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food / travel

Fecal Rain? Near Shanghai Airport, Unpleasant Droppings From Above

Pudong airport
Pudong airport

SHANGHAI — Some inhabitants near Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport are reporting something far more odious than the usual noise pollution.

According to Zhou, who lives just south of Shanghai in Luchaogang, even on sunny days, he can see "golden raindrops" falling down, accompanied by a bad smell, the Dongfang Daily reported.

The droppings, which Dongfang Daily referred to as "fecal rain," accumulate on locals’ cars and their night-time duvets put outdoors to air out. Since Luchaogang is located under the Shanghai airport flight path, local inhabitants blame arriving aircraft, which in the morning land every five to 10 minutes.

A Pudong airport staff member told the Dongfang Daily that modern aircraft now all have a vacuum system for collecting all human waste into a sealed fecal tank. Even if the system breaks down, the exrement should stay in the tail of the plane and not to be discharged in the air.

However, a maintenance crewman at China Eastern Airlines, while insisting that the vast majority of Chinese civil aircraft today have adopted the new vacuum collecting system, admitted that "old planes still have stool collection containers that are not tight enough and the situation where the feces leak out can indeed occur," the Xinhua news agency reported.

After the initial press reports, Pudong airport has promised to investigate whether some aircraft toilet collecting systems have cracked or leaked.

Meanwhile, some may never be able to hear Prince's classic song the same way again...


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Economy

Wealthy Russians Are Back To Buying Real Estate In Europe — Sanctions Be Damned

After the start of the war in Ukraine, Russian oligarchs and other rich individuals turned to the real estate markets in Dubai and Turkey. Now Russian buyers are back in Europe. Three EU countries in particular are attracting buyers for their controversial "golden visa" program.

Photo of a sunset on villas on a hillside in Benahavis, Spain

Villas in Benahavis, Spain, a country that has enticed Russians with a so-called "golden visa" program.

Eduard Steiner

BERLINWestern sanctions imposed after the start of Russia's war against Ukraine have made financial outflows from Russia much more difficult — and paradoxically have also helped to strengthen Russia's economy, as the renowned economist Ruben Enikolopov recently noted in an interview for the online media "The Bell".

So while sanctions have not completely prevented these financial flows, they played a role in changing their direction.

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It was notable in real estate purchases during the first year of the war: as Russian buyers moved away from the previously coveted European market to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as to Turkey or the South Caucasus and even Southeast Asia.

Instead of "Londongrad", where the high- to middle-income earners from Vladimir Putin's empire turned for the previous two decades, people suddenly started talking about "Dubaigrad."

But this trend now seems to have peaked, with unexpected signs that Russians are back on the European real estate market.

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