Light snow covered much of drought-hit north China yesterday, but the welcome respite was unlikely to signal the end of a severe dry spell that has sparked UN warnings about the impact on crops.
The snow began falling late on Wednesday over parched Henan, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces — all key grain-producing areas — the national weather bureau said.
Up to 3cm fell in most places after authorities ordered weather manipulation techniques such as cloud-seeding to induce the precipitation, the China Daily reported.
“The snow won’t ease the unusual drought that has lasted for more than 100 days, nor end the impact the aridity has had on farming,” the paper quoted an engineer at the Beijing Meteorological Station, Sun Jisong (孫繼松), as saying. “The possibility of heavier snow remains low.”
The snow in the Beijing region was the first precipitation in the capital since rain fell on Oct. 25 and it marked the longest wait for the first winter snowfall in six decades, the paper said.
Officials in Henan, one of the provinces hardest hit by the drought, said silver iodide chemicals shot into clouds had ended 116 straight days without precipitation.
On Wednesday, the government pledged US$1 billion to fight the drought after the UN said the lack of precipitation could pose “very serious” problems to China’s winter wheat crop, a key harvest for the world’s biggest producer of the grain.
At a meeting chaired by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), the government decided to allocate funds to pay rice growers higher prices for their grain in a bid to spur production, according to a statement from the State Council.
The statement did not say how much of the 6.7 billion yuan (US$1 billion) in anti-drought spending would be earmarked specifically for that purpose.
Other spending would go toward diverting water to affected areas, constructing emergency wells and irrigation facilities, and alleviating water shortages for up to 3 million people.
The State Council warned the situation could worsen, saying rainfall across northern China for the foreseeable future would remain “persistently below normal levels and major rivers will continue to be generally dry.”
China has a state policy of grain self-sufficiency and any move to purchase wheat overseas — which some see as increasingly likely — could drive global food prices up and impact commodity markets.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of