China Recruits WhistleBlowers to Fight Pollution

— China is increasingly asking its citizens to blow the whistle on industrial polluters. That's in stark contrast to two years ago, when authorities sought to cover up a major chemical spillage. When the 9 million residents of Harbin, in northeast China, awoke to dry taps in the winter of 1995, the last thing they were aware of was that the Songhua river was heavily polluted by a severe chemical spill of carcinogenic benzene. The Songhua river, stretching 1,927 kilometers across northeast China into Russia's Amur River, is the lifeblood of the provinces of Jilin and Heliongjiang, which in winter months drop to temperatures of-30 degrees Celsius...