weather

blogs.wsj.com — Fresh from scoring another record grain harvest this year, China now plans to get the weather to heel as well.

Rainmaking has now become part of the government’s five-year-term goals, the state-run China Daily reported Friday. Over the next four years, Beijing wants five regional weather control programs to increase artificial rain by 10 percent, it says....

www.theatlantic.com — Jeremiah Jenne (of the Granite Studio) is helping fill James Fallows' spot at The Atlantic while Fallows is away. In this post he talks about how Twitter and Facebook calls for revolution ain't got nothing on a lack of rain.

www.farwestchina.com — Is it really a storm if you can't see it? Khotan has been reported as having zero-visibility after violent sand storms swept in last Friday. Here is the CCTV video to give you a better idea of what that would look like.

www.telegraph.co.uk — The Beijing Olympics of 2008 were the most polluted games ever with athletes and spectators exposed to dangerous level of smog, researchers have concluded.

thestar.com.my — A powerful typhoon headed toward the eastern Chinese coast on Monday forcing over 200,000 people to seek higher ground, state media said, after it battered Taiwan over the weekend.