Beijing has decided not to make measures that limited car use during the Olympics permanent, state media said yesterday, despite considerable public backing of curbs that brought the cleanest air in years.
From Saturday private car owners will no longer face any restrictions, following a two-month period when they could only drive every other day, the Beijing Youth Daily reported, citing the city government.
Instead, they will merely be “encouraged” to avoid using their cars one day every week, according to the paper.
However, government vehicles will in future be forced off the roads once a week, following a rotating system based on the last number on their license plates, the paper said.
The new regulations follow remarks from the government that it would not rule out continuing the temporary car use limits put in place at the last moment before the Olympics and Paralympics to clean the air for the athletes.
The restrictions prevented over 1 million of Beijing’s 3.3 million cars from hitting the roads.
The limits — along with a move to shut down construction work and close over 100 polluting factories — have been an unmitigated success, as Beijing had the cleanest air of any summer in the past decade, officials said earlier.
The better air and the smoother traffic meant significant support from the public for the measures.
A recent survey of 844 Beijing residents carried out by Capital View Research Co showed 55.6 percent were in favor of making the curbs permanent, the Beijing Youth Daily said.
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