A burst oil pipeline in north China has spewed thousands of liters of diesel into a major tributary of the Yellow River, state media said yesterday.
The spill occurred on Wednesday last week on the Chishui River in Shaanxi Province when a pipeline operated by the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) ruptured, a statement on the Weinan City Government Web site said.
Emergency measures have been taken to stop the leak, with 23 containment belts set up downstream from the spill and up to 700 people scrambling to clean up the mess, the statement said.
Local government officials refused to reveal how much diesel had spilled into the river or comment on the spill when contacted by reporters.
Xinhua news agency reported that up to 150,000 liters had leaked into the river about 70km from the Yellow River, one of China’s longest watercourses.
Oil has already been detected 33km downstream from the spill, the report said.
“We must take thorough measures to handle the spill and the pollution and strictly prevent it from entering the Yellow River, while ensuring the safety of drinking water,” the Chongqing Evening News quoted Vice Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) as saying.
Local environmental departments have warned residents not to use the river water as it may be polluted, the report said.
A preliminary investigation showed that the pipeline rupture was caused by a local construction project, CNPC, one of China’s biggest state-owned oil and gas companies, said in a statement.
The pipeline is used to transport diesel from Gansu Province to the central parts of the nation, it said.
About 30 years of unbridled economic growth have left most of China’s lakes and rivers heavily polluted while the nation’s urban dwellers also face some of the world’s worst air pollution.
More than 200 million Chinese currently do not have access to safe drinking water, government data showed.
In November 2005, a major oil spill on the Songhua River in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province resulted in a cut off of water supplies to up to 4 million people in the provincial capital of Harbin before flowing down river into Russia, causing a diplomatic crisis.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS