking or money transfer system.

Different currencies are structured in different ways. Some, like Liberty Reserve's "LR" digital currency, use units of value that are tied to an existing hard currency, such as the U.S. dollar. By contrast, the value of Bitcoin, the best known virtual currency, fluctuates according to supply and demand.

Bitcoin, which has been embraced by a number of venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, exists through an open-source software program that any users with enough skill and computing power can access. It is not managed by a single company or government. Users can buy bitcoins through exchanges that convert real money into the virtual currency.

Liberty Reserve, which was closed last week, however, was a firm that U.S. prosecutors said created a platform that enabled criminal gangs to launder more than $6 billion.

Bitcoin's supporters cite a host of legitimate reasons for using a digital currency: It can be transferred using less infrastructure than traditional currencies, and with fewer service fees. A virtual currency could also be safer than using a regular credit card for online purchases, because it is not attached directly to any bank account.

But law enforcement officials see Bitcoin as another vehicle for criminals to anonymously transfer money.

FinCEN's statement in March set off a rush inside the community to learn about anti-money laundering rules and figure out how to comply with them. At the 2013 Bitcoin Conference in San Jose, California two weeks ago, discussion focused heavily on regulatory compliance - its intricacies and its costs.

"That was a big theme of the whole conference," said Jerry Brito, director of the technology policy program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Brito said businesses exchanging Bitcoins were coming to terms with the fact that they would now need to get licensed as money transmitters in 48 U.S. states, a process requiring in-person interviews in each state, thanks to FinCEN's guidance.

"Everything I'm telling you, I've learned over the past couple of months as I'm racing to learn," said Brito, who attended the Bitcoin Conference in San Jose. "I think that's what the Bitcoin community is doing too."

Charlie Shrem, chief executive of Bitcoin transfer firm BitInstant.com, told the conference about the importance of complying with the new rules.

"You have to know your customer," he told the audience, according to a video posted on the Internet. "Whether or not you agree with the laws or not, you've got to follow them."

The FinCEN statement means companies that exchange Bitcoins for hard currency must now hire full-time compliance officers to verify the identities of users, especially those looking to transfer Bitcoins out of the digital world and back into dollars or other hard currencies. Estimates vary on how much it costs to get compliant, but licensing and registration fees alone can total in the tens of thousands of dollars, an added heavy cost for small startup businesses.

Brito said the Bitcoin community is also trying to increase its contact with law enforcement and regulators. The Bitcoin Foundation, a Bitcoin advocacy group made up of Bitcoin-related business owners and software programmers, is looking to hire a full-time lawyer based in Washington to make its case to regulators and lawmakers.

Some members of the community are declining to discuss regulation. Jon Matonis, the Bitcoin Foundation's secretary who is identified on the group's website as one of two spokesmen for press inquiries, told Reuters: "I am electing to take a brief break from commenting on issues such as this."

U.S. law enforcement officials are looking first and foremost to unmask criminals operating in cyberspace and arrest them, wherever they may be in the world, and they're looking to digital currency businesses to help.

Ed Lowery, special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service's criminal investigative division, said the agency is working "aggressively with our international partners" to pursue cyber crime and the companies that permit the misuse of digital currencies. He declined to comment specifically on Bitcoin.

Liberty Reserve has not been the only recent target for the authorities. The Tokyo-based firm Mt. Gox, the world's largest exchanger of U.S. dollars with Bitcoins, had two accounts held by its U.S. subsidiary seized this month by agents from the Department of Homeland Security on the grounds that it was operating a money transmitting business without a license.

Mt. Gox on Thursday announced it would require all of its users accounts to be verified before allowing them to perform any more deposits or withdrawals. Its founder declined to comment for this story.

Other companies are simply trying to avoid having to comply with U.S. rules by keeping away from the country. Following FinCEN's statement, two digital currency firms structured similarly to Liberty Reserve - Russia-based WebMoney and Panama-based Perfect Money - restricted access to their services from inside the United States.

Vyacheslav Andryushchenko, a spokesman for WebMoney in Russia, said each of the company's 20 million users had to agree to prohibitions against money laundering and illegal trade when signing up for an account. Users who violate the rules are cut off, and all actions inside WebMoney's system are recorded, the spokesman said. A user is blocked if there are any suspicions of anything illegal. In addition, the less personal information the user provides, the fewer services are available to him or her, the spokesman said.

Several messages on the listed number on Perfect Money's website were not returned. The company's address is an empty suite in an office block on the northwestern side of Panama City. A secretary in a neighboring office said she had never seen anyone go in or out.

(Reporting by Emily Flitter in New York and Brett Wolf in St. Louis; Additional reporting by Maria Kiselyova in Moscow and Lomi Kriel in Panama City; Editing by Martin Howell and Richard Chang)

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) -- The cost of a gallon of gas in Maine has inched up by more than a penny in the past week, yet still remains 8 cents below the national average.

Price-monitoring website MaineGasPrices.com reports Tuesday that the average retail price of a gallon of gas in Maine is now $3.57.

Nationally, prices are down more than 2 cents per gallon to an average of $3.65.

In-state prices are now more than 12 cents lower than at the same time last year but almost 8 cents per gallon higher than a month ago.

Maine prices are based on a survey of more than 1,200 gas stations across the state.

"I can confirm that George remains in hospital but purely as a standard precaution for observation because he suffered some bumps and cuts to his head. But he's making good progress, he's fine and he's really looking forward to getting home," the spokeswoman said.

British media have reported that the 49-year-old former Wham! front man fell out of a car he was travelling in on the M1 motorway just outside London during rush hour - the latest of a string of recent accidents and health scares.

The tabloid Sun newspaper interviewed a woman who said she had skidded to a halt after the singer fell out of the vehicle in front of her, and that she had used her car to shield him from other vehicles.

"There was a nasty cut on his forehead and the back of his head. There was blood all down his face and on his teeth," the Sun reported driver Katherine Fox as saying.

Last year, the "Careless Whisper" singer cancelled a tour of Australia due to "major anxiety" brought on by a 2011 battle with severe pneumonia in Vienna, where he was treated in intensive care for a month.

Michael has sold an estimated 100 million records over his career, but in the past few years has hit the headlines for his personal life more often than for his music.

In 1998 he was arrested in California for "engaging in a lewd act" in a public toilet. He has also had a number of run-ins with British police for possession of narcotics, and served time in jail for driving under the influence of cannabis.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Yanira Maldonado, 42, walked out of a prison on the outskirts of Nogales, Mexico, and into her husband's arms late Thursday after a judge dismissed drug-smuggling charges against her.

The judge determined Maldonado was no longer a suspect after viewing video that showed the couple climbing on the bus with just a purse, blankets and bottles of water.

After returning to the Phoenix area Friday, Maldonado said, "I got strength through my faith and said, 'I'm going to be out,' and I got out."

The governor of the Mexican state of Sonora, where Nogales is located, apologized for Maldonado's ordeal during a visit to Phoenix on Friday. He said he made sure she was safe and wasn't transferred to a federal prison and worked to ensure the court proceedings went quickly.

"In a few words I could say we're very sorry that she was in the wrong place in the wrong moment," Gov. Guillermo Padres Elias said. "But we're very glad that she's OK and she still says ... that she will continue visiting our country and she will continue going on tourism trips to Sonora.

"Because Sonora really likes the United States people and Arizonans to go down there. We welcome them with open arms with a big smile and we see you as a family, so we want to continue with that."

With kidnappings, drug cartel shootouts and other violent crime pervasive in parts of Mexico, the tourism industry has taken a hit, although popular destinations like Cancun are so well-protected that problems are rare.

Kidnappings and cartel violence are prominent among the U.S. State Department's lengthy set of warnings about travel in Mexico. But there are also warnings about getting caught up in drug smuggling, either by being used as a "blind mule" who doesn't know drugs have been put in their car or luggage, or by being strong-armed by smugglers who threaten harm if a person doesn't carry drugs.

Maldonado also may have been caught up in a shakedown by Mexican police who were seeking a bribe. Her husband said police sought $5,000 to let her go.

She may have just been randomly assigned the seat under which the smugglers hid the pot. Or she could have been put there on purpose by smugglers who hoped an American was less likely to be targeted for a search and to provide cover for the real smuggler.

Alonzo Pena, who retired as deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2010 and was once stationed in Mexico, said someone else on the bus probably put the drugs under Maldonado's seat without her knowledge and watched her throughout the trip.

The State Department also warns that criminals are increasingly affixing drugs to the bottom of parked cars in Mexico, the removing them after the vehicle enters the U.S.

Those cases are rare, Pena said, because smugglers like to closely watch the drugs crossing the border.

Eric Vos, a lawyer with the U.S. Office of Defender Services who trains federal public defenders, agreed that slipping drugs into unsuspecting travelers' cars or luggage isn't all that common.

"There's just like a million reasons why the blind mule thing is a difficult angle," Vos said Friday.

It's more common, Pena said, for drug carriers to admit they knowingly smuggled because they or their families were threatened if they disobeyed.

Another old smuggling tactic is to advertise work as security guards, housecleaners and cashiers in Mexican newspapers, telling applicants they must drive company cars to the U.S. They aren't told the cars are loaded with drugs.

There were 39 arrests at San Diego's two border crossings tied to the ads for seemingly legitimate jobs between February 2011 and April 2012, according to ICE, prompting the agency to take out ads in Mexican newspapers warning about the scheme.

An Arizona sheriff who has spent more than 40 years along the Mexican border said Maldonado's case probably was a shakedown.

"They've got some good, courageous law enforcement officers in Mexico," said Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada. "Coupled with that, you've got really corrupt ones too. And that goes at all levels."

Estrada, whose territory includes Nogales, said finding drugs under the seat of a public bus wouldn't have been enough to arrest her in the U.S.

"Something underneath somebody's seat, anybody could have put it there," he said.

But having Americans on board the bus made it easy for police to either assume the Maldonados were the smugglers, or to target them for a bribe.

The Maldonados were traveling home to the Phoenix suburb of Goodyear after attending her aunt's funeral in the city of Los Mochis when they were arrested.

All the passengers were ordered off the bus in the town of Querobabi and a soldier searched the interior. The soldier told his superiors that packets of drugs had been found under two seats, including Yanira Maldonado's.

Her husband, Gary Maldonado, 41, said a man sitting behind them on the bus fled during the inspection and might have been the real smuggler.

Yanira Maldonado said Friday that during the weeklong ordeal, "I got scared, I prayed." she spent her first wedding anniversary, May 25, in jail.

Maldonado was held without bail for a week because under the Mexican judicial system, she had to prove she was innocent. The family's lawyer in Nogales, Mexico, Jose Francisco Benitez Paz, said the video of the couple boarding the bus did just that, although prosecutors are pursuing a routine appeal.

After spending the night in a hotel on the U.S. side of the border, the Maldonados arrived home Friday afternoon to be reunited with their seven children, who range in age from 6 to 25.

Yanira Maldonado said she didn't blame her home country but Mexican authorities should do a better job of arresting drug smugglers "and not people who are innocent like me."

"What happened to me can happen to anyone," she said Friday.

Since she still has family in Mexico, she said she'll return, "not right now, maybe in the future."

"I don't think it's going to happen again," she said of her arrest, but "I'll drive my own vehicle."

___

Silva reported from Nogales, Mexico, and Spagat reported from San Diego. Associated Press writers Walter Berry in Avondale, Ariz., Michael Weissenstein in Mexico City and Luis Castillo in Nogales, Mexico, contributed to this report.

The program, which excludes top executives and anyone who directly profited from misconduct, marks a bigger push for information from staff at SNC, which hired a compliance officer in February as it attempts to restore its tarnished reputation.

The scandal-mired company is trying to get out from under a series of cases in which former top executives have been charged with bribery and corruption for activities in Canada, Libya and Bangladesh.

Current employees will have 90 days between June and August to request amnesty for information on potential corruption or anti-competition matters said SNC, which said it believes the program marks a first for a Canadian company. Amnesty does not extend to executives in the office of the president or management committee groups.

The Montreal-based company guarantees that it will not fire or make claims for damages against any staff who voluntarily report violations of its code of ethics.

"While the vast majority of SNC Lavalin's employees will have nothing to report, this offer of amnesty will allow us to uncover and quickly deal with any remaining issues," said chief compliance officer Andreas Pohlmann in a statement.

"Our goal is to turn the page on a challenging chapter in the company's history, so we can focus all of our attention on creating value for our stakeholders."

Last week, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services cut its long-term corporate credit and senior unsecured ratings on SNC to BBB from BBB-plus. The agency said it expects high administration costs from SNC's ethics scandal will hurt profitability.

Last May, SNC vowed to get to the bottom of any misconduct, saying it encouraged employees to come forward with any information that would help with police investigations.

Shares of SNC were up 46 Canadian cents, or 1.1 percent, at C$41.25 on the Toronto Stock Exchange in early trade on Monday.

(Reporting By Susan Taylor; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

The latest incident of Philistinism, in which a Chinese teenager scratched his name in a 3,500 year old bas relief in a temple in , in , has also triggered a tsunami of embarrassed anger among s Internet community.

Earlier this month, deputy Premier Wang Yang was merciless during a televised meeting called to discuss a proposed tourism law. Too many Chinese tourists talk loudly in public, cross the road when they shouldnt, spit, and carve characters on tourist attractions, he complained. This has damaged Chinas image and had a dreadful impact.

Fifteen-year-old Ding Jinhao has not helped. He is the young hooligan who scratched graffiti into a Luxor temple wall graffiti photographed by another Chinese tourist who then posted the desecration on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform, last week.

More than a quarter of a million people have commented on the post, mostly to express their shame. His parents have publicly apologized.

Jinhao is hardly the first visitor to have defaced Egyptian monuments. Tourists have been carving their names into the pyramids outsidefor millennia. (My favorite: a wistful inscription in Latin left by a lonely Roman atop Cheops pyramid. I saw the pyramids without you, and wept.)

But young Jinhaos indiscretion, which the Egyptian authorities say they have now repaired, is only the most recent in a litany of reports from abroad about the ways in which Chinese tourists have managed to offend the locals.

If its not Hong Kongers sniffing at a mainland mother encouraging her young son to urinate into a bottle in the middle of a restaurant, its Balinese complaining about brash Chinese tourists making too much noise, or Thai Buddhists offended by immodestly dressed Chinese female visitors to temples.

The Chinese Tourism Agency has taken note of these reports. Last month the government department issued a set of civilized behavior guidelines for tourists going abroad, urging them to be attentive to etiquette, maintain dignity protect the environmentqueue in an orderly fashion and eat quietly among other recommendations.

On the same day, though, the agency issued a similar, but even more draconian, charter intended to govern the behavior of visitors to domestic tourist attractions, warning them not to sneeze in other peoples faces, nor to chase and hit animals, nor to spend too long in public lavatories.

In the end, lamented deputy Premier Wang, the problem comes down to what he called the poor quality and breeding of many Chinese, whether they are at home or abroad. It looks like the ugly American that some Europeans and Latin Americans love to hate is about to get a run for his money.

Related stories

Become a part of the Monitor community