Briefly

HAINAN

Naval fleet sent on escort mission

The 37th fleet of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy left the port city of Sanya, Hainan province, on Saturday for the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia to escort civilian ships. The fleet is composed of the guided-missile destroyer CNS Changsha, the missile frigate CNS Yulin, and the supply ship CNS Honghu. On board are 700 officers and soldiers, including dozens of special operations troops. It is the first time Changsha has joined an escort mission. The PLA Navy began to carry out escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia in December 2008.

SHANGHAI

Yangtze delta sees sharp drop in PM2.5

Forty-one major cities in the Yangtze River Delta have experienced a significant improvement in air quality, with a 31.4 percent decline in the average concentration of PM2.5 during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), a Shanghai environmental official told a news conference on Friday. The cities' average density of PM2.5 last year was 35 micrograms per cubic meter, meeting the country's second-level air quality standard, said Bai Guoqiang, chief engineer of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment. Shanghai's average concentration of PM2.5 was 32 micrograms per cu m last year, 36 percent lower than the reading in 2015 and down from 35 micrograms per cu m in 2019.

Xinhua