Beijing is considering banning 90 percent of private cars from its roads and closing more factories in a last-ditch bid to clear smoggy skies for the Olympics, state media reported yesterday.
With just 11 days to go before the start of the Olympic Games, Beijing was blanketed in a dense white haze yesterday that cut visibility in the city of 17 million down to just a few hundred meters.
Last week Beijing ordered more than 1 million cars from the roads and closed dozens of polluting factories but the effort has failed to remove the stubborn layer of unhealthy haze.
Acknowledging the failure of the initial car ban introduced on July 20, Beijing authorities are expected to announce more stringent emergency measures soon, the China Daily quoted the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau as saying.
One plan under consideration put forward by a city environmentalist was to ban 90 percent of all private vehicles from the streets of the capital during the Games, the paper said.
The Beijing Olympic organizing committee was unable to confirm what new measures would be introduced.
“The new car ban represents the personal opinion of an environmentalist professor. As far as we are concerned we have not heard of any such new measures,” spokeswoman Zhu Jing (朱靜) said.
Li Xin, an official with the environmental bureau, said that the emergency plan would go into effect before the Games start, the China Daily said.
“We will implement an emergency plan 48 hours in advance [of the Games] if the air quality deteriorates,” he was quoted as saying.
On Sunday, Du Shaozhong (杜少中), spokesman for the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, acknowledged that tougher measures were needed to improve air quality.
Du said the extra measures were “under preparation” but gave no additional details, the report said.
“The air quality in Beijing must be improved. Seventy percent of the year the air is good, but for the remaining 30 percent, the air quality still does not meet the standard,” Du said.
International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge warned last year that poor air quality during the Games could result in the suspension of some events, particularly endurance races such as the marathon.
Under the car ban launched July 20, cars with odd and even number plates are allowed on streets only on alternate days. Beijing had earlier taken 300,000 heavily polluting vehicles off the road.
HONG KONG
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, dozens of Olympic equestrian horses had to exercise in a blanket of choking smog yesterday, as a dense white haze blurred the skyline.
The Hong Kong Observatory said the haze had cut visibility to about 3km at midday.
The territory’s air pollution level was classified as high, although it had not yet crossed the critical 100 mark, the point at which those with respiratory or heart problems are urged to stay at home.
But a spokesman for the Equestrian Company, which is responsible for hosting the Olympic Equestrian events in Hong Kong, said they were confident the pollution would not pose a risk to horses.
“We have kept our horses in a high-ceilinged, six-star stable with a temperature constantly maintained at 23˚C, which according to our vets is the optimum temperature for the animals,” the spokesman said.
A total of 204 horses will take part in Olympic equestrian events.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS