An environmentalist warned that toxins from an industrial spill will stay locked in river ice until winter breaks next year, but officials who restored water supplies to Harbin City insist the danger it posed to residents is ended.
Running water was turned back on in Harbin, the capital of northeastern Heilongjiang Province, on Sunday after supplies were switched off for five days because of the Nov. 13 explosion that spewed chemicals -- including cancer-causing benzene -- into the Songhua River.
The vice director of Harbin's health inspection bureau, Xiu Tinggong, said on Tuesday the water was safe to use and drink. Officials had earlier expressed concern that water left in the city's underground pipes for five days may not be safe.
"Everybody can rest assured that the water is safe," Xiu said on local television.
Many residents were still wary.
"We still can't be sure that it's safe," said bank worker Sun Ning as she loaded a shopping cart with bottled water for her household. "It's not that we don't trust the government, but we are still not totally at ease."
Concerns also were high in the Russian city of Khabarovsk, where the toxic soup from Harbin was headed after flowing into the larger Heilong River, called the Amur in Russian. Chinese officials have said the spill was expected to reach Khabarovsk around Dec. 10-12 -- or sooner.
A top Russian environmental official tried to reassure the population on Tuesday by drinking a glass of water on television.
But the World Wide Fund for Nature said the river faced "ecological catastrophe" from the 80km-long slick of chemicals floating toward the Russian border from China.
Meanwhile, Beijing has invited experts from the UN to assess the chemical spill.
The team of four will come from several UN agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Development Program, and will probably begin testing water along the Songhua River in the next few days, said Roy Wadia, a WHO spokesman in Beijing.
The international experts will assess the continued presence and effects of the pollutants that poured into the river.
"They will provide technical expertise in the areas of water contamination, chemical contamination, and the public health implications of such an incident," Wadia said yesterday.
The team will include Russian experts, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS