Shoddy maintenance work at a state-owned smelting works was blamed for a toxic spill that threatens water supplies to southern Chinese cities, state media said yesterday.
The director of the Shaoguan City smelting works, Zhang Weijian, has been suspended for investigation, said the semi-official China News Service.
Tens of thousands along the Beijiang river in Guangdong province were without potable water after the smelting works last week released excessive amounts of cadmium, which can cause neurological disorders and cancer.
According to the China News Service, staff at the factory breached safety rules by using just one day instead of three days to carry out cadmium waste treatment work, causing over 900 tonnes of the toxic discharge to spill into the river.
"During maintenance work, some staff had wanted to cut short the treatment time of the waste water, therefore, high density cadmium-containing effluent that was way above [safety] standards was discharged," the report said.
Authorities on Friday poured iron and aluminum polymer into the upper reaches of the river at the city of Yingde to induce the cadmium to settle at the bottom of the river.
"The move is expected to ensure a safe water quality at the lower reaches of the river," Xinhua news agency said in a separate report yesterday.
Officials this week had lowered a dam gate and released water from reservoirs upstream in Beijiang to try to slow the flow of the slick and dilute it as it headed towards the metropolis of Guangzhou.
Local environmental protection authorities have said the toxic discharge has caused the cadmium level in the river at Shaoguan to surge nearly 10 times safety levels, seriously affecting water quality in the lower reaches.
The toxic spill was China's second in as many months after a benzene slick from a factory in northeast China cut tap water to millions of city-dwellers for four days last month.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant