China will invest 26.6 billion yuan (US$3.28 billion) over the next five years to clean up the Songhua River, a key source of drinking water for tens of millions of people that was polluted in November by a toxic spill that reached into Russia, reports said yesterday.
The effort will cover the entire river valley in four provinces that are home to more than 62 million people, with drinking water sources in large and medium-sized cities given priority, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.
By 2010, more than 90 percent of the people living in the four provinces should have access to clean drinking water, the paper quoted environmental officials meeting in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, as saying. The percentage of those with access to clean drinking water now wasn't given.
The plan comes weeks after an explosion at a chemical plant spewed benzene into the Songhua, polluting the river and disrupting running water to millions of people in both China and Russia, where the toxic slick arrived late last month.
It also comes as one central Chinese province lifted a pollution warning for its water supply and another reported that that cadmium, a potentially cancer-causing chemical, leaked into a tributary of the Yangtze River.
Under the clean up plan, new facilities will be constructed to remove 4 million tonnes of waste water from the river each day. Officials said about 1.29 billion tonnes of waste water must be removed from the Songhua every year to improve its quality.
Meanwhile, the local government in the central province of Henan lifted a pollution warning for a stretch of the Yellow River following a diesel oil leakage on Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
An oil pipe at a power plant in Gongyi City in Henan split due to freezing temperatures, spilling six tonnes of diesel into the Yiluo tributary, local officials said.
By Saturday night, the water quality in the tributary and the river's lower reaches was found to meet safety standards, Xinhua quoted the government as saying.
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in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values.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
‘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
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS