The East is ... Orange

China's worst sandstorm in a decade swathed Beijing in a thick, orange haze, with peak particulate readings going beyond the scale of the instruments made to measure them. The March 15 blast of yellow sand from the Gobi Desert prompted social media users to mock air pollution czar Liu Bingjiang, who three weeks earlier had claimed a clean-air campaign called "Operation Blue Sky" had exceeded its goals, and that "the battle to keep our skies blue has been won."