Fire engulfs Beijing hotel

A huge blaze sparked by fireworks engulfed a hotel late Monday in the unfinished headquarters of Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, one of the icons of Beijing's architectural rebirth, state media said. The blaze consumed the Mandarin Oriental Hotel due to open later this year within the complex housing the future headquarters of China Central Television, the country's state television broadcaster, Xinhua news agency said.
The unfinished hotel was just a few hundred metres (yards) from the showpiece 234-metre (770-foot) CCTV tower designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, an AFP journalist at the scene said.