Beijing starts 2017 under a cloud

A man takes a selfie beside a lake on a heavily polluted day in Beijing on January 1, 2017. -AFP

BEIJING: Beijing woke on the first morning of the New Year covered in thick toxic fog, with a concentration of harmful particles 20 times higher than international standards.

After a long period of pollution in December, the Chinese capital was again smothered Sunday in an acrid grey haze which limited visibility to a few hundred metres.