An environmentalist warned that toxins from an industrial spill will stay locked in river ice until winter breaks next year, but officials who restored water supplies to Harbin City insist the danger it posed to residents is ended.
Running water was turned back on in Harbin, the capital of northeastern Heilongjiang Province, on Sunday after supplies were switched off for five days because of the Nov. 13 explosion that spewed chemicals -- including cancer-causing benzene -- into the Songhua River.
The vice director of Harbin's health inspection bureau, Xiu Tinggong, said on Tuesday the water was safe to use and drink. Officials had earlier expressed concern that water left in the city's underground pipes for five days may not be safe.
"Everybody can rest assured that the water is safe," Xiu said on local television.
Many residents were still wary.
"We still can't be sure that it's safe," said bank worker Sun Ning as she loaded a shopping cart with bottled water for her household. "It's not that we don't trust the government, but we are still not totally at ease."
Concerns also were high in the Russian city of Khabarovsk, where the toxic soup from Harbin was headed after flowing into the larger Heilong River, called the Amur in Russian. Chinese officials have said the spill was expected to reach Khabarovsk around Dec. 10-12 -- or sooner.
A top Russian environmental official tried to reassure the population on Tuesday by drinking a glass of water on television.
But the World Wide Fund for Nature said the river faced "ecological catastrophe" from the 80km-long slick of chemicals floating toward the Russian border from China.
Meanwhile, Beijing has invited experts from the UN to assess the chemical spill.
The team of four will come from several UN agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Development Program, and will probably begin testing water along the Songhua River in the next few days, said Roy Wadia, a WHO spokesman in Beijing.
The international experts will assess the continued presence and effects of the pollutants that poured into the river.
"They will provide technical expertise in the areas of water contamination, chemical contamination, and the public health implications of such an incident," Wadia said yesterday.
The team will include Russian experts, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
US President Donald Trump on Friday said Washington was “locked and loaded” to respond if Iran killed protesters, prompting Tehran to warn that intervention would destabilize the region. Protesters and security forces on Thursday clashed in several Iranian cities, with six people reported killed, the first deaths since the unrest escalated. Shopkeepers in Tehran on Sunday last week went on strike over high prices and economic stagnation, actions that have since spread into a protest movement that has swept into other parts of the country. If Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
RSS