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HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Thousands of people lined Harare’s roads and welcomed Chinese president Xi Jinping, whose visit has raised hopes that China will help stabilize Zimbabwe’s faltering economy.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe greeted Xi at the airport, where some immigration signs are in Chinese, indicating China’s importance to this southern African country.

Xi inspected a guard of honor at the airport but did not speak on his arrival. He is expected to address a joint press conference with Mugabe after signing economic deals later on Tuesday.

China is Zimbabwe’s biggest foreign investor, pumping in $600 million in 2013, according to Chinese ambassador to Harare Huang Ping. Mugabe and Xi are expected to sign several “mega deals,” said Ping.

Chinese nationals, Zimbabwean schoolchildren and people wearing shirts of Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party held Zimbabwe and Chinese flags for up to 10 kilometers (6 miles) along the road to Harare International Airport. Others wore T-shirts praising the friendship between Zimbabwe and China.

Xi is in Zimbabwe until Wednesday before heading to South Africa for a forum on cooperation between Africa and China as he works to strengthen ties with this continent that is a key supplier to Beijing of oil, minerals, tobacco and cotton.

China’s growth in Africa has slowed over the past two years as the weakening Chinese economy demands fewer of Africa’s resources, although overall trade topped $200 billion last year.

Mugabe, whose country is struggling with mass company closures, high unemployment, low liquidity and foreign direct investment and food shortages, has said he and the Chinese leader will discuss “some of the projects and programs we want China to assist us in undertaking.”

China’s imports from Zimbabwe include gold, diamonds, platinum, tobacco, nickel and chrome. China has invested in construction, energy and telecommunications projects in Zimbabwe.

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PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — The South African prison cell where Oscar Pistorius stayed for a year for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp is furnished with a single mattress on a metal frame, a basin, a small cabinet and a barred window whose view is blocked by a metal screen on the outside.

Journalists got a look Tuesday at the former cell of the double-amputee Olympian during a tour of a maximum security prison in Pretoria.

Pistorius, 29, was convicted of manslaughter for shooting Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day 2013. He was released from jail on Oct. 19 after serving one year of a 5-year sentence and is under house arrest. An appeals court is preparing to rule on whether Pistorius should be convicted of the more serious charge of murder and sent back to prison.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A Smithsonian museum is launching a new initiative exploring the ways giving is woven into American life, whether it’s a multimillion dollar school endowment, nights spent battling blazes by a volunteer firefighter or other contributions of time and money.

The National Museum of American History’s announcement of a plan to collect, research and exhibit artifacts documenting the nation’s legacy of philanthropy coincides with Giving Tuesday, a movement encouraging philanthropy in a season often associated with consumerism.

“Our goal is to help them understand what it means to be American, who we are as a people, and try to characterize what makes us distinctive,” said Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs David Allison.

Allison said philanthropy is one element of that and the exploration seems a natural fit for an institution created by the philanthropy of James Smithson. The British citizen left his estate to his nephew, but since the nephew died without an heir, the half million dollar estate went to the U.S. for the founding of “an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge,” according to the Smithsonian’s website.

“The Smithsonian only exists because of philanthropy,” Allison said, noting that Smithson’s legacy of giving has been carried on by many others. “That’s something that we as an institution should pay more attention to.”

A grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a gift from David M. Rubenstein fund the Smithsonian’s Philanthropy Initiative, with an annual symposium, display space and the endowment of a curatorial position, but neither wanted to disclose the amounts contributed.

The idea for the initiative grew out of the museum delving into the history of business in America for its recently opened innovation wing, Allison said.

“The role of philanthropy kept coming up,” he said, but there wasn’t space to include it then. “It made us think that we should do more on that topic.”

Just as styles of giving have shifted from coins in a church collection plate to 10Ks and crowdfunding campaigns, so has the way museums engage their audiences, Allison said. This initiative embraces collaboration, putting out a call for artifacts of philanthropy, such as thermometers that organizations use to track progress toward a fundraising goal and inviting the public to share online their stories and photos about giving.

“The Smithsonian is really moving to a different relationship with its audience,” he said. It’s no longer a situation where the museum knows everything and tells you what you need to know, “those days are gone,” he said. New ways of engaging the public, such as social media, create a larger conversation about the topic being explored.

The museum will open a long-term exhibition in late November 2016. In the meantime, “Giving in America” will give a preview of ways giving has shaped civic culture both in the Gilded Age and the present day. Artifacts gathered for the initiative include a nurse’s cap from a Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing student circa 1945 and letters from signers of the Giving Pledge, a commitment by some of the world’s richest people to dedicate a majority of their wealth to philanthropy.

Items being donated on Tuesday include a firefighter’s boot used to collect money from motorists for the “Fill the Boot” campaign for muscular dystrophy and T-shirts, signs and a banner from the #BMoreGivesMore 2013 campaign in Baltimore.

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BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s counter-terrorism coordinator believes the Islamic State group is resorting to attacks abroad because it is hurting from coalition airstrikes.

Apart from the Nov. 13 massacres in Paris, the group has also launched attacks in Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt’s Sinai in recent weeks and De Kerchove says that it appears to be changing strategy.

Gilles De Kerchove told EU lawmakers on Tuesday that “the pressure of the coalition airstrikes … in Raqqa and around Raqqa maybe forced them to seek successes abroad.”

He said: “Is this a sign of weakness? I believe so.”

The city of Raqqa in northern Syria is the group’s headquarters and a focus of an air campaign by Russia and a U.S.-led coalition including France.

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The big carmakers are releasing their numbers on US auto sales throughout Tuesday.

The estimate is that domestic vehicle sales grew at an annualized pace of 18.10 million, according to Bloomberg.

Unless December’s numbers come in really bad, US auto sales are set for a record year. The previous record, set in 2000, was 17.4 million, and the pace of sales has crossed 18 million since then although we’ve never finished a year at that level. 

Business Insider’s Matt DeBord broke down the four main reasons why auto sales have been so strong in 2015.

In short, lots of people have lots of old cars (11 years old on average), gas is cheap, it’s easier to access credit, and there are plenty of jobs. 

“In recent years, we have seen automakers make greater use of Black Friday temporary deals to drive auto sales and we expect this trend to continue this year,” RBC Capital’s Joseph Spak said in a client preview. “The focus will be on VW sales following the “dieselgate” crisis, which we expect will be pressured.”

This post will be updated as the data roll in, refresh it for updates.

SEE ALSO: Automakers are about to do something in the US that’s never happened before

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NOW WATCH: We drove the fastest Tesla you can buy

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HAVANA (AP) — The Cuban government says it is reimposing a hated travel permit requirement on many doctors, requiring them to get permission to leave the country in an attempt to counter a brain drain that it publicly blames on the United States.

It is the first major reverse in Cuba’s policy of allowing unrestricted travel for its citizens, put in place in 2012 as President Raul Castro allowed new freedoms as part of a broad set of social and economic reforms.

The government announced on the front page of state media Tuesday that doctors in specialties that have been drained by large-scale emigration in recent years will now be required to get permission from Health Ministry officials in order to leave the country.

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MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) — Comedian and Ball State University graduate David Letterman is donating memorabilia from his career in television to his alma mater.

Ball State president Paul Ferguson made the announcement Monday night before Letterman spoke to a sold-out crowd at Emens Auditorium with filmmakers Spike Jonze and Bennett Miller. Ferguson said Letterman plans to donate Emmy Awards, a talk-show set, props and other items to create “The David Letterman Experience” at the Muncie school.

Letterman graduated from Ball State in 1969 and has since returned to the school for a lecture series with other celebrities.

He shared the stage at Emens Auditorium with Oprah Winfrey in 2012, Rachel Maddow in 2011 and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone in 2010.

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BEIJING (AP) — For four hours every day, for 100 days, Chinese artist Wang Renzheng held up the attachment of an industrial vacuum cleaner to suck in Beijing’s notoriously polluted air at various landmarks.

Passers-by were intrigued, inquiring if he was an air sanitation worker, or if he was taking air samples, or if he could be hired to do air sweeps of their apartments, Wang recalled.

The 34-year-old artist hopes the performance art — dubbed the Dust Project — can sharpen the public’s sense of China’s air quality.

“Have you ever thought how much dust there is in the air, as Chinese cities are growing at high speeds?” Wang said Tuesday.

Although the public has come to realize the severity of China’s air pollution, Wang said he feels the change has been painfully slow.

“This is not an issue to be ignored, and I want to magnify it so much that you cannot ignore it,” he said.

Coincidentally, the project’s 100-day phase of dust-collecting ended Sunday — right in the middle of this year’s worst pollution spell in Beijing, when its landmark buildings disappeared into thick smog and residents were asked to stay indoors. Monitoring sites reported that the density of the tiny, poisonous PM2.5 particles had reached more than 40 times the safe level set by the World Health Organization.

Local media reports of Wang’s performance art went viral this week with the headline that his efforts had gathered enough dust to make a normal-size brick.

Wang said that his 400 hours of air-sucking had netted 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of dust, which has been added to a mixture to make a brick at a factory in the northern city of Tangshan.

The 100 grams were more than he expected when he first embarked on the project on July 24 with the $1,100 vacuum cleaner.

Wang said that after three days, the machine collected little dust. “I checked again after 100 days, and the dirt was far more obvious. It was black and dirty, and it crumbled upon touch,” he said.

Once the brick is made, it will be used in construction along with other bricks. “It should just disappear like a drop of water going into the sea,” Wang said.

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HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Thousands of people lined Harare’s roads and welcomed Chinese president Xi Jinping, whose visit has raised hopes that China will help stabilize Zimbabwe’s faltering economy.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe greeted Xi at the airport.

Xi inspected a guard of honor at the airport but did not speak on his arrival. He is expected to address a joint press conference with Mugabe after signing economic deals later on Tuesday.

Chinese ambassador to Harare Huang Ping said that China is Zimbabwe’s biggest foreign investor, pumping in $600 million in 2013. He said Mugabe and Xi are expected to sign several economic deals.

Xi is in Zimbabwe until Wednesday before heading to South Africa for a forum on cooperation between Africa and China.

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Good morning! Here are the plays everybody will be talking about Monday morning.

Another team wins on a block-6. The Monday Night Football game was not the best matchup ever, featuring two teams with losing records and most of the stars plays not in action. Still, the Cleveland Browns beat the Baltimore Ravens in stunning fashion. The Ravens actually had the ball with the game tied and less than a minute left when they threw an ugly interception in their own end of the field. That led to what looked like it was going to be a last-second game-winning field goal. Instead, the Ravens blocked the kick and Will Hill returned it 65 yards for a game-winning touchdown for the Ravens. Here is the play with the Browns radio call (via Fox Sports 1).

The Warriors did it again and so did Stephen Curry. The Warriors improved to 19-0, but this 106-103 win over the Utah Jazz was anything but easy, going down to the final seconds. Curry finished with 26 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 assists, and none of the assists were prettier than his hook-alley-oop to Festus Ezeli with less five minutes to go.

Maple Leafs goalie makes great save in NHL debut. Garret Sparks is a 22-year-old rookie goal who made his NHL debut on Monday and became the first player Toronto Maple Leafs history to record a shutout in his first NHL game. Sparks was tested early and made a couple of nice saves in the first period, but it was his save late in the second period that he’ll always remember. After making an initial save on a breakaway, he fell to the ice and had an Oilers player on top of him when he kept his cool and swatted away the loose puck. The Leafs went on to win 3-0.

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NOW WATCH: Watch the epic haka that accompanied a New Zealand rugby legend’s funeral

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